Us: 30 to 40 percent of the customers of restaurant chain Lettuce Entertain You who “seem to value local produce. “Them: People supplying such produce such as Heritage Prairie Farms and Klug Farm. All this comes from an article in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, which also notes that the percentage of folks valuing local food just five years ago was a mere 10-15 percent. The article reports that this increase in interest in local food supports area farmers.
Bronwyn Weaver, co-founder of Heritage Prairie, said growing interest from hotels and more casual-dining chains is proving to be a shot in the arm for many small farmers. “When they embrace local foods, it really can make a huge difference to the farming community; it really helps to make us viable.”
See it’s good that a nice jump in us gives a good jolt to them.
A thriving local food system, obviously, needs us and them, united in a virtuous circle. Us want to forsake the industrial food chain, and them area growers, ranchers and artisans produce what feeds us better. There is, however, an on-going argument over which comes first, the us or the them. Virtuous circle or not, the system must start somewhere. A lot of the people thinking about our foodshed want to begin with them, the suppliers of local food. I maintain, have maintained, am supported in this maintenance from this recent Trib piece, that demand drives the system. On one hand, I read that 30-40% telling restaurant chain LEYE, and I think that’s plenty of room for growth and improvement. On the other hand, I see that as a pretty decent number already. More importantly, I see how that number influences farm production as the article shows.
What a lot of people tell me is that there just is not enough local food around to meet the needs of us, the existing forty percenters. It’s a supply problem that needs better transportation and more uniform packing. Or put it this way, there’s certainly a problem supplying all the lettuce and tomatoes needed to garnish the plates dished up at area establishments. And I really do think it’s a good thing if people can make it more possible for Big Bowl to use local bok choy and Chipotle to get their carnitas from area hogs. Still, I believe that change, any change will come from market demand.
Demand to eat local food and people will sprout up to meet your needs. Listen, I worked ten years for, at the time, the world’s largest professional service firm. I know a thing or two about the way business works. We need not just demand but clamor. Frustration. Farmers and ranchers should feel a palatable sense of desire. The more they feel, the more they will work to quench. I guarantee.
Yet, we cannot desire an abundance of local tomatoes. Shifting a little tomato production around will not drive a local food system. Rather, we must demand what local food really can offer us. It means demanding a good supply of freshwater fish, from the Great Lakes and area aquaponics over habitat destroying ocean breeds. It means adjusting our diets so that asparagus comes to the forefront only in May and recedes by the end of June. Demand a diet heavier on cattle in the cold but focused on sweet corns and fresh beans when it’s hottest. See, here’s the thing, instead of trying to manage a supply for what they want to sell us, why not boost a demand for what others can truly and easily do.
There are tweaks and investments necessary to increase the supply for real local food. Hoop house construction adds so much. There can be fresh greens like spinach, lettuces and rocket on all but the coldest days. Hoop houses also create more variety in the early Spring, crops like salad turnips and young carrots and enable the Fall season to last much longer. The other needed investment is cold storage for root crops, onions, and the like to be around. Do this. Like Heritage Prairie, as the article shows their hoop house built to meet the demand for their winter products. It does not seem like a complicated tweak or a large investment.
My take away from this informative article remains, don’t worry about what they are doing. Worry more about what you are doing. Are you asking for local foods. Are you buying what’s in season on the Local Calendar. Are you selling your friends on the virtues of local foods? We’ve grown from 10-15 percent to 30 or 40 percent. Our growth has inspired changes in farm production. Our growth has inspired the opening of stores catering to us. Just last week, we saw the opening of Publican Quality Meats. Think what will happen with even more of us.
Does not it seem lately that the Local Family column is an homage to the Book of Numbers in the Torah. Just endless lists. Don’t we want to move on the Deuteronomy, where we can brush up on the eating local laws, as well as finish the story? Or at least get some ideas on what we do with all that food we tuck away around the bungalow.
I’ll tell you up front, we use a lot of eggs. For instance there was that dinner last week. Mom baked eggs over locally sources corn grits, and garnished with frost-kissed winter spinach.
Did I say eggs. Or did I mean spinach. This was dinner two nights ago. We used recently purchased spinach in a Rick Bayless inspired wilted salad with C&D Pastured Pork chorizo and cubed apples (the apple’s substituting for the jicama in Bayless’s recipe).
Brewing for tonight, locally raised beef braised in Chicago lager, accentuated by storage turnips, carrots, and leeks. We would have eaten this last night if it was ready, but instead had to improvise with pesto from the freezer and a side of local mushrooms browned in the pan.
It seemed like for the longest time we did not need to brew up anything new because we were working and working and working our way through a pot of Michigan beans my wife cooked up with a large Wettstein smoked pork shank. In fact, after a while, she pureed the beans into soup. She made soup partially for a first course in a dinner she was trying to impress her brother with, but mostly to trick us into keeping on eating it. Those grits mentioned above, they came from this dinner too, where they served as the n’, in shrimp n’ grits. Who cared anyways if the entree was shrimp, the meal also featured a salad of winter cabbage, the now famous sauteed turnips, and a soon to be famous “hypocrite” pie of apples and custard.
