Eating Local in the Upper Midwest

Us Eat Local foodies have certainly noticed the mainstreaming of our beloved.  I mean Whole Foods, smug in their corporganic inventory, realized, like Masons discovering Shriners, that there was a whole new degree of food coolness.  They have raced to embrace local.  In the store closest to me (at least), there are big signs proclaiming local, and little signs announcing all the stuff from nearby.  In addition there's a handy take-home explaining Whole Foods' committment.  Well, I guess they're trying and that's good.

That not so good picture, that's Gordy's in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.  They're trying too, but I got the impression their committment to eating local is not a recent revelation.

I spent a week traveling the Upper Midwest: Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.  No one's gonna compare this region to Napa, and while there are many award winning cheeses, the defining dairy product of this area is soft cheese spread.  Still, it is a great eating zone; great especially because of the innate natural-ness of eating local.  Of course this is my sense, based on limited observation, but my sense is that eating local is very much intertwined with the way people eat around here.  Shoppers in the small town grocery store, Gordy's expect local produce with their supermarket offerings.

It was not just some tomatoes.  Gordy's carried several types of locally made sausages (abet mostly of the summer variety).  Even more interesting, they carried a very small production, locally made Amish blue cheese. Even more-more interesting, Gordy's was not nearly as interesting as Soukups Market, at the end of what amounts to Chippewa Falls main street.  Below is a view of their meat case, featuring their own or nearby meats and sausages.  There was a lot more of interest in this small store. 

A little outside of Chippewa Falls was a place called Native Bay.  How much more local could fried blue gills be, but this place is really cool.  We kicked ourselves because just the night before, there was a wild rice dinner.

A lakeside supper club cooking with heirloom tomatoes was just the thing we began to expect to find in this region.

Here's some of the other things we bumped into during our travels.

• Minneapolis has a new farmer's market, the Mill City Farmer's Market, focusing on organic produce.  (Here's an article that's a little about the market and more about the restaurants there.)
• Even newer, Minneapolis just opened a public market, the Midtown Global Market.  It centers on ethnic foods--it's authentic enough that the birriaria also sells big blocks of congealed goat blood.  It treats Minnesota as one of these ethnic foods.  One of the stalls, Farm in the Market, allows you to purchase daily stuff that used to be available only at Farmer's Markets.  Locally raised beef, bison, chicken and eggs; milk.  I especially liked the fact that much of the meat for sale was not frozen.  It is very hard to find that in Chicago.
• Every town in Iowa seemed to have a farmer's market, and something I have not seen, they were mostly in the afternoon.
• The upscale grocery store Lunn's/Byerly's sells a large selection of local cheeses, including many producers I did not know.

Any discussion of eating local in the Upper Midwest cannot fail to mention the Dane County Farmer's Market.

Some may quibble with me, but I think this is about the super-de-duperest farmer's market around.  Part of what makes the market special is that it is not entirely given over to upscale-ness. There are many vendors with organic and specialty items, but there are also farmer's selling carrots for a $1 and things like that. It makes it more real, so to speak. Still, there IS plenty that is artisanal and of higher quality. I mean think cheese. There's the mundane, including the so irresistible cheese spreads (really) as well as the award winning stuff like Pleasant Ridge and Rothkasse. There's some really interesting specialty meats like a Scottish Highland breed whose name escapes me and elk and bison. Because there are many Vietnamese and Hmong farmers, there is a high proportion of Asian vegetables including the stuff pictured below. What I most appreciate about the market is, as an eat local fanatic, is that one could just about eat local based on what's at the market. Milk, meat, eggs, cheese, flour, maple sugar, aside from coffee and wine, it's about all there.

Or there.  All over the Upper Midwest one finds brats unique to that town, bacon better than you can imagine.  A craft brewer makes an extreme point of making its beer local. I plan on exploring more.

Comments

[LynnAnn]

Growing anything veggie is a challenge up here in the far northern reaches of Wisconsin...but us "locals" do pool what our short season does allow us to grow.

Last Fall, I added a 14X24ft "greenroom" to the front of my house to enable me to grow year round...it's fabulous. I grow heirloom produce and am beginning to start plants for neighbors. Sugar Camp (10miles north or Rhinelander) is a tight community and I'm proud to be a member of it. If anyone ever gets up this far...stop by my little garden center...check my URL for location and some details...love and peace...lynnann

[BurdockBoy]

I also live in northern wisco where we have some great local farms that even sell to the local co-op, but the season just isn't long enough. My hope is the midwest, with its amazing soil, will focus more on growing food, other than corn and soybeans, that can be canned or frozen and distibuted throughout winter. That way we can still buy local greenbeans in Feb.