Eating locally to to save myself from going loco

It's harvest time! A time of year when it is easy to plan your meals around fresh local produce because it is everywhere. I love seeing all of the tomatoes, peppers, corn, eggplant, beans, oh I can't even begin to list all of the yummy bounty available at the market. All of this plenty is actually a bit anxiety inducing for me, for two reasons. One, there are so many good things to eat, I can't decide what to make for dinner. Two, it signals the end of summer, the end of the growing season, and the start of -- I dread it ever year -- no local produce. 

Long before eating local became the cool thing to do, I shunned out of season tomatoes because I thought they were, well, to put it bluntly, gross. Same for those mutant, California grown strawberries you can find in the middle of winter.  Slowly, over the past five years, I have been eating more and more seasonally. And this past winter, I contemplated what it would be like to really eat locally, even in winter, in Quebec. 

This past winter was a tough one for me because it was so dang long! To make a long story short, my mental health wasn't in tip top shape, and I had a difficult time eating well-balanced meals because I couldn't stand the sad, imported produce in the grocery aisles. Then I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. She came to speak in Montreal, both her book and talk inspired me. While I don't have the Appalachian farm like her, I do have a farmers' market just up the street. I have decided to freeze and can my way to delicious meals all winter long. I have been trying to get a blog going now for a long time, but never found the proper theme. But now I kinda, sorta, have it, at least something to start me, for now. 

My first post

So, here it goes! I have been thinking about a blog for over a year now. What really kept me from starting one was the name. Everyone has cute and clever blog names, and I just could not think of one. Nicknames have never really stuck to me, and when I was yearbook editor, I was never the one to come up with the captions on the pictures. I love words, but witty names and remarks have never been my strong suit. Back in 1995 when we first got AOL, I chose JillyB3 as my screen name (because JillyB was already taken and I liked how the "three" rhymed). I certainly had no idea that I would have been better off picking something more clever, since the name would be with me for so long.

So after months and months of agonizing over names, I finally decided that I should just stick to my own real first name. It may not be original, but it is me, nothing fake, nothing false, nothing forced.