I live in a relatively small town with a population of around 50,000. My husband and I both grew up here. We both moved away for college and worked other places for a few years, but we ended up back home to raise our family. Since starting paleo about a year and a half ago, it has gotten easier and easier to buy groceries. In the past two years the size of our organic section in our grocery store has doubled and they have filled many requests for new products. Now you have to fight to get a spaghetti squash, where as I really think that last year they probably had to throw them out because they eventually just went bad sitting there. Last week I went to grab a bag of almond flour and the store manager was standing at the almond flour while on the phone with a customer. The customer was asking if they had any almond flour. They were out of it, and when he got off the phone with the customer he said to me, " was there recently some sort of special on almond flour because we cant keep enough on the shelf now? We have been carryiing it for a couple of years and before the last few months, we probably only sold like 5 bags of it." I explained paleo to him and said that he better go ahead and order more.
Tonight our community came together for a farm to table dinner at the Alexandria Museum of Art. It was a group of 88 people from our community that believe in healthy, organic food. We were served a 5 course meal. All of the meat, produce, and vegetables were grown locally.
Thomson Grazers provided all of the grassfed beef, and
Inglewood Farms provided all of the organic vegetables. It was such an awesome event, and such a huge step for our community. Not just for the growth of our local paleo community, but for everyone trying to eat healthy. Being able to buy all of this locally is great for our city. Although the meal wasn't completely paleo, it was fresh from the farm and it was delicious.
Butternut squash soup with micro greens
2nd course was a mixed salad with sweet peppers and goat cheese crumbles. I forgot to take a picture.
Roasted Asian eggplant topped with wild caught shrimp and bowfin caviar
Beggars purse of beef tenderloin and mushroom duxelles with roasted baby okra
Creme brûlée with caramelized pecans
