Very happily, Wednesdays have become a junket of local food pickups, which invariably punctuate with a feast, best enjoyed with others on the wobbly table we’ve got on our patio. Usually our friends showup when it’s time to eat, but yesterday, for the first time, we took someone — our friend Rachael — along for the pre-feast tour.

The fun for us nerds begins Wednesdays in Inman Square, in an apartment house on Tremont St, where we get our Just Dairy order. Rachael watched me punch in the code on the combo lock, duck way down through the doorway, and into the basement where there’s a fridge filled with glass jars of raw milk and cartons of eggs. I scanned the goods for our order. She asked, more than once, who lives in the house. But I couldn’t tell her. I don’t know. “Sketchy” was the response.

Barely a moment later, we were back in the car and headed for the parking lot outside Harvest Co-op in Central Sq to fetch our CSA share. Per usual, there was a line of very hungry looking types checking in, gathering the week’s veggies with gusto and grace. Rachael wanted to know how all of these people , who looked roughly our age and basically like us, found out about the business of buying a CSA at all. This a good question, I think, and any thoughts on it are very welcome.

We got home and here’s what we ate: 2 hard boiled eggs each (from Just Dairy), a salad with carrots (CSA share) and goat cheese (Vermont Butter and Cheese Co), sauteed zucchini, summer squash and garlic scapes (CSA). And some leftover bread from Hi-Rise.

Rachael is not a self-described localvore. She is, however, an awesomely curious and open soul, and she is actively trying to eat well, and better all the time. And here is the point of all of this so far directionless chatter about how we spent last evening: We talk a lot about this local eating thing with Rachael, and she asks great questions about it that make us clarify and articulate (in our own heads) why we do this stuff and what it means. But it’s not actually that easy to transfer the core of this compulsion to another person who doesn’t precisely have it herself.

There was a time, not long ago, when I gave an ex a load of crap for shopping at Whole Foods because I thought it was elitest. She politely told me not eating poison had nothing to do with class. And so this is to say, I wasn’t always the convert I am today. But trying to identify when and how exactly I went from the chipped-shoulder type who bought the cheapest ground beef in a Grocery Store to save a few bucks to what I guess I am today is tough. I’m sure it was a series of moments (like the ex rightly putting me in my place) that got me here, but I wonder about the trajectory other eager local eaters followed. Anyone? anyone anyone.

All in the name of getting Rachael (and everyone else who sits down to eat with us on our wobbly table) fully on board…