Local Eating Summer Recap

Well, clearly we slacked off on the blogging towards the end of the summer... but, to be fair, we were both extremely busy!!  But, enough about that, back to the point of this blog.  Our official end date, as stated at the start of our experiment, was September 1, so I wanted to give a little bit of a recap now.  We are by no means done eating local food; we're still getting our CSA box weekly, and other things we discovered will remain mainstays in the future, but some other things will also be creeping back in!

Overall, it has been a really cool experience, and, really, not as difficult as we expected.  There's just a lot of good, local food out there, especially in the summer!  Certainly it took some effort and we missed some things, but we ate pretty darn well and found some fun new foods and local alternatives to others, as well as some great new recipes.  So here's a little summary of our summer local eating experiment:

Favorite New Food

• Mike: Turnips and radishes - specifically when they are baked, because they become sort of sweet, like the way onions do, and they are a really fun addition to lots of dishes!
• Pam: Turnips - I would never have tried them but they have a fun and unique taste I love! Especially baked!

Least Favorite New Food

• Mike: Rapini - honestly, it's just kind of pointless.  Other greens are tastier, and if I wanted broccoli, I would just eat broccoli!
• Pam: There wasn't anything I would have spit out...

Favorite New Recipe/Dish

• Mike: German Potato Salad - It's just so ridiculously delicious!  I mean, really, check out the recipe and tell me that wouldn't be outrageously good.  I dare you.  Now I need to try making my college roommate's mom's recipe for it...
• Pam: Root veggie bake & homemade/invented hamburger helper - my own invented recipe that of course includes turnips!

Most Missed

• Mike: Avocados - oh my goodness, I missed them soooo much.  On sandwiches, in the form of guacamole, or even just plain.  They're just too good!!
• Pam: Juice, especially orange juice!

Best Local Alternative (These are things that we previously ate but for which were able to find new local sources)

• Mike: Sausage from Fischer Meats in Issaquah - this sausage is to die for, oh my goodness.  They have some many amazing flavors, but my favorite would have to be the cranberry walnut.  Yeah.  Out of this world.
• Pam: CB's Peanut Butter = Amazing!!  Will continue to eat it always!  (Available in bulk, grind-your-own at the Everett Co-op!  Also at PCC)

And now, about the alcohol (written by Pam)

Even though we already drank pretty locally, we were still able to find some fun new northwest brews and wines that have become go-to favorites for us.  It was fun to find some additions to our favorites list.

Beer:

• Fire Station 5 Brewing Company (IPA = Pam's fav!) - Available at Fred Meyer, try the 12-pack variety pack, all 4 beers in it (IPA, Blonde, Amber, Hef) are delicious!

• Fish Brewing Company - Ok, this one's not exactly new, I've always loved them, but I recently bought one of their 1-gallon growlers that I can get filled up at their brewpubs, including their new Everett location!  LOVE IT!

Wine:

• Chateau St. Michelle Riesling - Great summer wine, goes well with the German Potato Salad.

So, we're definitely looking forward to some things re-entering our diet (juice, pasta, cereal, rice, avocados, etc.), but some other things have definitely found their way into our normal diet, which is pretty cool.  One of the most encouraging things, I think, was finding out how easy it really is to eat locally.  Even if you don't eat 100% locally (and, don't want to shock you, but I'm afraid we didn't quite...), the more food you can get locally, the better.

Thanks for following along on our journey, now go out and support your local farmers and enjoy the most delicious, fresh food you'll ever eat!  Sounds like a win-win to me!

Garden Update!!

Ok, I know it's been a while.  Sorry....  Things have been very busy, and we've definitely been enjoying our local food of late.  One of the highlights was definitely the fresh Dungeness crab pulled out of the ocean not an hour before it was cooked last week when we were over near Port Ludlow at the house of a good friend of Pam's parents.  Soooo yummy!  We also made pizza, which we've been wanting to do for a while now, and it turned out quite well for our first attempt!  Homemade mint-basil-spinach pesto for the sauce, fresh spinach, sauteed onions and chicken, topped with pepper jack cheese - delicious!

Anywho, as you can tell, we're certainly not starving.  And here's some fun news - we're finally getting to harvest from our garden!  Well, I don't know if you can call it harvesting, but so far we've eaten about 20 of our peas, with other things on the way!  Yay!  Here's an update on the garden in pictures:

PEAS!!!  YUM!

