Eating In Place

Whew!

2008-11-06T16:53:00.000-08:00

Well the Westside Community Farmers' Market and the Dane County Farmers’ Market finish their outside seasons this Saturday. The DCFM goes indoors and boy are we lucky we get to eat locally all year long! There is also a new market/craft show happening , the Northside Winter Farmers' Market.

We will not be writing for the WCM next year and look forward to reading a new perspective.

I don't know how much writing this blog will see. It was started as a month-long experiment in August 2007--anyone who knows us knows we could talk forever! If you are visiting for the first time, go back into the archives and read our daily posts from August 2007, our adventure in 100 mile eating.

Happy Harvest!

Monday, May 12—A chicken in every pot?

2008-05-12T21:29:00.001-07:00

Call me the master of the obvious. . .

Years ago, it used to be that chicken was special: roast chicken was fit for sunday dinner, and the promised "chicken in every pot" was a promise of affluence and comfort.

Fast forward to today. Now we appear to expect chicken ever day, and steak is what we serve to company (or see my previous post which refers to filet). We now know that beef represents a substantially greater impact than chicken does. Is it of concern that the goal posts seem to be moving? What was once special is now for every day, and what was once out of sight for most is now within the grasp of most, at least some of the time?

Hell yes, I say. No need to go into nauseating detail--the topic of what happens when China and India want to eat like we do (OK, steak will never be a hit in India!) has been covered elsewhere in more detail than I ever could. But it struck me that it's not only the "developing" world that is adjusting its standards. Ours are evolving, too.

Does that mean give up steak? Not necessarily, but choose it judiciously, and be well-informed. Know the economic and environmental context and consequences of what you do. And remember that, despite what some want you to believe, all steak is not alike. I am referring, of course, to the corn versus pasture thing (again). But even if you are a bazilloinaire who can afford to wipe your rear end with $100 bills, I think steak should be for special occasions no matter what. It's the sense that we are "entitled" to steak that has driven the market to make it ever cheaper. I don't suggest that it's bad to raise cattle for meat, and I certainly don't want beef to disappear. I wish all the success in the world to the Priskes, the Johnsons, and the Goodmans (who don't have a website for Northwood Farm). If everyone who raised beef did it to the standards these farms set, it would be way more expensive in dollars and way cheaper in karma and in environmental impact.

So if you like, enjoy a steak--pastured, of course. Cook it simply and well—quality steak cooked correctly is hard to beat, but treat it as if it is more precious than gold. In a sense, it is.

April 30—Can food be too cheap?

2008-04-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

It's a question I've been pondering ever since we watched the movie King Corn on PBS. It's a really interesting piece of work, and it defied our expectations: it is not the snarky Michael Moore treatment you might expect.

In the film there is a brief treatment of US agricultural policy, including some archival footage of Earl Butz, Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, talking in 1973 about the new direction that American farm policy was going to take. What we want, he said, was an abundance of cheap food. Looking back on it now, with what we know today, his remarks seem laughably naive, if not even a bit sinister.

The filmmakers visited Butz in the present (which was, I think, 2005), at the age of about 95. He remained proud of what he accomplished, saying that Americans feed themselves on just 16% (I think I've got the number right) of their household budget, and that's a great accomplishment because it leaves so much money free to make other things happen. Consumer spending is, after all, one of the underpinnings of economic growth.

Butz (who died earlier this year at 98) got me to thinking. Can food be too cheap? What we see from the film King Corn is that without government programs, farmers who grow commodity crops like corn lose money. They get a per-acre payment that (they hope) puts them slightly into the black. I am a person who believes that, when it comes to work life, people will basically do what you pay them to do. In this case, it pays Iowans to grow corn, as much of it as they can. Read The Omnivore's Dilemma to learn about many of the things into which the corn gets made. But there's no doubt that cheap corn is one of the cornerstones of our food supply.

So what's wrong with cheap food?

This is where it gets complicated for me. I agree that cheap food is a great thing, in principle. But I think the way you get it is just as important. The current system of payments for commodity crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) is designed to keep prices down and, at least in theory, to keep farmers in business. Of course you would expect that having a virtually unlimited supply of something cheap would lead people to find all sorts of new uses for it, and you would be right. Corn is in all kinds of things—too big a topic to go into here.

The way we go about it now creates incentive for consolidation of farms. That has the effect of driving people away from farming and in many cases out of their home towns and away from their families. It also creates incentive for agricultural practices that do not seem sustainable—a tremendous amount of chemical and mechanical input is required to keep the land in production, and all that land under tillage creates a huge amount of runoff creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. And of course the farm communities that produce a huge portion of the food we eat can't feed themselves.

While I agree in principle that cheap food would be of benefit to people, I feel like it is just not sustainable. The land can't sustain year after year of that level of production without external inputs, and we can't sustain that level of external input (it mostly takes oil, after all, to make the fertilizer and power the equipment). The towns can't sustain that level of population loss, and there are some who would argue that our health-care infrastructure can't sustain itself in the face of all the complications that arise from results of all that cheap food.

I don't know that I have an answer. How can you create a system that keeps food affordable for everyone (which requires plenty of it), but that keeps prices sufficiently high for farmers to support themselves (which requires scarcity to keep prices up)? And of course you want to do it in a way that at a minimum does not create incentive to push the land too far, and even better would be to create incentives to actually improve it. And do we need to institute further scrutiny of some of the byproducts of cheap food? In my mind, I can sketch out the vaguest of outlines of what such a system might look like, but it's really a Utopian fantasy—such a policy could never be enacted in today's political climate.

Our approach is to opt out where we can. We try to avoid products that contain lots of corn-derivatives, and make as much as we can from scratch using ingredients whose origins we know. But it's not our religion, and even if it was I'm not sure there's much you can do. We recently discovered that there is High Fructose Corn Syrup in every single variety of pickles at our grocery store. Pickles! Our goal is not to boycott those evil farmers in Iowa and teach them a lesson. It is to demonstrate that there is a market for you if you choose to do it a different way. There is a huge gap at the grocery store: on one end you have classic "industrial" food, full of the products of the commodity agriculture economy, including but not limited to the corn syrup mentioned above. At the other end is the stuff that is fully organic, made with things that sound like what you might use at home, like sugar. Of course, products that contain all organic ingredients are far more expensive. So where is the middle ground? Where are the products for people like me, who don't need to go full-on organic, but don't want corn syrup and genetically modified organisms? At present, it seems that our food life, like our political life, is dominated by the extremes. Let's hope for some sane, sustainable options in the near future.

—SCL

First Wednesday Market

2008-04-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

It is amazing that the Dane County Farmers’ Market happens twice a week. Now, the Wednesday market is MUCH smaller but it is still a vibrant part of the downtown scene. We browsed today, buying cheese curds and a cookie. Evie and I commented that the cheese curds were especially delicious, and then we realized maybe that was because we hadn't had any since market was outside in November. I guess to us, even cheese curds have their season!

There were lots of greens including yummy watercress, jerusalem artichokes, tomatoes, bedding plants, tomatoes, baked goods, chicken, sausage--the list goes on and on. I absolutely loved listening to people as they walked the market. I overheard one woman explaining to a co-worker that she was planning to join a CSA because "it is way easier than gardening and it just seems like the right thing to do, ya' know?" Other people greeted vendors like old friends and we saw daycare and school groups being led through the market like it was a fascinating wonderland (which it is).

A great chef whose food you'll never eat

2008-04-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

Jack Kaestner is the chef at the Oconomowoc Lake club just outside Milwaukee. He's been there for many years (I think he said 17). It's a private club, so you will probably not get to eat there, which is too bad. Chef Jack is a CIA (Culinary Institute of America, not the other one!) graduate, and a huge supporter of local food in the area. He has been involved in many organizations and initiatives to promote local eating, including as a founding member of the SE Wisconsin Slow Food chapter (or Convivium, as they prefer it). I have heard him speak a number of times on how farmers and chefs can work together for mutual benefit. In a profession that is somewhat famous for hotheads, he is a decidedly cool one (of course I've never worked in his kitchen, but I did see his whole staff smiling).

I am one of the lucky ones, because I got to enjoy one of his meals. No, I did not join the club. In observance of Earth Day, Jack and his crew put together a special dinner focusing on local ingredients. The members had to buy tickets, and all 75 seats sold out. I got to go as a representative of Death's Door Spirits, so I got to introduce the members to those great products as well as to meet some other producers. It was a good group, and a great menu, including spinach salad, a duet of pastured beef and turkey with mashed potatoes, and ice cream sundaes and a selection of cookies. I also got to try rabbit for the first time, in a paté no less. My impression was more about paté than rabbit (think cold meatloaf), but I did enjoy it. We had a chance to mingle with the diners before hand, then each producer gave a spiel about their products and approach, after which the members got to ask questions. A big focus was on what is meant by free range, most particularly with respect to poultry. I feel that the issues of concern closely mirror what we have heard in speaking to other groups about local food. And of course there is nothing like having a connection with the producer so that you can find out if the farming practices are in accord with your values.

One of Jack's points as a chef in a fine-dining restaurant is that you have to think about the sustainability of what you are doing. Or as he says, you have to shift from thinking about filet mignon to thinking about pot roast. For example, think of a typical beef steer: it weighs maybe 1,000 pounds. Think you like filet mignon? How about if I told you that there is only 4-6 pounds of filet on that 1/2 ton animal? Yes, that's 1/2 of 1% of the live weight. And you know how you see hanger steak on all the trendy menus just now? Well, there's only one (one!) hanger steak on each steer. Now as to pot roast, I have tasted Jack's, and I am a believer. You will never find a piece of filet that is more tender, and as a bonus, you actually get some flavor (which is my main complaint with filet), or in Jack's case, a ton of flavor.

I have to give a lot of credit to Jack for his leadership on these issues, and frankly, a lot of credit to the members of his club for giving him the freedom to serve pot roast at their daughters' fancy wedding receptions!

