www.eatlocalchallenge.com

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.

Lamb's Quarters

by Laurie O.

Now that I've discovered them, I may never go back to spinach.  They're free, they're delicious, they're easy and fast to cook, they're good in salads.  They're nutritious.  They store well. You can freeze them.  They grow like - weeds.  I mean, really.

Lamb's quarters are growing all over the community garden.  I gathered some last Sunday, washed them and stored them in the refrigerator in a plastic bag, then gathered the rest of the ones in my row yesterday.  The ones in the refrigerator were just fine to cook today.  I bagged them stems and all, and maybe that made a difference.

In the chapter about lamb's quarters in Stalking the Wild Asparagus, Euell Gibbons mainly takes issue with another nickname for this fine wild food, "pigweed."  But he does have a bit of advice for the wild foods cook: "There are few better wild potherbs than this close relative of garden spinach. 

Full Circle, Almost

by Laurie O.

In the swamp country of southeastern North Carolina where I grew up, it was common for each family to have a small vegetable garden in which they grew food for their own consumption.  Our cash crops had already moved to the monocultures of tobacco, field corn, and soybeans, but you could count on eating fresh, frozen, and canned vegetables from the garden all year long.  Plenty of swapping went on as well - neighbors gave us sweet potatoes and collard greens, and they were free to pick blueberries in our bountiful patch. 

We lived near the coast, and my father was an accomplished fisherman of red drum. He bought shrimp directly from the small boats that came to his small marina and mechanic shop near Calabash, N.C.  Eggs came from our next-door neighbor and milk came from Mr. Cook's cow down the road.  Hunters on our farm occasionally provided us with venison.