The rhubarb transplants have taken quite well, much to Pam's delight!

Pole beans starting to climb

Can't wait to start eating beets... need to plant the next succession as well!

Cucumbers finally sprouted!

Them peas just keep right on growing

Our garden is definitely bringing us great joy, and we can't wait to start sharing the bounties with everybody!  But for now, we will hoard our 20 peas all to ourselves.

Fun with Strawberries!

Over the past couple weeks, Pam and I have been obsessively checking the website for Remlinger Farms out in Carnation (east of Sammamish), waiting for one announcement: the start of strawberry U-pick!!  Finally, this past week, we got our wish, so we headed out to the farm to get our share of the strawberries!

We got there and discovered that the strawberries were going for $1.50/pound, which works out to a little over $1 per pint, which is fantastic considering a pint will cost you $4 at most farmers markets, plus the fresh picked berries are just that much better!  So, needless to say, we decided to stock up.

When all was said and done and we weighed in, we had picked nearly 13 pounds of strawberries!  BOO-YAH!  We had some big plans for these strawberries too, so we headed home to start enacting those plans.

First step was to wash and hull all of the strawberries.  That took a while.  We immediately froze one big gallon bag of strawberries (to go with another we’d gotten in the freezer the week before), to be used throughout the year for smoothies and waffle toppings and things like that.

The next project was one that we were very excited about; making jam!  There’s just nothing quite like homemade strawberry preserves, so we knew we had to make some.  In keeping with our local commitment, however, we didn’t want to use things like added pectin or sugar.  The sugar was easy to substitute with honey, and after a little more research I found out something pretty cool.  The pectin is basically to help the jam set up properly, and it is naturally occurring in some fruits.  Strawberries, when ripe, are very low in pectin, which is why people generally add it in.  However, thanks to this blog, I found out that unripe strawberries that have some green left on the tip actually are higher in pectin, and a handful of them in your preserves mixture is enough to help it set up properly!  Yay!

            Strawberry Preserves

           

            4 cups sliced strawberries (including a handful of unripe berries)

1-1½ cups honey

Mash berries to desired consistency (some people like more berry chunks, some less), add in the honey.  Heat on the stove to a boil, stirring constantly, and boil for 10-15 minutes til thickened.  Remove from heat, let cool, then can or freeze for future use!

Since freezing is easier than canning, that’s what we opted with, but I’d like to can some in the future, because then you don’t need to use up freezer space.  Here are some step-by-step pictures of the process:

Sliced strawberries, ready to mash

Mashed up, with the honey mixed in

Boiling away!

Into the fridge to cool

YUMMY!!  It turned out super well, way to go us!

So yeah, the jam turned out really well, and we plan to make more!  Not only is it super delicious, but the bottom line is pretty awesome - compared to the cheapest local jam (typically at least $6 for a 16-oz jar) our jam cost only $0.14/ounce, or $2.27 per 16-ounces!  About 1/3 of the price we'd pay at the store - Win!

Another fun project was making strawberry vinaigrette, which turned out absolutely delicious.  I adapted the recipe from this website:

            1 cup sliced strawberries

            ⅓ cup olive oil

            ⅓ cup balsamic vinegar

            1 tbsp honey

½ tsp thyme

½ tsp lemongrass

salt and pepper

Finely chop herbs, place all ingredients in blender/food processor and blend until well mixed and smooth.

The thyme and lemongrass came from our herb garden, and the result was a delicious vinaigrette for a salad we took to my aunt and uncles for 4^th of July!

Lastly, who could resist making a strawberry rhubarb pie??  Certainly not Pam!!  Yummy!  We’ve still got a few berries left for munching as well, so all in all, a very successful harvest!  I encourage everyone to go pick some strawberries now while they’re in season, you’ll never find them juicier or cheaper!

Too Many Great Meals!

Ok.  I have to give you a little update on what we’ve been eating.  The past couple of weeks, now that Pam and I actually have time to cook, have been full of some of the most delicious, fun, experimental food we’ve ever created!  Yay!  I would love to take the time to elaborate on each and every one of these, but there's just too much good stuff!  If you have any questions about a specific recipe or anything else, just let us know.  Enjoy the following pictures/recipes!

Winter vegetable bake with garlic and rosemary, along with cheddar cheese biscuits and salad

Making homemade pasta!

Adding the spinach garlic ricotta filling for our ravioli.

Ravioli!!

