It's Day 2 of eating locally, and we've been cheating like undergraduates. First, I ate the granola for breakfast that was labeled as "local" at the Coop but which obviously can't be local because it was composed of oats and peanuts, two not-local crops. But I ate it anyway, because what else was I going to have for breakfast? Then, we both put Hellman's mayonnaise on our leftover Fred sandwiches because what is a chicken sandwich without mayonnaise? Laurie Colwin taught me well about how to make the perfect hen sandwich, and it always means homemade bread, mayonnaise, and celery salt. (I wouldn't have been able to make my mayonnaise, either, because I don't have any local oil!) I added some tomato and a little baby fresh green spinach from Lewis Creek to my sandwich... heaven.
And dinner tonight is bound to be full of cheating, too. But being the geeky historian that I am, I've even found ways to rationalize it. And it all has to do with the Woodcarver of Lympus.
You've probably never heard of the Woodcarver of Lympus, even if you're a Vermonter. But if you've driven across the Bethel Mountain Road on your way to Boston (and who hasn't?), you've probably spotted the sign pointing to Lympus, and thought "Lympus??? what the heck? Shouldn't that be O-Lympus? and what's Lympus, or Olympus doing in Vermont anyway?" Well, once upon a few years ago, I was driving home from Rutland or somewhere, and stopped at a now-defunct antique store in Pittsford. And there, on a shelf, was a book with that magical title: The Woodcarver of Lympus, by Mary E. Wallace, published in Boston by Little, Brown in 1906. And it was a mere $5. Here was my chance to learn what the heck was Lympus!
I don't remember learning why it's called 'Lympus, but I loved, loved, loved that book anyway. Sentimental? Yes. But so what? A young man is felled and paralyzed cutting down the winter's firewood. He falls into despair, while his poor family struggles, until, eventually, he begins to carve, so that his fame eventually spreads far beyond little Lympus and his relative fortune saves them from poverty. There's love (both requited and un-), lovely descriptions, and a fascinating depiction of rural Vermont in a much more isolated time. The opening scene is all about the stagecoach coming -- not to Lympus itself, which is too isolated for that, but to somewhere close by. It's an event!
There's a scene from the book that keeps coming back to me while thinking about eating locally. It marks the moment when our woodcarver realizes how very badly off the family is -- something that they have been trying to hide from him. If I remember correctly, he discovers that while his aunt puts regular old sugar in his morning coffee, she puts maple sugar in hers, and tries to explain that she prefers it that way. He is not fooled (we all know that maple has its place, but coffee is not it!), and realizes that he has to do something to help his family.
What can we learn from this story? (told you I was going to be a geeky historian!) a) They have coffee. They are very, very poor, and very, very isolated, but they do have coffee (not exactly a Vermont crop); b) They also have sugar (cane sugar? beet sugar? it's not clear). It is a sign of abject poverty, real destitution, to have to use a maple sweetener instead of the other kind in one's coffee.
Over our Fred sandwiches (Spread Fred!), we talked about food in pre-modern times, and mused over the fact that networks of food transportation are hardly a modern phenomenon. The Romans got their grain from Egypt, after all (and Sardinia, of course). Trafficking in salt is one of the oldest trades around, because everyone needs salt, and you either need salt deposits or a salt ocean to get it. And I thought of a document I have students read, a list of the tolls at Colibre (Collioure) in 1252. Lots of spices and exotic commodities, yes -- what we've always been taught that people traded in long distance. But there's a surprising number of food items on the list: grains, different types of figs (do you prefer your figs from Alicante or Mallorca? Alicante figs are more expensive, and thus, perhaps, tastier), dates, peas, oats, tuna-fish in barrels, cheese, oil, artichokes, and a blanket category of "vegetables." Food traveled. A lot, sometimes, even in 1252. I have an article somewhere about cheese from Crete being eaten all over the Mediterranean. Think of the Romans and garum. Making garum is a smelly, smelly business, and not everyone wants to do it (certainly not me!), so it was imported from wherever small fish and salt were cheap. Your average 13th-century traveler was doing a fair amount more carting to and fro of foodstuffs than we might imagine.
After all, food and where it's grown isn't static. Teaching the course on the Mediterranean has made me think so much more about how foodstuffs in the Med have changed. We all know that they didn't have tomato sauce in pre-modern Italy (don't we?) because tomatoes are a New World plant (ditto potatoes, squash, maize and peppers). But that's not all. For quite some time now, Clifford Wright has been performing an admirable public service of trying to inform us all about other ways in which the Mediterranean diet is not what it used to be. First, you should read his 900-page book, A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrate Cuisines of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs (William Morrow, 1999) and then you should check out his website, replete with articles on the origins of the artichoke and the like. You'll learn a lot about how food migrated from place to place: the Phoenicians and the Greeks brought crops from place to place, then the Romans, and most famously, the Muslims. We even call it the Islamic Green Revolution, without which I would never have had spinach to put in my quiche this evening.
