Dear Internet

...wait is this thing on? It is? Okay here goes.

Dear Internet,

This is Liz and Sam, we are Team Zombie Makeout, and this is to be our first foray into the world of blogging. To be clear, this endeavor is not motivated by the need to make resolutions for the new year and it is merely an unfortunate coincidence of timing that all of this is starting now. That being said, our motivation for this project will not be the subject of this report but perhaps will be explained later.

We are, that is to say at least one of us, retired ruggers, experimental geographers, gentleman naturalists, roller derby enthusiasts, backpackers, travelers, and drunken scholars but the bills get paid by moonlighting as graduate students in evolutionary biology at the University of Texas at Austin. I know graduate students are the worst. Neither one of us is an Austin native, Liz is from California and as Emily is oft to say, "I don't look nearly as Midwestern as I appear in my older pictures."

So brass tax time. The plan is for Liz and I to spend the next month subsiding solely on food and drink that is grown within 200 miles of Austin. We say 200 miles mainly to incorporate citrus and rice, with the vast majority of our food coming from our county and those directly surrounding. You might say we are crazy for trying this in February, and many already have, but there's beauty in this madness. This time of year in central Texas you can get a veritable smorgasbord of fall and winter vegetables, eggs, dairy, meat, citrus, flour and so much more. And if we learned anything from Super Size Me and the Atkins diet it's nearly impossible to cause lasting harm to yourself in one month. We are going chronicle our journey in words and pictures and are excited to learn about what others have tried, hear suggestions, and hopefully convince you that living more sustainably can greatly enhance your quality of life.

To begin with, we will post some questions we've been debating over the past month, things central to our existence such as booze, coffee, salt, and sprouts. Spoiler alert, we're likely not to have any of these. Actually, I'm just kidding there's no way we could undertake this without wine from the Hill Country. If you have opinions, as I'm sure your do, we'll be excited to hear them and levy our own in return. We will regularly post what we're eating, the recipes we use, and the farms growing and raising the food. Liz and I are both really excited for this all to kick off tomorrow and are frantically cooking crackers, rice, vegetables and experimental pankcakes so we won't starve before our CSA basket arrives Wednesday. Last but not least, here's to savoring our final beer for the next 28 days.

As I think they say in swahilli, Karibu tule!

-Team Zombie Makeout