Rosemary fettuccine!

Bok choy sauteed with garlic, chicken, and hazelnuts to go with our ravioli topped with a cheese sauce

Basil garlic cheddar focaccia bread (recipe from my favorite cookbook, Simply In Season)

Our rosemary fettuccine with a recipe (Lemon Asparagus Pasta) locally adapted also from Simply in Season

Strawberry rhubarb crumble

Homemade potato chips with olive oil, salt, and pepper

They turned out pretty well!

German Potato Salad - adapted from this recipe (I substituted honey for sugar, and Chateau Ste. Michelle Gewurztraminer for the vinegar)

Fresh bing cherry pie

And the newest addition to our garden - a soaker hose!!

Homemade Granola is Amazing. Period.

Several years ago I decided that I liked granola.  It was one of those things where I’d probably had some crappy store-bought granola at one point and was just like, hmm, nope.  But then I had my dad’s homemade maple apricot granola (my cousin’s recipe) with some Yami vanilla yogurt (my personal favorite, and also local!) and some fresh fruit and I was like, YES!!!  Store-bought granola just cannot compare!  Last year when I was taking care of my parents’ house I made my own batch of that granola and fell even more in love with it.  So, needless to say, I was very keen on finding enough local ingredients to make some this summer, as was Pam, so we started doing some research.

At some of the local farmers markets there is actually a company that sells locally sourced and produced granola, but it was always so expensive – almost $10/pound!  There was no way we were paying that much for granola, when I knew we could make it for way cheaper.  But, it was nice to know that the ingredients necessary for the granola would be available locally.

First, the most important ingredient; the rolled oats.  No Quaker oats for us, thank you!  After a little bit of looking we found that Bob’s Red Mill (which produces a lot of specialty flours and other grains and things) had some rolled oats that they mill that are grown right in Oregon.  Not all of their products are sourced locally, but they often say on the package if they are, and these were, so yay!  Then the trick was to search around and see where they were sold.  I did an afternoon of calling and found them at PCC and some other specialty stores, but then, the big surprise was finding them at Fred Meyer!  Not only that, but in bulk!  Everywhere else only had the 1 lb bags, which were going for somewhere around $2.69 or so, but good old Fred Meyer had them in bulk for $0.89/lb!  SUCCESS!

Ok, so here’s the rest of the recipe, along with where we got it for the local ingredients (remember, spices and olive oil are a couple of our exceptions…)

6 cups old-fashioned oats (Bob’s Red Mill; Fred Meyer)

1 ½ cups chopped hazelnuts (CB’s Nuts; Whole Foods)

½ cup hulled sunflower seeds (Kettle Foods; Fred Meyer)

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

⅓ cup olive oil

⅓ cup honey (Mech Apiaries; Pike Place Market)

⅓ cup lemongrass, minced finely (our herb garden!)

1 cup dried pears, finely chopped (my parents fruit trees; their pantry!)

Preheat oven to 350°.  Stir together oats, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, salt, cinnamon, lemongrass, oil, and honey in large bowl.  Spread mixture evenly in 2 large shallow baking pans (~1 inch deep) and bake in upper and lower thirds of oven, stirring and switching position of pans halfway through baking, until golden brown, ~30 minutes total.  Cool granola completely in pans on racks, then stir in dried pears.

With all our local ingredients in hand, we set out to make our granola!

mixing the initial ingredients

chopping the hazelnuts (ours were already roasted so we added them at the end) and pears

baking!!

getting ready to store it, we'll eat a lot now but also freeze some for later.

the finished product!  SOOOOOO yummy!

Making your own granola is really not very difficult and it tastes so much better than what you typically find in the grocery store.  Oh, and another bonus?  You know how that farmers market local stuff is about $10/pound?  Ours was about $3/pound, and $1 of that was just the hazelnuts (gotta find those cheaper...)!  Win, us!!

The Joy of Really Eating

I just came across this quote in a book I am reading by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, which, if you haven't heard of, I highly suggest you check them out.  They're featured in a number of documentaries and books, including Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, and they do some pretty awesome stuff that goes against the grain of everything in the industrial food system.  This quote from his book The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer hits it right on the money about the difference between ingesting food, which is what we typically do in American culture, and really eating.  Check it out:

Ingesting is what Marines do at boot camp when they have 10 minutes to inhale processed material.  Ingesting is what people do when they pop boxes in the microwave without talking to anybody and consume it while watching TV.  Ingesting is what most people do because they don’t want to take the time to eat.  The preparation, thoughtfulness, acquisition effort, and menu planning that eating require are meaningless to them.

