www.eatlocalchallenge.com

Briarpatch Community Fund Supports Eating Locally

I have been a member of the Briarpatch Cooperative (located in Grass Valley, California) for several years and have been delighted to see them focus on local foods in the past two years, putting together special fliers, tagging the products, and even encouraging people to participate in Eat Local challenges.  I work for a small community-based non-profit organization in Camptonville about 30 miles north of Grass Valley.  We have a Family Resource Center on the grounds of our local elementary school, and offer an early childhood program.  Together, we share a school garden based on the Edible Schoolyard principles, and the elementary school actually has a School Wellness Plan that includes offering organic and locally raised foods!

We are lucky to be located in the Sierra foothills, high enough to be in the conifer belt, but low enough to have a good growing season.  However, most of my neighbors only grow a summer garden, and when the frosts hit ( as they did early last weekend), everyone folds up for the winter, waiting until the following spring to get growing again.  I decided to turn to the Briarpatch Community Fund to apply for grant funding this fall, as I wanted our organization to host a special program encouraging greater food self-sufficiency.  I was delighted when they awarded us with a grant, even though I had only a month to quickly assemble and promote the program, which we held on Tuesday night.  Drawing upon the wisdom of our community, we were able to contact a few special people and plan for an educational evening based on the Twilight School model we have used since 1997.

Twilight School always starts with a free or low-cost community meal.

The first half of our evening program was a demonstration by our local nurserywoman, Jessi Wilcox of Rebel Ridge Organics, on what to plant in the fall (broccoli, cabbage, hardy greens, garlic and onions, flowering bulbs, cover crops incuding fava beans... the list is probably longer than you thought).  She also showed how to create hoop tunnels and use floating row covers to protect crops, extending your fall harvest or getting an early start in the spring.

Jessi highly favors using cover crops, and spent a lot of time describing the benefits; the biggest one that stuck in my mind was that you would be replenishing the soil for the next season.  She also recommended using rice straw (readily available in our part of California) to cover the beds, so that the beneficial microfauna would stay in your garden over the winter rather than migrating elsewhere.

Then, Robyn Martin of Olala Farms spent the remainder of the evening delighting us with stories of her 35 years of preserving food for her family of six while living mainly without electricity.  She covered using a root cellar (and reminded us not to mix the onions with the apples) and drying foods using recycled sheer curtains to keep the flies away.  She delved into salt brining, and explained that our Sierra Nevada soils are mineral deficient, especially of iodine.  Robyn swears by Celtic sea salt for making these brines, though most of us would need to decide to exempt that from our local food choices, since her experience has shown that there are more minerals and longer-keeping brined foods by using this source of salt over choosing other forms of sea salt.

Robyn also explained what lactic fermentation is and how those foods differ from brined ones, as well as detailed how to choose, pick and pack your foods for best preservation.  Here, Robyn (left) discusses a canning dilemma with young mother, Jessica.

I feel particularly fortunate to live in a community where there is a strong interest in self-sufficiency and re-learning the old food preservation skills, where there are people like Robyn who have the wisdom to share and Jessi who is making new scientific information available, and for a cooperative such as Briarpatch for supporting us!

A family eats local in Hawaii

Aloha!

Our family is off to a great start on our first day of local eating for the month of October.  Eating locally grown food in Hawaii poses some big challenges:

1. About 90% of our food is imported to our island state.
2. We're missing many of the more typical options for the biggest food group, whole grains. If we were true Hawaiians living off the land we would eat a lot of Kalo, the staple food for the old Hawaiian diet.
3. Since the closing of the final Oahu dairy we have no local milk or milk product options. The lack of dairy represents one of the biggest challenges for my family with two young growing children in need of calcium and protein. Yes, I know I can feed them with alternatives but I'm just not that good at it.  It's much easier in our busy day to dish a bowl of plain yogurt than to cook up a fish or some dried beans (which we don't have here anyway).  And yes, broccoli and green leafy veggies and even seaweed are all good alternatives for calcium but it's still nice to have a piece of cheese once in awhile.

With all of that I think we have come up with a good plan to feed ourselves for October:

• All of our fruit, vegetable, egg, meat and fish choices will be locally grown (local defined as grown on one of the major islands).
• We will use at least one ingredient from our own garden every day.
• Every dinner will be mostly if not all created from local ingredients.
• If we eat out we will choose restaurants that source local foods.
• We will focus on education outreach by talking to our friends and family and encouraging them to eat local foods too.

