"Would You Like Your Receipt?"

...Um, yes. Yes, I would like my receipt, actually.





It's been a bit of an adjustment for me to remember to keep my receipts, let alone keep track of them. A little over a month ago I promised I'd keep the intrawebs appraised of my eating-local costs. I did my best to compile my receipts, so while this summary won't include such nebulous items as time & energy, it will at least be a fairly accurate snapshot of a poor-ish, young-ish single guy (with somewhat expensive tastes) trying to eat 80% local in the month of June, 2008. Obviously, someone with a family to feed, or more skill at buying in bulk, or better farm connections is going to have a different cost-to-benefit ratio. & again, it would be great if someone with a more complex living situation or buying approach would tackle this topic too. I doubt I'm really representative of the average natural-foods consumer.

Here is what I spent on local food & local food related items in June at the Market:


$236.87


If I wasn't the happy recipient of an employee discount (-$59.39), my total would have been more like $266.57, for a co-op member, & $296.26 for a non-member.

It should be noted that I didn't eat out at all, besides the Magical Mystery Pizza-Farm Excursion & the occasional morsel that someone else treated me to. In other words, the above total is essentially the cost of nearly every bite of food I've had in a month. Also, while this estimate includes various non-food items (such as a pitcher to steep larger quantities of my coffee/energy-drink replacement) purchased through the Market, it doesn't include other Challenge-related purchases (such as a cast-iron griddle, or a large set of plastic storage containers) made at other stores. Further, I tried to avoid free stuff from work (& no, I didn't cut myself any special deals on meat, either), other than a couple of loaves of locally-made bread. Well, I must cop to snacking on a few leftover Deli scraps, from time to time. I mean, seriously, they're just sitting right there! Overall, though, I've been pretty strict with myself in that area.

Other things aren't being factored in here, either. Things like the large tub of mulberries that a certain thoughtful Health & Beauty Counter-person kindly picked for me, or various bits I cleaned out of my freezer. My overall goal in the first phase of the Eat Local Challenge has been to get an idea of what the costs of eating local without having my own garden or having a lot of free/barter connections in place would be. As time goes on & the growing season continues, I'll be taking more advantage of such money-saving & community-building options, I assure you.

Yes, that is a hint to those of you who do have gardens.

All things considered, I find myself to be fairly pleased with my first official 80% local month, both cost-wise & otherwise. I've been learning a lot, stretching myself in the kitchen somewhat, & finding ways to economize. Not bad for a guy who generally buys food on a French-style "what do I want to eat tonight?" sort of basis!

-nano out

Finally!!

It seems I have done it.

Last night for dinner I cooked up some beans that had been hanging out in my cupboard for a while and I'm pretty sure everything I added was local (with the exception of a splash of olive oil and a dash of salt...)

Starting with our bulk department's 10-bean blend, I added Holy Land cucumber sauce (local business, but probably not locally sourced, eh?), feta cheese and tomatoes from Wisconsin, and fresh broccoli and kale from my garden. Served cold with butter lettuce (also from my garden) it turned out to be a simple, fresh tasting meal. Dessert was a handful of raspberries, bravely collected by Ms. N from the bushes in the backyard. Plus, I made enough to last for a few meals, so I can take my time scheming about what to make next! Now I just need to track down a bottle of good local wine...

Back on track

I feel like I've been off track from my local challenge for the last few days. Sure, I've been able to pull off a local lunch everyday (I can always count on salad!), but breakfast and dinner have been tougher than usual- Probably just because we've been busy and I haven't planned ahead as much.

It started with a bite of chocolate here and a handful of almonds there. Then my sweetie knew I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday and knew that I wanted some Banana Fudge Rice Divine ice cream more than anything, but I wouldn't buy it for myself. So he bought me some and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I felt some local guilt, too, because I've done really good with avoiding tropical fruits (even if I've splurged on other very not local items).

Anyways, tonight is my evening to myself- no family, no classes, just whatever I want to do. So I cooked a great comfort-food meal for myself.

I had barbecue tofu, my mom's yellow squash recipe, and some awesome green beans.
The green beans are super easy to make and the flavors don't overpower the sweetness of the beans. These green beans are local because they're from my garden, but I hear the local green beans should be at the co-op very soon! I included red pepper in these because when I was out at The River Market Co-op in Stillwater today I found Wisconsin hothouse-grown red peppers. But you could leave it out and they'd still be awesome.

Seared Green Beans

2 Tbsp. olive oil
about a pound of green beans, trimmed
1 red pepper, deseeded and sliced thinly
1 head of green garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. maple syrup
sprinkle of salt and pepper

Heat a heavy skillet (cast iron is my fave) over high heat for a few minutes. Add olive oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Toss in the green beans and stir frequently. They'll only need to cook until they are bright green and browned on a few edges- just a few minutes. Just before they are done, add the red peppers and minced green garlic, tossing to coat. Before the garlic browns, remove from heat and drizzle with vinegar and maple syrup and stir to coat. Last, sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve immediately.