Ingesting is really different than eating.  Eating conjures up things like appreciation, culinary skills, chewing, salivating, conversing, pleasant aromas, family and friends.  Eating is a social activity.  All cultures are defined primarily by religion, architecture, and food.  Eating is intricately tied to cultural identity.  When you think of American food culture, what do you think of?  Ingesting.

I try every meal to really eat rather than ingest my food, and I encourage you all to do the same!

Week 1 of our CSA!

Eating locally this summer is going to be made much easier by our subscription to a local CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  This type of program has really been expanding over the past decade or so, all across the country.  As a member of a CSA you pay an upfront fee and every week you’re provided with a box of fresh produce!  CSAs come in all different shapes and sizes, so let me tell you a little more about ours.

We did some research and looked at a number of different local farms and talked with some of our friends who have done CSAs in the past.  We ended up selecting Willie Green’s Organic Farm in Monroe, WA, which is less than 30 miles from Bellevue, where both Pam and I live.  Not only is it super close by (at some point we’re going to go visit!), but they fill their CSA boxes with only local produce.  Some other CSAs like to supplement their local produce with things from elsewhere, like California, or even overseas, sometimes without really even telling their customers.  All of Willie Green’s produce is either grown on their farm or occasionally comes from one of their local partners, all of which are within Washington.  The produce is all grown organically and picked no earlier than the day before it is delivered, which minimizes the nutrients lost before consumption.

So, we decided to sign up for a small share, which we will receive every week all the way into October.  This will be fun because it’ll introduce us to all sorts of new things that we haven’t tried and force us to learn how to cook with them!  We’ll be receiving our first share this Friday, and we found out a couple days ago what’s going to be in it:

• Salad Mix ½ lb;
• Spinach ½ lb;
• Rapini 1 bunch;
• Carrots 1 bunch;
• Turnips 1 bunch;
• Baby Head Lettuce 4 each;
• Bok Choy 1 bunch

When I look at this, my first reaction was, “What the heck is rapini?”  Turns out it’s kind of like little broccoli heads with some leaves.  Cool.  Now just need to figure out what to do with it!  And the turnips too!  We’ll see what we can come up with!  For all of this we paid the equivalent of roughly $19.44 (we bought 16 weeks of boxes!!), and if we were to get this from one of their stands at a farmers market, we would pay $28.50!  Boo-yah!

Needless to say we’re very excited for this first installment, and we’ll keep you updated on what it looks like and what we end up making out of it!

 

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Friday, June 17, 2011 – UPDATE

I just picked up our first Willie Green’s CSA Box!!  Yay!!  Here’s what it looks like, lots of yummy greens:

I got it home and went through everything, excited to see just what all we had.  And I couldn’t resist, I had to make something real quick to put it to good use, so I made a salad using some of the salad mix as well as some spinach, topped with chopped carrots plus some green onions I still had.  Then I made a little vinaigrette with blackberry juice (from frozen blackberries that were picked last year at my parent’s house), a little bit of olive oil, and some fresh thyme.  It was delicious!  The first of many fun dishes to come this summer!

Exceptions to the rule… Yes, we are weak.

So, a couple weeks into our little local eating experiment, I feel that we need to come clean about something.  We’re not really eating 100% local this summer.

AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

I know, you’ve been deceived, and I apologize.  We really are trying our best, but there are just some things that we decided beforehand we would rather not do without.  The list is as follows; feel free to judge us all you like.

1.       Peanut Butter

The stuff is just too delicious.  But peanuts, sadly, are not really grown locally.  However, stay tuned for a future blog post from Pam about how we’re getting this as locally as possible!

2.       Spices/Herbs

Here I am deferring to the wisdom of Barbara Kingsolver from her book, Animal, Vegetbale, Miracle.  We use spices in such small quantities that the amount of energy spent to get them to the table is relatively negligible.  We will get as many things locally as possible (including growing our own things such as basil, mint, lemongrass, cilantro and more), and look for fun local substitutes for others, but we’re not going to make a big deal out of occasionally using some salt and pepper or cinnamon or something like that.

3.       Olive Oil

With the exception of butter (which I love and will continue to consume in large amounts) there are no good alternative cooking oils, so we’ll continue using olive oil.  We’ll also probably use it in salad dressings and things like that.  I’d like to find some from as close by as possible (in other words, NOT imported from Italy…), but we’ll see what’s available.