Like shrimp, rice is not local to our area, but as the Local Family believes in a practical approach to eating local, we include things like them in our diet. And when the Local Mom makes rice, she makes almost as much rice as she makes beans. The first of it supported leftover Chinese food, but the second batch went with Kim Snyder’s Faith Farm bacon, freezer peas, and a local duck egg for fried rice. Leftovers from that, I made into rice salad with Wisconsin feta, salad turnips, and far-away anchovies. See how local food works.
We eat local all winter using a combination of foods stored and preserved and foods obtained over the season. Use what works for you. Use what you have. It helps to have made arrangements ahead of time so there’s a package of pesto from a fall market or you have several heads of cabbage in your fridge, but you can also hit one of the Chicago area markets for the mushrooms and spinach. We don’t just keep local food. We use it too.
As reported recently, the Local Family is entering another Chicago winter committed to eating local foods. To do this, we put away a good deal of food during the fall. A lot of the food came from our CSA from Tomato Mountain (where one of the Local Family also works), and we also made purchases at area farmer’s markets including Evanston and Green City. We benefited from an increase demand for local foods, as well as the mild temperatures . There were more farmer’s markets for us this fall and early winter, and there was much more food at the markets. Likewise, our CSA came with a lot food. See below for a listing of what we have now in the Bungalow to keep us eating local. See especially, the turnips.
Good thing she makes a mean turnip. Not much to what she does. Runs them through the food processor for even slices. Gets a cast iron pan pretty hot. Add olive oil. Add your turnips. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want them soft and caramelized. Believe me, that little bit of work will have you loving turnips. We also make the Local Family teens take sliced turnips in their packed lunches, which they tolerate more than love. Still, if you have all the turnips we have, you need to love turnips and tolerate turnips.
OK, it’s not all turnips. In fact some days, the kids switch from turnips to radishes in their lunches. Variety! And we cook our radishes too. We like them oven roasted. We do continue to shop and find local foods. Last week we added yellow peppers, cucumbers, and lettuce to our inventory, so it is NOT all turnips and radishes. We recently made an order on Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks for a few things including carrots, and herbs–note, these are not including in accounting below as we have not received them yet.
Notes on food storage for eat local winter use: Our cold weather residing ancestors knew they could get by without the benefit of grapes flown in from Chile. They knew that food kept in conditions just above freezing, also damp, would keep foods fresh for several months. Thus, food could be set aside for times when the grounds hardened. The Local Family uses this knowledge to keep on eating local. We put food in an un-heated attic, where it is cold enough–a big bowl of water adds the necessary dankness. We also use our two refrigerators, but we note that the dryness there is not conducive to long term storage. Other cold spots we take advantage of include our garage and our “mudroom.”
You can see our previous inventory report here. Our current inventory of local food looks like this:
Kitchen Fridge
Cabbage – 2 + 1/4
Turnip (white “hakurei”) – about 10
Homemade quince-apple membrillo
Local eggs
Cucumbers – 2.5
Lettuce
Yellow bell peppers – 2
Herbs – parsley, thyme
Local grains
Kitchen, Dining Room, Living Room
Winter squash – (blue “cinderella”)
Garlic – 6 or 7
Walnuts
Hot peppers – dried
Onions – 8
Dried herbs (marjoram, oregano)
Red onions – a few
Shallots – several
Honeybell tangerines brought IN Florida (not that it matters…)
Mudroom
Yellow onions – (medium and large) – somewhat less than a 1/2 bushel
Cranberries – 1/2 bushel, less 2 pies 3 pie’s and one cake’s worth
Sweet potatoes (assorted) – many
White potatoes (assorted) – some
Spinach – 3 big bags
Leeks – 8
Kohlrabi – 12
Basement
Onions – 10 or so
Garlic – 8 or so
Canned tomatoes – whole, sauce, puree
Spiced peaches
Peach chutney
Dried mushrooms
Misc. pickles, jams, jellies, relishes
Dried beans
Basement Fridge
Local grains
Basement Freezer
Frozen fruits – blueberries, grapes, cherries, peaches
Frozen veg – pureed squash, tomato puree, dried tomato, caponata, prepared green beans
Local meat
Root Cellar in the Sky
Potatoes – (assorted including fingerling, red, russets) – enough for a while
Carrots – (assorted) – several
Apples (mutsu, Northern spy) – less 2 pies worth
Radishes (long red Japanese “shunkyo”, watermelon) – a lot
Winter squash – (delicata) – 10
Turnips (purple top) – many
Parsnips – one big meal’s worth
Garage
Apples (Northern spy) – 1/2 bushel
Do you know it’s been exactly one month since I last blogged. In the middle of December, I was eating tomatoes. Now, in the middle of January, I could have purchased some tomatoes but instead went for yellow bell peppers, lettuce and two cucumbers. What’s so difficult about being a locavore in the winter?
