Local Food Status Report

After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle last winter, I was motivated to set a New Years' resolution to try and eat more local, seasonal, and organic foods. We've taken the approach of making small changes one at a time - no massive, sweeping changes or moratoriums on certain foods. We want this to be a slow, manageable change that sticks, not a single year experiment that we can't wait to bail out of come December. Sooooo... how are we doing?

What's working:
Buying in Season. We didn't totally write off avocado, but we ate lots more root veggies in the winter and waited for the summer farmers markets to purchase any peaches or tree fruit. Instead, I bought canned fruit this winter. Side bonuses: new recipes to try, most canned pears/peaches come from Washington, my picky toddler LOVES canned peaches.

Local, free-range eggs! I have an past co-worker that started a little farm 20 minutes outside Bend a few years ago. I used to haphazardly buy eggs from Jim at the office, but we made our subscription official in the spring and started getting a dozen dropped at our door every other week. Side bonuses: beautiful colored eggs (not a white one in the bunch), healthier eggs (tests show free range eggs have lower bad cholesterol and higher good stuff), and a great little farm for our play group to visit this summer!

Produce Box. We signed up for a CSA share through Big Star Farm (same as the eggs). In the spirit of little steps, we're splitting the share (every other week) with a friend. It's much more manageable to tackle a bag full of unusual produce (Kohlrabi anyone?) for a week and then get to return to our old favorite recipes the next. We started the spring will bags full of spinach and right now I have a fridge full of purple carrots and snow peas and more squash than anyone should probably consume. At least it inspires creativity - zuccini muffins, chocolate zuccini cake, yellow squash pasta salad...

Container Garden. I posted previously about our container garden. Three little pots of tomatoes and herbs are keeping me happy, money in our pocket, and all the caprese salad on my plate I want. Is there anything better than tomatoes and basil? Okay, maybe chocolate.

Farmer's Market. We have one just a 5 minute drive from our house, so Owen and I hit that on Friday afternoons when we need to stock up on fruits. It certainly feels like summer to sit on the front porch eating blueberries...

What's not working:
Setting some sort of mileage limit for our food. It was never our goal to "only eat food grown within a 100 mile radius" like the locovore (isn't that a great word?) movement promotes. Oregon may have a wonderful bounty, but the high dessert on this side of the mountains would leave us eating sagebrush all winter! I'm reading labels to try and eat more Oregon-Washington-California if possible, but we're not giving up our local brands anytime soon.

Picky Toddler. Our local food emphasis certainly takes a back seat to "whatever the kid will eat today." I finally found an Annie's Organic Mac n' Cheese flavor that he likes, but we're still buying Kraft Easy Mac, Pirate's Booty, and Cheese-its in the bulk box. (Okay, okay, we'd be buying bulk cheese-its regardless of Owen's eating habits, and I ate my fair share of Easy Mac last spring as well.)

Hit and Miss Cookbooks. I bought Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors" but haven't been overly impressed. I like that the book is supposed to be organized by seasons, but they don't seem to be in any logical order. We also tend to eat one pot meals, and her book has more salads and sides. At least we're getting to test lots of recipes (thank you world wide web!) and adding to our repertoire for the future.

Side effects:
Backlash. As the summer moves on and our produce box keeps filling our fridge and counter with beautiful produce, I'm finding that I am craving junky, processed food. Granted, the cravings could be pregnancy related, but we had a pretty funny meal last week of tomato-cucumber-basil salad served alongside chicken nuggets and tater tots.

Wonderful Meals. I was so excited by a recent meal that consisted of grilled chicken in herb marinade, lemony potato salad, and caprese salad. Every bit of herb and produce (minus a lemon) came from our CSA or the pots on our porch. Last Sunday's meal was garlic-lime flank steak (okay...Costco), grilled turnips and potatoes, and Mediterranean tomato salad. The picture doesn't do it justice, so you'll have to trust me that it was yummy.


Protein Shift. We've been fairly intentional about eating at least one meatless, egg-based dinner on the weeks we get our eggs. I also recently discovered that we're not powering through the bag of Costco chicken like we used to. I can't tell if it's a side-effect of summer and having tons of veggies that must be consumed, but time will tell.

