How to Feed a Fussy Localvore

By Paula Melton

    If you’ve never taken the Localvore Challenge, I hope you will try it this year during Celebrate Local Food week, Sept. 13-20. Whether you’re “into” local food or not, the yearly challenge is the best way I know to increase your awareness of what you really eat on a daily basis.
    Here’s the idea: you eat as much local food as you can for a whole week, where “local” means grown and processed in Vermont or within a 100-miles radius of your home. And where “as much as you can” means that if your vice of choice happens to come from Colombia – I’m talking about coffee, of course – you make an exception.
    Trying your local-food experiment during Celebrate Local Food week makes the experience much easier and a lot more fun. There are several family-friendly events throughout the week, featuring local food and good company. (See www.WindhamLocalvores.org for information about the week’s events and how to obtain harder-to-find dry goods.)
    But here’s the trouble: an all-local diet is already somewhat limited, even in the thick of the late-summer harvest. And any dietary restrictions you have will limit your diet even further. For example, you might be a vegetarian, or allergic to eggs, or unable to eat wheat. Or, if you are reading this article, you might have picky children.
    What on earth are they going to eat?
    There are ways around this. If you’re already accommodating a child’s tastes by making special meals, you could just exempt them from the Challenge. But if you’re insane, like I am, that sounds way too easy – and, in all seriousness, if you skip the Localvore Challenge, you miss out on a week-long series of teachable moments.
    Here are some ideas that have helped my family rise to the Localvore Challenge in a way that was both fun and educational.
    • Get buy-in. Why are we doing this? Be prepared with age-appropriate answers to that question. For the youngest kids: We want to help the farmers and get the freshest food we can. The older the child is, the more complex the answer can be. And you may have help. Several local school districts are sponsoring a Kids’ Localvore Challenge, integrating local food into the curriculum – and even into school lunches.
    Your family probably already does quite a bit of thinking and talking (and perhaps arguing and whining) about where your dinner comes from and what is in it. In our house, we regularly talk about vitamins and minerals, starch and protein, artificial ingredients, plastic packaging and why we eat “growing food” before dessert. The Localvore Challenge is a good opportunity to build on what you have already discussed.
    • Agree on the rules together. When I say rules, I mean that the Localvore Challenge is a kind of game. This is supposed to be fun! Our family’s rules allow one non-local treat per day. For the adults, this is always coffee (sweetened with maple syrup). For the kids, it has ranged from chocolate to noodles. We also use yeast, baking powder and exotic spices. And I have a confession to make: I sometimes augment the wonderful locally grown whole wheat, spelt and corn flours with white flour. For our children, this exception makes the difference between taking one required bite and eating a meal. Your family should make its own rules and menu plans. Just make sure the kids have a say.
    • Pick your own. Apples, berries, pumpkins, sweet corn and many other items are still available at local farms that allow you to pick your own produce. Picking fruit makes a wonderful family outing, suitable for all ages (except perhaps the most rambunctious toddlers, depending on where you are picking). We always try to get lots of berries and freeze them for midwinter snacks and smoothies.
    • Let them eat veggies. How many kids do you know who will eat any fruit or veggie put in front of them? Probably none. But I know several otherwise fussy eaters who can’t get enough of something other people don’t really care for: squash, blackberries, carrots, fried mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, baby spinach, steamed broccoli, bell peppers, baked potatoes or even beets. I spent several years fretting about what my kids would not eat, until I realized they each of them had a handful of really healthful foods that they would eat. All fresh, whole produce is bursting with goodness. If there is a vegetable at the farmers’ market that your children love to eat, by all means let them have as much as they want!
    • Try new recipes – together. We don’t often make our own tortillas, so our kids see it as a treat when we break out the little rolling pins and give them their own balls of dough to flatten. You can use the tortillas to make quesadillas, burritos or homemade chips – or just serve them hot with butter. Other fun things you can make with local ingredients: bread (most kids under 12 love to make their own small loaf), granola, applesauce, scones, muffins, smoothies, eggnog, purple potato soup, pancakes, omelets and quiches, stir-fry, made-to-order garden salads, and my husband’s personal favorite: pots of gold in pirates’ blood. (Arrrrrgh! In English, that’s tomato soup with cheese-filled dumplings floating in it, matey.)
    • Accept no substitutes. In my experience, picky eaters respond much more positively to a totally novel food than to a food that’s pretending to be something else. Please, for the love of all that is noodly, do not attempt to make macaroni and cheese with locally grown ingredients. I’ve tried to use whole-wheat bread flour instead of semolina to make noodles, so take my word for this: if your kids are used to Annie’s or Kraft, your “local” version of mac & cheese is very likely to land in the compost.
    • Make treats. There’s no sugar cane in our bioregion, so we always stock up on Grade B maple syrup during the Localvore Challenge. You might be surprised at how many wonderful (and secretly nutritious) sweets you can make with maple syrup and/or honey. Fruit crisps, pies and cobblers; ice cream; oatmeal cookies; custard; quick breads; and another favorite from my husband’s childhood: milk toddies. (These do not actually involve alcohol, just warm milk sweetened with either syrup or honey.)
    • Congratulate yourselves. If you manage to get through the whole week following your family’s agreed-upon rules, you have won the game! Praise your kids – and yourself.
    During the Challenge, I often wish that we could keep this up after the week is over. But it never works out that way. While we eat seasonally to a great extent and buy local foods whenever we can, our lifestyle does not allow us to spend most of the day making food from scratch. If you take the Localvore Challenge, you might suddenly understand how your grandmother managed to stay busy in the kitchen from dawn to dusk. It’s great to be connected to our food in that way for a while, but by the end of the week we’re usually ready for a nice warm bagel: buy, slice, toast, eat. The really wonderful thing is that, by then, we appreciate those little luxuries so much more.