[In our regular feature, Home Cooking, That's Fit blogger Larissa Brown encourages us to explore with her the challenge of eating and cooking with local foods. No matter where you live or what local products are available to you, we all can benefit from the creative and healthful mindfulness of choosing to take advantage of our local resources.]

Goodbye shopping cart, hello adorable collapsible canvas basket.

As part of an "eat local" movement that is beginning to sweep the United States and the blogosphere, I'm going to focus on getting my groceries and meals as much as possible from sources within a 100-mile radius of my home. In the past year, hundreds if not thousands of bloggers have challenged themselves to do something similar.

Some eschew all corporate groceries -- a wild dare if you ask me. Just think about trying to find locally grown coffee, local baby formula, or local soft dark licorice! Others commit to preparing one entirely local meal per week for the course of the summer, which in my neck of the woods -- where there are more than a dozen farmers' markets and one operates through December -- seems too easy.

I'm looking for a middle ground, a level of local eating that will challenge me to be creative and healthful. Along the way I'll be blogging about the subject, checking in with scientists, academicians, environmentalists, farmers, chefs, and bloggers. I'm inviting you to take the trip with me, challenging yourself in whatever way is meaningful to you. And my first question, as yours might be, is: Why?

The multi-authored eat local challenge blog has a list of 10 reasons. Nearby food is fresher, ripens naturally and for longer, and generally tastes better. Local eating is good for the neighborhood and regional economy, and it cuts down on the emissions and other pollution generated by transporting food in vast trucks and airplanes. Several other reasons range from the paranoid (local food is less susceptible to bioterrorism) to the wistful (it keeps us in touch with the seasons and provides adventures, stories, and variety to spice up our lives).

John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri , gives his own top 10 reasons in the body of his paper, which are different, leaning more toward sustainability for the future and the integrity inherent in any food system where the grower or farmer knows the person who's going to eat his kale.

Regardless of which list moves you more, in my opinion the 11th reason is of course the adorable basket. It's de rigueur at all the best farmers' markets. Unless you want to go hard core and avoid aluminum baskets with chemically-dyed fabric. In that case, you'll have to spin some local wool and felt your own bag.

[Photo by Sarah Gilbert.]