“Local Food Challenge” - Day Five
Things we have learned so far on our journey of heating local:
1. Local meat and dairy are hard to find in Monroe. - For the first few days of this challenge we didn’t even realize how dependent we were on the fish and chicken we already had stocked in our freezer. Now that our supply is dwindling (we have two frozen salmon steaks) we are realizing that it is nearly impossible to find locally produced meat in Monroe. I am going to place an order through the co-op out of Vadalia that I mentioned in my earlier post but I’ve learned from Maurine the owner of Health Matters that there are some minor hurdles to get through before I can actually order and recieve the meat. It’s looking like it will take a week or two. Today, to make due, we bought some amish farm raised all natural chicken from Indiana to incorporate into a recipe (more on that later).
2. You take for granted how many products you can’t ever get locally but buy all the time. Olive oil, parmesan cheese, balsamic vinigar. Have you ever seen old movies or read books about Victorian times when kids would get oranges in their stockings for Christmas and get all excited? I used to think this was the dumbest thing in the world…until recently…when I realized what an extravegant treat an orange must have been for a kid growing up in New England who had probably never seen an orange, let alone in the dead of winter. Hmmm… maybe that’s why fruit baskets became so popular. I now realize what a luxury a lot of the foods that we eat really are.
3. Just because it’s local doesn’t mean it’s the best choice. Sarah over at Home Life has been blogging about meat and dairy and where it comes from. It raises the question: Even if you can eat local but it’s meat from a factory farm in Michigan where they use antibiotics and growth hormones, would it be better if it’s bought out of state but raised humanely and naturally?
4. For the most part, eating locally means eating healthier. Over the past few days its amazing how much we’ve reduced the amount of highly processed food and increased the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables we eat (or at least incorporate into our cooking). I’ve also learned a tremendous amount (thanks to the St. Mary Organic Garden) about what foods are in season. If you had asked me a week or two ago what the first crops are I never would have told you asparagus, radishes, arugala, rhubarb and lettuces.
5. Eating locally means cooking more creatively (or just cooking more - period)When you have an abundance of the aforementioned veggies, you’ve got to figure out what to do with them. Tonight Kevin decided to try out a rhubarb recipe from one of the sites Luna Pier Cook mentioned. The recipe was for a pork with a rhubarb stuffing. Since we couldn’t find local pork he settled for the Amish farm-raised chicken from Indiana. Baked chicken with rhubarb stuffyin. Would we have ever dared to try this if not for this local food thing? Most likely…no.
6. You realize that eating locally means not wasting food. It’s funny how before I started this challenge I would have been more likely to get tired of something, buy something else and then let the leftovers expire in the fridge. It’s the mentality…If I don’t like what I have in my fridge I’ll just go out and buy something different. Who cares where its from! Not so on this diet. When your food choices are limited you make a better attempt to use up every last bit of what you’ve got.
Finally…it’s okay to eat pizza. Yes. we had one of those nights. Everyone has them. You don’t want to cook and you just want to order pizza. Instead of going to Pizza Hut, Tiffany’s, or Cottage Inn we opted for Detroit Beach Pizzeria. Granted, Tiffanys is local but Detroit Beach just seemed more “family owned” maybe they even make their own dough there still too?
Hopefully Kevin will find potatoes soon…I think he’s going into withdrawal…besides he’s found a lot of potato rhubard and potato arugula recipes. He can’t wait to try them out.