Our first diary entry by Alice is in

“So I am at the end of my first week of the 50 mile challenge and thought I’d give you a little update on how it has been.

My partner and I started the challenge on 1 June and intend to keep going until the end of the month. We regularly shop on the High Street in Dunbar and figured that this challenge would encourage us to think a bit more about where our food comes from and encourage us to eat a bit more healthily for a month.

So we spent that first day visiting every local retailer we could think of to see what they had and gathering as much advice as possible. Overall our haul was ok. We managed to find

Meat – the local butcher sources all his meat from between Dunbar and the Borders
Fish – the smokery have a great selection and we found fishcakes in Knowes Farm shop
East Lothian Oatcakes – made by the Bakehouse in East Linton – who’d have thunk it!
Free range eggs, salad, jam, pies – Knowes Farm Shop
Milk – Yester Farm Dairies
Bread – Dunbar Community Bakery
Root veg – Crunchy carrot
Booze – Thistly Cross cider and Belhaven IPA

Things we couldn’t find this week
Tomatoes – we found scottish but not local
Celery, onions, garlic
Fruit – apparently it will be another couple of weeks before the fruit farm PYO is ready. We did get some Iced Delight though – yum.

We’ve also been making things we would normally buy. So this week we invested in a yogurt maker – which worked well especially with a wee bit of local jam mixed in afterwards. I thoroughly recommend it. We also had a bash at homemade granola – this was a revelation though I have to admit the nuts, seeds and dried fruit weren’t produced locally. Does anyone know if this is even possible?

Overall the menu for the week was great. A bit more meat than normal but for a first week I think we did well – what do you think?

Monday – homemade burgers, chips and salad with some lovely pickle that a friend made (all local)
Tuesday – fishcakes, salad and potatoes (all local)
Wednesday – steak pie, potatoes and kale (all local)
Thursday – sausage, chips and beans (woops – beans not local)
Friday – sausage stew (all local)

I’m not going to lie and say that there weren’t any cheats eaten throughout the week, of course there were but compared to the week before this is definately more local.

Next week I am getting organised. I have ordered a veg box from Phantassie Farm and I’m on the look out for a Leith Claret that Kim my hairdresser mentioned….”