Just try is what I tell people looking to eat more local. Or local is where you find it. And what I found when I made, a late in the morning, visit to the Faith in Place winter farmer’s market in Oak Park last Saturday was a table brimming with bell peppers, green and yellow; several big bags of lettuces, one cucumber, and a host of tomatoes. I grabbed the cuke. Filled a bag with salad. Took three yellow peppers. Squeezed the tomatoes enough to know n0t. Paid. Paid $9. Paid really no more than I would have paid for such produce in the summer. Left thinking I had that last cucumber, by the way, but it turned out they had many more. I paid one more dollar for another winter special. I got a nice haul to supplement our other winter fare.
Rainbow Harvest of Channahon, Illinois produces these crops using hydroponic, indoor production. Sneer. In fact hold that sneer for a bit because I cannot fully address your sneer, having put all my produce away for another day. I accept that hydroponics may lack a certain veggie vigor indicative of what makes us locavores in the first place, but hey, it’s local. It’s winter, and when you are looking for a cucumber, a tomato, a bell pepper, you are often getting an indoor grown, hydro thing regardless. Might as well get it from a farmer you can meet. Listen, sometimes we eat turnips. Sometimes we eat cucumbers. As long as it comes from around here, it tastes good to us. (Which is not also to say, that the big bag of honeybell tangerines my Brother-in-law recently brought us from Florida don’t also taste good to us.)
I’ll catch you up on the inventory well within the next month, probably in the next day or two. For now, know that our Tomato Mountain CSA ended not too much after that last post. It has kept us well stocked in turnips, radishes, spinach, and potatoes. On top of that, we have good supplies of other stuff. We’re getting by just fine, thank you very much. I mean we just picked up lettuces, bell peppers, and cukes.
I compose my best posts walking Molly the Eat Local Dog. Eat local dog, of course because she is the dog of the Eat Local Family. Still, we gather more eat-local-ness when we commence the thrice a day walks. We bundle in the tweedy, plaid-ish, LL Bean types of clothes to walk. We do this for the same way they do it in the source of said look, the UK, to keep warm. Yet, all that bundled, layered country look also makes us think of bundled layered country cooking; of long wooden tables and a saddle of hare, claret in the decanter as the good dining companion; of long Sunday lunches where that final bite of savory, the anchovy toasties, become a prelude to a crock of home-made soup for supper forthcoming. City hipsters mostly begat the eat local lifestyle, but don’t most of us aspire to country gentry-hood? We dream.
I dream and I compose. Perhaps it is the clarity of thought that comes with the hyper-awareness needed to walk Molly the Eat Local Dog. We must remain vigil that one of her neighborhood enemies, the dreaded mixed Shepard, Piper from down the street, or the seemingly harmless–to us!–Springer, from the next block may appear from around the corner, and much hackles will be raised, teeth bared. There may be a rabbit hidden to you but all so apparent to the endowed of nose; then the least becomes a cross-fit tool. I like to think the attire of a prep school English teacher has me thinking like one, and as I walk Molly I compose posts, not just of exquisite detail, but with perfect parallal constructions and exquisite use of the pluperfect tense. I drop Dublin references without even thinking about it. Then, I arrive home. Back in sloppy sweats I get sloppy thoughts. What did I mean to say.
I compose awesome posts that I forget to enter. You would not believe the posts left on the Molly walking trails. Would you believe that only last week I thought about local tomatoes. I had a glorious post roll around my head about the pleasure of tomatoes saved. Funny thing happened though. In waiting for that post to germinate I ate more local tomatoes. Yes. Really. I’m eating local tomatoes. I mean tomatoes. Not tomatoes as in put away tomatoes or tomatoes processed by my wife’s employer, Tomato Mountain, tomatoes. Tomato tomatoes. Last week I went for the last of a platter of fresh tomatoes gently nursed from green-ness to salad worthy over the course of several weeks. Believe me, what ever was lacking here in tomato flavor, in tomato of summer heat, they made up for in the bittersweet way it comes when you meet up with a friend for what you know will be a long time hence. See you next reunion and see you next harvest. Just don’t see you on the pages of the Local Beet.
Besides why compose posts on last week’s tomatoes when I can compose posts on this week’s tomatoes. Monday, was the fog of red-eye arrival from Las Vegas, the wife not quite better, coming airport to pick me up (and that led to a chain reaction with the kids having to be up earlier to walk the dog, etc.). No one was in a mood for cooking dinner, and we tried Melrose Park Mexican. Tuesday night, my wife tackled a surplus of greens; kales and chards, in her beloved slow cooker. Wednesday night, what to eat on Wednesday. Surely, the way my wife slow cooks, we could have eaten more greens on Wednesday, but we figured we’d give that a day’s rest. What. What forced the issue, some freezer work by my wife. In knocking some frost off a packaged of Crystal’s sausages, I tore the package. What better way to cook her sausage than in the Jamie Oliver inspired dish where sausages are combined with cherry tomatoes and oven baked. Where could there be local cherry tomatoes be in December. Well, in the garage of the Local Family. OK, not cherry tomatoes. I mis-lead you. They were juliet tomatoes.