Jack has an informative web site, and has a great calendar that provides a month-by-month guide to what is in season at any point in the year. A great resource for planning ahead (perhaps for your own local eating experiment?).

—Scott

Can Livestock Be Raised in the City?

2008-04-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

In 2004 legislation was passed to allow citizens of Madison to keep up to 4 domestic fowl in their yards. All must be female, and no butchering allowed on the property. The city of Seattle now allows goats to be kept in people's backyards. With the price of animal protein going through the roof, is raising animals in the city one way to counteract skyrocketing prices? What kind of profit can be made by from agriculture on a small parcel of land? These and other interesting questions are discussed in MetroFarm Online Magazine and Food Chain Radio. Michael Olson is anAgriculturalist, Journalist, Radio Show Producer and Host, Author, Farmer and Business Owner. Whether you agree or disagree, his publications and forums provide food for thought. Check it out!

The Environmental Impact of Local Eating

2008-04-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day!

We spent the afternoon with an amazing group of people, the Board and members of the Welty Environmental Center. We were invited to speak at their annual meeting about our 100 mile diet experience. We were blown away by all this group does. This is only their 8th year of existence and the slate of programs they offer is outstanding and the commitment and vigor of the group is a wonder to behold. Their stated mission is:

"To provide leadership in environmental and ecological education to students, teachers and individuals of all ages so that the residents of this region can make informed decisions leading to the respect for and the enjoyment, preservation and sustainable use of our natural resources."

If it wasn't so far away I think we would be there all the time!

Our presentation was billed as "Local Eating as an Environmentally Friendly Choice." We got to tell our usual story, we also got to add in a bit of new research regrading the usefulness of the concept of "food miles." Food miles have become a short-hand way of discussing and categorizing food, in some ways fewer food miles have come to equal "better food." That labeling is not entirely accurate now does it take into consideration all aspects of food production.

A new study, Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States published last week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology states that it is actually the production of food that is the most environmentally damaging. The study systematically compares the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with food production against long-distance distribution, aka “food-miles.” The conclusion is that of GHG emissions associated with food, 83% of emissions come from production as opposed to only 4% from transportation from production to retailer. The study suggests that changing what we eat (moving to a diet less reliant on red meat and dairy and concentrating on vegetables, and poultry) would lower a household's food-related climate footprint more than buying local.

In our opinion, individual farming practices complicate matters even further. Locally-raised, pastured beef has a different environmental impact that factory-raised beef from far away. Asking questions and deciding what is most important to you is what matters. Buying local food is not just about GHG emissions. Issues of land use, soil sustainability, local economics, community, taste etc. all play a role. The more information we have about what impact our food choices have, the better choices we can make.

Opening Day 2008

2008-04-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

Yum! What a glorious day! It started out cloudy and by 10:00 am the sun was shining. Due to time constraints we only made it to one market today, the Westside Community Market was full of smiling people. Since we are writing the weekly updates for this market we stopped to talk at every booth, introducing ourselves and getting more of each vendor's story. We are so very lucky to live in a place where people are so passionate about their food. There were bedding plants, hanging baskets, over-wintered vegetables that looked spectacular, meat, eggs and cheese (including a Muenster from Edelweiss Creamery that was so good we all went weak in the knees). There were prepared items like the Italian biscotti and pizzeles from one vendor and the awesome salsas and preserves from Tomato Mountain, including a Sun Gold Tomato preserve that was like summer in a jar!

There were onions, chicken, maple syrup and bakery items. It was a rough winter for hoophouse crops, Primrose Community Farm has spinach and they sold out by 9:00! Market days are a joy!

GO BUY LOCAL FOOD! And Other News

2008-04-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

First things first. Tomorrow is opening day for the Westside Community Market (7 am) and the first outdoor market for the Dane County Farmers’ Market (6 am), Wednesday markets for DCFM start 4/23, 8:30 am. Go meet the farmers from your community and buy and eat their food!

Both markets have weekly newsletters available by email or at their websites to get a glimpse of what will be available . . . most of you probably already know that we write the Weekly Update for the Westside Market.

Also in the news . . .

Do you know about the Dane County Food Council? I didn't! Following is their Mission Statement:

The Dane County Food Council explores issues and develops recommendations to create an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable local food system for the Dane County region.

I am excited to read and learn more!

Read about more Wisconsinites taking up the cause of local food in the Door County 100-mile challenge.

There is a trend of 20-somethings turning to farming as a way of life. It is another facet of the local foods revolution.

Now, in case the title of this post somehow slipped past you, go to a Farmers' Market this weekend and taste spring. For more info on other local markets and their start dates click here. As of May, there is a market happening somwhere, every day of the week--amazing.

King Corn

2008-04-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

KING CORN will be shown on WI Public Television at 9:30 pm on Friday, April 18th.

Two friends grow an acre of corn to see what drives our fast-food nation. Go along for the ride as they follow the grain from seed to table.

This is important viewing people! Set your recorders and watch it with your family and neighbors!

Rising Prices Good for Local Food

2008-04-17T03:37:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times, April 2, 2008:

WHILE grocery shoppers agonize over paying 25 percent more for eggs and 17 percent more for milk, Michael Pollan, the author and de facto leader of the food intellectuals, happily dreams of small, expensive bottles of Coca-Cola.

Along with some other critics of the American way of eating, he likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.

And if American staples like soda, fast-food hamburgers and frozen dinners don’t seem like such a bargain anymore, the American eating public might turn its attention to ingredients like local fruits and vegetables, and milk and meat from animals that eat grass. It turns out that those foods, already favorites of the critics of industrial food, have also dodged recent price increases.

Logic would dictate that arguing against cheap food would be the wrong move when the Consumer Price Index puts food costs at about 4.5 percent more this year than last. But for locavores, small growers, activist chefs and others, higher grocery bills might be just the thing to bring about the change they desire. read more . . .

Our Upcoming Weekend

2008-04-16T05:40:00.001-07:00

We hope to see many of you on Saturday (April 19) for the opening of the Westside Community Market. On Sunday we will be heading to the Welty Environmental Center in Beloit to speak about local eating as an environmentally responsible choice.

Finally, this weekend marks the official opening of the Madison Area Community Gardens. We have a half-plot this year and there will be many blog posts to come about our foibles, and hopefully a few triumphs, with our garden!

Fast Food

2008-04-16T05:13:00.000-07:00

We have been remiss in blogging what we are eating, there is so much going on and so much to talk about! One of our stand-by fast food dishes is Okonomiyaki--which translates from Japanese roughly as "things you like--fried!" Can't beat that! There is no recipe and it is often billed as a cross between pizza and a pancake--doesn't sound good but it is! Mix eggs, flour and water to make a batter like a thin pancake. Add strips of cabbage (keeps everything together) and then add what you like. We usually take those bits of veggies at the bottom of fridge, chop 'em up and add them. The result is a yummy, slightly crunchy, eggy pancake. We serve it with rice and a soy/ginger/garlic sauce. Last night's ingredients included green beans, carrots, onions, cabbage, peas and of course, eggs from our chickens.

Try this some night when you are pressed for time--YUMMY!

Eating Local is About the People . . . All the People

2008-04-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

On more than one occasion we have heard the complaint that eating locally is only for the wealthy. People claim that locavores are elitist, striving to segregate themselves from "the average eater" by choosing to shop directly from the source of production.

We completely disagree.

A recent article in the Albany Times Union says it beautifully (please click the link for the full text)

It's about transforming and democratizing the food system. It's about increasing access to high-quality, nutrient-rich food and making it available and affordable to all people.

It's about establishing whole food (not Whole Foods) markets in poor inner-city neighborhoods plagued by "food deserts."

It's about keeping more farmers on the land by paying them the real cost of production and about consumers having a stake in the stewardship of productive land. It's about sustainability.

Buying locally, whether it be food or other products is about thinking long-term. Support your community and it will support you.

Foraging

2008-04-13T16:09:00.000-07:00

There is a place, less than a mile from our near-Isthmus home, where we find Morels. One year we found over 20 gorgeous specimens and we feasted (well, my MIL and I did, Scott wasn't too keen and Evie didn't like the sherry we added to round #1). Each year, as we pass by the spot at this time of year, Evie asks, "I wonder if there are Morels yet?" Sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't. I LOVE the idea of foraging for our food. So do a lot of other people it would seem!

If you have a lot of time to kill, check out the YouTube series of EatTheWeeds's Videos. I would recommend starting with video 3, that's when he gets down to the nitty gritty.

Here in WI we are lucky to have Sam Thayer. His website, Forager's Harvest is a treasure trove of information and he has weekend foraging expeditions!

If you want to forage close to home, especially here in WI, may I recommend garlic mustard? On May 18 you can participate in the Weed Feed. An opportunity to pull invasive species and then cook 'em up and scarf 'em down. Evie loves to eat the new leaves raw, I love a good garlic-mustard pesto. Peter Robertson of RP's Pasta will be cooking a number of dishes and piles of the weed will be available for people to take home and use themselves.

Use It Up!

2008-04-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

On April 19th the first couple Farmers Markets in our area open for business. You can bet you'll get a full report here, in the meantime we are thinking about using up what we have preserved from the last growing season.

We still have GOBS of applesauce. There may be a few apples around that were stored over the winter but we prefer to eat our sauce slowly, hopefully running out only in late August or so, when the new crop comes in.

Last year I froze a lot of berry sauces (strawberry and raspberry). Turns out I didn't freeze nearly enough raspberry (ran out in November) and too much strawberry! The strawberry sauce (just strawberries whirred up in the food processor) is endlessly versatile. I have been using it in scones and smoothies, as a base for salad dressing over spinach and eating it with a spoon with dollops of sour cream.

We will finish out last bag of frozen corn tonight (check back tomorrow for pictures of our Mexican feast), but we will have lots of peppers (dried and frozen). We will use them up by the time the new ones are ready.