4.       Maple Syrup

I don’t even want to think about pancakes, French toast, and the like without maple syrup.  It’s just too good.  Plus, Pam gets it straight from the source from her family in Vermont, so that sort of counts as local, right?  Right?  Shut up.

5.       Sugar (when absolutely necessary)

As much as possible, honey will be our sugar substitute of choice.  However, some baking recipes just won’t be the same without at least a little bit of sugar, so we may need to use some in small amounts, perhaps in conjunction with honey at times.

6.       Chocolate (also when absolutely necessary…)

What?  It’s delicious and sometimes you just need some chocolate.  To go as local as possible we’ll look to companies like Theo Chocolate, which produces it’s own chocolate right here in Seattle with organic, fair trade, sustainably grown cocoa beans, and finds local sources for as many of its other ingredients as possible.

7.       Coffee (written by Pam)

Alright, let’s face it... Pam can’t really survive without coffee in the morning. SO, she has found a few companies in Washington that work with small family fair trade, organic farms in South America and roast the beans after they have been transported here. Locally produced coffee works for me. Really... expecting Pam to go without caffine is not a good plan; this is an excellent exception.

8.       Dairy Queen Blizzards

Ok, before you stop reading this blog altogether, hear us out on this exception.  Last fall I bought a Bear Card, which is a discount card that offers deals all over Olympia that the Olympia High School sports teams sell as a fundraiser every year.  Now, since I’ve got it, I need to use it, that’s just who I am.  I can’t just let it sit in my wallet unused.  And one of the few discounts that I actually like to use is the buy one get one free small Blizzard at Dairy Queen.  So here’s what we decided: when we’re in Olympia this summer we will allow ourselves the occasional Blizzard treat.  Judge if you must, but I think it’s legit.

So that’s the extent of the exceptions that we have outlined for our summer of local eating.  We’re always looking for fun local alternatives, so if you have any ideas relating to these different areas please share them!  Also, if you feel the need to rebuke us for our failings, by all means, go ahead.

Some of you might think, oh, well, all these exceptions don’t really make it worth it then, right?  Wrong.  Anything you can do to eat more locally helps diminish our dependence on an industrial food system that is out of control and helps to strengthen local economies.  Anyone living in Washington (or, for that matter, most other places) should not have to purchase any non-local produce (outside of maybe the occasional avocado or pineapple) during the summer months, because really, fresh, local produce is just a hundred times better than what you find in the grocery store on a daily basis.  If anyone is looking for a way to start eating locally, try eating only local, seasonal fruits and vegetables for a summer and see if you want to switch back to supermarket produce afterwards.  My guess is you won’t.

The Garden: The Ultimate in Local Food

When I was growing up my parents had an enormous garden that my siblings and I would be forced to help out with, pulling weeds, pruning trees, raking leaves, picking fruit and veggies, etc.  We rarely did this willingly, begrudging the fact that we were being forced to give up free time to perform manual labor.  But then something funny happened.  All three of us came to love gardening!  Both my siblings now have substantial gardens at their houses, and last year when I was house-sitting for my parents I got to take charge of the garden and plant whatever I wanted, and I’ve gotta say, I had a blast!  Gardening really ties you to the experience of growing food and lets you witness the incredible process of growing delicious fruits and vegetables from tiny seeds.  It’s also the ultimate in terms of local food.  So, naturally I wanted to continue my foray into gardening this year.

Renting a room in a house, however, makes gardening considerably more difficult, and Pam’s apartment was certainly no better.  We'll certainly steal some produce from my parents any chance we get, and I did start some things in my windowsill, including lettuce, spinach, green onions, and cilantro, and Pam was already way ahead of me with some green onion starts, but we really wanted something more.

Cilantro in the windowsill!

Spinach, scallions, and lettuce that started in my window and got moved to the back patio.

So, with Pam moving back into her parents’ house this summer, she was able to convince them to let us have a small portion of the yard to plant a garden!  Yay!  Three bags of Cedar Grove compost (Cedar Grove composts the yard waste and other compostables collected in the greater Seattle area), some rabbit-proof fencing, and a few hours of manual labor later we had a respectable little garden plot!

Some transplanted rhubarb roots, courtesy of my dad, and some pea pods started in my window got things underway, and we’re seeing the first sprouts of green onions, lettuce, spinach, beets, and carrots as well.