Maybe a bit vapid from the temperature swings of the last several weeks, these tomatoes were not the one thing unnecessary to dinner. Moldy. They were in fine, red, oval, shape. At least fine shape for a dish of Jamie Oliver’s design. Baked with his necessary glugs of oil, it made for a highly delicious meal, especially when combined with wide Amish egg noodles. You would think such a meal, in December would be a dream unless I posted about it.
I like the Evanston Farmer’s Market. I like it about as much as any farmer’s market in the Chicago area. It is one of the few places one can get organically grown local apples. It is the only place to get the bio-dynamically grown variety of Henry and his farm (along with the nickel bag). It has some of my other favorites like Nichol’s Farm and Green Acres. There’s cheese and other dairy from Trader’s Point Creamery, and there’s a lot of other stuff from an assortment of area farmers. There are no donuts. And even if there were donuts, my wife’s planted, with car, at Oak Park. What Evanston is to top Chicago area market, the Oak Park to Evanston journey is to Chicago area schleps. Except last week she planted her Tomato Mountain flag in Evanston, and I made the long trek out there.
Where’s the squirrels?
We’ll get to that. Before getting out to Evanston, my wife and I talked about household needs. Where did we stand for the coming months. As you can see below, we stand well given the circumstances. We did decide we needed something. Sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes are one of the few things that have not shown up in our Tomato Mountain CSA, and for whatever reason, we have not taken to buying them yet this year. With Thanksgiving ahead, we needed sweet potatoes. I made good use of the Evanston vendors, buying an assortment of sweet potatoes, heirloom and straight, yellow, white and orange, big and skinny from Henry, from Green Acres and from Geneva Produce. I have more stuff to store.
Storing food has been a challenge so far in 2011. It’s all that damn nice weather. Every extra bit of Indian summer just makes me stew over the fate of my fruits. To allow the apples in the sky the ability to thrive, I’ve taken to opening the attic window. Unfortunately, this allows the squirrels the ability to enter, and those neighborhood varmints have taken a liking, not just for local apples, but for the highest price, most exclusive local apples. The went after our Northern spys! My wife, the Other Cookbook Addict, insists we keep the windows closed. I’m thinking I just move my office in there, you know wi-fi, and scream at any squirrels that enter.
With attic problems, we’ve taken to putting a lot of our stuff in our over stuffed “mudroom” outside the kitchen. As this room is un-heated, it is fine now, although in a month or so from now, it will probably be too cold. Root cellaring requires cold but not freezing. I’m telling you, the hardest part about eating local year-round is the moving of food and in-gathering of food. We’ve got bushels of onions here that will have to be bushels of onions there. We have potatoes up there that require a StairMaster output each time they are to be used. And then, of course, there is the rooting around for bags in the basement fridge. If only it all looked like this. Alas, we do not have an old dark-room converted root cellar. We just make do. Since we believe in the worth of eating local, we believe in trying to eat local year-round. We fully believe, based on experience, that we can do it by putting aside food.
You can see our previous inventory report here. Our current inventory of local food looks like this:
Kitchen Fridge
Cauliflower – remnants of a big, white head mostly already used
Turnip (white “hakurei”) – a lot
Sweet and hot banana peppers – waiting to be roasted and marinated
Hot peppers (habaneros) – 5
Homemade quince-apple membrillo
Local eggs
Asian pears – 10 or so
Radishes (long red Japanese “shunkyo”) – a lot
Broccoli – tons
Lettuces
Rocket
Zucchini – About 3 weeks ago, I purchased some of the last zucchini for stuffing, but we never used that way, now they sit
Red cabbage (2) – small
Cucumbers – A few left
Home-made harrissa
Herbs – parsley, mint, cilantro
Local grains
Kitchen, Dining Room, Living Room
Winter squash – (delicata, acorn, butternut, blue hubbard, blue “cindarela”, pie pumpkins)
Garlic (10)
Apples – ongoing supply
Pears – only a few left
Walnuts
Tomatoes – the last
Bell peppers – (yellow, red, green) – 8
Hot peppers – (jalepenos) – several
Red onions – (6) – large
Basil
Dried herbs (marjoram, oregano)
Red onions – a few
Shallots – several
Watermelon – Family fight over including this, because some of us our embarrased we have not eaten it yet.
