One Local Summer: Meal #1
I’ve signed up for the One Local Summer challenge this year, although I found out about it last summer. For one whole summer, I will eat one meal a week which will consist of all locally produced food. This is in an effort to not only reduce the energy normally wasted by transporting goods long distances, but to have the freshest foods available. Because I live in Northern California, this challenge should be easy for me, so I’ll try not to complain too much here. I can find a lot of locally grown and raised foods here. I have to keep in mind the other participants who don’t have as long of a growing season.
This was the first week, so how did I do? I’d say I could have done better, but I did manage a to eat a darn good local meal along with quite a few tasty local snacks.
Here’s the run-down:
- Barbequed chicken wings and grilled corn on the cob
- strawberries and vanilla quark (yes, locally made quark!)
- blueberry, honey and vanilla goat’s milk yogurt smoothie (yep, local goat’s milk yogurt!)
- I haven’t used it yet, but I even found out that we have a multitude of locally produced olive oil (as well as rice).
Despite such variety, I’m still having trouble putting a whole meal together that consists of entirely local foods. I enjoyed locally made pita bread this week bought from the farmer’s market and homemade hummus (with local tahini), but the chickpeas weren’t local. I can come close, but get hung up on some crucial ingredients because I can’t find a local source for them. I need to learn to be more creative. Instead of having a recipe in mind and looking for necessary ingredients, I need to find ingredients first and shape a recipe around them. That skill eludes me still. A few weeks ago when I signed up for this, I had visions of homemade pasta, but I still have yet to find a local flour source. Can I somehow make rice flour out of my local rice? Rice pasta? Hmm…
This week’s meal wasn’t quite up to my expectations. Joe made the chicken wings and corn on the cob dinner for us. It was great (of course!), but it was nothing new. We usually eat this for dinner, but I didn’t even know it was a local meal until we had to start paying closer attention. This coming week I’ll try to venture into new territory.
on June 10th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I haven’t found local pasta, but I have found local flour that could be made into pasta. Full Belly Farm in Guinda produces wheat flour and corn meal, and they’re at a few of the local farmer’s markets. Locally grown chickpeas are harder to find, but I got some in my grain CSA from Windborne Farm in Fort Scot (very far north), and I don’t know if they grow chickpeas, but Phipps Country Store in Pescadero and Rancho Gordo in Napa grow their own beans. (Try the gigante beans from Phipps – yum!)
You’ll find a wealth of local sources at http://caff.org/ – they have a local food booklet that has been my bible! Good start and good luck.
on June 10th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Wow! You sure know your stuff! I had no idea Full Belly produced flour, but you have given me hope. So now my dreams of homemade pasta came come to fruition this summer. Yum.
I completely forgot about Rancho Gordo beans as well. Those will really help me out.
Thank you Momaste!
on June 11th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Hi!
It sounds like a difficult challenge. I don’t know if I’d be able to do it ’cause here there’re a lot of products labelled: ‘Product of the E.U.’, so unless you know the bar codes of your country and region it’d be tough.
Anyway, that chicken and corn look great! Wish I could have tasted it!
Cheers.
on June 12th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Ok, seriously. Did you get the vanilla bean quark from the folks at the farmer’s market behind Sunrise Mall?
We go EVERY SATURDAY. We should meet up and sample those cheeses!
Kudos on the local challenge. I’m going to look into it because we eat as local as we can always. We were even going to the farmer’s market in the middle of winter!
on June 12th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Spring Hill Cheese makes a lemon quark that is to die for. Seriously delicious.
Cowgirl Creamery is now at the Palo Alto farmer’s market – little sounds of joy escaped me when I saw them! 