It's funny that I include the word 'we' in the plan when my family doesn't have much of a choice since I do all of the food shopping and cooking.  But they will be helping tend the gardens and decide what foods are ready to eat. And of course, the kids love to shop the farmers market with me so they will be participating that way.

Many of the exceptions I hear from participants are coffee, sugar, bananas and fresh grown produce year round. Whereas for us, we have these things but are missing grains and dairy. Coffee is grown on all the major islands, sugar is grown on Maui, we have bananas in our backyard and we can grow most things year round.

Dinner the first night:
Local romaine and red leaf salad with roasted beets and tomatoes and a basil macadamia nut vinaigrette
Local purple and white sweet potatoes, roasted in a solar oven
Local garden-grown corn roasted on the grill
Grilled Big Island Top Sirloin with a basil garlic sea salt rub
Bananas flambe and fresh starfruit, bananas were harvested from our tree a few days earlier

Debbie is a Ph.D. scientist and stay-at-home mom of two young children. She enjoys cooking, gardening, surfing and eating local food.

Supporting the Eat Local Challenge in San Francisco

By Jennifer Maiser, Editor

Originally posted at Bay Area Bites.

October is Eat Local Challenge month around the nation.  Over at the Eat Local Challenge blog, we are excited to have over two hundred people who have committed to eating locally in their area for the entire month.  We choose to eat locally because it supports the local economy, because it supports local farms and farmers, because it's lighter on the earth, and because it supports responsible development.

Since its meager beginnings in 2005, the Eat Local Challenge has grown to a movement that is beyond any of our dreams.  This is evidenced by the cooperation of many organizations in San Francisco that are bringing you a myriad of eat local events throughout the month of October.

Even if you don't commit to eating locally for the entire month (though we'd love if you sign up and participate!), there are lots of ways that you can support eating locally in October in the Bay Area.  Here are just a few ideas:

1.  Support restaurants in the Bay Area that make a habit of buying from local farms.  Just a few ideas include Delfina, A16, SPQR, Flea Street Cafe, Coi, Piccino, Pizzetta 211, Serpentine, Hog Island Oyster Company, Pauline's Pizza, NOPA, and so many others.

2.  Support restaurants in San Francisco that are committing to buying locally in October.  Eat Local SF is a local organization that has worked with restaurants to provide special Eat Local menus during October.  Those restaurants can be found via Open Table.

3.  Learn more about eating locally by attending a lecture.  The Commonwealth Club is hosting a four week series about eating locally.  I will be attending several of the events.  I sat in on some of the planning sessions for these events, and am excited about the panelists at each.  Events include:

• October 1.  Local Food, Local Pride: Policies for Sustainable Economies
• October 8.  The Water Connection: State Policies and the Impact on Local Food Systems
• October 15.  From Farm to Feast: How chefs, farmers and artisans strenghten our community
• October 22.  Food as Medicine: Health and Food Safety

4.  Attend tastings of local wines and food at 18 Reasons each Thursday night in October.  18 Reasons is a great art + food gallery in the Mission, and I am excited to check out these celebrations of local wine.

5.  Use the Buy Fresh Buy Local database to find local food in your area, and support those purveyors in October.

6.  Attend a farmers market each week in October.  Use the Chronicle website to find your local market.

7.  Ask your supermarket manager where your meat, produce and dairy is coming from.  Remember that market managers are trained to realize that for each person actually asking the question, at least 7 people want to know the same answer.  Make a difference!

However you decide to support local eating in October, be sure to let us know what you're doing and how it goes.

Jennifer Maiser is the editor of the Eat Local Challenge website.  She is often found behind a camera or writing for her site, Life Begins at 30.

The evolving farmers market

By Marc

In last Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Russ Parsons has an interesting story about a recent evolution at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market.  The Wednesday market has long been a place for chefs to meet, to pick up the best produce in Los Angeles, and to be inspired by the seasons.  Lately, though, chefs have seen produce trucked away by big companies to be shipped to far away restaurants.  Parson writes:

Though no hard figures are kept, some growers say that as much as half of what they sell at the market is bought by produce companies.

As a result, what had long been a kind of informal meeting place for many of Southern California's foodies and chefs is no longer quite so clubby. What chefs once regarded as a combination of culinary laboratory and kaffeeklatsch -- a place to find new ingredients and ideas and swap gossip, sometimes seemingly in equal proportions -- is more and more a place for big business.

"It used to be that everyone thought how great it was to be out there picking things for ourselves; it was so exciting," said Matt Molina of the white-hot Mozza restaurants, co-owned by star chefs Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton. "Then all of a sudden it began to become a business, a big-money business. Now farmers are sometimes catering to the big people, so local restaurants are sometimes getting left behind.

