Mapping out a week of Eating Local

Today is the first day of my third year of the Eat Local Challenge and I’m feeling confident. The first year, I was a self-described “stickler” who made no exceptions whatsoever to the 100-mile rule. One of the things I learned from that experience was that I need exceptions. My second year, last year, I wrote a blog about my week of eating local for the Mail Tribune. We had some great meals that week and I found several new sources for local ingredients. This year will have a few new twists.

The rules themselves have changed for 2009: “local” according to the sponsor's rules, is now defined as “grown, raised, or produced within the 200 mile radius.” I assume this change was effected to include the coast with its fishing industry and also seawater (for salt) from Port Orford. Well, 200 miles is all right by me. I love fish and now I won’t have to write myself an exception for salt. But I don’t like the “grown, raised, or produced” part – I like to keep it to grown or raised. “Produced” means the ingredients could come from anywhere; this might be good for the local economy but if you are concerned about food miles I think you need to look at where all the individual components come from.

I got out a map and tried to make a geometry lesson out of the new local definition but my 12 year old daughter wasn’t having any of it. It’s been a rough first week at school for us both. So I drew the circle myself: it arcs the coast from Lincoln City OR to Fort Bragg CA. Heading up I-5 it reaches just north of Salem to Keizer, and south as far as Willows CA. Heading due east we go past Lakeview to an area called the Basque Hills. Ought to be plenty to eat in that big circle.

As I mentioned, work has been a bit of a trial recently. In fact, I didn’t get to the Ashland food co-op this week at all and so started the challenge today somewhat unprepared. But we’re doing OK. There were nice local 49er peaches (from Quality Market) for breakfast. Lunch was some eggplant salad made according to a recipe in a previous post with all-local ingredients (except the oil - see below), some leftover steamed green beans from our garden, a carrot bought last week at the co-op, and some raspberries also from the garden. I was hungry when I got home so I ate the leftover garden chard that was in the fridge.

I had to dig around in the freezer a little to find dinner for me and Alekka. I bought a quarter beef from rancher Larry Martin in Central Point a while back - one of the big changes in my food purchasing habits that came about because of last year's Challenge was that now we get almost all of our meat now from local producers - but now most of it is gone except for some short ribs and stew meat. I have an order in for a half beef but the animal won't be killed until October.

But then I found a package of long strips of round steak down in the bottom of the case and thawed it out in the microwave after work.For dinner I cooked that on my stove-top grill along with some Romano beans from the garden – they’re great tossed with some olive oil before grilling and sprinkled with salt and a little lemon after. Alas, no local potatoes in the house but I’ve got a loaf of bread baking in the oven (no local flour in the bin, so the bread will just be for the kids). That and some of our amazing baked tomato stuff (more about that tomorrow) and I think the two of us are all set for decent - and local - meal.

I call myself a purist but I have to make a couple of exceptions if I want get to the goal of educating myself with local eating lessons I can use throughout the year. I don't see this as a Lenten-like deprivation exercise, rather as an opportunity to open my mind to the to realities of agribusiness while exposing my tastebuds to nearby epicurean delights. That's how I interpret it anyway. I could survive a week on steamed zucchini and raw tomatoes from the garden but that wouldn’t inspire me to any kind of higher level. So –

1) I get to drink coffee. The first year I did the challenge, I gave up coffee (it doesn’t grow here) but got a mongo headache that didn’t go away all week. I haven’t done anything to cure myself of my addiction so there we are. Anything that goes into the coffee, however, must be local.

2) Cultures. So many tasty foods depend on yeast and bacteria that I’m just not going to worry about where those ingredients came from. That means I get to make yeast bread (with local flour, of course). I suppose maybe for next year I could get a starter going and make sourdough bread out of the air. But meanwhile for our purposes I declare that yeast is not a food. Same with bacterial cultures used to make buttermilk, sour cream, cheese, and so on. I would not be able to partake of the delicious local cheeses or even make my own if I worried about where the starter was made (the one I use comes mail order from Vermont, but I don’t know where they get it). Even Daisy brand sour cream whose sole ingredient is listed as “cultured cream” contains bacteria of unknown origin. Same with sulfites added to wine and other similar trace chemicals. I say, who cares.

3) Olive oil. My son is allergic to all dairy products, but aside from butter, there are no local oils. You have to have some oil for cooking, and if I choose butter for its local-ness, I have to cook a second dinner for my son without it. No thanks. Besides which, olive oil is delicious and good for you. I get mine in bulk at the food co-op in a container I reuse, so at least I can say I save on the packaging.

4) Lemon juice. I need something sour to make salad dressing and to add a little tang to things. The other option is vinegar. Last year one of our sons in California had the grace and good sense to bring a bottle of Napa Valley red wine vinegar with him on a visit during Eat Local week and I talked myself in to thinking that was legit. But I think we need a real exception. The lemon juice is from lemons we picked ourselves on a visit to LA but I can’t honestly say that makes them local-legal – that’s a slippery slope (I mean, where are the food miles savings if I fly to Ecuador to satisfy a banana craving?)

So, those are my rules. Tomorrow I'm going shopping.