By the way, the local raspberries from Hoch Orchard are AWESOME right now. I've been eating them over plain soy yogurt with a drizzle of maple syrup.

Not the coolest place in the world...

Where do I like to spend a hot Saturday night? In the kitchen, of course.
How ironic that canning or preserving needs to take place during the hottest summer months, when the garden is overflowing with food. This task, while enjoyable, heats my kitchen far beyond lasagna-baking or soup simmering temperatures. It is nearly unbearable.

So today, while making mulberry-honey jam and jalapeño jam (that's two kinds, not mulberry-jalapeño...although that might be good), I took breaks in the kiddie pool in the backyard and sipped ice water.

And then, after heating up the kitchen to unbearable levels, I figured, "Hey, why not make some pasta?" Nano and I have lamented over the lack of very local pasta here in MN. I rely on the Dakota Grower's pasta from North Dakota when I need a quick pasta fix, but there's nothing like homemade pasta.

Tonight I decided to make a tortelloni pasta with 1/2 my dough and some fettuccine with the other half.

The pasta itself is pretty darn local, with flour and water being 99% of the ingredients in this recipe. The filling is as follows:

Herbed Sunflower Seed Pasta Filling

1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds, toasted in a dry skillet (MN)
1/4 cup water (MN)
2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast
10 stems from cremini mushrooms (WI)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. fresh thyme (backyard)

After toasting the sunflower seeds until beginning to brown, add 1/4 cup of water and let them soak for about an hour. Go do some yoga in the meantime. Then whizz around the sunflower seeds, soaking water, and remaining ingredients in a food processor until finely minced, but not quite smooth. Use about 1/2 tsp. per 2" round of pasta dough. This would also be super good as a spread on crackers, inside a tortilla, or just off a spoon.


The sauce for this pasta is a white sauce made with Earth Balance, flour, Org. Valley soymilk (WI), salt, green onions (MN), cremini mushroom caps (WI), parsley (backyard) and blanched snap peas (backyard). I didn't measure anything for this recipe, sorry.

Even though it was 9pm before I got to eat dinner, it was damn good. And the best part is, I have fettuccine in the freezer for another day!

My Thoughts on the Burning Questions, Or "HOW Many Miles Did You Say?!?"

Silly me, I've been trying as hard as I can to stay within roughly 100!

Ruminating on Liz's post about our varying concepts of & approaches to the subject of "locality", it seems obvious to me that we really need to clarify our guidelines for this project. Of course, we'd have about as much luck in trying to come up with a unified stance on our position regarding our construct of God, or Goddess (or Nothing, for that matter). Perhaps the best way to tackle this is to clearly state, on the record, our individual guidelines & how we formulated them.

Here's more or less exactly how I'm doing the challenge:

I'm eating locally (80% or more of a given meal), more than 80% of the time. Well more, as far as I can tell. Almost all of my food is currently coming from the shelves of our own store, with the exception of a few side adventures to other locales. I have a couple of "tiers" that I use to determine the (sometimes fuzzy) percentage of my meals, as well as a couple of allowable "cheats" that I'll get to later.

The first tier, which makes up the bulk of my food choices, I'm calling "Real Local". This means that the food was grown & processed within approximately 100 miles of the Twin Cities, as far as I'm reasonably able to determine. I know with some certainty that if I buy something with a local label from my meat cooler, then it comes from somewhere within a (roughly) 100 mile radius. I fully realize that there are hidden miles in many of these items (from the farmer to the processor, perhaps to a warehouse, & then to the store), so sometimes that 100 miles is really 150, or even more. My absolute outside boundary in defining "local" could be considered something like 250 miles.

Honestly, we're all flying partially blind, here. We are involved in a system of trust, between us & our suppliers, & between us & our customers. None of us has the time to individually Googlemap every single one of our ingredients before we make our purchases, although kudos are due to Liz for trying. We have to take it on faith that the "Local" sticker on the product actually means that said product is reasonably local. Quite frankly, I'm dismayed that something with an 800-odd mile itinerary was even up for debate in the first place.

The second tier consists of foods that are processed within 100-300 miles, using at least a healthy portion of actual local ingredients. I'm guessing that Whole Grain Milling products & Salsa Lisa might fall under this category. Various locally baked breads would be included here, too. Because these sorts of items fulfill at least some of the requirements for inclusion in the first tier, while still supporting local small businesses, I'm likely to shift them towards the local group when figuring out percentages for individual meals.

Only slightly beneath is the third tier, which I define as basically any meal component I make myself (like Liz's tortilla example, or possibly my mayo recipe), with a mix of local & less-local ingredients. If I don't feel comfortable with the subjective mix, I'll be honest & shift it towards the non-local percentage.

As for seasonings, if we're talking fresh herbs & they're not in tier one, I'm not making that dish. Basics like salt, pepper & vinegar (or oils) aren't being counted any longer, because to do so would drive a man insane.

