Sugar, coffee, bananas, chocolate. Some of the hardest things to find suitable workarounds for if you're trying to live a locavore lifestyle.
Finding local cane sugar is nearly impossible if you don't live in Hawaii or the continental Southeast -- and even then, the raw product is typically shipped to a processing plant thousands of miles away before distribution.
But there are options. If you want to keep your "home, sweet home" sweet AND close to home, a local-food columnist suggests a DIY option:
Set aside a section of your garden for sugar beets and boil them down for a homemade sweetener!
Making Beet Sugar
(adapted from: Grandpappy's Homemade Sugar Recipe )
Substituting Honey And Maple Syrup
You can also use maple syrup or honey in many recipes.
To substitute honey for sugar, eHow provides a few guidelines:
They also recommend reducing the amount of liquid in your recipe, adding a little baking soda to counter honey's acidity and reducing the cooking temperature a bit.
For maple syrup, similar rules of thumb apply: use about 3/4 cup maple syrup in the place of each cup of sugar and reduce the amount of liquid in your recipe by about 3 tablespoons per cup of maple syrup added.
Both honey and maple syrup also make healthier, more local additions to coffee, tea and other beverages.