Here's today's menu:
Breakfast:
coffee and Domino dots
not-so-local granola with local yogurt for me
homemade bread with butter and honey for Stefano
Lunch:
Fred sandwiches, with Hellman's mayo, local tomatoes and spinach
Dinner:
Quite a Quiche: crust made with Lewis Creek spinach, and Gleason's Grains flour and Cabot butter, filled with local leeks, bacon from Maple Wind Farm, local zucchini and tomato, milk and cream from Monument Farms, and Cabot Seriously Sharp Hunter Cheddar. Delicious!
Salad. Now here, we cheated. The lettuce was local (a freckled Romaine from the Midd Farmers' Market), but how could I make a dressing with no oil? So I decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and used a bottled soy ginger vinaigrette. Good stuff!
Stefano finished off the meal with a pile of cheese from Twig Farm, and more bread.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Eating a Local Chicken
Ok, the chicken (let's just call him Fred, for ease of reference) was delicious. Even if I couldn't cook him stuffed with two lemons, as is my wont (thanks to Marcella Hazan), he came out juicy and tasty. Instead of two lemons, I stuffed Fred with a "Sops of Wine" apple, herbs up the wazoo, Eugenie's garlic, and a wee bit of butter, just for fun (I was really nervous about him getting dry). Not as copious a harvest of juices as usual, but tasty. Stefano couldn't taste the apple, but I could - and I'm not sure I liked it as much as lemon.
But there are a TON of leftovers (5 lbs is a big bird for 2 people). Not quite sure what I'll do with them, yet, but the bones will make a tasty broth -- to freeze for another "local" meal down the line (though what will I do for pasta in the soup!! ack! a crisis!). Astrolabe was disappointed, though, because there were no giblets in the cavity for treats for him. Luckily, the "eat local" thing does not currently apply to beagles, so I'll just give him an extra treat treat. And he'll get to lick the chicken platter in the morning, lucky dog!
Bill McKibben notes in that Gourmet article that:
"I've had to think about every meal, instead of wandering through the world on autopilot, ingesting random calories. I've had to pay attention."
He's exactly right. It's like keeping kosher, really. Back in the days when I was sharing an apartment with my friend who's now a rabbi, I thought a lot about keeping kosher (we kept a kosher home, more or less). I have friends who don't like the whole idea of keeping kosher, and are happy to quote Leviticus about mixing fibers or burning witches, but I actually think I "get" kosher: it's about being conscious of what you eat, and making conscious decisions. When you're keeping kosher, those restrictions take you back to God, a tangible reminder of your religious nature. When you're eating locally, the restrictions take you back to why. Why does it matter if I pull out a bottle of Sardinian olive oil out of my cupboard? how did that olive oil get all the way here to Vermont? Is it really right to eat something that has traveled so far? Could Marco Polo have carried olive oil with him to China??
And I hate to say it, but my attitude towards cheating is similar in both instances. It didn't bother me if I mixed my meat with my dairy (though I was careful to do it in my specially reserved pan, and to eat it on my specially reserved plates). So I'm just not going to worry too much about the olive oil we fried those delicious porcini we found at Breadloaf in. Well, I'll probably feel guilty about it. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't feel guilty about something.
And Fred was really, really tasty. I just think he'd have tasted better with two lemons stuffed up his wazoo.
But there are a TON of leftovers (5 lbs is a big bird for 2 people). Not quite sure what I'll do with them, yet, but the bones will make a tasty broth -- to freeze for another "local" meal down the line (though what will I do for pasta in the soup!! ack! a crisis!). Astrolabe was disappointed, though, because there were no giblets in the cavity for treats for him. Luckily, the "eat local" thing does not currently apply to beagles, so I'll just give him an extra treat treat. And he'll get to lick the chicken platter in the morning, lucky dog!
Bill McKibben notes in that Gourmet article that:
"I've had to think about every meal, instead of wandering through the world on autopilot, ingesting random calories. I've had to pay attention."
He's exactly right. It's like keeping kosher, really. Back in the days when I was sharing an apartment with my friend who's now a rabbi, I thought a lot about keeping kosher (we kept a kosher home, more or less). I have friends who don't like the whole idea of keeping kosher, and are happy to quote Leviticus about mixing fibers or burning witches, but I actually think I "get" kosher: it's about being conscious of what you eat, and making conscious decisions. When you're keeping kosher, those restrictions take you back to God, a tangible reminder of your religious nature. When you're eating locally, the restrictions take you back to why. Why does it matter if I pull out a bottle of Sardinian olive oil out of my cupboard? how did that olive oil get all the way here to Vermont? Is it really right to eat something that has traveled so far? Could Marco Polo have carried olive oil with him to China??
