www.eatlocalchallenge.com

ELC Blog Highlight: Food on the Food

I have been reading Food on the Food, a blog by Tammy from Boston, for months now.  She makes me giggle with her wit and her stories of trying to feed her children and husband and picky father.  When she announced that she would be taking the Eat Local Challenge, I knew that we were in for a treat. 

Not only has Tammy been doing an amazing job with the challenge this month, but she's been tracking all her food consumption on her blog. 

The exciting news at Food on the Food is that the CBS Morning Show filmed Tammy and her family last week for a segment about the Eat Local Challenge!

Psst,...did you hear about the spinach?

By Jennifer BB

There hasn't been a national freak out the way there was  last year around the recall of E. coli infected spinach but food recalls are still occurring and there have been two within the last month.  The first was a recall at the end of August related to spinach infected with Salmonella and the most recent was last week's Dole recall of E.coli infected mixed salad greens.  Discrete signs at our local Wegman's Supermarket and a Google search gave me the low down on the latter but I'm left wondering if this is just becoming ordinary news these days.  "What beautiful weather we're having, hey, shame about that spinach recall." 

Local food in Kansas

By Marc

Via the Ethicurean digest, an article in the Parsons Sun about how farm subsidies are affecting rural life in Kansas ends with snapshot of the local food situation:

Paul Johnson, Lawrence, an organic farmer and lobbyist with the Kansas Catholic Conference, said subsidies do little for either rural populations or small farms.

He notes that Kansas consumers spend about $525 million a year on fruits and vegetables, yet only about $15 million worth of those crops is grown here.

It would take only 150,000 acres to grow enough fruits and vegetables to satisfy consumer demand in Kansas, according to studies done by Kansas State University in the Kansas River valley.

Johnson, a market gardener in the summer, recognizes that not all of the state would be suitable for fruits or vegetables. But he said Kansas is so focused on big agriculture that it misses the larger picture.

"I guess it's sexier or more handy to get into a $250,000 combine and ride the prairie," he said.

How does 150,000 acres compare with the amount of farmland in Kansas?  It's basically nothing:  Kansas has 10.3 million acres planted in wheat (according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service).

Marc lives in Berkeley, California.  He writes Mental Masala (an enticing blend of food, history, travel, and nature) and contributes to Ethicurean.

Image credit: Photo of the wheat harvest in the Palouse (Washington, Oregon, Idaho) from the USDA ARS Image Gallery.

ELC Blog Highlight: Green-Lemonade.com

Liz and Rhaya are taking a one-week long eat local challenge and writing about it on Green-Lemonade.com.  Liz lives in Albany, NY and Rhaya lives in Indianapolis, IN.  Today is day four of their attempt, and they are doing great!

One exciting outcome of their challenge is that they are finding new products near their homes that they didn't know existed.  In Liz's words:

So in the first day I have already enjoyed two foods, edamame and black beans, that I never would have thought were grown in New York.  Over the weekend while shopping for groceries for this week, I was really surprised to learn that foods like these can be purchased from local sources and it made me think about how out of touch I am, as are many others I’m sure, with where my foods really come from and what the local farm community really consists of.

Rhaya found local mead, and is finding recipe help with an Indiana-focused site called Going Local.  Keep an eye on the progress of the Green Lemonade women through the "going local" section of their site.

(Aside from all that eat local talk, they also have a killer website design!)

Liquid assets

I have a treasured little crackpot theory. It's that many foodways started off with a conversation something like this:

"Oh, no, what's happened to our [food item]?"

"Well, I don't care--I'm desperate!"

Surely it must have been that way with wine: Someone leaves fruit or honey-water alone for a while, maybe in a cave, and instead of just going sour, it turns into something delicious and celebratory. "Hmm! Let's try that again as soon as this headache goes away," our experimenter says.

But in the days before refrigeration, wine was not just a delicacy; it was an important food preservation method. Even today, it's a great way to put up a bumper crop.

Local Table Grapes: Don't Fear Grape Seeds

by Jack & Joanne

It's September and in wine country California that means it's harvest time for grapes. While our first thought is wine, eating table grapes are also lush, ripe and ready to devour. But here is our plea: Instead of eating bland Thompson Seedless grapes from who knows where, eat organic heirloom seeded grapes and support diversity.