Mudroom
Yellow onions – (medium and large) – 1/2 bushel
Cranberries – 1/2 bushel, less 2 pies and one cake’s worth
Sweet potatoes (assorted) – many
Basement
Canned tomatoes – whole, sauce, puree
Spiced peaches
Peach chutney
Dried mushrooms
Misc. pickles, jams, jellies, relishes
Dried beans
Basement Fridge
Cauliflower – 1 each, romesco, cheddar
Leeks (6)
Kohlrabi (12)
Green beans
Local grains
Bok choy/tatsoi – probably more than we can ever get to
Basement Freezer
Frozen fruits – blueberries, grapes, cherries, peaches
Frozen veg – pureed squash, tomato puree, dried tomato, caponata, prepared green beans
Local meat
Root Cellar in the Sky
Potatoes – (assorted including fingerling, red, russets) – not quite enough
Carrots – (assorted) – several
Apples (mutsu, Northern spy)
Members of the Local Family share the same burden as the families of many other foodies. That pause that does not satisfy. That overlong wait for fresh food. The picture that needs to be taken before we eat. If it is not shot, did we actually eat it? The epistemology is especially vital here because I’m talking bok choy. I’m talking a delicious bok choy casserole. I’m telling you that all that CSA bok choy does not have to be stir fried. If only I have a picture to help make you believe. Yet, when I went to snap dinner the other night, once, twice, the Instagram did not work (the updated version of this ap confuses the hell out of me too). Giving up and then trying again seemed fortuitous as I realized the delayed picture would be better as now you could see the wonderful crust cooked up by the Other Cookbook Addict and the inside filling of bok choy. I mean it would now be more believable with the inside of the casserole showing the bok choy. That picture did not come out either. And the Local Family, like most families says three strikes, lets eat. You, dear readers, get to see no bok choy casserole. Wait, have I been calling it casserole. I mean bok choy gratin. Does that not sound better. Gratin. Bok choy can be gratined.
We are entirely long in bok choy and its related Asian style cabbage-y green, tatsoi. It comes in great big quantities in our Tomato Mountain CSA box.* Bok choy is the leafier, stemier, version of kohlrabi. Only CSA subscribers seem to have some idea what to do with bok choy and tatsoi. You stir fry it. With brown rice. Hippie food. But what if you have no brown rice. What if you don’t want a mixed medly of soy sauce infused vegetables. What do you do with all that bok choy. The answer is, you can do plenty. It is really not necessary to get out the Kikkoman to consume bok choy. Like other cabbages, that’s brassica’s to you and me, bok choy goes well with mustard, it goes well with bacon, and it goes well with cream. A few week weeks ago, the Other Cookbook Addict used the bacon.
I actually meant to write a column, not on bok choy, but on how she can put a crust on it and call it dinner, but time flies and now we’re just talking bok choy. Needless to say, that dinner, that bok choy cooked down with pork and its fat would never be served at the Chicago Diner. And we liked it that way. And we liked it as gratin, the softened bok choy beneath a layer of home-made bechamel, that’s a thickened milk sauce to you and me; the whole thing covered in breadcrumbs and baked into another far from hippie-ish dish. Do not fear your bok choy, but another picture would help you believe.
Note, I’ll update the inventory for you soon. Needless to say, we are flush with produce.
*The Other Cookbook Addict works for Tomato Mountain.
In case you have not noticed, we have a lot of local food on hand. I did an inventory last week to show you how much food we have around. And between the Tomato Mountain CSA and my wife’s overall presence at the farmers markets selling for Tomato Mountain, the food keeps on arriving. Luckily, I enjoy planning what to do with our food nearly as much as I like eating our local food. Even more, I like when my wife has already planned out some meal. All that chard and mustard greens around, “hand pies”, she suggested. Given she makes the best crust around, I eagerly awaited that meal. It came last night.
Of course a family dinner’s worth of hand pies (and my wife cooks for an imaginary family of 9), we still had leftover cooked greens, not to mention a whole big bowl of chard stems we cannot simply compose. We have gobs and gobs of bok choi and its baby brother, tats soi, and my wife has a plan for that too. It involves bacon, so I’m happy here. The six zucchini left from summer, we have a plan for that, our yearly attempt at stuffed vegetables. Since I could not resist the large white heads of cauliflowers, and I mean, large, we have too much of that too, but she has a plan involving the food processor. Yet, what of the green tomatoes coming any minute now (our CSA delivery comes on Thursday night); the hand basket of green beans I picked up last week, because I just don’t feel I ate enough green beans this year, and speaking of beans, what about the 20 lbs of fresh beans we recently shucked, blanced and shoved into the freezer. You could think we don’t really need a plan on that, but with the freezing over-flowing sooner rather than later seems in order. On the other hand, the clear up freezer space, my wife just bought a new blender so we could make smoothies–possibly a true account.
A couple other notes, fruitwise, before getting to the inventory. We are trying hard for ABA, anything but apples, knowing we have a long winter of them ahead, but our other choices are getting slim. We have in the table fruit bowl pears and plums as well as apples. For the long term, my wife has turned to various fruit vendors next to her at different markets. For instance, on suggestion of keeper/baking apple, Hillside sold her a half bushel of Northern Spys, and on another day, she got a half bushel of winesap, also from Hillside. These will go soon into the attic, but for now sit in the hall.
See below, our updated inventory and let me know some good ways to use it. Note, although I mentioned above, the soon to arrive green tomatoes, the current inventory only includes stuff actually in house, no inventory accrual method here. The bok choy being used now, is also not mentioned for inventory’s sake.
Kitchen Fridge
Kitchen, Dining Room
Basement Storage
Basement Fridge
Basement Freezer
Root Cellar in the Sky
Empty
Although the calendar is saying fall, the sun is saying climate change. Still, the Local Beet and the Local Family have begun serious thinking of colder times ahead. After all, global warming only goes so far. There won’t be tomatoes that much longer despite all our wishful thinking. We have begun our preperations for winter eating. Really, we’ve done stuff for a while, freezing green beans, berries and peaches earlier this year. As in year’s past, the Local Family will track its inventory of foods online. We do this for two reasons. First, we need to track our food anyways. Second, we to show you how possible it is to eat local year round by following our food stores.
