It must be nice to live in California. Beautiful weather, beautiful people, beautiful beaches and vineyards and mountains. Plus, the food. I mean… mostly the food. Priorities.

I’ve always wanted to live in California even though I’ve never so much as visited. It’s become an unhealthy obsession, I think.

Did you know that California produces more than half of our country’s food supply? From the California Department of Food and Agriculture: “California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities. The state produces nearly half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables. Across the nation, U.S. consumers regularly purchase several crops produced solely in California.”

*Crops for which California is the sole producer (99% or more) are listed in bold.

That must be nice. Even when you buy the cheapest, most pesticide-ridden produce from, say, Walmart, if you’re in California at least it was produced right there and didn’t journey across the country to get to you.

California produces some beautiful food–some that we probably couldn’t grow elsewhere like pomegranates–but they don’t produce the only food. And that’s why I’m throwing myself into a weeklong local food experiment.

California’s great and all but they ain’t got nothin’ on the Carolinas. See that table above? Sole producer of peaches, California? Au contraire.

As of late, I’ve been doing most of my shopping at Trader Joe’s because it’s close and it’s cheap. Most of what I get there is produced in California, Chile or Mexico, none of which are close to my house. I do buy organic only but it doesn’t change the fact that the food traveled an unnecessarily long way to get to me, a fact that I know full well is not in line with my food ethics. And all the while my dear local farmers are busting their butts in this hundred-degree heat to grow many of the same foods right here in my own backyard.

It’s high time I started supporting them.

And so, starting tomorrow, I declare this Carolina Week in my kitchen. I will only eat foods produced here in the Carolinas, which means no more coconut butter or oil or water. No oranges or olives or bananas or my beloved Trader Joe’s sunflower butter. I’ll trade almond milk for milk milk (yikes). I’ll use butter instead of olive oil. I’ll probably go a little bit crazy.

I’m not saying it’s inherently bad to eat foods imported from outside your neck of the woods. It’s a beautiful thing that we can get whatever we want whenever we want. But I think that for me, I’m just curious to see what it would look like to not have that option. I think that when it’s all said and done, I’ll also learn to better appreciate those foods that come from far away.

I’ve already stocked up on rice from South Carolina, peanut butter from North Carolina and am out the door on my way to the farmers market for produce galore. It’ll be an adventure and I’m looking forward to learning a little and eating a lot.

It’s funny how easy it is to purchase and eat foods that were produced thousands of miles away without batting an eye and yet a week of local eating (arguably the simpler of the two options) feels like an adventure. Honestly, the local Carolina food culture is more foreign to me than the pretty packages of food shipped around the world to the grocery store shelves. So I’m looking forward to learning more while exploring this strange place called home.