We have tomato sauce left and about a quart of dried tomatoes. The dried will be gone within he month I suspect but we will stretch the sauce until July.

In the fall I always want to preserve mountains of food to sustain us through the winter. I usually get a fair amount put away but not enough to keep us totally local. Inevitably I preserve too much of a few things and we scramble to eat it all before the new crop comes in. Smoothies for fruit, soup for veggies. The new crops are on their way--celebrate!

The Joy of Pastured Eggs

2008-04-08T15:08:00.000-07:00

Another reason we choose to eat locally grown food is because we can ask about HOW it is grown and choose to support farmers who are thinking sustainably about their land, products and animals.

Even before we had our own chickens we sought out pastured eggs. I want to buy eggs from farmers who let their chickens roam free, able to eat the delicious worms and weeds and run around in the wind, protected from predators and loved by their keepers. Now that we have our own clucky darlings I can't imagine raising chickens any other way. Turns out my instincts about how chickens are happiest is also apparent in the eggs they lay. In March 2007, Mother Earth News put out the call, looking for eggs to test and info about how the chickens were raised. The results were published in October 2007 speak for themselves. I highly recommend you go and read everything in the Mother but for those of you who just want the highlights, here they are:

From Mother Earth News "Our testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene"

The picture above is a recent egg from our chickens--it is a joy!

Something From the Oven

2008-04-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Last summer we built a mud oven in our backyard. Yesterday was baking day. Here is what we baked:

Photo #1 The oven last summer
Photo #2 3 Ciabatta loaves, 4 sourdough loaves
Photo# 3 2 loaves potato buttermilk, 2 loaves whole wheat
Photo #4 Focaccia (this was dinner-YUMMY!)

We also baked a quick bread and a Boston Cream Pie inside. The outdoor oven is still warm this morning and would be good for making yogurt or drying herbs or fruit. Later in the season the oven will get used more and more.

Chickens!

2008-04-01T10:30:00.001-07:00

How could I have forgotten our new feathered friends!?! Last November we adopted two chickens, Ricka (Rhode Island Red) and Flicka (Redstar). You can see them in the fabulous film Mad City Chickens this Thursday in the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival.

They are a wonderful addition to our family and have been laying two gorgeous eggs a day since just after Christmas. They are affectionate and fun to watch, they efficiently process our compost into food for us and are a constant and tangible reminder that we really do care about knowing where our food comes from--in this case, our own backyard!

Sprouts

2008-03-31T03:46:00.000-07:00

For dinner tonight we had our made-up version of chicken schwarma (ground chicken with onions, cumin, garlic, pepper, coriander), homemade pita bread, yogurt sauce (thank you Sugar River Dairy), cucumbers, peas and sprouts. It was all good, somewhat pale but seemed "spring-like."

What I really wanted to highlight was the sprouts. These were mung bean sprouts given to us by friends last week. As with most sprouts you soak them overnight then drain the water, rinse them every 12 hours or so and watch in astonishment as they swell and , well, SPROUT right before your very eyes. They taste like Spring! Sweet, mild, green--they are good in sandwiches, dressed with a vinaigrette or eaten by the handful. Beans sprout quickly and easily as do many grains. You can also plant the seeds in some shallow soil in a sunny window and then just snip off delicious bits of green when the plants are only a few inches high.

100 FOOT diet

2008-03-27T16:25:00.001-07:00

Think we went a little far afield (pun intended) during our experiment last August? Check out the amazing work of the Dervaes Family in Pasadena, California and their 100 Foot Diet . Anyone want to try?

Blurry

2008-03-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

I am going to blame the blurriness of this photo on the tears that came to my eyes while cutting these amazing potatoes. Never mind the fact that the camera wasn't tearing up . . . I was just struck by the beauty of color and form--oh were they good to eat!

Still eating locally

2008-03-26T06:16:00.001-07:00

So what does one eat at the tail end of winter before the bounty of the growing season is here again? Well, last night we ate quite well! (Remember we are not strict 100-milers anymore, just careful local eaters).

We had spinach salad thanks to Snug Haven Farm. We took bacon from Pecatonica Valley Farm (thank you wonderful Carr family) and sauteed it until crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan and fry finely diced onions or shallots. When the aromatics are crispy, toss in some balsamic vinegar and reduce it, pour it hot over the spinach--yowza that is good!

We also had homemade bread with canned tomatoes and Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, (the little fresh mozzerella balls).

To round out the meal we sauteed leftover ravioli from RP's Pastas and topped with a bit of rosemary salt from Renaissance Farm.

Yummy!

We're baaaaaack!

2008-03-25T06:23:00.001-07:00

Happy Spring everyone! Never mind that we got 8 inches of snow the day after the equinox, the robins and juncos are back and mailboxes everywhere are being flooded with seed catalogs. In a desperate attempt to assure ourselves that things would indeed grow again after this very loooooong winter in WI, we grew some wheatgrass on our kitchen counter. The mesmerizing sprouts has us all checking the progress of growth hourly. Our final crop was devoured by our chickens and we started another batch!

We have been blessed, over the winter, with a variety of opportunities to talk about our family and local food. Scott spoke at the North American Farmers' Direct Marketing Association conference in February about the "anatomy" of a Farmers' Market customer, we have spoken as a family at a couple different venues and most excitingly we will be writing the weekly update for the Westside Community Market this year. I am excited to get to know some of the vendors we haven't bought from in the past. I am excited to meet consumers and hear how the market fits in with their lives. I am excited to promote the market as a place of food procurement and also as a community.

Want a little inspiration? Check out the writings and links of folks who participated in the Dark Days of Winter Eat Local Challenge.

Bounty

2007-12-05T03:59:00.000-08:00

There is still so much available at the Dane County Farmers' Market. The market is at Monona Terrace until Christmas and then moves to the Senior Center on Mifflin. Go get your spinach fix!

In the news . . .

2007-11-28T10:00:00.001-08:00

We were featured in a local news story last night, you can watch the whole thing here.

We haven't kept up the blog much, too busy eating! Maybe some pictures of the Dane County Winter Farmers' Market this weekend. Another Winter Market is the Northside Farmers Market.

How were your local Thanksgiving feasts?

Local eating goes super-mainstream

2007-10-16T01:11:00.000-07:00

Here's the proof:

Yup, that's the cover story on an airline in-flight magazine (Midwest Airlines, to be specific). It's an interesting article centered mostly around a cool restaurant called Local Burger. Next time we go to visit family in Kansas, we'll be sure to stop in.

Also check out the article.

Preserving the Bounty

2007-10-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful time talking with people at the Westside Community Farmers' Market on Saturday, thank you to all of you who stopped by to chat! For those of you who couldn't make it, following is some info on the gadgets and gizmos we use and what we preserve.

First is the best book I know of for info on home preservation, Putting Food By. This book can tell you how to freeze cherries, dry apples and can shrimp--not that I would ever, ever do the latter!

Freezing

We freeze tomato sauce, berries (pureed into sauce), corn, chicken stock (not exactly a produce crop but made throughout the year), bread and pesto. We have a small chest freezer that we fill to capacity and we have a friend who generously lets us use the empty half of her GIANT chest freezer. The freezers run more efficiently when full so that is a win-win situation for us both. When shopping for a freezer check the Energy Star rating and think about how full you can keep it. Freezers start around $300.

Drying

We use an old American Harvest / Nesco food dehydrator, I am not sure if they make the model we have anymore but if you follow the link you will see the current offerings. I have seen them for as little at $15 on eBay. Ours has a thermostat, fan and 5 stacking, dishwasher safe trays as well as a fruit leather insert. We dry mostly berries, tomatoes and peppers. You haven't lived until you have crunched a styrofoam feeling raspberry in your teeth in February and then jumped for joy at the explosion of taste on your tongue! When looking for a dehydrator a thermostat is not essential, a fan is. Drying times vary enormously and it is hard to mess up food drying so stick some food in, check it occasionally and take it out when you think it looks and tastes right! We store our dried food in ziploc bags in the freezer. We don't want any residual moisture causing mold over the next six months. Our peppers we store on the shelf, they never seem to go moldy.

Canning

We can tomatoes and tomato products (ketchup, chutney etc.) during a tomato-heavy year, but usually we just can applesauce. We use regular old mason jars, most purchased at thrift stores. A brand-new dozen of jars and lids is around $15 depending on where you get them. Woodmans, your local hardware store, Willy St. Co-op and Farm and Fleet are all good locations to find canning supplies. We recommend a canning funnel and a jar lifter to make life easier. You can use a standard water bath canner with rack or you can use any big ol' pot that can fit you jars plus 1 inch of water. You will need to keep your jars off the bottom of the pot, we have used triangles of aluminum flashing under each jar with good success.

The "canning" part of canning is easy, whether you do water or pressure, the previously mentioned "Putting Food By" will walk you through every step. For us, it is preparing the food to be canned where we have made the most use of gadgets! After years of using a hand-cranked food mill (with good success but tired muscles) we bought the KitchenAid Food Strainer and Grinder. It has revolutionized applesauce making in this family. It attaches to the PTO on our KitchenAid stand mixer and we can pour in cooked apples (or tomatoes) and the skins and seeds come out one side and smooth, beautiful sauce comes out the other--brilliant!

Preserving food is about thinking ahead and being the ant instead of the grasshopper. Some years we are better about it than others. Preserving the bounty is part of the work of eating locally, it is also part of the fun! Let us know what you are preserving this year!

Food preservation workshop

2007-10-09T06:04:00.001-07:00

We'll be at the Westside Community Market on Saturday (Oct 13) to talk about food preservation and show some of the equipment and techniques we use. If you are curious about any of the processes (canning, freezing, and drying, mostly) or need some encouragement to get started, swing by and we will pump your self-confidence to previously unknown heights.

