RSS Feed (xml)One Local Summer
This is my third year participating in One Local Summer, a group of bloggers that make it their goal to make a 100% local meal each week in the summer and then showcase their creations via their blogs.
To be fair, I try to make local foods a guest at our table frequently and try to include local ingredients whenever possible. In the summer, it is easy as there is an abundance of fresh veggies and fruits in Upstate NY; winters are harder unless you really feel you can eat squash, beets and applesauce at every meal. As much as I consider myself a locavore (emphasis on the loca), I still crave an avocado or twelve. And rice....oh, I love rice.
Eating local has a number of benefits. It has less of a carbon footprint. The spinach in tonight's meal did not travel here from Chile (no offense, Chile, I've visited and I LOVVVE your country); instead, it traveled about 6 miles. Eating local also keeps a local farm in business and keep money here in my community. The CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm from which I buy also employs people who live in my community. Local food is often safer. If there is some E. coli (unfortunately) in that head of lettuce I buy, it's likely only my family that will get sick. However, if one head of commercial lettuce is contaminated with E. coli, the consequences are greater. That head of lettuce is shipped to an industrial processor and washed with hundreds of other heads (think E. coli soup)...then those heads are chopped up and packaged in 1000 bags of 'salad mix' and distributed all over the country. In Scenario One, my family got sick; in Scenario Two, hundreds are at risk.
And really, the REAL reason we eat local: Flavor. You can't beat it.
So tonight's menu is:
- All Beef hot dogs from High Point Farms
- Sabol's potatoes smashed up and cooked with garlic and parsley from my garden and a few splashes of balsamic vinegar
What's on YOUR plate this week?
4 comments:
That is one swoonable spinach salad. I may have to try it!
We use herbs from our garden all the time (rosemary, thyme, oregano, mint) and we have strawberries, although the birds usually get to them before we do. I had th one edible strawberry from our garden this year and it was so much better than the ones shipped from Spain.
We were trying to hit up the weekly farmers market for our veggies, but with my one handedness and Hans working on his thesis and trying to keep up on chores I can't do, we're doing weekly Aldi runs instead.
Well, Saturday nite we ate locally at a Mexican place with good food and sucko service ... on Sunday I ate locally at a new place called Recipe .. oh my it was good. I like this local stuff. ;-D
I made quorn bolognese tonight and we have greek salad planned as well as spinach and stilton risotto planned. Yum.
I'm finally starting to eat SUPER-locally, as in my backyard. I'm currently harvesting squash, some tomatoes, lettuce, arugula, herbs. Give me another month and I'll have eggplant, peppers, corn, melons, basil, tomatoes from all 10(!) of my tomato plants...I can't wait!
Post a Comment