My goal this week was to have 2 full meals that were fully local. I certainly made that goal. To the right is one of my meals. It is an egg, chicken sausage and purple potatoes. We were just gonna have eggs and the potatoes but then we discovered that the chicken sausages were local and they LOOKED SO GOOD!.
I had another fully local meal and many that were left-overs or just incorporated a lot of the food I had around that was local.
Cole brought up Joel's Hydroponics system in a comment to a past post so I thought I'd post a photo. Currently, as you can CLEARLY see, he is just growing lettuce. We have now harvested and eaten a good 1/3rd and that leaves some room for him to start growing something new. I'm not sure what he will try.
When I think about challenges, I'm grateful we did this assignment in the fall rather than the dead of winter. There have been great foods to eat so having my local meals has been very doable. The challenges were more with the toppings. Things like pepper, salt, butter and other spices. Fresh spices were pretty easy, but I did use some of what I had and knew would make something flavorful. I still managed to get some local spices and created flavorful meals. I looked to local before using my standbys.
As winter goes on I think it will be harder to find the local food. I'm going to keep trying however. I would love to know what is out there that I'm just not thinking of yet. I want to keep finding ways to do what I feel is the right thing. I also have enjoyed learning a little more about the possibly of sustaining more locally. During this project the Co-op had their member owners meeting and i learned about a huge project to challenge some great minds and pull together information on what land in Minnesota is available to grow on, how is the soil, and what can be grown realistically in the climate and on that land. They have put together a pretty complete diet. I learned that Hazel nuts grow here... I didn't know that.
I feel benefited in my awareness of eating local food. I really want to eat more local and like how voting with my dollars makes me feel. I enjoy buying from the guy who busted his chops to grow decent veggies when I buy at farmers markets and I like to see a high number on the "local purchases" on my Whole Foods receipt. I feel like I'm supporting people who are trying to do a good job and provide a good product. The money goes through less hands and I'm saving miles of travel and that saves fuel as well as gives me fresher food. I like that. I do enough to screw up the planet, it is nice to make some adjustments and lifting even a little burden and demand on her.
I also learned that I really like root veggies in chicken soup!
What did I learn? That with some effort, this wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I think I surprised myself at how good it felt.
For others looking to make a lifestyle change, I highly recommend sitting down ans making some sort of plan. Thinking through what you perceive the tough parts might be before you start so you can see success before the roadblocks, if they even come up. For me in this situation it was thinking about where my local options were, could I get there and when would I go, what would I be making out of my local goodies.
I have one more thing that I'd like to share...
As I was thinking about my week and the local meals I have been eating I had a really cool realization... This week, as most people who have been anywhere near me know,
Robert Kenner, Director of
Food, Inc. was here presenting at UMD.
Duluth Grill was one of the sponsors for this event. Tom, the owner, offered to host a dinner for Robert before hand. The dinner was 100% gluten free and they focused on local. First of all, they have gardens on Duluth Grill's property, in the owners front yard and they also source as much as they can local. Almost everything was local. Tho Belgian chocolate that covered the local cherry was not local. I know there were a few other things, but I honestly can not recall.
Below are the pictures of most of the food.
This was our salad. The raspberry dressing is sweetened with local honey.
This was our main course. The roast is a local bison pot-roast, Minnesota wild rice. The food in front is squash, apples and all sorts of amazing flavors.
They serve something close to this for their Sunday Special.
I'm really NOT trying to torture you. I SWEAR I'm getting to my larger point.
This summer when I was first working on choosing sponsors for the Kenner event, I asked Duluth Grill to be a part of it. I never thought that, that decision would be influencing 20 people, months later, on one night to come together and all be eating a local meal. So much fun to have that unexpected bonus.
So, what do you say? Sunday, Duluth Grill... FIELD TRIP! :)
Robert Kenner, the director of the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. spoke at UMD October 20th. I may be a little biased but this was a great event! Robert talked about various aspects of our food touching on topics like GMOs, cloned meat, how our food has become controlled and become more corporate, updates on some of the people in Food, Inc, what we might do to help, and more.
One of the stories he told that I found fantastic was of the woman in the movie who was "mass producing" chickens for a large company. There were chickens crammed into a house, their legs couldn't carry them because of the hormone induced rapid body growth and dead chickens lying around that the farmer had to go in and pull out. She was very open in the film because she was struggling with the way the corporation was forcing farmers to produce. The women lost her contract because of the fact that she was in Food, Inc. sharing her story. She is now raising free range, well taken care of chickens. Robert said that when he interviewed her the first time the chickens were walking around in a days, scared of people and he said it was really icky. This time when he interviewed her 3 days before his talk at UMD, he said that the chickens were lively and interested in what was going on. He had one in his lap, one on each food and others running around him. The farmer is also much happier as well. 
