You may have seen this floating around the internet lately, but the intrepid locavores who spearheaded the White House Organic (WHO) Farm movement have moved on to encourage all 50 states’ governors (and Washington’s Mayor Fenty, I presume) to serve local and sustainably sourced foods this Independence Day. Take a moment to sign the Food Independence Day petition and see if your governors have responded. Locally, Kim O’Donnel reports that Maryland Gov. O’Malley’s July 4th menu will feature, naturally, Chesapeake Bay crabcakes and salad greens from the first lady’s vegetable garden. Join the cause by declaring your own independence from the industrial food system (seen Food Inc. yet?) and plan your own locally-sourced July 4th meal.

5 Tips for A Local 4th of July Cook-out:

1. Make those burgers local and grassfed — and avoid worry over the latest e.coli beef recall.
2. Buy the buns from a farmers market vendor or local bakery — they’re fresher and most likely made without the high fructose corn syrup and preservatives of most supermarket brands.
3. Stick with seasonal veggies — sweet corn is just beginning to appear here, along with fresh from the field tomatoes, garlic and plenty of herbs for a homemade fresh salsa.
4. Skip the made-in-China, flag-covered disposables — take sheets outside or have the kids decorate a (recycled) kraft paper banner to use as a tablecloth — local and green.
5. Nothing’s more patriotic than domestic beer or wine; just skip the (now Belgian-owned) Bud Light and search for a local craft brewer or vineyard, or stir up a red, white and blue sangria with berries from the farmers market. (And reserve some of those berries for a family-friendly cobbler for dessert!)

Some favorite summer cook-out recipes from the archives, for added inspiration:

• Roasted Tomatillo Peach Salsa
• Patriotic Potato Salad
• Peach Berry Sherbet

My son has requested that we spend the holiday at the Farmers Market and the pool, and I’m happy to oblige — with perhaps a few minutes spent getting a fresh Pennsylvania cherry pie in the oven. What’s on your plate for the holiday?

(Submitting this to Fight Back Friday over at the Food Renegade – go check it out!)

Calling all farmers market fans! Whether you’re an experienced locavore or just curious about whether you could survive cooking with only locally-grown ingredients, you’re invited to join in for a three-month local eating challenge. One Local Summer 2009, hosted by Farm to Philly, begins this Monday, June 1. Participants commit to cooking one entirely local (except for oil, vinegar and spices) meal each week. Here’s a reminder of some of the Chesapeake Bay foodshed meals we enjoyed last year. And I’m pleased to be helping this year as the Southern region coordinator, so if you’re in the Southeast (DC and south of the Potomac) please sign up to join in or just check back to see what your neighbors are cooking up each week. To join, email your name, location and blog url (if you have one) to farmtophilly@gmail.com by Sunday, May 31. 

This is opening weekend at many local farmers markets — including Arlington’s Columbia Pike, Alexandria’s West End, Fairfax County markets and 14th & U in the District — and what better way to prepare than to point you to some online sources of locavore info and fellow local food enthusiasts. If you don’t have a Twitter account, what are you waiting for? Seriously though, if you don’t have an account you can still follow interesting Twitter users by clicking that orange RSS button at the right side of their page; this will subscribe you to their updates in your feed reader, just like you follow your favorite blogs. Over on Twitter, each week users share some of their favorite friends (”tweeps”) in an event called “Follow Friday.” Here’s my farmers market/local foods edition. This is far from an extensive list, so please feel free to identify yourself or add your favorites in the comments.

Farmers Markets & Local Food Resources on Twitter

Chesapeake Bay foodshed

• Edible Chesapeake magazine (@EdChes)
• What’s to Eat Baltimore (@whatstoeatbmore)
• On the Gourmet, mobile market, Va. (@chrisguerre)
• Great Country Farms, Va. (@thefarmersays)
• Smith Family Farm, Va. (@smithfamilyfarm)
• The Crab Place, Md. (@thecrabplace)
• Clyde’s restaurants (@clydes)
• sweetgreen restaurants (@sweetgreen)

Around the US

• Portland (Ore.) Farmers Markets (@portlandfarmers)
• Edible San Francisco magazine (@EdibleSF)
• Brooklyn Farmhouse blog (@bklynfarmhouse)
• Local Family, Local Beet (Chicago) blog (@localfamily)
• Earth Eats: Real Food, Green Living (Indiana) blog/podcast (@eartheats)
• Local Flavor Knoxville (Tennessee) (@localflavorknox)
• Eating Niagara (Ontario) blog (@eatingniagara)

National Resources

• Edible Communities magazines (@ediblestories)
• La Vida Locavore, food & ag policy blog (@locavoreblog)
• Farmers Markets Today magazine (@farmersmktstoday)
• Local Harvest, local foods directory (@localharvestorg)
• Eating Well magazine (@eatingwell)
• Go Locavore blog (@golocavore)
• Locallectual, online directory (@locallectural)
• Enjoy Locavore, the iPhone app (@enjoylocavore)

District-area foodies who occasionally tweet from the markets:

• Arugula Files (@arugulafiles)
• Capital Spice (@capitalspice)
• Counter Intelligence (@melissamccart)
• Farmette Report (@farmettereport)
• Metrocurean (@metrocurean)
• The Bitten Word (@bittenword)
• Alinea at Home’s @CarolBlymire
• and me, @foodietot (no “s”)

Elsewhere on the web, Alexandria’s West End market has a new blog on Culinate. DC’s FreshFarm markets does not (yet?) have a blog but has an extensive database of their market vendors. The Washington Post food section’s newly-launched blog has a category titled “To Market, To Market,” so I hope that’s a sign they’re planning some farmers market coverage. (And WaPo food editor Joe Yonan is on twitter, too, @joeyonan.)

While we’re on the subject, I’m sure you’re already subscribed to the FoodieTots feed, but please note that you can now receive automatic email updates whenever we post something new. And if Twitter’s not your thing, you can also follow us on Facebook. Whatever method you choose, please touch base on Monday and let me know what you found at your local markets this weekend. Happy eating, locally!

Today is the first day of the Eat Local Challenge*, which lasts the month of October. Despite my enthusiasm for the One Local Summer challenge, I hesitated a bit before deciding to join the ELC. It’s not that I don’t think we can eat entirely local, but more that I was wondering whether we really should. I’ve decided that we will give it a go, but not be overly dogmatic about it. And I hope to discover and share a few ways busy families can incorporate local foods into their menus without going to crazy extremes.

Our Eat Local Challenge goals for the month are to:

• Eat one local ingredient at every meal.
• Explore local sources/alternatives for seafood, snacks and sweets – the three “s” pitfalls.
• Extend the “buy local” enthusiasm beyond food.

As I was thinking about this post yesterday, I received an alert that DC’s oldest independent bookstore chain, Olsson’s, had abruptly gone out of business. They had recently closed my favorite location, one that (along with my favorite chef) helped revitalize a neighborhood of DC that I was told not to walk through after dark when I first moved here. Apparently they were unable to save the remaining locations in the bankruptcy proceedings. It’s a stark reminder of one of the reasons I started eating locally, which is to support our local economy, our local small and family businesses and farms. I love that we have the option, in our neighborhood, of shopping somewhere other than the Big Red Giant, and would like to keep it that way. I will be heading over to our new (!) children’s bookstore ASAP – and pledge to buy something in one of our neighborhood shops each week this month. (No, not gratuitous consumerism – I’ll be looking to get an early start on my holiday shopping.)

This month is also marked by Blog Action Day, October 15, when bloggers from around the world will blog on the topic of poverty. I launched FoodieTots on Blog Action Day last year, so you can bet we’re participating this time. Stay tuned for how.

Anyone else giving the Eat Local Challenge a try? Or here’s a starter challenge – will you buy one local ingredient each week? I’ll personally suggest a recipe or menu around your item if that helps – just shoot me an email at foodietots at gmail com! Happy eating, locally!