The Place Where We Live

My sister-in-law sent me an MSNBC article on Friday entitled,”There’s No Food Like Home”. I’ve been joking with her that every time we’ve gotten together over the past couple of weeks,  we end up talking about our local food challenge. I figured she was probably sick of hearing me talk about it. But getting this article from her made me realize that perhaps through our conversations with friends and family about what we’re doing, we’re really making other people start to think about eating local. 

I thought this article was great at summarizing alot of the discussions Kevin and I have been having about eating locally, better than I ever could.  You can click here to read the entire article. However, below I will highlight the main reasons that the article offers about why it is good to eat local and will offer my own take based on our experiences with the challenge so far:

Seven Reasons to Eat Local

1. A Taste Treat - “A juicy tomato from a farm down the road is much sweeter than one grown thousands of miles away, picked when green, and practically dead to the taste buds by the time it reaches your cart at the supermarket…”

We have found this to be true - especially with strawberries. Most strawberries you find at the supermarket throughout the year are gigantic, crunchy, flavorless (if not just plain sour) and usually need sugar to make them palatable. The strawberries we’ve been buying from the Farmers Market and Parrans Greenhouse are much smaller, softer, jucier and naturally sweeter. Some are so ripe that if you don’t eat them within a matter of a day they will spoil. This week I made a strawberry rhubarb crunch for my boss’ birthday. I served it with some Independent Dairy French Vanilla Ice-cream. People seemed to really like it. Kevin was disappointed because he didn’t get any leftovers.

2. Health Boost - “…Another health benefit of eating local is that you’ll tend to eat more whole foods, and more fruits and vegetables, rather than processed foods.”

One of the questions my sister-in-law asked me last weekend was, “What do you guys do when you eat fast food?” Our answer was, “We don’t.” Fast food pretty much is the antithesis of local in so many ways that there’s no way you could ever incorporate it into a diet like this. In addition to giving up fast food, we’ve realized we’ve given up most convenient snack foods and also realized that we’re eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat in general than we ever did before. Because lettuce is so plentiful this time of year, we’re finding ourselves eating salads several times a week (and sometimes several times a day if we have leftovers to eat for lunch the next day.) Okay…we do have the occaisonal Vince’s or Monroes original hot-dog… but that’s still a locall made product sold by a small locally  owned buisiness. And also, it’s good not to be too fanatical. More about that later.

3. Earth Benefits - “Apples flown in from New Zealand…The amount of oil used for that is crazy…You use a lot less energy buying local.”  

During our first week of the food challenge we were shopping and saw a sign for Michigan Apples. “Michigan apples in June?” we thought. “How can this be?” Upon closer inspection of the sticker affixed to the apple we found that the apple was actually grown in New Zealand. I haven’t been able to find anything out about that yet but my guess is that it’s a apple variety that’s native to Michigan but grown in New Zealand during the off season. This was an eye-opener for Kevin. As someone who rides his bike to work every day to save gas and he never realized how much fuel is used for things like shipping Michigan apples back to Michigan from New Zealand. With all the talk of CAFE standards it makes you wonder why more people aren’t talking about how much energy we use shipping food.

4. Social Glue - “We’ve lost our sense of community in this culture…People feel so isolated…”

Unless you run into someone you already know…how often do you find yourself having a conversation with someone at the grocery store? For me the answer was probably never. But somehow, shopping at the farmers market is different than shopping at a grocery store. You see the same people week after week and you start to get to know them. And you’re more likely to talk to total strangers. A few weeks ago we wanted to buy a bundle of onions but the bundle was more than we thought we’d ever use. The farmer was reluctant to break the bundle to sell it to us. So a woman and her husband overheard our conversation and offered to split the bundle with us. They then started a conversation up with us about riding our bikes etc.

5. Community Cash Cow - “Eating local keeps your money in your community. Buying non-local product sfrom a national food chain takes it out of your community.”

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, and the premise of this entire blog. Enough said.

6. Food Safety First - “Our dependence on long-distance shipping means that if any sort of contamination happens, it can very quickly affect millions of people (or animals) around the country,”

I have to admit that food safety was never a major concern for me until the recent spinach, pet-food, tooth-paste recalls. Now, this is a very real thing for me. Sadly, while we’ve been able to buy more local, safe food for ourselves, we realize that pet food is still pretty much a crap-shoot in terms of knowing what you’re getting. However we have switched to more natural brands of cat food that contain no wheat products.

7. Cost—Sometimes - “A great way to save money when buying local food is to take advantage of a bountiful harvest. Buy ripe peaches, berries, or corn, when they are on sale, and freeze or can them.”

One of my goals this summer is to have my mom teach me how to can.  Canning is a lost art. My grandma who was a an avid gardener canned all the time.  I never really cared much about it until recently when she was no longer able to garden - let alone can. It was the first time in twenty some years that I ever had to buy strawberry jam from the store. My grandma’s home-made freezer jam was something we just always had, that  I took for granted.

8. Don’t Be Fanatic - “It’s about eating as local as you can … without being a fanatic.”

One of the most frustrating things about this food challenge has been having some good local base ingredients but missing a few other ingredients that really make a recipe. I have a recipe for arugula (which is abundant) pesto. However, I can’t find locally made parmesan cheese. Once the challenge is over I would then go ahead and buy that parmesan. However, you can bet that I will definitely think differently about how and where that parmesan is made. (i.e. NO KRAFT PROCESSED PARMESAN CHEESE.)

While our local food challenge is coming to an end in this incarnation, Kevin and I have seriously been talking about keeping it going as much as we can  - especially as more great local produce becomes available over the summer. After all, it’s fun to go to the Farmers Market or the organic garden every week with anticipation for what new locally grown treasure we might find!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 11:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.