On the road again

2007-10-09T05:34:00.000-07:00

We're in Boston visiting Scott's mother this week. Last night we went to Oleana, which is a fabulous restaurant specializing in Eastern Mediterranean food (think Greece and Turkey). No photos: taking pictures of food in a fine dining restaurant just feels tacky.

They have an awesome farm-to-table connection: the wife is the chef and the husband is the farmer, so they grow the majority of the produce themselves and source meats locally. The press clippings we saw (posted in the bathroom!) tell the tale of having to adapt the cuisine a bit to account for the differences in growing conditions between the Mediterranean and New England. Some people might be dismayed by this kind of compromise of "authentic" cuisine, but I think it is really the very best of what eating has to offer: the flavors from all over the world are the paint and the local ingredients are the canvas. The result, in the case of Oleana, is a masterpiece. If you ever find yourself hungry and in Cambridge, give the place a try.

—SCL

This is a very cool idea. . .

2007-10-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

My mother sent me this from Massachusetts.

Wouldn't it be great if we all had the option? We can get University of Wisconsin Alumni and the Green Bay Packers. Why can't we get a license plate that supports family farms in some way?

Had a great dinner tonight (conhinita pibil, or yucatan-style pit barbeque) with yummy Willow Creek pork. Pictures are in the camera that is packed away for a trip starting tomorrow. We'll update it in a day or so.

Fall Food

2007-09-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

Jessica Weiss of Oregon, WI created the winning recipe for the Food for Thought recipe contest. We made it last night--yummy! You really need to watch the time and check them often, our next batch we will use a spicy salt. Try 'em yourself!

Kale Crisps

Kale (any kind)
Olive Oil
Salt
Cayenne (optional)

Take thick stem out of kale, tear into bite-sized pieces. Arrange in one layer on baking sheet, drizzle with oil and seasonings, mix with hands to throughly coat. 425 degree oven for 15-20 minutes until thin and crispy. Eat quickly and check your teeth for specks before going out!

There may be a run on kale next Saturday!

Local Night Out

2007-09-27T04:10:00.001-07:00

If you are in the Madison area go out to eat today at one of the following restaurants. Ask your server "what's local?" And make sure to tell them that you are there because of their commitment to local food. Enjoy!

Sardine
The Weary Traveler
CoCoLiquot
Lombardino’s
The Greenbush Bar
The Old Fashioned
Fork and Spoon Cafe
The Dardanelles
Captain Bill’s
L’Etoile
Ian’s Pizza
Bluephies
Bunky’s
The Edgewater
Harvest
Manna Cafe
Osteria Papavero
Washington Hotel Coffee Room

For more details click here!

Lettuce Confess

2007-09-26T03:56:00.000-07:00

I have been in a sour mood lately--I have been wanting salad. I could have grown my own (I did in the spring) but September is not know for being lettuce season. So, I have been eating brassicas. But, I REALLY wanted salad. So, last night we went to an ordinary grocery store and I bought lettuce--from Delaware (they grow lettuce in Delaware?) Why am I confessing this non-local transgression? Because I want people to remember that there are always choices. Maybe I didn't make a responsible one (think how many gallons of gas that lettuce has consumed), but I did choose. Eating locally, using alternative power, recycling--none of it need be an "all or nothing" undertaking. During August we heard "Oh I could never do that!" about a million times. Well, you don't have to make a strict 100 mile limit to your food, you can simply make a choice to eat as locally as works for you. Every little bit helps, in all things that will change the world. As the old saying goes, "Just because you cantaloupe doesn't mean you shouldn't get married!"

If you have trouble sleeping . . .make applesauce!

2007-09-23T03:48:00.000-07:00

I made 31 more quarts of applesauce Saturday using Paula Reds from Eplegaarden. That brings our grand total to 48 (plus one in the fridge that I didn't process because we were going to eat it). I think I am done for the year (with applesauce). I used 12 dish towels and wiped the floor approximately 1,624,312 times yesterday. I also slept better than I have in weeks--making applesauce is good therpay for whatever ails you and is a heck of a workout!

September Bounty

2007-09-23T03:44:00.000-07:00

We can't get enough Romanesco. I have been sauteeing it in butter and then cooking (covered) until tender, but not mushy, in garlic, chicken broth and salt--heavenly! From the looks of these pictures we are hungry for dairy this week! Blue Marble Micro Dairy had a sale on chocolate milk that was close to expiration date--$1! It will never even reach that date!

Amanda Cooks Martha

2007-09-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

We received a lovely email today from Amanda who was inspired, in part by our blog, to eat more locally. She also plans to teach herself to cook with the help of the The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook. It sounds like an ambitious, fun and worthwhile project, we wish her the best and urge you all to check our her blog! (Just click on her name.)

Marco. . . .Polo!

2007-09-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading a while, you'll recognize Marco Polo rules as eating local foods with "imported" seasonings. Here is what a recent meal looked like:

So what we have here is Willow Creek Farm pork chops with a really tasty glaze—maple/ketchup/soy/ginger and a semi-local ingredient, Gin from Death's Door Spirits (made from many Wisconsin ingredients, but greater than 100 miles), green beans from somebody local (don't remember who) and corn bread made with the corn ground by all the kids (and a few of the adults) who came to chat with us at the food for thought festival. We did use commercial flour, but instead of buttermilk we made it with clabbered milk (local milk soured with our homemade vinegar), bartered eggs, and everybody's favorite, bacon fat. If you are still not convinced of the merits of adding bacon fat to your diet, stop punishing yourself. You're a good person, you deserve it.

This is now a pretty typical meal for us. The overwhelming bulk of it was purchased in person from the person who grew it, and a few extras (all of which would fit into a coffee mug, I suspect) were added to give it some character. And after the way we operated in August, it almost feels as convenient as a TV dinner!

Applesauce Season

2007-09-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

I made my first 17 quarts of applesauce this morning, all Paula Reds. The kitchen is warm and sticky and the house smells like hard cider. Autumn is truly upon us now and I feel the pull to put up more and more food!

Local Night Out

2007-09-20T03:56:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, September 17th make sure you plan to eat out! The following is the press release from REAP regarding the 3rd annual Local Night Out--an evening when local restaurants showcase local food producers:

From pizza with the kids to an exquisite meal celebrating a special
occasion, treat yourself to a night of local foods at restaurants across
Dane County during REAP's third annual Local Night Out.

This year's Local Night Out launches the next phase of Buy Fresh Buy Local
Southern Wisconsin. Buy Fresh Buy Local Partners are a diverse group of
restaurants and cafes from casual to ethnic to upscale, each committed to
expanding their local purchasing from area farmers.

"We'll have great burgers made with beef from Fountain Prairie Farm for
Local Night Out," said Chef Bill Horzuesky of Bluephies. "We are excited to
introduce customers to Fountain Prairie and our other farmer partners."
Long-time supporters of the local food concept, L'Etoile is keeping things
fresh with a prix fixe tasting menu for $35 on Local Night Out. "We wanted
to do something special for Local Night Out and encourage diners to give us
a try" says Chef Tory Miller of L'Etoile.

This season's new partners will have their first opportunity to introduce
diners to the program as they serve up the freshest meals in town, all in
celebration of Wisconsin farmers. In the pilot phase, Buy Fresh Buy Local
worked with select Madison restaurants and retailers this summer to develop
their commitment to buying locally and telling stories of the farms they
work with to their customers. Developing networking tools, events and
marketing resources, the Buy Fresh Buy Local program will continue to foster
strong farmer-chef relationships this fall as the program opens up to a
broader range of establishments.

Local Night Out is an evening for Buy Fresh Buy Local Partner restaurants to
shine-really showing off what they can do with fresh local ingredients.

And it's our night to say loud and clear with our dining dollars, that we
appreciate their efforts to support local farms!

Participating Local Night Out restaurants this year are:

Sardine
The Weary Traveler
CoCoLiquot
Lombardino's
The Greenbush Bar
The Old Fashioned
Fork and Spoon Cafe
The Dardanelles
Captain Bill's
L'Etoile
Ian's Pizza
Cafe Montmartre
Bluephies
Bunky's
The Edgewater
Harvest
Manna Cafe
Osteria Papavero
Washington Hotel Coffee Room

Click here for delicious details of
what each restaurant is planning.

LET YOUR SERVERS KNOW YOU'RE THERE FOR LOCAL NIGHT OUT!
Afterwards, send us an email and let us know where you went and how it was.

Changing Seasons

2007-09-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

Wow! What an incredible day it was at the Food for Thought Festival yesterday. Scott and Evie and I were blown away by how many people came over to talk, ask questions and share their own stories. I don't think we stopped talking for 5 1/2 hours! Most people wanted to know what surprises we encountered, how we are eating now and our plans for the winter.

We said that the time it took to process food was the biggest things we noticed, along with the lack of cooking oil (not difficult, just noticeable) and the lovely surprise of peanuts. Our August diet was not much different from the way we normally eat. I have my coffee back and we are all enjoying chocolate again. Scott is using flour from North Dakota. Other than that, our eating is much the same as in August. September is such a month of bounty that we are eating well! As for winter, I am trying to preserve more than ever this year, I will be curious to see how local we will be eating in February!

Also at the Festival, Scott was interviewed for a documentary commissioned by the Animal Welfare Institute and I was interviewed by a journalism student from NYU. Evie got her face painted and ground A LOT of corn!

Our haul from market this week illustrated the changing seasons. Instead of green being the predominate color, the oranges and reds were making themselves known. Red peppers are in their full glory and the winter squashes are starting to make themselves know. We will make our first apple pies of the season this week--can't wait for that!

At the end of the day yesterday we sat down to eat as a family (at my parents' house). Family is definitely the best part of Eating In Place!

Food For Thought Festival

2007-09-15T04:17:00.000-07:00

Join us at the Food for Thought Festival today down off the capitol square. It is a staggering confluence of amazing people and ideas.

Also, check out this article from the Capital Times newspaper--great info about where to get local food!

Saturday Fun!

2007-09-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

We spent the morning at the Westside Community Farmers' Market serving free trade coffee from Barriques Market and Crossroads Coffeehouse, thanks to Cam Ramsey from Madison Sourdough Bread Company for schlepping it to the market! It was wonderful to speak to so many people who had seen our story in the various papers. Of course our friends knew all about our 100 mile month, but to know that our story struck a chord with people we DON'T know was fabulous! If you are one of those people please leave a comment with your thoughts and stories!

We purchased our groceries at market yesterday, as usual. More apple varieties are in and the corn is dwindling. Red peppers are in full force and winter squash are beginning to make their appearance.

Saturday night we had a rollicking party to thank those who got themselves thoroughly muddy to help us build our mud oven. We made six pizzas in rapid succession and enjoyed the local cheese, meats and produce that made them so delicious.

We have added coffee and chocolate and "distant" wheat back into our diets, we even bought some crackers the other day. Really though, not much has changed since August--it is a yummy and busy time of year!

Radio!

2007-09-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning (Friday 9/7) between 6 and 8 am on AM 620 WTMJ you can hear Scott in an interview he taped today talking about our month of 100 mile eating. I will post a direct link when it is up. The program is called Wisconsin's Morning News. This station is out of Milwaukee! We are happy that our story is hitting the airwaves! Tune in!

Upcoming Events

2007-09-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

We will be at the Westside Community Farmers' Market this Saturday (9/8) from 9:00-10:00 serving coffee at the info booth. Stop by and tell us your local eating adventures or surprise us with one of your discoveries.

Plan to attend the ninth annual Food for Thought Festival. There is so much going on, please follow the link and see for yourself! We will be at booth #43 talking about our local eating adventure and we will be right next to the folks from the Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge. Come on down to hear great speakers, learn about what is available here and meet folks who are as interesting as you are!

Saturday, September 1: What is different?

2007-09-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

We went to our two markets this morning as usual. The bright sun lit up the vegetables and we had several wonderful conversations with people who have been following our story. What was different about this Saturday? Well, I had already had a pot of coffee by the time we arrived at 7:30 am! We also stopped in at Cafe Soleil for croissants (oh how we've missed you!) Other than that is was business as usual. We bought a quart of chocolate milk today and some prepared pasta from Peter Pasta himself. We also bought cheese and yogurt and milk and apples and pork and bok choi and carrots and jicama and much more. The bounty continues . . .

Friday, August 31: Day 31

2007-08-31T17:55:00.000-07:00

Wow! A whole month has gone by! In case you missed the Wisconsin State Journal article, we were also featured in the Isthmus this week. Check out this wonderful interview by Terese Allen.

This marks the official end of the experiment, but we all feel like we've only begun to learn about the food we eat. The question we've been asked (and have been asking ourselves) is. . .

What's next?

We will continue to update the blog—we'll aim for a minimum of twice weekly. In addition to any meaningful discoveries regarding what we're able to find locally, we'll keep our eyes open for references to the topic in the media—news stories or interesting new research. We'll also be sure to post on any events we hear about, hopefully in advance, but after the fact if that's the way it works out. And we will post producer profiles from farms we visit in the coming months.

In that spirit, here are a few upcoming events where we will be participating:
Food for Thought Festival, September 14 & 15. Look for our booth on MLK!
Westside Community Farmers' Market, September 8th at the info booth

Contribute!

From day one this has been a project about trying to spark interest in local eating in as many people as possible. With that in mind, we invite all readers to submit comments with experiences of their own—triumph or tragedy, success or failure. If you have something big to say, email us and maybe we can dedicate a whole post to it.

Was it worth it?

Heck yeah! It wasn't always fun, but it was fascinating, not only for what we learned about our food supply, but also what we learned about ourselves. The biggest thing, though, is what we learned about other people. The number of people who took an interest in this project was far greater than we anticipated, and most of them expressed some interest in local eating themselves. So we'd like to wind up the project with a challenge of sorts: if you have been reading this blog, take stock of where your food comes from and challenge yourself to find a little bit more of it from local sources. Going 100% local isn't for everyone, but you can always do just a little more. So give it a try, and let us know how it goes.

As Ming Tsai says, Peace and good eating.

Thursday, August 30—Day 30

2007-08-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

Day 30? Can that be? Well, we knew that the month was nearing its end when we were presented with the following gifts:

Yep, we're right back where we started: coffee and chocolate. Many thanks to Laurie, who correctly discerned all of our preferences (dark roast for Jen, dark chocolate for Scott, and milk chocolate for Evie). We are starting to get questions from people about what we're going to eat on Saturday. Tune in and find out. . .

Our menu today:

Breakfast: Pancakes with butter and maple syrup, plus bacon and cider.

Lunch: The normal mid-day miscellany, a combo of Jen's tortilla creations featuring whatever vegetables she could find, plus salsa and cheese, hot dogs, and cut up fruits and veggies (finally finished that watermelon).

Dinner: Cheese pizza. We polished off the last of the 100 mile flour. Homemade tomato sauce with garlic (Harmony Valley Farm) and basil (grown in a bucket in our driveway). Topped with Farmer John's Provonello, which is a wonderful cheese that melts smoothly like mozzarella but has a little bit more assertive flavor. We've all agreed that we've fallen in love with his cheeses all over again.

I predict tomorrow will be an anticlimax--as a practical matter we will be ending the project early because there is a cookout to celebrate the end of Evie's logrolling class. As usual for a Friday, we'll all be in different places for lunch, which will be the last real meal of the experiment. We'll all try to have some deep thoughts for tomorrow.

—SCL

Wednesday, August 29: Day 29

2007-08-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

Who is on your team?

Your doctor? Your accountant? Your lawyer? Your kids’ teachers? Maybe even your mechanic? Your team is those people who understand your needs and take them into account when they provide services to you. You trust your team to look out for you.

Are your food producers on your team? I think they should be. Food producers are the only people whose service you use every single day—the rest of your team you see when something goes wrong (sickness, audit, cracked radiator) or for preventative maintenance.

Throughout this project, we’ve campaigned for people to ask questions of their food suppliers. We've come to accept that we should ask questions of our doctors, to be active participants rather than passive consumers of health care. Are we willing to educate ourselves and become active participants in our food procurement system?

Fine, you say, but what questions do you ask?

It depends what you care about. I'll throw out what I see as some of the issues I have heard people express, just to stir the pot, and I'll also add some questions that have come up in discussions about this with consumers and with producers.

What are the issues? Everybody has their own, but here are some common ones:

1. Chemicals/Toxicity in food
2. Ecosystems and wildlife
3. Genetic diversity/heritage breeds/genetically modified organisms
4. Food miles (distance traveled) and other energy inputs (fertilizer, etc).
5. Small business versus agribusiness
6. Food safety and security
7. Humane treatment of animals
8. Human rights/treatment of workers/immigration

Without trying to create a list of questions specific to each point (because there are certain to be more that I have not thought of), here are some ideas for questions. And I should add that I recommend asking relatively open-ended questions both to avoid suggesting the answer you want to hear, and also to give the farmer the chance to demonstrate how much thought he/she has put into the process.

How do you choose what varieties to grow?

How do you promote soil fertility? (fertilizer, cover crops, rotation, etc).

What are your major pest/disease challenges and how do you deal with them?

Do you participate in any certification programs, such as Certified Organic or Integrated Pest Management?

If products contain other ingredients (such as sausages, jelly, or cheese, for example), what are they and where do they come from? Are any ingredients required by law to be in the product?

Who does the work of harvesting?

Where is your operation located?

Here are a few that are more specific to animals, and these are a bit less open-ended:

Are your animals able to move outdoors? Do they have access to shade and shelter in case of bad weather?

What type of bedding/nesting material do they have?

Are antibiotics or hormones routinely added to feed? If so, for what purpose?

What are the animals fed? Does the feed contain any animal by-products? Where does the feed come from?

How far must the animals travel for slaughter?

Kay Jensen of JenEhr Farm offered me the following recommendation: Write it down. There is bound to be more information than you can remember, and even if you can, you may not know what it all means. So go home and look it up.

On a busy market day, a farmer may be busy and have a hard time getting into specifics with you—please respect that. Maybe you can come at a different time next week, or perhaps you can email your questions (check web sites, many such questions are already answered there). But also realize that if you feel farmers are less than forthcoming with you or are being evasive, you can always find someone else who will shoot straight with you. I recommend finding team members who have sound reasons for doing what they do, and who don't mind telling you about it because they are proud of the work they do. And well they should be—they have chosen to use their work to nourish us, which is the greatest give we could ask of them. And to the farmers out there, my deepest apologies if you are bombarded by a zillion questions as a result of this!

What we ate:

Breakfast: "the usual", toast with butter (running out of peanut butter, yikes!), maple yogurt, cider.

Lunch: Jen had tortillas with Farmer John's cheese and homemade taco sauce and sauteed red onions. Evie and I had hot dogs. We shared watermelon and red pepper.

Dinner: We were invited over to enjoy a 100 mile meal at the home of friends: Summer vegetable ragout, sauteed Jordandal Farm pork, and yummy whole wheat rolls with Brantmeier Farm wheat flour. For dessert, homemade yogurt with Gentle Breeze honey.

Those of you who saw the newspaper article about our project will recall that we said that if we went to a birthday party we would have a piece of cake. Well, happy birthday, Maddie!

—SCL

Tuesday, August 28: Day 28

2007-08-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

Lots of activity today. The biggest thing is probably that the Wisconsin State Journal ran a front page article about our experiment. They came to the house to chat about what we've learned and to take some pictures of us working in the kitchen. The article includes many of the resources that inspired or informed us, and we're hoping some more people will give this a try in whatever way makes sense for them.

Jen made tortillas this morning. In a very uncharacteristic move, she read the instructions carefully, and it was well worth it--by far the best tortillas we've made so far. I am officially fired as tortilla maker. Here she rinses the corn after it has soaked overnight in the lye bath to dissolve the seed coats and soften the kernels.

Later in the morning we went raspberry picking at Blue Skies Berry Farm. We learned from the owner that, "if you take care of your soil, your soil will take care of you." What she meant was that thanks to the many improvements they have made to the quality of their soil and their drainage, they were able to withstand 16 inches of rain in 2 weeks and lose nothing more than a few rows of beets and carrots.
We got a mix of orange and red berries. We're drying some, eating some fresh, and putting up some puree to fight off scurvy in the dark of winter.

In the afternoon, Jen and Evie, along with some neighborhood friends, stomped the grapes we gleaned from the neighborhood. Jen then made them into delicious grape jelly—for consumption after the experiment due to its refined sugar content.

Today's menu:

Breakfast: Toast and cider.

Lunch: Tortillas with cheese and a red chile sauce I threw together with tomato, jalapeno, onion, garlic, herbs, and vinegar.

Dinner: Gnocchi with italian sausuage and swiss chard. The gnocchi were a bit dense due to the fact that I have not found any starchy potatoes yet--mostly still seeing waxy boiling/roasting potatoes. And the whole wheat flour probably contributed, too. But we did have real-live sheep's milk ricotta to make them with. Dessert was (what else?) raspberries and whipped cream.

We made a great new friend while berry picking at Blue Skies:

Frogs are considered excellent indicators of toxicity in the environment because they absorb everything through their skins. This guy was perched way up near the top of the foliage in a shady spot—I can't imagine how he got all the way up those prickly canes without getting cut to ribbons. But I will take him to be a sign of good things happening at Blue Skies. We nestled into the rows along with so many honeybees and bumblebees that the buzzing was constant (and soothing). With happy wildlife, robust and resilient soil, and a plentiful and delicious crop, I'd say they are onto something.

—SCL

Monday, August 27: Day 27

2007-08-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

Today the blueberries were finished drying so the poblano peppers went in. We boiled more corn for masa and are letting it soak overnight. I plucked the grapes off the stems in preparation for stomping tomorrow, sewed a jelly bag and made peanut butter. NOTE: The jelly will require non-100 mile sugar so it won't be eaten until after Sept. 1 but I am preparing some things for winter.

Breakfast was toasted baguette with peanut butter and cider. Lunch was a variation on my usual tortilla lunch. This time it was cheese curds, hot hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, jalapenos and onions. We were invited to dinner at the home of friends, they were excited to try cooking a local meal. We had wonderful chicken from Ken Ruegsegger courtesy of the Paoli Local Foods shop. We also had potatoes, corn and bread with yummy chevre cheese. We had local wine from Weggy Winery and watermelon for dessert. We also had whole milk and black raspberry smoothie from Blue Marble Micro Dairy . It was a wonderful evening and we so appreciate those who have invited us over and taken the time to think about food and buy it locally.

Sunday, August 26: Day 26

2007-08-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

Lots of delicious happenings here today. With our neighbors' permission we gleaned both apples and grapes from our neighborhood today. We may have an old fashioned grape stomp here tomorrow! I am drying blueberries (thank you Ruth!), when those are done the poblano peppers will go in. There are peanuts waiting to be shelled and smashed. Evie came up with a brilliant way of collecting the seeds off of some dill plants given to us by friends. I think some sauerkraut is in our future! I heard geese honking this morning in that "south flying" sort of way, I have made my list of foods I still need to preserve--it is long and this week will involve canning and freezing to be sure.

Breakfast was fresh wheat bran muffins with raspberries and whipped cream on the side (it is Sunday after all). For lunch I baked some of our older corn tortillas in a 375 degree oven for 15 minutes (having already cut them into wedges) and we made nachos! Delicious! For dinner we have the answer to "what do I do with all this summer squash?" It is a Japanese dish that was introduced to us by friends many years ago amidst another zucchini tidal wave. Okonomiyaki means, basically, "things you like, cooked the way you like." Or the way our friends used to explain it, "things you like, fried!" Tonight our okonomiyaki has red onions, zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, bacon and cheese, bound together with egg and flour and fried up with bacon fat. Lovely green beans on the side.

Saturday, August 25: Day 25

2007-08-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

The markets were a bit subdued today as farmers figure out how much has been lost to the floods. Several of the usual folks were not there, maybe that was on their schedule, maybe not. Richard de Wilde of Harmony Valley Farm looked haggard and sad, other farmers were expressing their relief that their crops and animals were okay.

I found out today that our wonderful peanuts are being grown by Silvan and Avis Disch THANK YOU!!!!

We purchased a wonderful array of things today, the apples are really starting to come in while corn is beginning to wane. Fall raspberries are showing up, we are hoping to go pick at our favorite raspberry farm on Monday.

Breakfast was the last of our bread (Scott comes home tomorrow, thank goodness) with cider and milk. Lunch was eggs with cheese curds, salsa, carrots and the first of the season's pears. Dinner was a thrown together number by me that was fabulous! I made a cheesy flatbread with some leftover dough and then I made broccoli romanesco. The crazy crucifer is delicious raw but tonight I sauteed it in butter, garlic, chicken stock and salt. Evie kept exclaiming, "MMMMM! This bite was even better than the last one!!" She and I both dearly love anything from the cruciferous family. The whole meal took maybe 15 minutes to make (having preheated the oven) that's a keeper!

Last day of remote posts from Massachusetts. . .

. . . and it was a good one. As is the case in so many places, Saturday means Farmers' Market in Maynard, MA. There is no question that by our usual standards it is tiny—just a few vendors. But those who do show up can have so much impact on what you eat. Here is an overview:

We were there more for research than to shop, but we did get a few things. Balance Rock Farm has a wide selection of meat and dairy: beef, pork, chicken, milk, cheese (cow's milk and goat), plus eggs and butter. A real find! We bought some bacon, sausage, and eggs. We also visited Applefield Farm for some veggies and fruit: tomatoes, melon, and onion. They have a great selection of produce, including these:

I was thrilled that the Maynard Farmers' market, small though it is, could provide so much. And it is interesting to note that both of the vendors we bought from employ organic methods but don't feel they can justify the cost of organic certification.

We brought that goodness back home and made up some pizzas. Here are two:

The foreground is a pizza caprese: olive oil (not local, of course) with heirloom tomatoes, mozzerella, and basil. The background is local potatoes, local caramelized onions, local rosemary, and imported proscuitto (it was left over from something else) and parmesan cheese. Not shown was a tomato and cheese pie with the local sausage we bought at the market.

So as my trip comes to an end, I am in a position to draw some conclusions. Local food is available, even here in the east-coast suburbs. Maybe not quite as many things as we've been accustomed to in the bountiful midwest, but if you want to, you really can buy a considerable portion of your food from local producers, which is pretty cool. Most of the farms in these areas are being coveted by real estate developers and are potentially worth millions of dollars as building lots. So if you like looking at farms near where you live, find out what you can buy to help support them and keep those farmers on the land. Otherwise you may find that beautiful pasture will someday soon contain a crop of McMansions.

Fresco Restaurant Farm Dinner Benefit

2007-08-25T02:08:00.000-07:00

Click on the image to read the details or check out Fresco's website. Then go eat!

Friday, August 24: Day 24

2007-08-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

I never get tired of the taste of freshness. For breakfast this morning I made tortillas with cheese, eggs, jalepenos, onions and tomatoes--again. Always delicious, always satisfying. For lunch I was working so I made a lunch I could eat on the run. I cut up half a head of napa cabbage (thanks Vermont Valley Community Farm) and some red peppers Then I made a dressing from peanut butter (big surprise), cider vinegar, honey, hot peppers and garlic--very yummy. I drank a blueberry smoothie (yogurt and blueberries) and ate an apple.

Dinner was at The Roman Candle a Buy fresh, Buy Local participant. We talked to the owner, Brewer (his name not his title). He said reliability and availability are the biggest obstacles for restaurant owners when it comes to buying local. They do go over to the Eastside Farmer's Market to buy tomatoes for their caprese salald, and they are trying to source all local basil for their pesto. They currently buy fruits and veggies from a local purveyor but not all the food is grown locally.

It seems the connections are not yet easy enough for restaurant owners to take advantage of what is grown here. Here's an idea right from the Farmers Diner Scott posted about a few days ago: How about a central commissary where fresh, local food can be processed and then delivered to local restaurants in the same form they can get from Sysco or other big providers? The chicken can be broken up the same way line cooks are used to, cheese can be shredded, veggies prepped--an idea like this would provide jobs and make local food a viable and reliable option for local restaurants. Something to pursue?

Thursday, August 23: Day 23

2007-08-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

We are still reporting on our eating adventures from two locations. Scott's Massachusetts musings follow my Madison meanderings.

Today life conspired to make our day a busy one. The rain that has devastated farmers also crept into my parents' basement so we worked to get that cleaned up and ate was at hand for lunch (yummy french toast by the way). Breakfast had been dryish bread because our electricity was out and we couldn't toast. Dinner was wonderful calzones made with dough I actually made! (Scott's recipe of course.) They came out really well. Mine had broccoli inside, Evie has her broccoli on the side. Tomorrow will be our one "eating out" adventure this month, Fridays are always crazy and tomorrow will be no exception. We will be picking a restaurant from the Buy Fresh, Buy Local list. Not all the ingredients in our meal will be from within 100 miles but we will be making a choice to support a local business who is buying local food. None of this is about 100% compliance to a dogma 100% of the time. It is about thinking about where your food comes from and keeping it close to home.

Eating locally: hard to start, but easy to do.

As we’ve noted elsewhere, once you track down your sources and get into a routine, getting even a large proportion of your food locally is not that difficult. For the past week I’ve been out of town, visiting my mother in Massachusetts. It’s been a struggle to locate many local resources in the short period of time I’ve been here. There are several farmstands nearby that have fruits and vegetables, but eggs, meat, and dairy are more difficult. The state department of agriculture does maintain a website to help locate local products, but most of the providers are in a different part of the state. If we lived here, it would not be a difficult decision to make a trip a couple of times a year and stock up on things that will keep. And there is a local chicken producer, but they are sold out for the year. To me, that demonstrates that the interest is there.