We are so lucky to have Ana Stayton at Golden Nectar Farm, located in Healdsburg, CA. Each year at the Sebastopol Farmers' Market, she has a small but outrageously wonderful selection of table grapes. Some of the most delicious heirloom grapes you'll ever taste, like Bronx (the best!), Himrod, Interlaken (one of our favorites), Golden Muscat and Early Muscat.

Preserving a peck of pears with panache

By Marc

I was fortunate to receive a gift of twelve pounds of a pears from Cookie Crumb and Cranky a few weeks ago (which was just a small fraction of their trees' amazing output this year, as noted here).  Unlike some backyard fruit trees (like my plum trees), the fruit was actually delicious on its own, and I suppose I could have eaten a few each day until they were gone.  But with the farmers market full of summer fruit, it would be foolish to binge on pears for a week.  So, of course, I turned much of the gift into preserves.

[The beautiful photo to the right was taken by Jen Maiser, not me]

ELC Blog Highlight: Kale for Sale

One of the reasons listed in the "10 Reasons to Eat Local" is:

Buying locally grown food is fodder for a wonderful story.

It's one of the reasons that I relate to the most.  It's a difficult reason to describe, but it is so powerful when it happens. I literally clapped when I read Katrina's post this morning.  She did a great job of capturing the story aspect that comes with buying food from local farmers.  Katrina writes Kale for Sale, and is participating in the Eat Local Challenge from San Anselmo, near San Francisco.

Here's a bit of what she wrote ... please read the entire post.

Tonight I popped raspberries into the freezer that I bought from Rose at the Ferry Building Tuesday market. As I placed each raspberry finger-puppet side down on a cookie sheet I thought of her. She's like chicken soup with an apron. Her smiles are an anyday remedy and I want to fill the freezer with them.

San Francisco restaurants go local

By Marc

In this week's Tablehopper newsletter, I learned about a new effort to recognize local foods in San Francisco:  the restaurants that serve it, the groceries that sell it, the farms that grow it, and the artisans that use it in their creations.  Called Eat Local San Francisco, the group's first big event is an "Eat Local Week" from September 23 to 29.  During this week, member restaurants will create daily specials that rely on the locally-grown ingredients.  As of today, nine restaurants are participating.  A slow start, to be sure, but the 23rd is still ten days away, so others may join in before Eat Local Week begins. 

The founders of Eat Local SF include such commercial interests as the San Francisco Council of District Merchants, San Francisco Small Business Commission and Open Table (an on-line reservation system), so it seems that eating local has become a marketing hook.  That's fine with me, as supporting locally-owned business is one of the main reasons to eat local. 

I hope the Eat Local SF efforts encourage restaurants and stores to use more local ingredients and to tell consumers how they use them.  Some SF restaurants have been doing this for a while.  The Slanted Door, for example, lists farm names on their menu.  The current on-line dinner menu, for example, mentions Prather Ranch beef, Allstar Organics summer squash, Star Route Farm baby spinach, Dirty Girl Farm haricots verts, and Catalan Farm sweet corn, among others.  That's useful if you have heard of the farms, but not useful if you haven't.  It would be far more informative if restaurants made maps showing where their suppliers are based, like the Highwayman pub in Lancashire, UK. 

Marc lives in Berkeley, California.  He writes Mental Masala (an enticing blend of food, history, travel, and nature) and contributes to Ethicurean.

Saving the Harvest — for Generations to Come

by Expat Chef

A couple weeks ago we went to pick up our CSA bag. Part of the week's harvest included an small melon with a light green rind. It smelled crisp and citrus. I can't even remember the name of it. As we placed it in the car, the farmer said, "Hey, be sure to save the seeds on this for me. They cost me a dollar each."

He gave my husband instructions on how to save the seeds. When my husband cut into the melon, the texture and flavor were just like the smell. It was a very interesting fruit. He did as the farmer asked, and saved the seeds. When he counted them, he said, "You know, there's like $150 in here." The next week we returned the seeds to our farmer, keeping a few to try and plant ourselves.