And I hate to say it, but my attitude towards cheating is similar in both instances. It didn't bother me if I mixed my meat with my dairy (though I was careful to do it in my specially reserved pan, and to eat it on my specially reserved plates). So I'm just not going to worry too much about the olive oil we fried those delicious porcini we found at Breadloaf in. Well, I'll probably feel guilty about it. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't feel guilty about something.
And Fred was really, really tasty. I just think he'd have tasted better with two lemons stuffed up his wazoo.
Localvore Links
The term "localvore" is a little problematic... I feel like we're eating the locals.
Find your 100 miles here (US and Canada only, I'm afraid)
Addison County Localvore Project: plenty of good links here to information about local found in Addison County
A fantastic article by Bill McKibben, who ate locally all through a long, Vermont winter, and lived to tell about it (originally in Gourmet magazine)
Find your 100 miles here (US and Canada only, I'm afraid)
Addison County Localvore Project: plenty of good links here to information about local found in Addison County
A fantastic article by Bill McKibben, who ate locally all through a long, Vermont winter, and lived to tell about it (originally in Gourmet magazine)
Eating Locally, Part I
Today was the first day of our "eating locally" escapade. A group of Middlebury-based "local-vores" has declared September to be "eat local" month, and we took a partial challenge: we'll be eating locally for at least one day a week, and also trying to increase our consumption of local products in other ways. It's all part of the 100-mile-diet idea: try to source your food within 100 miles.
In some ways, this isn't that much of a change. That is, at this time of year, we already buy all our fruits and vegetables at one of the local farmers' markets or farmstands. There's Middlebury on Saturday morning (and Wednesday morning), Bristol on Wednesday afternoons, and Lewis Creek Farm up the road any day until 6 pm. And even at the Coop and the other "natural foods" store, much of the produce is locally sourced (and labeled). Ever since my childhood when my mother and I would roam the back roads of Lincoln and Concord visiting farmstands, I've loved buying vegetables directly from farmers. So that's not a change for us. And the vegetables here are so delicious! Heirloom tomatoes and yellow carrots and "Fairy Tale" eggplants, to name only three wonderful things I've bought recently at a local farmers' market.
We also buy local dairy products (milk from Monument Farms, butter, yogurt and cheddar cheese from Cabot, and some of the above from either Vermont Butter and Cheese or Butterworks, too). And there are a pile of local artisanal cheeses that we love, too: Blue Ledge goat cheeses, mozarella from the guy in Vergennes, Orb Weaver cheese, and Twig Farm. Not to mention 3 Shepherds over the mountain in Warren: cheese made by the youngest cheesemaker in America, featured in Gourmet Magazine, no less!
There are real challenges to this eating locally thing, however. Obviously, there are products that we will never, ever find locally. Citrus. Olives and olive oil. Seafood. We can do without those temporarily, but not eternally (certainly not with a Sardinian in the house!). We're taking advantage of what Bill McKibben called the "Marco Polo" exemption: being able to use small amounts of things that Marco Polo might have been able to squirrel away in his saddlebags. We're interpreting that fairly liberally, actually: I just can't live without coffee!
There are other small challenges, though. What about cooking oil? I've heard a rumor that someone in Vermont makes sunflower oil -- but I haven't seen any. Yes, we can cook everything with butter (or lard), I suppose, but I'm not sure my cardiologist would approve! And there are precious few "convenience" foods available made from Vermont ingredients. So Stefano baked bread yesterday. No cereals, besides some granola that Stefano picked up at the Coop. No crackers. No pasta -- what???? no pasta!!!??? can't live without that. I am also simply Not Willing to put maple syrup or honey into my coffee. No.
And another shocker was the price of local meat. Yesterday, I bought a chicken from a lovely farm in Hanksville at the farmers' market to roast tonight. 5 lbs: $18.36! Yes, 5 lbs is big for us, and yes, we'll get at least three meals out of that (and stock), but it's still a lot more than I'm used to paying for a chicken -- just about exactly three times as much, actually. We also bought lamb sausage, and a shank steak, and spent a total of $48. Yikes. Ordinarily, we'll buy the occasional lambchop at Lewis Creek, but otherwise, we buy our meat at the supermarket or at Costco. I'm wondering if we shouldn't look into buying a half cow to see if it would be cheaper that way.
Still, it's an adventure. And here is the menu for today, with ingredients (and where we cheated):
Breakfast:
Coffee (with one Domino dot of sugar for me, and 2 for Stefano...)