We rely mostly on cold storage for keeping foods. We keep a root cellar in the sky; our un-heated attic makes a great root cellar, but it has not gotten cold enough yet to use it. Right now, we store in our basement and our basement fridge. Actually, a lot of the foods we now have, we simply have on plates and bowls in our kitchen and dining room. We also store, as I mentioned above, in our extra freezer (and have some freezing planned in the next week). We have canned in the past, and have canned goods to use, but did not do any canning this year.
Over the course of the next several couple of months, you will see the inventory expand, and then in the months that follow, you can see how we manage.
Kitchen Fridge
Kitchen, Dining Room
Basement Storage
Basement Fridge
Basement Freezer
Root Cellar in the Sky
Empty
It won’t be that much longer until we have up our new Fall/Winter CSA guide ( a share of “comunity supported agriculture” that you get, generally once a week, for a fixed payment). As when we put up our main CSA guide, we asked for feedback on your experiences; this time specifically asking for feedback on fall/winter CSAs. Sadly, we have recieved no feedback. No one wants to talk about their fall/winter CSAs. Yet. So, I’ll start. I love my fall winter CSAs. For several years, I’ve subscribed to Farmer Vicki Westerhoff’s Genesis Grower’s fall/winter CSA, and this year and last year, it’ll be Tomato Mountain*. I love ‘em all.
I like CSAs. For years, the Local Family got its box. We started with an Angelic Organics box way pre-Beet, pre-Vital Information, even pre-world-wide-web if that’s possible, believe it or not. When the kids were still in elementary school we got the Growing Power market box; the one with local food AND bananas! And it was in elementary school where we began our relationship with Farmer Vicki, after she spoke to my younger daughter’s class. I like the burden of having a box of local food to use each week. I like, really, the variety of the CSA. I mean who knows how good kohlrabi really is if not for their CSA. What I really liked about a CSA was that relationship that came. The weekly newsletters on farm life–hint, it’s all bad. I liked the farm parties and the work days–hint, organic farming is back-breakingly hard. I liked getting those boxes. I liked having a CSA.
I liked those CSAs, but I loved the fall/winter CSAs. I love getting the boxes in the fall/winter. I like the fruits and vegetables that came during the summer, but I really liked the fruits and vegetables that came in the fall and winter, and I loved it for one simple reason. I loved getting local fruits in the fall and winter. When we started with fall/winter CSAs, there was barely any sources for local foods after the summer markets ended. Now, we have more, many more shopping options come November, but none of these options will supply me as well as what comes in the CSA. The simple reason for that, farmer’s prioritize their fall/winter CSA cutomers. The first hoop-house stuff and the last storage crops go to the CSA subscribers. My fall/winter CSAs have always filled me up with root crops, hardy greens, winter squash, onions and potatoes. They have provided the bulk of the foods that make it possible to eat local year-round.
I’m giving you my feedback. I’ve been entirely happy with fall/winter CSAs from Genesis Growers and Tomato Mountain. I’ve found the foods highly delicious; the variety plenty, and the value excellent. I’d love to hear what you think.
*My wife works for Tomato Mountain. Last year they waived their delivery charge for us because of her employment.
I talk diets a fair amount; mostly with my wife, occasionally with my parents, and sometimes with anyone else who will tolerate my theories. I spout based on a good amount of reading on the subject (of course with the closing of Borders in Oak Park, my material resources got much stricter). I think have pretty good ideas on ways to eat. My influence, however, does not go far. I may know what I’m talking about, but I’m fat. Who takes diet advice from a fatman. Maybe not as fat as I’ve been, and surely not as fat as some of the people I’ve run with over the years from the Chowhound-LTHForum crowds. Still, I’m not afraid to say, I’m fat. Maybe not fat enough that I need to (or can) lose 54 pounds, but fat enough that I’d love to lose a lot of weight. 54 pounds is the amount of weight Dana Cox lost by embarking on a year-long locavore challenge.
I met Dana Cox last night. She proudly discussed her Honest Meal Project last night at the Green City Market Locavore Picnic Supper. I admit for a part of her discussion, it was blah-blah-blah. I know why to eat local. I know how to eat local. I’ve made it through not one, not two but like six winters on local food. Then, “I lost 54 pounds.” Hello. And hello, I’ll tell you, maybe the old, cynical Rob would simply try to exploit Dana in my diet conversations with those who’d have it. Hard time believing me on the health benefits of eating local, well here’s Dana Cox, less 54 pounds damnit. But no, I’m rather inspired. Maybe not fully motivated or committed but inspired of the possibilities demonstrated by Dana. Not just to talk about her, but to live a bit more like her.
