Enjoy Great Food While Greening Your Travels

Italy-Homemade Pizza - After
purchasing ingredients at Campo
de’ Fiori market in Rome, we made our own pizza.
Photo by: Greenloons

Savoring local flavors helps communities, families and the environment.

Eco-tourism travel is about preserving ecosystems, educating visitors about conservation, empowering localities, operating sustainable tourist attractions – and, most of all, having fun and unique family experiences!  Of course, eating is a big part of traveling and aside from the fact that families can truly immerse themselves in the travel experience when sampling local foods and delicacies, the practice of eating locally teaches the value of food to both young and wise, and helps the environment.

The environmental benefits of eating locally include: less need for preservatives, better health since smaller farms are less likely to use pesticides and more likely to grow a variety of foods, and helping local economies since farmers receive the full retail value of the item rather applying it toward the expenses of transportation, processing, packaging, and refrigeration.

To find sustainable food restaurants in the United States and Canada, two great resources are Eat Well Guide and Local Harvest, which provides a comprehensive U.S. directory of farmers markets, farm stands and other sources of locally grown food.

London-Gastropub - Farm-fresh appetizer
 at London’s only certified organic restaurant,
the family-friendly Duke of Cambridge.
Photo by: Greenloons

When traveling overseas, a great resource to use is World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), which lists organic farms as well as organic farm volunteering opportunities around the world.  While ‘farmers markets’ may be a relatively new concept for Americans, almost every foreign city large or small has established local markets that sell fresh meats, fish, cheeses, breads, pastries, vegetables and fruits.  Traversing through one of these markets with children will not only reveal the different colors, shapes, textures and smells of local food, but will serve as a quick language, math and social studies lesson too.

Alternatively, if you are overseas and a family member suffers from allergies, Select Wisely portable translation cards, which can also be downloaded to a smartphone, cover all manner of food allergies and medical conditions including cards for nut and shellfish allergies, restaurant chefs, gluten-free diets, as well as smoke-free and low-salt requests.

Zurek Soup-Poland - The Polish specialty
of Zurek Soup, served in Krakow,
 is not only nutritious and filling,
 but “delicious” according to
my 7 year-old.
Photo by: Greenloons

Next time you are traveling to a new country, try to find a sustainable food restaurant or organic farm market or festival, and start savoring the local flavors.

About the author:

Irene Lane is the founder and president of Greenloons, which connects families to meaningful and unique nature-based travel experiences all over the world.

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100-Mile Diet Recap

We're going bananas here!

Well, I wouldn't take it that far but now that we've just about completed this month's 100-Mile Diet Challenge, we are looking forward to adding some of our favorite non-local foods back into our diet... and bananas are on top of just about everyone's list.

Going into this challenge, we were all very nervous and everyone seems to agree that it was the most difficult challenge we've done so far, but it also may have been the most educational and rewarding. We've missed our apples and bananas but we are happy to have discovered some amazing local finds such as sweet corn from Salinas, squash blossoms, and delicious berries and have discovered tastes that we may not have explored if not under these circumstances.

This challenge also led us many of us to make new friends from within the foodie community and taught us about an amazing local food delivery service in Santa Cruz: http://santacruzlocalfoods.com/. Santa Cruz Local Foods provides an online marketplace filled with products from within 100 Miles of Santa Cruz. You shop online and either pick up your bounty at one of their pick up locations set up throughout the week or they will deliver them to you on bicycle. Their service is amazing and the vast array of local foods they offer is incredible. They took a lot of the legwork out of this challenge for us and made it possible for even more of us to be successful throughout the week and for that, our bellies are thankful!

Moving beyond this challenge, we will all put a lot more thought into our food choices and will try to support our local farm community as much as possible. Eating locally does come with a price tag but having the chance to be further involved in our local community and economy and filling our bodies with fresh, local foods is a pretty great return!

100-Mile Diet Challenge

This weekend, the Laptop Lunches staff members are likely to be found at one of the several Farmers' Markets around town. As part of this month's weekly challenge, we will be on the hunt for foods that were grown within 100 miles of Santa Cruz. Yes, that's right, we've chosen to follow the 100 mile diet for 1 week... and we are nervous!

Of course, we all choose to support our local economy as much as possible and we are lucky to live in a community abundant with locally produced goods but, after some thought, we've realized that many of the staples in our diet cannot be found locally. We will definitely be missing our coffee, tea and bananas but we are also excited to learn more about local products and to discover new flavors and possibly even a local can't-live-without product or two.

To learn more about the 100-mile diet, visit the following link: http://100milediet.org/faqs.

Strength is in numbers, so please let us know if you're in!