Pancakes, with local flour (Gleason's Grains), eggs, yogurt and honey. We had to cheat on the baking soda and a little bit of cooking oil. The maple syrup was local (Billy Norris), obviously, as were the berries in the jam I ate mine with (Norris Berry Farms) -- but the jam was made with sugar!
Lunch/snack:
Cabot cheddar with homemade bread made from local flour
Dinner:
Roast chicken from Maple Wind Farm in Hanksville, with Eugenie's delicious garlic from Last Resort Farm, Costa Romanesca zucchini from the farmers' market (can't remember who was selling them...), cauliflower from Golden Russet Farm, and porcini mushrooms found by us at Breadloaf. But we'll be using olive oil to cook the mushrooms in, I'm afraid.
A bottle of Arctic White wine from Shelburne Farms
We're going to try to eat local again tomorrow. Pizza, maybe?
In some ways, this isn't that much of a change. That is, at this time of year, we already buy all our fruits and vegetables at one of the local farmers' markets or farmstands. There's Middlebury on Saturday morning (and Wednesday morning), Bristol on Wednesday afternoons, and Lewis Creek Farm up the road any day until 6 pm. And even at the Coop and the other "natural foods" store, much of the produce is locally sourced (and labeled). Ever since my childhood when my mother and I would roam the back roads of Lincoln and Concord visiting farmstands, I've loved buying vegetables directly from farmers. So that's not a change for us. And the vegetables here are so delicious! Heirloom tomatoes and yellow carrots and "Fairy Tale" eggplants, to name only three wonderful things I've bought recently at a local farmers' market.
We also buy local dairy products (milk from Monument Farms, butter, yogurt and cheddar cheese from Cabot, and some of the above from either Vermont Butter and Cheese or Butterworks, too). And there are a pile of local artisanal cheeses that we love, too: Blue Ledge goat cheeses, mozarella from the guy in Vergennes, Orb Weaver cheese, and Twig Farm. Not to mention 3 Shepherds over the mountain in Warren: cheese made by the youngest cheesemaker in America, featured in Gourmet Magazine, no less!
There are real challenges to this eating locally thing, however. Obviously, there are products that we will never, ever find locally. Citrus. Olives and olive oil. Seafood. We can do without those temporarily, but not eternally (certainly not with a Sardinian in the house!). We're taking advantage of what Bill McKibben called the "Marco Polo" exemption: being able to use small amounts of things that Marco Polo might have been able to squirrel away in his saddlebags. We're interpreting that fairly liberally, actually: I just can't live without coffee!
There are other small challenges, though. What about cooking oil? I've heard a rumor that someone in Vermont makes sunflower oil -- but I haven't seen any. Yes, we can cook everything with butter (or lard), I suppose, but I'm not sure my cardiologist would approve! And there are precious few "convenience" foods available made from Vermont ingredients. So Stefano baked bread yesterday. No cereals, besides some granola that Stefano picked up at the Coop. No crackers. No pasta -- what???? no pasta!!!??? can't live without that. I am also simply Not Willing to put maple syrup or honey into my coffee. No.
And another shocker was the price of local meat. Yesterday, I bought a chicken from a lovely farm in Hanksville at the farmers' market to roast tonight. 5 lbs: $18.36! Yes, 5 lbs is big for us, and yes, we'll get at least three meals out of that (and stock), but it's still a lot more than I'm used to paying for a chicken -- just about exactly three times as much, actually. We also bought lamb sausage, and a shank steak, and spent a total of $48. Yikes. Ordinarily, we'll buy the occasional lambchop at Lewis Creek, but otherwise, we buy our meat at the supermarket or at Costco. I'm wondering if we shouldn't look into buying a half cow to see if it would be cheaper that way.
Still, it's an adventure. And here is the menu for today, with ingredients (and where we cheated):
Breakfast:
Coffee (with one Domino dot of sugar for me, and 2 for Stefano...)
Pancakes, with local flour (Gleason's Grains), eggs, yogurt and honey. We had to cheat on the baking soda and a little bit of cooking oil. The maple syrup was local (Billy Norris), obviously, as were the berries in the jam I ate mine with (Norris Berry Farms) -- but the jam was made with sugar!
Lunch/snack:
Cabot cheddar with homemade bread made from local flour
Dinner:
Roast chicken from Maple Wind Farm in Hanksville, with Eugenie's delicious garlic from Last Resort Farm, Costa Romanesca zucchini from the farmers' market (can't remember who was selling them...), cauliflower from Golden Russet Farm, and porcini mushrooms found by us at Breadloaf. But we'll be using olive oil to cook the mushrooms in, I'm afraid.
A bottle of Arctic White wine from Shelburne Farms
We're going to try to eat local again tomorrow. Pizza, maybe?
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