Dana Cox defined her Healthy Meal Project parameters as requiring that all food consumed needed to be traceable back to a farmer. It’s a definition that allows her successfully to stray from 100 or 300 mile boundaries, but it also restricted her greatly from commercial foods. For instance, unlike me, she would not buy the Michigan celery at Caputo’s because she did not know the specific Michigan farmer. Where we really differed, she allowed no exception for eating out or other foods not prepared by her. That, I believe, is where the 54 pounds came from. The Local Family loves eating out, and when we eat out, we do not necessarily seek out locavore establishments–I mean we like places like Big Jones and Vie, but we don’t eat exclusively at them. There are meals out, surely, for ease or convenience. Just last night the three girls went for pizza because various commitments made it difficult to get a dinner on the table. Yet, we also eat out because we love eating out. We love trying new foods, for instance a meal last week at the newly opened Lao Hunan. Or, my wife and I had a blast luxuriating over many, many wines at Smith and Wollensky’s “wine week”. We also possess weaknesses for the various products the industrial food system can offer us. We have an ice cream maker. We can pour in some Kilgus cream and Klug berries, but instead I bought two pints of Graeter’s ice cream the other night at Whole Foods. As good as the Greaters is, they overwhelm by a few, the Hagen Daaz five ingredient challenge. All of those meals, adds, I believe, the extras that leave me 54 pounds behind Dana. It is foremost, more sugars. It is also more fats, probably trans-fats even with the crackdown there. It is also that guar gum that thickens the ice cream and all the other ingredients that cannot be traced to farms. I’m not incredibly touchy-feely when it comes to food, but I think there is something, something, that puffs us up, in those additives. Look at Dana. The 54 pound less Dana.
I’m not going on a year long quest away from restaurant food and fast food and snack food. I can list excuses and problems with why not. I can also say flat out that I’m not giving up my Chinatown, my Maxwell Street, my Italian beef. I will work to lessen those things. Every time we think about a meal out, I’m going to try to think again about it. Do we need it. Every time we think about bringing something snack-y, something industrial, something that violates Michael Pollan’s instructions, “can you pronounce the ingredients”, “would your grandmother recognize those ingredients”, I’m going to think about it. Eat a nice piece of fruit bubala. Since maybe I don’t need to lose 54 pounds, I don’t need to be perfect. Since I do need to lose weight, I need to be a lot closer to perfect. Stick to my locavore principles more. Eat out less. Snack less. I’d like to lose it the locavore way.
[Note, no sooner did I post this, did I start thinking of other money saving ideas, and then I joined my wife for coffee and she had her own set of good ideas. See new ideas below.]
“I’d love to shop at the farmer’s market, but who can afford that.”
Man, the Local Beet would be rolling in dough if we had a dime for every time we’ve heard that. And believe me, that’s about the nicest way it’s been put. Surely, we here, as a movement, get tagged all the times with claims of elitism, snobbery, disconnected-ness, and such. The polite will just say, “love to do it if we could.” Thing is, they can. I have. The Local Family has. In September of 2011, Slow Food USA draws attention to the notion that good food can be served at $5. That’s a challenge the Local Family long ago accepted. I’ve re-printed (and added to) below, some of the ways we don’t spend too much money eating local, so you too can accept and accede the $5 Challenge. Fully prepared, join Slow Food Chicago this Saturday, September 17, at Green City Market to proclaim your ability.
Before telling you some of the ways I save money, let me tell you a few ways I will always spend money. For one thing, nearly every day this summer I have not written a post, the post I would have written would have been about how good is local fruit. No where is it more clear, the advantages of local food than with local fruit. And no where do you, almost always, have to pay the price. I just do. The other thing, eggs. Man, can the price differences between farm eggs and factory eggs stagger. Yet, as I’ll note below, expensive farm eggs still provide an inexpensive source of protein, all things considered. That out of the way, here’s ways to save.
I’m sure I’ll come back to this post with new ideas and suggestions, and I very much want to hear your ideas for savings. I want to end, however, with something else I have said often to justify the costs. You still spend less, way less when you buy and prepare your own local food than when you eat out or when you spend money on packaged foods. How much do you think it costs us for the satisfying meal we had the other night of pasta with summer squash and red peppers, a green salad on the side. I do not think we could feed our family at Gene n’ Judes for that much. The real costs of local food are often paid in time. Resist convenience food, fast food. Instead you can eat real food. Accede to the $5 Challenge.
Once again, Chicago’s Green City Market has put out the challenge to Chicagoans to “pledge to eat only local food, to the best of their ability.” The Locavore Challenge started yesterday, September 7 and it goes through September 22. Can you do it? Should you do it? Every year at Local Beet headquarters, we debate our willingness to go along with the Locavore Challenge. There is a strong contingent of Beetniks that believe a two week challenge artificial, dilettantish, dabblers; in fact, they argue, those who just dip their toes in the locavore waters undercut the hard work others put into eating local all year round. After all, they argue, it’s not a detox program. You can not simply purge. Still, the majority of us here reject the more cynical approach. We believe the best way to encourage eating local is to eat local. Like me, they feel that if you eat local a little, you might just take the challenge to eat local every day. I say, take the Challenge. You’ll thank me later.