Cheats include certain specific things that I simply "can't" live without, things that if our civilization crumbled tomorrow, I'd be willing to trade dearly for (one example might be the occasional scraping of Parmigiano-Reggiano). Or if someone offers me a piece of their birthday cake. Another acceptable cheat is yerba mate, since I gave up energy-drinks & coffee for the challenge & I still have to make it to work in the morning (I use the St. Paul brand, Nativa, for what it's worth). Oh, & cigarettes.

So, that's the basics of my "how". As to the "why", the more experiential & philosophical aspects of the Challenge (as I see them), I'll post on that soon enough, as well as provide an update on my first month's costs.

-nano out

The question burning a hole in my mind

So here's the dilemma I've been wrestling with the past few days:

I realized that I have held off on making some of my favorite homemade treats because the ingredients are not locally produced- For example, our co-op's masa harina is not local and I use it for tamales and corn tortillas. In lieu of making my own, I've purchased corn tortillas that are made at a local business.

Now, is it really all that different to buy from a business that gets the corn shipped from somewhere else in the country and makes the tortillas in MN than to buy my own corn shipped from elsewhere and make them myself?

The answer I've come up with is that it depends on why you want to eat local.

If it's about supporting local businesses, it's great to buy the local business's tortillas from the neighborhood co-op (double local business points) rather than just buying the corn from the co-op.

If I'm eating local to reduce carbon emissions and conserve resources, I'd have to know exactly how far away their corn was grown and how far away my corn was grown and what form of transportation each used to arrive in Minnesota. Plus, I'd have to know how each type of corn was grown and what kind of petroleum input that took (pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc.).

If it's about freshness and taste, I'd much prefer to make my own tortillas and eat them hot off the skillet with Earth Balance and salt dripping down my face. I'm a spoiled Texas girl who likes her tortillas fresh. As far as I'm concerned, they're practically ruined after being refrigerated.

So, basically, there's no easy answer.

I think this dilemma is one that has been at the back of my mind for a while and it's rooted in the debate of how we should define local. While it makes our Eat Local Challenge more accessible to folks and supports local businesses (undoubtedly a great thing), it just doesn't sit well with me to count locally made goods as equal to locally grown/produced goods.

One thing I loved in Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is that she ate locally without using processed, packaged goods (mostly). So she didn't just find salsa that was made at a factory the next state over, she actually grew (or met the person who grew) the tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc. While her experience is definitely outside the realm of what most people can achieve while working full time and having hobbies other than canning, I like the simplicity of it and the purity of her definition of local. It feels authentic and trustworthy.

There's something just a little weird about my Sunbutter (which I love dearly, mind you) counting as local when it comes from the processing plant in North Dakota to the distribution warehouse in Iowa and then to our co-op in Minnesota on big trucks. Dave and I have been wrestling with this in our conversations lately and I think we agree that this one is pushing the limits, despite the fact that all the stops on this 841 mile journey (yes, I tracked the path on google maps) are within the 5 state area. Keep in mind that this doesn't actually include the miles from where it was grown to the processing plant. I'm not sure of that information.

So what's a girl to do?

I think my focus on this challenge needs to be using products grown as close to home as possible, with locally made foods filling in the gaps or helping me out when I'm short on time. When I look at my food values, I feel most passionate about eating sustainably grown, organic, minimally processed and vegan foods. Coming in at a close second are eating locally grown and homemade foods. While it might not be popular (considering I'm writing this on an Eat Local Blog), eating locally at the expense of sustainable/organic production just doesn't jive well with me. In the same way, supporting a local business doesn't win out over homemade food for me. But I think I'll hold off on making the corn tortillas and just be happy with the flour ones that ARE from locally grown flour!

One thing I love about this challenge (that Emily pointed out already) is that I'm forced to stop and become more aware of my food. Despite what you might think, I wouldn't normally get this introspective about my food at 5pm on a Wednesday night. Thanks to the local challenge, I'm sitting at this computer, thinking about where my food comes from and trying to figure out how I'm going to prepare those garden snap peas tonight.

Em's Zen Garden

The time and energy this challenge takes is crazy. I've been doing... well, not so hot. I'd guess that I'm averaging about 50%. The one thing that is going well is that my garden is coming along splendidly. My lettuce looks... well, pretty much just like Jess's lettuce. I was harvesting a bunch yesterday and a couple things really struck me. First, I saw a tick and got really freaked out and I had to take some deep breaths. Then I saw a little tiny worm in among the harvest and lost my appetite. Suddenly, the clouds parted and all those Michael Pollan books I've read clicked into place. Food doesn't spontaneously generate in those big UNFI trucks. Food comes from dirt. Food was once part of a habitat, and in some places (like my garden) food still is habitat. Just ask my cat, she hangs out in the broccoli.
So my point today is that even though I'm not meeting my percentage goals for this challenge (yet), I have managed to make some progress on that other goal: awareness.
PS: I have tiny tiny tomatoes.