I’ve decided to take on a project about SOLE (sustainable organic local ethical) cooking in rural Appalachia. There have been some pretty interesting articles about going locavore on a budget recently, including one couple who did an experiment to see how SOLE they could eat on the food stamp allowance, but most of them have been in places like southern California where there’s a ton of arable land, a long growing season, and a strong customer base for local sustainably grown organic food. It’s a whole other world up here in the mountains–not much farmable land, a shorter growing season, serious time and money constraints for a lot of people, and not a whole lot of interest.
The parameters of the project are this: using an average food budget and the time I would have available if I worked a full-time job outside the house, we’re going to eat as close to locavore as we can manage and what’s not local will be as local and organic/sustainable/free trade as possible within the budget. I’ll write about what we’re eating, where we got it, how much it cost, and how far away from us it was. And, of course, how it tastes.
That’s all been fairly simple to figure out. Finding food resources has been fairly simple thanks to the Kentucky Proud website’s search producers by county function. But naming the thing–that’s turning out to be a right bitch. I got no ideas. A friend made a few suggestions: Shootin’ at Some Food, We Eat Rednecks, Beyond Apple Butter and Deer Steaks, You Can’t Live on Oxy Alone, and On Beyond Possum. I like the Appalachian flavor of them, but would like to avoid ugly and untrue hillbilly stereotypes like suggesting people eat possum around here.
Someone else suggested Coal Miner’s Dinner, which I thought was simple, funny, and very evocative of the region. Plus I’m a huge Loretta Lynn fan.
I see what people are saying about the ease and directness of just calling it Hillbilly Locavore, though. I like easy and direct, it saves time and hassle.
What do people think about Coal Miner’s Dinner: The Hillbilly Locavore Project ?