I challenged the Local Family to eat local because I loved shopping at the Oak Park Farmer’s Market. I loved shopping there weekly. I loved that my tomatoes could come in several shapes, colors and sizes. I loved that there were items like damson plums and ground cherries that I hardly every heard of before. I wanted peaches that dripped and cucumbers that wept. I loved each and every farmer at the market, and I came home each week, it seemed, with something from each and everyone. The challenge we originally took, was to eat as much of our food as possible from the market. It was not long, however, when we learned that eating from the market was “eating local”, even that there was a new word, “locavore.” We found all sorts of reasons to eat local; green reasons, economic reasons, community reasons. And always, taste reasons. We made our challenge to eat as much of our diet from local foods as possible. We bought big slabs of meat from local farmers to keep our carnivore side local. We stocked up on Michigan beans when in Michigan to keep our vegetarian side local. We canned and froze and kept a root cellar in the sky to make sure we could always eat local.
It’s over six years since we became the Local Family. I surely don’t regret taking up the challenge. If you’ve followed this column over the years, you’ll have seen that I do go through periods of locavore ennui. Not the least, there are times, mostly in the winter, where I rebel against the effort it still takes to eat local. I, and the rest of the Local Family, have never given in to the difficulties. I will say that over time, I have realized that there are certain non-local foods that I just really enjoy eating. For instance, now in various places you can find fresh dates. A little bit of a splurge to begin with, but at least once a year, I’m buying a bunch. Pomegranates. Figs. Avocados, here’s a funny thing, my locavore tendencies got me loving avocados much more than I ever did before. Nothing’s as good as the guacamole I make with local sweet onions, fresh tomatoes, a really hot Farmer Vicki pepper. I’d love local avocados, not so much so I could buy them with less guilt, but because they’re so damn expensive. I’ve come to believe, strongly, that exclusivity is not an eat local issue. I mean I never gave up my coffee.
I love the fact that a bunch of others are trying to eat all their food locally, even if it is for a few weeks. As I have found, the more you eat local, the more you realize what eating local means for you. What you do and do not want to do. The Local Family still holds to a strong, if it grows local, we only eat it locally, rule, and we still strongly seek to get as much of our consumption from local sources: maple syrup, beer, vodka, cheeses; we have long ago psyched ourselves into liking the local more regardless of all the other great options out there. So, take the Challenge now. Then, take the challenge every day.
Today the Local Kids marched off on their first day of school. In all the hub-bub of new outfits, new haircuts, remembered supplies, my older daughter failed to get sentimental that this was her very last, first day of school. She did, like she has done on the first day of school for several years now, leave with a local lunch. I had planned on simply recycling last year’s post on packing your kid a local lunch, until I realized that I no longer pack the local lunch. Some time last year, we finally trained the kids to make their own lunches. Freeing me up to do more productive things in the AM, like Twitter. Hopefully, next year, in her first year of college, she will also pack a local lunch to start the year.
Today, their local lunch included Wisconsin cheddar cheese sandwiches (on Turano rolls) and Tomato Mountain radishes and cherry tomatoes. It’s easy this time of year to fill up a local lunch. Still, many weeks from now, they will still be packing local lunches, even if it means their veg is a big bag of sprouts. Besides all the produce, there are other ways to make the lunches local.
Cheddar is just one of many local cheeses that can go on their sandwiches. The Local kids are especially fond of goat cheeses, and we have an array of fine ones from the small farm Prairie Fruit Farms to the commercial yet high quality Mont Chevre. If we can plug Tomato Mountain some more, you can do no worse than a goat cheese and TM sun gold preserve sandwich.
For days without cheese, you have some excellent choices for local cold cuts, much better choices, in fact, than when I was packing the lunches. For instance, you can now visit City Provision’s Deli or Butcher and Larder for fixin’s. At many area farmer’s markets you can find Crystal Nellis and her C & D Pastured Pork. She makes an excellent ham. Just at your neighborhood Caputo’s, you can find the well made turkey from Michigan’s Golden Legacy.
We still have not found local peanut butter, but we still love locally made peanut butter. Cream-Nut peanut butter created in Grand Rapids, Michigan tastes like peanut butter should. Because my wife works for Tomato Mountain, we have endless supplies of strawberry preserves leftover from samples. Lucky us! There are so many other great local jams and jellies out there at the markets if you don’t make your own (or work for someone who makes their own).
As I noted last year, you do not have to limit their lunches to sandwiches. This is the time of year, for sure, for the “blue cheese ala Hananh.” Take one of those red peppers finally now in season. Split. Seed. Find a good local blue cheese. We’re partial to the products from Wisconsin’s Hook’s if you can track down. Let it come to room temperature (to soften). Then fill the red pepper cavity. [ed. great also for adults on low carb diets!]
Hey, just because I’ve finally been relieved of the lunch making burden, does not mean I don’t hold a keen interest in local lunches. I’ll try to do a decent job of reporting their efforts. Don’t you especially want to know what kids do left to their own devices. And I want to know about the local lunches your kids take, whether packed by you or them. Let’s strive for local lunches this year.