What's next:
Local Meats?? This is a big wild card for us. I'd like to make the shift from frozen Costco chicken to an organic source, but I don't know if I can give up the convenience (and the price). Maybe that will be our next small step... right after I swing by Arby's for some deep fried chicken bites.

A Tomato Story

We are one of the zillion families trying to grow some of our own food this year. But with a dog that destroys our backyard, the tough Central Oregon climate, and a baby in the belly, we decided to start small. My Mother's Day gift was the supplies for a small tomato and herb garden on the front porch. It started with meager beginnings...

But with sporadic watering (with my pint-sized helper), blazing sun, and the addition of some filler flowers, things started to take shape.

It's been a challenge to keep Owen from eating the green tomatoes, but he now points to them and says, "Not yet. No red tomato." But last week, we got our glimpse of red...okay, the tomatoes are still orange, but close enough.

My pint-sized helper got to be the first taster. Considering his rejection of most foods this days, I had no idea how it would go over, but it turns out this kid LOVES home grown tomatoes... who doesn't?

Success!We also started getting tomatoes in our weekly produce box, and Owen ate them faster than I could slice them in half. I told Jim and Jessi that my non-eater loved their tomatoes and they promised extras in our box this week. =)

So far, we've only been tasting the cherry tomatoes (and all the basil, parsley, sage, and cilantro we need), but I've got my eye on this growing Early Girl to put in BLTs or caprese salad... Yum!

Happy Eating!

Resolutions 2009

As we are now three full weeks into the new year, I thought it only proper to post my resolutions for the new year. I think the statistics are that most people who resolve to go to the gym regularly have already bailed on their resolutions by now. I figure it's not much of a resolution if it hasn't held for at least 3 weeks, so why reveal the failures? So, here are the things I'm working on this year:

1. Eat more local/seasonal foods - this is my big one. Inspired by reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," I am learning what veggies and produce are in season at what times and finding recipes to work within those constraints. No more eating Chilean strawberries in December. We'll wait and gorge ourselves on Oregon berries all summer long. I'm also using more canned fruits this winter, since a lot of the peaches and applesauce comes from Eastern Washington. I'm looking into either signing us up for a CSA with a local farm this summer or trying to get one of the community garden plots. Right now we're eating a lot of winter squash, carrots, parsnip, and sweet potato. I consider this a resolution in progress - a challenge to myself to keep learning and making small changes all year long. I'll list some of the inspiring statistics at the end of this post. Small changes - big results.

2. Wash my face every night before bed. You would think my mom nagging me about this all growing up would have instilled a habit. Now that I'm 30, it's probably time to start paying better attention to my skin.

3. Have more patience between 5 and 6 PM. Like many people, this is the frustration hour at our house and ususally one Owen and I spend at home alone. He's tired from a long day at school, hungry for dinner, and wanting attention. I'm no better. So, I'm resolving to replace my whining, pleading, and irritated sighs with a patient voice and lower blood pressure for JUST ONE HOUR. If we can to 6 o'clock smiling, it's much more plesant the rest of the evening. Thankfully, I'm already seeing a difference - at least in my mental mantra on the way to get Owen after work...patience for one hour, patience for one hour, patience for one hour.

4. Work first, blog later. This will be the hard one for me. I always save my posting for the evenings after Owen is in bed, but I have developed a terrible habit of reading through blogs when I should be sitting down and getting work done. I love reading about everyone and catching up, but then I'm annoyed when I finish reading and have nothing else to do, but, well, work! So, I'm going to save blog reading for a reward when I get my work done (or for those crazy long conference calls, but don't tell the people on the other end of the line that!). Thanks for the inspiration simplemom and to Cailean for linking to the post.

A few Local Food Statistics:
- 17% of our national energy use is for agrigulture - and 80% of the agriculture energy goes to SHIPPING the food from place to place.
- If each American ate just ONE meal per week of local, organic meats and produce, we would save 1.1 million barrels of oil each week (barrels, not gallons).
- The US exports 1.1 million tons of potatoes each year. We also import 1.4 million tons.
- Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where we get 98 percent of our chicken, are allowed to raise up to 1,152 animals in a 6x8 ft room - picture 1,000 chickens in your bathroom. We're still buying boneless skinless chicken from Costco, but I'm hoping our buget and eating habits will allow us to shift to free-range chicken by the end of the year.