www.eatlocalchallenge.com

Federal rules stymie local food efforts in Iowa

By Marc

"About 32,000 acres could supply Iowans with five servings a day of fruits and vegetables for three months out of the year, according to Iowa State University economists. Iowa farmers will harvest nearly 14 million acres of corn in 2007."  That's the sidebar message in a Des Moines Register article brought to my attention by the invaluable FarmPolicy.com newsletter.

Iowa farmer Gary Boysen grows sweet corn, peppers, tomatoes, cantaloupes and other produce on 65 acres near Harlan.  He sells his produce at nearby supermarkets and Wal-Mart.  And he would like to be growing more fruit and vegetables for Iowans.  However, a big obstacle is standing in his way:  federal agricultural rules.

If farmers want to plant fruit and vegetable crops on land enrolled in USDA subsidy programs, they must permanently give up the possibility of receiving benefits. Not just for the period when they are growing non-program crops.  Permanently. 

Summer Freeze

by Expat Chef

This September, the Eat Local Challenge is offering a whole range of ways to participate in the ELC September Challenge. With so many ways to participate, we can all join in the experience.

One of the ways to participate this year is to leahrn how to preserve your locally grown food for winter. It’s easy enough to do for many foods. You don’t even have to buy special equipment or learn to can. You just need a bit of time and freezer space.

I decided to try this approach this year after watching a friend of mine struggle with the vegetable side dishes for a 100-mile diet Thanksgiving. There's not much around for fresh veggies in late November other than sweet potatoes. What I do not use on the Thanksgiving table can easily be added to the turkey leftovers for a Turkey and Vegetable Soup, perfect for those chilly late fall days.

How It All Adds Up

by Expat Chef

One of the things I have loved about the Eat Local Challenge (ELC) is that the more I participate, the easier and better it becomes. It's sustainable, too, as we can each define it and build it to fit the local environment in which we live. Best of all, is what ELC has brought to my life.

I found myself sitting at a lunch dedicated to local foods last week. The event was a stop on the Sustainable Table's Eat Well Guided Tour. The tables were filled with local foodies, activists, and farmers, some of whom produced the very food on our plates. I felt such great joy as we went around the room and each of us, not just our guests, shared our vision and experience of eating local. My heart swelled as I saw the actualization of our shared vision. Living proof that sustainable food systems work and are healthy for all who participate. Were it not for Jen Maiser and ELC, I would not have had this rich and wonderful experience.

Celebrating the Last of Summer's Best

by Expat Chef

Ah, tomatoes. Between the farmers market and our CSA, we have around eight pounds of these gracing our table weekly. I rarely have a plan when I buy them. I just know that we will eat them somehow.

August is the best month for tomatoes, the peak of season. As this month winds down, so does the tomato crop. My advice, and I follow it wholeheartedly, is to enjoy them while I can.

I love the different flavors of heirlooms with just basil, balsamic and olive oil and some fresh mozzarella, but if you are going to prepare these beauties, here are a few of my favorite ways this season.

Fresh Salsa
3 large tomatoes, cored, seeded and diced
1 small red onion diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 green pepper or mild green chile, seeded and diced
1 red pepper, seeded and diced
1 jalapeno, cored, seeded and diced (2 for hot)
1/2 tbs. vinegar
1 tsp. lime juice
kosher salt to taste

Once everything but the garlic and cilantro has been chopped and measured and put in a bowl, take about 1/3 of the mixture and place in the workbowl of a food processor. Add the whole garlic cloves. Pulse until chopped fine, but not total puree. Add the mixture back to the bowl, add the cilantro and adjust the salt to taste. You can adjust the heat by adding an extra pepper (or using more mild green chile), or even using a hotter variety of pepper, right up to a habernero, if you can take the heat. I also like to use yellow, orange, green and red tomatoes for extra color and flavor instead of all red ones.

The September 2007 Eat Local Challenge: Many ways to participate

by the Editors

For the third year in a row, the Eat Local Challenge website, in association with the Locavores, is hosting a month-long Eat Local Challenge.  This year, the challenge is in September with an emphasis on canning and preserving the bounty of September for the winter months. 

During this time, nationwide participants focus on what foods are available in our local foodshed and how we can support our local farmers.  This year, we have received many inquiries on the ways that supporters of the Eat Local Challenge can participate.  While the original challenge premise involves eating as much food from your local foodshed as possible during the month, there are many ways that you can participate.

Here are just a few:

1)  Commit to eating local for 30 days in September.  To do this, define what "local" means to you --  be it a 100-mile radius or your entire state or region.  Then designate any exceptions, define any extra goals you have during the month, and sign up on the Locavores website so that you can be counted.

2)  Write about your experience with eating locally on your blog.  What's it like in your area?  Which parts of eating locally are easy, and which are difficult?  What advice do you have for others? If you are participating, email us and tell us what state you live in.  Then tag all posts with the term "EatLocalChallenge" so that we can find your posts.  Want to show your support?  Add an Eat Local Challenge logo to your site!

3)  Take photos of local food, local farmers' markets and local farmers and post them to our Flickr group.

4)  Make one local meal a week in September.  Liz from Pocket Farm heads up the One Local Summer project which asks people to eat a local meal each week during the summer.  You can participate in a modified One Local Summer by committing to preparing one local meal for your family weekly through September.  Let us know how you do!

5)  Submit original content about your eat local experience to the Eat Local Challenge blog to be posted during September.  Email us your content or blog thoughts.  All posts will be subject to our Creative Commons license.

Local plum jam

(Editor note:  This September, the Eat Local Challenge blog will be hosting an international, month-long eat local challenge in association with the Locavores.  This particular challenge will have a special focus of preserving, canning, and putting food up for the winter.  Stay tuned to this site in the next few days for more information. Meanwhile, this first post from Marc discusses making plum jam at home.)

By Marc

The grounds around my apartment have two plum trees that become heavy with fruit in the mid-summer.  The first few years I lived here, I didn't do anything with them except perhaps eat a few, only to rediscover that they are almost all pit and skin.  But last year my upstairs neighbor taught me how to make plum jam, so this summer I was sure to spend part of each weekend on a ladder harvesting as many plums as I could, even creating a strange contraption called "the depluminator" to pick fruit growing on high boughs beyond my reach.

Jam or jelly can be a fantastic way to preserve the bounty of local summer fruit.  A significant non-local component, however, is often required in the form of large quantities of sugar.  Much of the sugar sold here comes from the tropics, often produced by ill-treated workers on ill-treated lands.  Sugar beets are another source of white sugar, with California produces only about 6 percent of the U.S. crop (most comes from Minnesota and North Dakota). (An episode of the Deconstructing Dinner radio program goes into great detail about sugar, stevia and honey). 

Questioning food miles

by Julie Cummins

There was an interesting op-ed in the New York Times on Monday that questioned the validity of judging food by its miles. I felt my hackles start to rise around the third paragraph, and I began to suspect it was a rant against the Eat Local movement (probably written by a big business shill). As it turns out, the author is a "passionate cohort" of Eat Local advocates. He asks himself, "But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment?" He cites a study that shows it's four times more energy efficient for Brits to eat imported New Zealand lamb than it is to eat local British lamb.

Roasted Ratatouille

by Expat Chef

No, I haven't seen the movie. But I've known about Ratatouille for a lot longer than the Pixar version. It's one of those long-standing classic dishes, but until recently, I could not tell you why the dish made so much sense. Not until last summer at the farmers market while I was shopping what was fresh and in season for mid-summer.

Consider what is in season right now: tomatoes, peppers, onions, eggplant, okra, zucchini, yellow squash, garlic. All in season, all together, all in the one recipe. Makes perfect sense to build a dish around those ingredients, right? I just never got that point. The recipe existed before the corner Megamart with anything and everything regardless of season. It was built around the vegetables that were available, fresh, and in grown in one's garden. Simple. Rustic. And delicious.

Easy as Pie

by Sara Zoë

As our friend described his adventures attempting to cook a Shepherd's Pie for his wife, he listed all of the ingredients he put into the pie - and my husband B and I turned to each other and happily nodded. We could make that. We could make that with completely local ingredients, almost all of which we had in our fridge, cupboard, or freezer already.

With corn and tomatoes and the hot weather, we haven't been constructing complex meals. The ingredients are so delicious as is it seems sort of silly to go through the effort. But the sheer joy of realizing we could make something so familiar and yet make it in a much better way meant we gathered the carrots and corn, waited for a cooler day and then went for it.

Farm Bill Round-Up

by Jen Maiser

Curious about this week's news regarding the Farm Bill?  The Ethicurean has published an excellent round-up of news around the nation including straightforward reports and commentary.

Last Friday, the House passed a Food and Farm Bill with 231 in favor, 191 against. Nineteen Republicans voted in favor of the bill, while 14 Democrats voted against it. Thanks to a last-minute tax-adjustment proposal, the vote was a lot closer than most farm bills (in 2002, the House version passed 291-120). The official name of the Food and Farm Bill is the "Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007" and its identifier is H.R. 2419.