Enjoy a local Christmas

CATHY Cohen wants us all to have a happy North Coast Christmas.

The Alstonville woman, who moved to the North Coast from Sydney three years ago, has already prepared her Christmas menu made up of products that haven't just been bought locally, but have been produced locally.

And she wants others to think about doing the same, particularly in the current global economic crisis.

"I just think that everyone should be doing their bit in their own area (where they live)," she said.

Cathy and husband Kerry were regular holiday-makers to Byron Bay before they moved to their rural Alstonville property.

She said she 'just fell in love with the area'.

And since, she has researched the products produced locally and has many of them stored for day-to-day use in her kitchen.

For Christmas, she will be serving up Northern Rivers beer, Duck Creek Mountain macadamias, seafood from Northern Rivers Seafood, Alstonville chickens roasted in macadamia oil and stuffed with Continental Crust bread and Plateau Prestige eggs, combined with locally-grown salad with macadamia oil mayonnaise, and the meal will finish with a fruit salad including Uralba bananas and Byron Bay truffles.

And of course, the Christmas pud - from Father Mac's at Alstonville with In the Pink vanilla ice-cream and washed down with local coffee.

She said the locally-produced products were all of good quality.

Cathy said if locals couldn't buy locally-produced products for the festive season, they could at least buy from local shops rather than head out of the region for Christmas shopping.

And there were environmental benefits to staying local to shop, she said, as well as the economic ones.

"By eating locally-produced foods, you help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because long-distance transportation of the products isn't involved," Cathy said.

"And by shopping and touring locally, you don't use so much petrol, so you are again helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and you also save money."

There also is an historical reason for Cathy's campaign.

Her great-grandfather, George Daniel, opened one of the first shops in Byron Bay in the 1880s.