www.eatlocalchallenge.com

Beeten into Submission

by ExpatChef

Back in the not-too-distant past of my single days, I had a lunch date with a smart ass lawyer type. When trying to decide where to go, I suggested something ethnic just to test how open-minded he was, food-wise. Somehow, I can’t imagine spending my life with someone who did not posses an adventurous palate or at least an open mind. Preferably both.

“How about Vietnamese?” I said.

“No, thanks, I don’t like cat,” replied Smart Ass Lawyer.

“How do you know? Maybe you’ve just never had it fixed right.” I retorted.

The reason I bring this up, other than it is funny, is that this is how many vegetables get banished to the realm of yuck after a single attempt over a mushy, canned, processed, tasteless mound of mush that was once some type of vegetable. People have just never tasted the real thing, not been willing to try it, or just never had it fixed right.

Tis the season ...

for strawberries!  In recent years, several small strawberry growers have sprung up in our little corner of California, perhaps inspired by an article a decade or two ago in Organic Gardening about how profitable strawberry growing can be.  These patches are usually only 1-4 acres, located right next to a highway or main road through a rural portion of the landscape, with a pullout and fruit stand to make it easy for the customer.  Occasionally, I will still see "U-Pick" patches, but I suspect that the issues of insurance and liability in California are helping to make these operations endangered, if not extinct.

The ever-bearing kind of strawberries can produce throughout the late spring and summer on a small patch, and even though my permaculture background doesn't readily agree with monoculture, I can see that this method works for the small-scale commercial grower.  My co-worker and I stopped at a stand about 20 miles from home, following a lengthy meeting in Sacramento last week, and the heady fragrance of ripe berries hit us as we stepped out of the car.

Report from North Carolina

The Eat Local Challenge got some press today in the Southeast in the Greensboro, North Carolina centered News and Record.  What a nice way to finish the month!

The market for local foods in this area seems to improve with each week.  If you love to cook, your choices are nearly limitless.  Nearly every kind of sustainably raised meat and poultry is sold at the farmers' markets, and a couple of vendors bring fresh seafood from the coast.  There are several farmers who raise vegetables in hoop houses and greenhouses, extending the seasons.  Delicious baked goodies and jams and jellies abound.

The biggest challenge that I have seen is connecting the restaurants with the local farmers and cooperatives.  Hopefully our local Slow Food convivium will be successful in bringing more of these together.  I missed eating out for lunch, and I found out that a couple of restaurants that I thought served local foods did not - after I was seated, unfortunately!  In one case, I discovered that the staff thought that buying from a locally-based food distributor meant that they were buying local food.

May Ends--the Challenge Continues

 

By Jennifer BB

It would be an understatement to say that this year's May Eat Local Challenge and last year's, which took place in August, were miles apart--literally.  Here in the Northeast (upstate New York to be exact) the farmers markets are just beginning to expand their produce offerings beyond spring onions, pea shoots, lettuce mix and seedlings for transplant.  The chickens on offer are growing from young spring chickens into broilers,  Meanwhile the dairy products--milk, butter, cheeses, yogurt--and local granola, maple syrup, honey, and jams are as plentiful as ever.  All the same, the challenge to eat locally is just beginning.  Eating within our foodshed was definitely more challenging this early in the season but not impossible.  We are ready for June.

Talking the Local Talk

By Lucette

One of the unexpected pleasures of taking on the ELC has been my conversations with other people--sellers, farmers, bakers, grocers, passers-by, and, of course, my hapless friends and family. I'm the sort of enthusiast who, once interested in something, can't keep her mouth shut about it. So all this month I've been making a harmless (I hope) nuisance of myself.

The people at the farmers' market were good at this dialogue--happy to tell me about their products, even down to what kind of baking powder they were using, if I asked, and happy to pass out samples. Last week I spent time eating bites of chocolate croissant (local chocolate maker: Malleys) and sipping kale and sausage soup from a tiny paper cup while the vendor told me about his Italian grandfather's sausage recipe, and then tasting the last of the nettle pesto before I bought a pint. 

Field trip report #3: Honey extraction class

by Jamie S.

This spring my significant other and I took a beekeeping class at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.

Concurrent with the beginning of the class, we bought two packages of bees from a huge south Georgia apiary that shall remain nameless. Early on, we could tell something was amiss. It was peak nectar flow, and the hives were surrounded by blackberry and tulip poplar blossoms; yet we never saw the bees outside the hive. They languished, drinking copious amounts of the sugar water we fed them, yet failing to draw out any comb or (in the case of the queens) lay any eggs. So of course, when the bees came to the end of their natural lifespans--about 40 days--there were none to replace them. Whammo, we were out of business.

Hitting the Sweet Spot

by Cookiecrumb

Everything tastes good! Even my savory dishes are inexplicably sweet, but not in a sugary way. Butter tastes sweet. Onions taste sweet. By god, the other day, hamburger tasted sweet.

Sweet! Oh my.

Last year I described the transformation I experienced after a month of eating locally as "rehab for my taste buds."

I haven't used sugar for 10 months, except for the occasional gummi bear, so I guess I have a whole new definition of "sweet."

I attribute this sensation not only to restricting my food to the 100-mile foodshed, but to the undeniable fact that the food is fresher — because it's local! Fresh peas are sweet. Fresh fish is sweet. Fresh yogurt is sweet.

Sweet Dreams

By Expat Chef

The other night I had this beautiful dream. I was worried at first. You see, I had found 50, yes, 50 different varieties of heirloom tomato plants and I had no place to plant them. I am also a lousy gardener, (other than herbs) but this is a dream. When I walked outside, I was back on the farm where I lived as a kid. Stretched out before me were perfect, endless rows of a vegetable garden.

At the end of the rows, waiting, tilled and at the ready, was a place for each and every one of my tomato plants. There were German Stripe, Green Zebra, Cherokee Purple, and Lemony, seven varieties of cherry tomatoes in a rainbow of colors and flavors, Thai Pink, White Beauty, Japanese Black Trifele, Speckeled Siberian …

Where are Farmers' Markets Going?

by Jeanne Brophy

In today's New York Times there's a worthwhile read:

"The hand-wringing among organic farmers that greeted Wal-Mart's announcement last week that it would begin stocking large quantities of organic produce reveals the tumultuous state of the alternative agriculture movement. In the 1960's, the movement began with far-out notions such as shortening the food chain between farmers and eaters, and entertaining the possibility that agribusiness might not have consumers' best interests at heart. At that time, both organic labeling and a national network of urban farmers' markets seemed like remote possibilities. Now that both of those have been achieved, consumers, farmers and food policy experts are at a point of soul-searching."

Warren Weber of Marin's Star Route Farms is also quoted, " A lot of small farmers here are opting out of organic...farmers' claims that they are "better than organic" are unverifiable." Weber helped write the California organic standards 30 years ago.

Grow your own mushrooms

One rainy day back in April, Ben, Squeegee (the ball python) and I took a walk thru our neighborhood and observed a fresh crop of some wild mushrooms growing in the neighbor's garden. Hundreds of them....some kind of agaricus I suspect, but not knowing anything more than that, I was giving them a wide berth. Ben was fascinated, however...where did so many come from, practically overnight? Luckily, I had recently gotten a copy of Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets of Fungi Perfecti.