The chefs could get the same produce if they called in advance, but some think that a Tuesday afternoon phone call might kill a Wednesday morning idea that could lead to a magnificent new dish for the restaurant.  The chefs say that coming across a new ingredient or combination of ingredients can spark unexpected preparations.

For farmers, this evolution is a huge benefit:  having a big produce company place an advance order means a guaranteed sale, as opposed to the perpetual gamble of bringing highly perishable vegetables to a market where they might not catch anyone's attention and be turned into compost or animal feed back on the farm.

It seems counterintuitive for big produce companies to be buying at the farmers market, but I only see it a convenient place for the pick up, certainly easier than having the farmer struggle through the legendary L.A. traffic to a warehouse across the city.

Parsons writes that the farmers market is trying to mediate the conflict between the chefs and wholesalers.  I hope they can figure something out because a lot of culinary innovation has occurred at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, innovation that will slow if the chefs stay away from the market.

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

Photo of eggplant from Jen Maiser's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

NRDC promotes local food

by Julie Cummins

I was listening to KQED radio (San Francisco) this morning and heard a piece about food miles. Did anyone hear it? They referred to a recent Natural Resources Defense Council study that showed that local is better. Despite our ability to grow an abundance of crops year-round in our region, according to the study, most winter produce in California supermarkets is shipped from so far away (Chile and other Southern Hemisphere locations) that, all else being equal, you have a lower carbon footprint if you buy local, even if the modes of transport are less fuel-efficient. It said something like that, anyway. I hadn't had any high-carbon-emission coffee yet, so I can't be sure. I looked around on the web and couldn't find the story, but I did find this pdf on the NRDC site. It has an interesting chart about some of our biggest import crops, their transport methods, and their pollution potential.

NRDC also has this excellent seasonality page on its site. Select your state and the month, and you get a list of what produce is in season in your area! (Even in Alaska, they have local carrots and potatoes right now. I just had to check.)

Julie Cummins lives in Oakland, CA and is Director of Education for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).

Visiting the cows and bees

by Julie Cummins

On September 16, I organized a farm tour, called the "Milk and Honey Tour," for CUESA. This description originally appeared in the CUESA weekly e-letter, and I am re-posting it here because getting a firsthand look at the animals that produce our food is the most satisfying part of an Eat Local life.

It has been said that milk and honey are the only substances in our diet whose sole function in nature is to serve as food. Whether or not this is true, they certainly symbolize abundance of biblical proportions; the phrase “land of milk and honey” comes from a reference to Caanan in the Bible. Last month, a group of 43 food lovers made a journey to our local lands of milk and honey—Spring Hill Jersey Cheese (Petaluma, CA) and Marshall’s Farm Natural Honey (American Canyon, CA).

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.

ELC Blog Highlight: Locavore on Core

Jessica of the Locavore on Core blog is not only challenging herself to the Eat Local Challenge, but she's doing it while on the Weight Watchers Core diet and on a budget.  From the little that I know of the Core Diet, it lends itself really well to a local foods emphasis with it's slant toward whole, unprocessed foods.  I love Jessica's postings about how satisfying good, whole foods can be:

I'm making conscious food choices not entirely based on the calorie count, but on the quality of the food, and I've found something surprising: I don't need a huge quantity if the food is high quality. A small amount of good, real cheese is so much more satisfying than a whole package of fat free cheese product.

If you have a minute to check out Jessica's blog and cheer her on, please do so!  She's working hard at all aspects of her food challenges.

ELC Blog Highlight: Livin' La Vida Local

Melanie of Livin' La Vida Local represents our San Diego blog contingent during this challenge.   Her entire blog is dedicated to food issues and the idea of eating locally-grown food, and it's becoming a terrific resource for San Diegans who are interested in eating local.  Read about her approach, and I think you'll agree that she's going about this in a balanced, positive way:

I don't boast of being an expert in what I am undertaking. This blog will chronicle what I learn, in hopes that by the end of the year I (and anybody who's listening in) will be more knowledgeable about living like a "localtarian."

This is not a vegetarian or vegan diet. I intend to eat meat, chicken, and seafood in addition to produce (but only if I can find them from local sources).

Read more about Melanie's journey at Livin' La Vida Local.

From the archives: SF Guide to Local Cheeses

If you are a Bay Area Eat Local Challenge participant and haven't checked out our "SF Guide to Local Cheeses," it's worth a glance.  Between the cheeses mentioned in the post and those in the comments section, we have quite a wide array of cheeses to choose from!