Yesterday I went to an outpost of a large national chain specializing in natural and organic foods, hoping they might have some local meat. Despite the fact that our checkout cashier was sporting a “buy local” pin, most of the veggies were from California and all of the meat came from “the middle of the country”, and to top it off, the beef was corn-fed. Very disappointing.

New England is a small region. A 100 mile radius from where I am could blast you right through New Hampshire and deep into Maine, so boundaries are not a good tool for determining what is local. And while eastern Massachusetts is getting very urban, there is still a lot of agriculture in the western part of the state, and plenty to choose from in the northern part of the region. If you do your homework and are willing to learn where the stuff is, there is a lot to choose from.

But the fact remains that if you breeze in for a short while, it is hard to just slip into local eating. It takes a good amount of research and a fair bit of legwork to track it all down in a new place. Our way of life (that's the big "our") is just not set up to make this easy. And you don't want to spend all your travel time chasing down food. Or maybe you do—could this be a new kind of tourism?

A highlight: we did have dinner at a great restaurant called Stone Hearth Pizza. The menu is mostly pizzas, both classics and interesting new combinations. They take a lot of pride in sourcing ingredients locally, and in fact have a sheet that names their key suppliers and even spotlights one on a rotating basis. There are lots of local beers to choose from, but it looked to me like most of the wines were from elsewhere. All in all, it was a great experience: good local food prepared well and enjoyed in the company of friends.

Tasty pizza:

And a view of the open prep area and the gas-fired oven:

If you find yourself in the Boston area, give Stone Hearth Pizza a try: they have 3 locations to choose from. And either way, visit them on the web to learn about what they are doing. Producer profiles are under the "Community" tab.

Wednesday, August 22: Day 22

2007-08-22T17:04:00.001-07:00

I wish we had a fabulous new recipe to post or exciting news about a recent find. Instead it continues to rain here and we are just sick about the farms that are now under water. It is interesting to note that little attention is being paid to food with Scott away, Evie and I are fairly easy to please and would rather play than cook. I am sure we will both be craving some more elaborate dishes by the time he gets home, but for know we are back to the old standbys: Breakfast of peanut butter toast, lunch was grilled cheese and dinner was noodles and broccoli. Nothin' fancy but all delicious. I am amazed at how easy this month has been. Of course there are things we have missed, but eating 100% local has become routine. I know we will shop differently after this month is over. I know I will preserve more food this year and I am more grateful than ever to the farmers who live and work here, allowing us to eat in place.

Flooding

2007-08-22T03:05:00.000-07:00

It has been raining off and on in Wisconsin for almost a week now. There is heavy flooding closer to MN and further south from Madison. Many farmers are hard hit, some will never recover and the farms will be gone. Harmony Valley has had 17 inches. Click here to read more.

Please continue to use your dollars to support local farmers, if you have the time and proximity pull on a pair of boots and help out.

Tuesday, August 21—Day 21

2007-08-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

A short order revolution. . .

That's what it says above the counter at The Farmer's Diner in Queechee, Vermont, which is where I had lunch today. It is a real live diner—it's even in an old railcar, see?

Still not convinced? Here's the inside:

What's so revolutionary about a diner? This one happens to source all of its bulk ingredients (meat, dairy, produce in season, and baked goods) from within a 60 mile radius. That's big. They had to make a lot of special arrangements to get this to work, but it's working. They are putting finishing touches on a second location.

As I've noted elsewhere, I am not so much a fancy-food kind of guy. So a place that dishes up diner classics done very well that are also local to their area is perfect for me.

You have to love a place that that has Wendell Berry's The Mad Farmer Liberation Front reprinted on the front of the menu!

The food? I'm pleased to say that it is everything you would hope for in diner food: quality and taste were great and portions were generous but not insane. Here is what I ate:

That's half of a bacon cheesburger and half of a pulled pork sandwich, with fries on the side. When you can't decide what to eat, you go halfsies with your dining companion (thanks, Mom). Not shown is the milkshake that came a bit later.

Here is how this stacks up relative to our dietary guidelines: All the meat and dairy are fully compliant. The bun (which was one of the best sandwich buns I've ever had) was baked locally using some imported ingredients. The fries were from local potatoes, and the shake was made from local milk and cream but contained some non-local ingredients (sugar and—gasp—chocolate. Really, what would you have done?). The garnish is local, but we forgot to ask about the pickle.

The pulled pork rocked: succulent and tender, it just melted in your mouth. The burger was also first class—really as good as you can do without going to open-flame grilling (it's a diner, so that means it is constitutionally required to cook burgers on a flat-top grill). 100% grassfed beef, of course.

In the entryway they have a map that identifies where it all comes from, and the back of the menu proudly identifies their key suppliers:

They didn't have a T-shirt to buy, but we did get the bumper sticker:

'Nuff said!

Not much to report from the WI front. Food is no longer utmost in our minds since Scott left us with plenty of bread and sifted flour. Breakfast was peanut butter toast and cider. Lunch was tortillas, eggs and toppings for Jen, hot dog and carrots for Evie, blueberries for both.

Monday, August 20: Day 20

2007-08-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

Today we went to Troy Gardens on the north side of Madison.

"On 31-acres of urban property, Troy Gardens integrates mixed-income green-built housing, community gardens, an organic farm, and restored prairie and woodlands."

It was glorious! A friend has three plots there but we hadn't been in over two years. We visited the kid's garden, picked tomatoes, gathered eggs, walked the prairie and took in the smells and sounds.

This is the chicken

that gave us these eggs

to make this sandwich.

We were forwarded an interesting report regarding the US Food Supply Chain, please read through it if you have the time. It is an analysis of the question of Local vs. Organic From Far Away. It is quantitative and looks at individual food products not just broad generalizations about all foods taken together.

Breakfast was peanut butter toast and cider.
Lunch was egg sandwiches, carrots and apples.
Dinner was JenEhr chicken, edamame and roasted potatoes with herbs we got from Troy Gardens.

We also made mint tea today from Chocolate Mint we are growing in our driveway. We made peanut butter and honey cookies too. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me to make peanut butter cookies before, they adapt to our mileage requirements perfectly. They are delicious! We added a little whipped cream tonight because whipped cream makes everything better.

Sunday, August 19: Day 19

2007-08-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

It has been a rainy, cozy day filled with yummy food and inspiration. For breakfast we had toast made with the delicious bread Scott made in the wood-fired oven yesterday--even he grudgingly admits it came out "okay."

Lunch was tomatoes with onions and basil, green beans from our driveway garden and pork burgers.

Dinner was homemade pasta (2 cups flour to three eggs) with onions, summer squash and tomatoes and pork sausage with garlic bread on the side. For dessert Scott whipped up some little shortcakes and we added blueberries and whipped cream for a real treat!

You may have noticed that almost everyday includes something from Willow Creek Farm. I can't say enough good things about Tony and Sue Renger. We love their philosophy, we love their products and we so appreciate their hard work. I wish I could call out every single person who is making this project possible. Thanks to all the farmers that grow the food here in southern Wisconsin, we are lucky, lucky eaters.

For inspiration we watched The Endless Feast and Chefs A' Field. We love seeing how other people are eating in place!

Scott will be out in Massachusetts this week and will be doing some remote blogging. He will still try eat locally and has some cool field trips that he will blog about. Check back often . . . we are always eating!

Saturday, August 18—Day 18

2007-08-18T19:01:00.001-07:00

Market day today—a good haul. In addition to most of the usual staples, we had a pleasant surprise: Sugar River Dairy is experimenting with sour cream. Based on our initial testing, it's a big success.

Breakfast: pancakes made with the aforementioned sour cream, cider, and the original manna from heaven, Willow Creek bacon.

Lunch: Jen made baked tortilla chips and combined them with some home-made salsa given to us by a friend.

Dinner: We fired the wood-burning oven today, so we roasted chicken and potatoes. The chicken was very good, and the potatoes were outstanding. We used the residual heat to bake 2 loaves of sandwich bread and a batch of crackers.

An exciting development today was that we were interviewed and photographed for an article in the Wisconsin State Journal about our project. We're hoping that getting some attention for the project will cause other people to think about the same issues we are examining. We'll post links once the story comes out.

Friday, August 17—Day 17

2007-08-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

What did we eat today?

Breakfast: Toast with honey and butter

Lunch: Goat cheese and crackers, carrots, cider. (Leftover pork chop for Scott)

Dinner: Sausage and onions, green beans, cherries and yellow doll watermelon.

(no photos today—most Fridays we are on the run, and this one was no exception)

Very excited for farmers' markets tomorrow (2 of them).

I had an email from a friend today—she had been reflecting on an article she read about cutting down rainforests to provide cropland for soy production. It got her to thinking about how much soy she had added to her own diet as a lean protein source, wondering where all that soy comes from.

Well, I suppose it can be hard to know. After corn, I would guess that soybeans are the #2 commodity crop grown in the US. To the extent that people see problems with conventional agriculture, be it in soil conservation, pesticide and fertilizer use, broken subsidy systems, or genetically modified stocks, soy has them all in spades. And taken as a category, soy beans have zero traceablility, which is basically the definition of a commodity crop. When you read your food labels and see "soy protein concentrate", "soy lecithin" and a million other things, this is what you are buying. That's not to say that you can't buy soy products that are not part of the conventional commodity market—I assume that you can, though I'll confess that I do not know for sure. Certainly certified organic soy products are part of a different economy, but as big as industrial organic growing has gotten, that only assures you that some of the issues above are addressed, but not necessarily all. If you care, you have to do the homework and find out.

