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?