Beets!!! YUMMY!

The transplanted rhubarb is going to town!

Delicious pea pods that also started in my windowsill before being transplanted to the garden

As the summer goes on (in other words, soon!) that list of what we're growing will be expanded to include green beans, cucumber, squash, zucchini, maybe some corn, and a variety of herbs as well, plus some raspberry transplants from my parents.  Needless to say we’re both very excited to have a little garden to work with.  And even though it won’t provide us with lots of produce, there just really is nothing that compares with fresh produce off the vine/out of the ground, so we will savor every bit of it!

The Challenge: From Pam's Perspective

Totally excited for this challenge! When Mike suggested to me that this was something we should do this summer I jumped up and said immediately that I thought it was a great idea. Later on, I started thinking about what ‘eating local’ really meant. Every time I went to the grocery store I would analyze the food that I was buying, hoping that some of my favorite guilty pleasures were at least made in Washington. No such luck of course! This was going to be a tough one, but rewarding in so many ways.

Eating more fresh and local food is something that I have always thought about doing, but never pushed myself to try. Part of my interest in the idea began with my obsession with Top Chef and other food shows on television. In the recent past, these shows have become more and more focused on sustainable, local and in season products and produce to include in their meal preparation. Some of the challenges that they were presented with were based solely around those ideas. This got me thinking; I bet I could do that too!

I love to cook! Part of the joy of living on my own is getting to experiment with new and different foods that I was not introduced to during my childhood, or that my ridiculously limited pallet made me refuse to try. With a limited food budget, it made me really push the items that I bought to new levels, creating new dishes and flavors that I would not have created otherwise. Hearing names of products that I have never even tasted just increased my interest in broadening my food knowledge.
For me, the big fun part of this challenge will be the extreme expansion of my food knowledge and cooking skills. We will be receiving a box of vegetables every week and I will not only be able to taste and learn about the new produce, but also figure out how to incorporate it into my meals for the week. Sometimes, this will mean throwing a random mix of things into a skillet or a pot and seeing what results.
I feel the largest challenge will be baking. Using substitutions for things like sugar that are near impossible to find from Washington. I plan to learn all about how to use things like honey (which is very easily found at Farmers Markets all over Washington) in place of sweeteners and the local flour that I have been lucky enough to find. However, we will see what I can do with a lack of chocolate other than a few companies who produce it locally in candy bar form. Don’t worry though, I have found amazing local ice cream for a treat those hot summer days!

Local economy is important to me as well. I understand the need for us to support our local farms and businesses in order to be provided with the services and foods we have all grown to know and love in the future. As someone who has looked into growing my own personal business, I feel a pull toward being mindful of ‘keeping it in the family’ so to speak. What I have read about how far some of our food travels before it reaches us really makes me feel uneasy about what processes it has been through and where it really came from. To support small and local farms can only help toward a more sustainable future for us all, and I am glad to be a part of that for the summer.
Thankfully, I have a weak spot for spending the day wandering around the Farmers Markets enjoying not only the food, but the atmosphere of being out and about with local farmers and artisans. I plan to frequent the markets in my area many times a week to do my shopping and browsing, looking for what new produce has become available that week and what other local companies I can try products from.

One of the easier challenges to take on, because it isn’t really that much of a challenge, will be what to drink. Local beers and wines in Washington are easy to come by and something that I already enjoy supporting. Continuing to support local breweries and wineries will be my pleasure!

So, what will come of this for me? Well, in the week leading up to and start of this challenge, I have begun to figure out ways to use local products and home cooking to create some of my favorite foods and recipes. Some of these things I am already experimenting with are my beloved Sweet Potato Chips and the Cupcakes that I always make for events. I will be posting my findings about creating these favorites, along with my many other recipe findings, as we head forward through the summer.

Enjoy! I know we will!

Eat locally all summer? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! :-)

The Challenge: From Mike's Perspective

Welcome to our blog about our summer local eating experiment!! Pam and I are very excited to embark on this adventure, and the past couple weeks have been spent doing a lot of research and experimental cooking in preparation. First, though, let me give you an idea of why eating locally has become so important to me, and why I’m so excited for this summer!

