Locavores/Bike-to-Work - Livin' it California

This one is full of plugs. And links. Liberal, crunchy links. Get ready.

May is the "Eat Local Month", at least according to the Locavores , a group Nat and I joined about a month ago. Though we've pledged to do our best to try and eat within our watershed for the month (arbitarily designated to be 100 miles in diameter), we've fallen victim to some coffee cravings and bbq/brunch invitations that have kept us from strict adherence to the plan. We're catching a bit of flack, too. It is interesting, though, just trying to get a handle on where our food is coming from. Simple things, especially, like pepper and salt...you're pretty clever if you can even figure out what pepper is (hint - not a pepper). Did you know that the majority of commercial table salt is actually evaporated from SF Bay? So we're good there. And I've been defining local as in local small-scale businesses, too, like say, my UnCommon Grounds coffee roasters down the street, and Scharffenburger chocolates. Berkeley is a pretty easy place to fulfill this challenge, actually, and I'm sure there are many people here doing it much more to the letter than we are willing to...we may live in Berkeley, but we are far from Berzerkeley. It would be much more difficult if we were trying to eat within 100 miles of Roslindale, Massachusetts right now. I would have had to do a lot of canning and preserving over the winter (right...). But here we're polishing off our winter garden edibles and putting in the tomatoes, munching strawberries, asparagas, and tatangelos to our heart's content, and finding yummy yogurt from cows milked 20 miles away. Nevermind the occasional Jelly Belly. Yes, they're local.  And the taqueria dinner. Probably not very local, though we walked there.

Another nouveau-hippie plug for you -  tomorrow is Bike to Work Day in San Francisco. Before the weather turns, hop on your bike and ride...in support of more bikable cities or less oil dependence, whatever floats your boat. Or you can do it in solidarity with your , eh-hem, friend who has to do it every day, rain or shine, bent spokes, near-fatalities and heavy-bags be damned... and be glad you don't have to suffer the anguish. Actually, we were bequeathed a car last week for a few days and we had a hard time figuring out what we could do with it. I decided to take the opportunity to bring some files and books to my new job. It actually took me longer to drive to the Marina, park,a nd walk to the nature center than it does to bike, surprisingly. And I missed the landmarks of my usual journey - all the roses in bloom, the dog walkers by Aquatic park, the cars gridlocked along the freeway as I cruised over them on the bike bridge. With the dry weather, a more convenient job, the subtle mastery of pub trans, and the extreme generosity of our car-owning friends, I think we may be able to hold off on vehicle ownership indefinitely. Making every day a bike-to-work-day.

Okay, last plug. For Spring. In our yard. Yay, Spring! Here's what it looks like lately: