Good morning and welcome to Day 1 of the Eat Real. Eat Local 30-Day Food Challenge. We will be here all month bringing you the ins and outs of local food.

TODAY’S LOCAL FOOD FUN:

- Plan a lunch or dinner at Locals-Food from the Heart of the Island, Anderton Bistro-Pub, The Great Escape or Bisque and launch the food challenge with a bang (not to mention you get to cast your first vote for the winner of the 2009 Yummy Award)

- Brambles Market is hosting a demo from Cookie Crate at 11 a.m.

Now that you’ve got the scoop on today’s events, here are a few things you need to know:

1. If you have a passport, you need to register to participate (and be eligible for the $3,000 in prizes). Click HERE for the registration page.
2. Check in at OBE daily to find out what is on the schedule for that day. There’s so much goodness, be sure to use the Master Calendar to plan ahead too.
3. Double bonus points for checking in here every day is that we are (seriously) doing DAILY giveaways throughout the month. I have got some of the coolest food gear – from gorgeous handmade tea towels out of Victoria to handcrafted soaps, cookbooks, documentary films, green kitchen gear and more. The only catch is you have to participate in the online discussion to be entered into the draw.
4. Finally, we’ll be blogging our 30-Day Food Challenge experience straight from the Our Big Earth kitchen counter all month. Me and my cooking mojo have reunited in the name of eating local, and it feels so good.

Speaking of that, we are kicking everything off today with a little peek inside our all local Canada Day kitchen. My family seriously fell on their heads when they sat down to a totally home cooked meal yesterday.

The take-out gods were bummed. But, oh were our taste buds happy.

It’s important to note that I am no culinary genius, nor do I even claim to be handy in the kitchen. So, all of this food comes from a cooking novice, which is code for “takes less than 20 minutes and is really easy to make.”

With that, I bring you my local salad creations. Even I was amazed:)

I woke up about four days ago with a hankering for potato salad. Not just any potato salad, but the kind my Ukranian mother-in-law busts out a couple times a year in the name of comfort food.

Since I couldn’t bring myself to put her to work, I set out to collect all the necessary ingredients:

• New potatoes from the Comox Valley (I’ve seen them at Brambles, Thrifty’s and Seiferts Farm Market)
• Vancouver Island celery (Brambles)
• Garden radishes
• Green onions and parsley fresh out of the garden
• Local pickles
• Mayo. Well, I cheated here. I bought the mayo at Thrifty’s
• Salt and pepper to taste

I skipped the usual half dozen hard boiled eggs in an effort to mildly reduce our cholesterol intake and whoa, it was no sacrifice.

Neither Ken or I could believe how sweet (literally) the local new potatoes are. We wait all year for these beauties and would consider it a serious form of adultery to eat any other form of potato in the Summer. The whole mixture was gorgeous and delish.

We shamelessly polished off the whole bowl after a generous donated bowl-full to lovely Ukranian mother-in-law.

I’ve now decided that I’m going to have to get a bushel or two of these, cut them up and freeze them for things like fries in the Winter. No other potato will do.

Meanwhile, a pile of strawberries from ASHBerry Farm was strangely still lingering in our refrigerator (why, I have no clue), right next to a pile of Okanogan cherries and fresh honey from Comox Valley’s Big D’s Bees (they sell at the CV Farmer’s Market).

On the counter laid four lovely stalks of fresh rhubarb that our daughter had brought in from the garden and I had a lightbulb local dessert sort of moment.

Into the bowl went the cut-up strawberries and pitted cherries. I chopped up one stalk of rhubarb into very little pieces and chucked it in there too.

Then, I took about a tablespoon of the fresh honey and mixed it in, letting it all cohabitate for about an hour before serving.

Oh my.

To heck with oranges and bananas in the fruit salad. I am all over the rhubarb honey delight action.

On that note, I’ve got one of THE Vancouver Island foodie guides, Elizabeth Levinson’s An Edible Journey up for grabs today. This gorgeous guide that explores the islands’ fine food, farms and vineyards is a really fun way to get started with your local eating experience.

To be eligible all you have to do is leave a comment here today about one of your favourite local food discoveries. We pick the winners pin-the-tail-on-the-commenter style and the winner will be announced in tomorrow’s post.

This giveaway is closed. Trish Won! Nice Work!!!