Over the past couple of years I have done a lot of reading about a variety of environmental topics and how they are affected by my daily activities. Several books and authors in particular have helped me form the opinion that if we as a society are to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, one of the most important steps as we move forward is to think much more locally. Bill McKibben’s book Deep Economy and his more recent follow-up Eaarth, both of which I highly recommend, prove I think pretty definitively that we have already pushed our planet to its limits and we are now starting to experience some of the consequences of our careless actions built around the exploitation of fossil fuels and our obsession with constant growth. We’ve come to believe that the primary goal of human existence is to grow. Sure, that has produced unprecedented amounts of wealth and prosperity, allowing us to do incredible things never before possible. It has also produced immense gaps between the haves and the have-nots while poisoning our planet, possibly to irreversible (at least for the relevant future) levels. We have set in motion a series of events that are literally transforming the face of our planet, making it nearly unrecognizable in terms of historical norms for climate and other things (hence the title of McKibben’s book, Eaarth, representing this new planet that may look like our old Earth but is really fundamentally different). I won’t go into the science or the evidence, if you want that, start by reading Eaarth. Suffice it to say that I am convinced that we need to take dramatic action if we want to preserve any semblance of the planet that has sustained human life and allowed us to prosper for thousands of years.

Some of the other reading I’ve been doing has been about the joys and difficulties of local eating. One of my favorite books is Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which chronicles her family’s journey of moving to a farm in Georgia and, for one year, living exclusively on food that they grow or raise themselves or is otherwise found locally. It is a hilarious, moving, poignant story of the challenges, benefits, and really the incredible joys that come from eating food that is grown close to home. I resonated with a lot of what Kingsolver (and her husband and daughter, who also contributed to the book) said, having grown up on property with a wonderful garden and variety of fruit trees, knowing the pleasure, for example, of going out into the garden on a beautiful summer day, picking an array of fresh blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and more, coming inside, throwing them in the blender and tasting the most delicious smoothie you’ll ever have! (It’s fitting that I’m writing this while sitting at the kitchen table at my parents’ house, staring out at their beautiful garden!) Something about growing your own food just makes sense. Not to mention how much better things taste directly off the vine or out of the ground compared with supermarket produce that’s been picked before it’s ripe and shipped thousands of miles. It’s just better. Period.

More recently I read a book called Plenty, written by a couple in Vancouver, British Columbia, who, in similar fashion, for one year ate food grown exclusively within a 100-mile radius of their home. Living in the Pacific Northwest myself, this book was that much more fun to read and really got me excited about trying to find more of my food locally. In this age of huge industrial monocrops and the grain belt and buying super-processed foods at the supermarket we’ve forgotten what can be grown right in our own hometowns.

For me this is about a lot more than just food – it’s about water conservation, waste reduction, treading lightly on the planet that sustains us and giving back when possible. That all comes together when it comes to the food I eat. For me, the choice between asparagus from Chile in December and waiting until May for asparagus from my parents’ garden is an obvious one. The industrial food chain that supplies most of us with food is absolutely drenched with oil. Oil for the chemical fertilizers. Oil for the tractors and combines of the massive industrial farms. Oil for keeping the crops cool and shipping them immense distances to wind up in our local supermarkets. Compare that with food that I have grown myself from seed, or purchased from the farmer who picked his produce the day before and brought it to the local farmers market. It’s a no brainer. Not only are the energy inputs monumentally less, but the food is both more nutritious and better tasting. Think of the other concerns. Climate change. Peak oil. National security. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

So, all that said, where am I going with this? For the last couple of years I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to eat locally whenever possible and to limit my impact on the environment through recycling, conserving water, trying to get the best gas mileage possible, riding my bike and the bus, etc. etc. But I want to do more.

That’s why this summer, with Pam to join me, we are going to do our best to eat 100% local food. The obvious things are fruits and vegetables, which are plentiful in Washington in the summer. Milk and eggs and other dairy are readily available, as are all kinds of locally and humanely raised meat. Flour and other baking ingredients have taken a little more research, but we’re finding things. Honey will be our sugar substitute of choice. As we go through the summer we’ll update you on fun projects like making our own bread and pasta, as well as things like sweet potato and beet chips, and so much more. We plan to acquaint ourselves well with the local farmers markets, we’ve signed up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) which will supply us with a box of fresh produce every week, and overall we’re very excited to embark on this adventure. So, please enjoy this blog, and we hope that our experiment will inspire you to think more about where your food comes from and consider joining us in our commitment to local foods.

Eat locally all summer long? Challenge Accepted.