GroovyGreen.com – Start Today :: Save Tomorrow

How did you spend your summer? I spent mine in transformation. A transformation from an uninformed consumer of food products into an informed consumer of food. At the beginning of the summer one of our newest Groovy Green contributers, Liz Deane , launched an initiative on her website called “One Local Summer” challenging her readers to cook one fully local meal each week for 12 weeks. I decided to accept her challenge as a way to challenge myself to grow in my efforts to eat a more local diet. Originally the purpose of my participation was to buy food that hadn’t been shipped 1500 miles (on average) to my store and to keep my food dollars in the community. As the summer progressed it became about a lot more than saving money or just keeping my money local. It became about food. Real food.

I started buying all of our produce at farmer’s markets, found the most real milk I could find, started buying local, free range chicken eggs and bought a quarter of a locally raised grass fed cow for our beef products. I started buying free range chickens and locally raised pastured pork when we wanted those meat products. I started to make gravies and soups and sauces from their basic components instead of relying on spice packets or easy to use starter pouches. I started to buy extra produce and sock it away for the winter and even did a little canning. (I doubt I will have enough, but it’s a start) I decided to grow more of my own food. I’ve been to the orchard to pick apples. I had, and still have, an insatiable thirst to get as close to my food as I can. This summer every time I ate something it felt like I was tasting it for the first time. I discovered zucchini with flavor and a wonderful taste, and I hunted like a bloodhound for any recipe I could find to use it. I discovered that arugula and spinach taste great in a frittata, and as a lettuce replacement in sandwiches. And that a local egg has so much flavor I don’t have to smother it with cheese to eat it. (The color of these eggs is amazing too) I figured out that waiting to eat apples until they are in season make them SOOOO good, and after you eat them you’ll make multiple trips to the orchard to buy them. Why would I buy shiny waxed apples at the store from New Zealand when I can buy apples from a local farmer who clearly loves apples?

As the summer progressed I noticed some things with my body too. I noticed that I seemed to feel a lot more “peppy”. Constant exhaustion is just part of the game when you have small children, but I noticed as the summer became longer that I felt less tired, even though my days weren’t becoming shorter. I seemed to feel better about myself, and I definitely noticed that I didn’t have cravings for foods like I had before. The migraine headaches I had been experiencing went away and I went off the daily medication. I noticed a drop in my blood pressure and a small drop in my weight, although my cholesterol figures increased slightly. (The numbers are always on the high side anyway.) Could this be a result of reducing the processing of my foods and eating foods that were more whole? Perhaps it was because of the labor spent in the yard building up garden space? Could it be the serious increase in the amount of vegetables I was eating? Could it be the benefits of eating meat products that were raised humanely? Who knows? I just know that I want to keep that feeling around me.

I’ve had to learn a lot this summer and it’s been a fairly steep learning curve. I’m luckier than most, I guess, as I’m around older experienced cooks who can give me advice about how to do things “the old way”. I have older, experienced people around me that I can ask preservation questions to. People who will answer my questions about gardening or recipes. People who did or still do things that way so they know what they are doing. (Not to mention all the nice people online who help me out.) And to eat in season I’ve had to experiment with foods that I just didn’t eat in the past. While I may not like them all, I have started to eat some that I didn’t before, at least in a few different ways. This has exposed me to new recipes and different flavors than I had used before, and made cooking more fun. Cooking this summer was more about experimentation to see how things taste together rather than just opening a can, heating it up and serving it. It became a game to see how nice and great tasting I could make things. And it was a ton of fun.

Eating local foods has changed the way I view food. When I see a Butternut Squash now I see it for its wholesomeness, and taste, and the story behind it. I see that squash and I think about all the great ways I could cook that for my family. I see that squash and see the 3 months of work that the farmer (and Mother Nature) put into making this squash for me to consume. I see the potential peril this squash was able to survive from rabbits and deer and other critters that could have eaten it. But they didn’t. That squash lived its life so that I could eat it. When you shop at a farmer’s market it changes the way to view food, and your view of the farmer’s who grow it. When you shop at a farmer’s market you can look the farmer in the eye and laugh with them at a corny joke, or the absurdity of people complaining about the cost of the tomatoes at the market while drinking a bottle of water or cup of coffee from the coffeehouse. Throughout history food has been an integral part of culture, and shopping for local products brings back that interaction with the seller that you don’t get when you’re shopping at the Mega Mart.

I hope someday I won’t be such a unique foodie. I hope someday I’ll be in the majority. The majority of people who take pride in cooking a good chicken stock for their family. The majority of people who think that providing food that is delicious, wholesome and nutritious is one of the most important things that parents can do for their children. People who feel like informing their kids about food is one of the biggest jobs a parent can do. People that know that you can cook a quick 30 minute meal with local fresh ingredients without having to buy a prepackaged bag of frozen crap from the store. People who understand that food is about taste and stories and nutrition, and not about the deal you got when you bought that chicken breast for $.49 a pound. When the spring comes next year will you be one of us, someone who wants to experience real food and live through food and its history? Will you be one of us and start a garden so you can grow your own food and come in contact with nature and live and breath in one with nature? Will you feel nature through your hunger? Will you be one of us who shops at the farmer’s market and keeps their food dollars in the community? I know that I, for one, will not go back to buying food at the supermarket. After everything that I’ve experienced and learned why would I go back?

I’m sure this winter will be a struggle as I try to eat as local as possible, but also make sure that I’m providing enough food and nutrition for my family. But I think I should have this struggle now rather than in the future, when it’s forced upon me. When the growing season approaches next year I’ll be better prepared to plant food that I can store, buy food that I can store, and have the tools ready to preserve as much of the fruitful harvest as I can. Then I’ll really be on my way to eating locally and eating the way nature intended us to eat. You just wait. Next year, I’ll really be living.

For more information on eating locally, check out these sites!

One Local Summer
Local Harvest
Real Milk
Eat Wild
Eat Local Challenge