But another thing popped into my head, and I shared this with my friend—soy is turning out not to be the wonderfood we once thought. There are a lot of compounds in soy that are suspected of mimicing hormonal effects, perhaps causing gynecological problems, among others. I also had to point out that soy is not exactly as lean as we might assume: a 4 oz serving of firm tofu has 6 grams of fat. Compare that to 4 ounces of skinless chicken breast at 1.5 grams.

We eat tofu occasionally, but we normally opt for other protein sources, some leaner and some richer than soy. Why? I'll admit that I like meat better than tofu, but tofu is fine—I'm perfectly happy to eat it. The big thing for us is that we know where the meat comes from. We get chicken from people named Kay and Matthew, beef from Jim and Rebecca, pork from Sue and Tony. If I want to know how fresh it is or how it was raised, I will just ask them, or better yet, go see for myself. But I know for sure that the meat our family eats is not implicated in any way with destruction of rainforests or any of the other issues I noted above.

That's what we care about, so that's what we choose. What do you care about? Do your choices support that?

—SCL

Thursday, August 16: Day 16

2007-08-16T18:02:00.000-07:00

Breakfast: yummy tortillas made with corn from the Rengers topped with cheese, tomatoes, jalapenos and onions

Lunch: HONEY!

Dinner: Pork chops (See "Rengers" above), amaranth sauteed with garlic, veggie kabobs and flatbread

A wonderful friend gave us honey from her hives today--Evie ate it with a spoon for lunch! The same friend gave us salsa, popcorn and cauliflower! Scott got more flour today (still has to be sifted but we didn't have to mill this batch) and cider. We also expanded our 100 miles a bit to include Island Wheat Ale from Capital Brewery. Washington Island has a unique micro-climate and they are growing all sorts of interesting grain crops.

Today is the halfway point. I am glad we are not trying this in February! We are all amazed at how much time food procurement and preparation takes. We are eating well, feeling healthy and being amazed. We also really miss chocolate--we used a free coupon from Working Assets to get a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The ice cream was good, but I felt a little weird eating it. Where did all the ingredients come from? Did the farmers get paid a fair wage? What impact does their manufacturing plant have on their environment? Can I recycle this package? Am I caving in? Can my money still do good here?

Wow! I thought about our food before, but never so thoroughly! I think we are renewed and ready to continue.

Wednesday, August 15: Day 15

2007-08-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

Today's theme comes from our observance of two little words seen on our journeys throughout Madison: "coffee chip." It was the flavor and Michael's frozen custard today and it had Scott and I thinking of two of our favorite indulgences--coffee (me) and chocolate (all of us). I think we were all feeling deprived today because we had not laid in enough supplies to accomodate anything but our planned menus. We are out of flour again so cookies or a cake were out, we are low on milk and cream so ice cream was out. Earlier today Scott wanted a salty, crunchy snack he could just grab. The usual popcorn wasn't doing it and we are out of peanut butter. We are eating fabulously, but truth be told it is a lot of work. There really are no convenience foods that fit our rules, so if we want to grab something fast, we either make do with something fresh and whole or we need to have planned ahead.

When we reach for a snack, there are normally just one or two choices. When you eat "normally" there is typically a much greater diversity of choices. Takes some getting used to. And the planning is different, too. When you have fewer choices from which to pick, your consumption of the items you do have goes up as well. With no lemonade (a summer favorite), we are going through a lot more cider (which is also our replacement for orange juice) and milk, our consumption of which is up about 50% since the experiment began.

Today's meals:

Breakfast: Wheat bran cereal, toast with butter and/or peanut butter, cider, milk.

Lunch: Edamame, watermelon, open-face grilled cheese.

Dinner: We ran out of wheat flour, so we had Rhode Island Johnnycakes with edamame and pork breakfast sausage from Willow Creek Farm . The sausage was particularly delicious. Jen admitted that she was considering licking the fry pan, and Scott allowed as how he was thinking of sucking on the paper towel on which they were drained.

Tuesday, August 14: Day 14

2007-08-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

How deep do you go? By that, I mean how deep into the food production process do you look to determine what is "local"? For example, we have several good ice cream companies here in town. The ice cream is made here. Most of the milk probably comes from within our radius, but the sugar and many of the flavorings undoubtedly do not--chocolate, coffee, coconut, and many others. Can this still count as local? Sure, if you want it to. For the purposes of our experiment, we decided it did not. But we've always given special status to locally owned companies over national chains.

So how deep do we go? I think we're going pretty deep. We're basically buying pure ingredients for almost everything--we have bought almost no "value-added" foods, or foods which are prepared in any way. The exceptions are yogurt, which is a value-added milk product. We are eating plain yogurt, so we don't face the question of added sweeteners, etc. But our yogurt does list powdered milk as an ingredient. This week I will find out where it comes from. The the elephant in the room for us is certain meat products, specifically sausages. They have a bunch of seasonings in them that we have not accounted for—pepper, fennel, coriander, and some others, depending on the type of sausage. Some of these may be local, but some certainly are not. This kind of snuck up on us—it didn't really occur to us until we were underway, so we have opted not to make an issue of it.

The question of "value-added" foods is an interesting place to study the modern food system. What we have learned is that the realities of business make it nearly impossible to have a prepared or value-added food item that can be 100% traced back to a single local area. There is of course the question of salt, but what if we overlook that? Cheese is probably the closest we can come, but my recollection is that the enzymes and cultures the cheesemakers use are purchased from elsewhere (another one to research this weekend). This is why we like to buy directly from producers—if we want to know something we just ask the guy/gal who makes or grows it.

Of course any sort of baked item is likely to have flour from Kansas or North Dakota, maybe dairy (butter, milk, buttermilk, milk protein, etc) from Wisconsin (or New York or California), oil or shortening made from commodity crops (corn, soybeans, sunflowers, or others) that are grown all over and have no traceability at all, and perhaps sugar, which may come from Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, or any number of places (and those are just the ones inside the US).

I guess where I am going with this is that the way we conceive of something as basic as a recipe is a product of a very widely-spread agricultural economy. "The system" seeks out areas that have optimum conditions for a given crop and producers there specialize in that. So getting a 100 mile apple pie is a real trick—for the crust you need wheat that comes from a fairly dry place, and you need butter or lard which come from animals that need plenty of greenery—not much overlap between the two. And of course you need the apples, which can grow a lot of places, but not in western Kansas or North Dakota where your wheat came from. And you'll need a bit of sugar, as well. Cane sugar is a tropical crop, but beet sugar is grown in wide range of climates. But if you get sugar at the grocery store, there is only a 30% chance it is from sugar beets. Sure, you can use honey or maple syrup. Each will leave its own flavor imprint on your pie, which may be good or bad depending on your taste. One thing we can guarantee is that the pie will be really soupy, as both maple syrup and honey contain a lot of water. You could maybe add a bit of tapioca or arrowroot starch to thicken it up, but those are both products of the rainforest. . . So where where does this leave us? Nowhere in particular except to make it clear that there is no "purity" to be had, and that if you choose to learn the history of your food it is a complex plot that you may have difficulty following. But it sure is interesting, and you'll meet some great people along the way and learn a lot.

Menu for today:

Breakfast: Wheat bran cereal, yogurt with maple syrup, apple cider.

Lunch: Assorted things from the fridge (hot dogs, veggies)

Dinner: Pizza from the wood-fired earth oven. Whole wheat crust, home-made tomato sauce, Farmer John's cheese and Pecatonica Valley Farms Greenbush Italian Sausage. Yummy! Dessert of whipped cream and preserved rhubarb (probably with some sugar in it, but I am not sure, maybe honey).

Sorry,no pictures. We had good friends in from out of town and they have 4 kids 7 and under. Mayhem!

—SCL

Monday, August 13: Day 13

2007-08-13T18:11:00.001-07:00

Breakfast was delicious baguette, toasted with butter and peanut butter and cider.
Lunch for Scott was a hot dog with baguette and cider. Jen and Evie and some friends ate out today (more on that later).
Dinner was fondue made with cheese from Forgotten Valley Cheese. We dipped bread, steamed potatoes, raw summer squash and blanched green beans. We also had a cold veggie platter.

Three observations from the day:

1) We are generating almost no trash right now. The only packaging we are purchasing is milk bottles and yogurt containers which can be returned and recycled respectively. All our organic waste gets composted and office paper etc. also gets recycled.

2) Up until today we have been nearly 100% 100 mile compliant. Today, it was easier for Jen to take Evie and two friends to lunch than to come home and prepare a meal. The three young girls asked to go to a small, local place with excellent fresh food. They are not partcipating in Buy Fresh, Buy Local yet, but we can work on them. The girls specifically requested lunch at this place, knowing that they have yummy, fresh options--the next generation is thinking about their food!

3) Many people have said to us some version of the following: "I think what you are doing is great and we would love to eat like that but I could never give up X." Well, if there is only one thing maybe it is time to evaluate if you really can or can't live without it. Maybe it is time to investigate the most responsible way to obtain X (the big ones we hear about are coffee and chocolate, both of which are available in combinations of organic or fair trade or both, depending on what you value). Maybe it is time to live satisfied and happy with the amount of local goods you do buy. But spread the word. As with so many things, a lot of people doing a little is a far more powerful force than a few people doing a lot.

Sunday, August 12: Day 12

2007-08-12T14:54:00.001-07:00

If you walked into our house today you would be bowled over by the overwhelming feeling that you were walking into a giant tomato. I started making sauce at around 5:00 am and by the time I was satisfied with the thickness it was 3:00 pm and I had 12 quarts ready. Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year and it gives me such pleasure to put up food for the coming colder months. Luckily I have an extremely generous friend who lets me share her giant freezer--this means I can can less and freeze more! (Maybe I Can-can less too! Can you tell I have been breathing lycopene all day!)

Breakfast was a modest affair of leftover bread products and cider. Lunch was "things we can grab while we sweat" and included glorious local peaches that brought tears to my eyes with their deliciousness, tomatoes (shocking!), cheese curds, carrots, a tiny melon and apples. Dinner will be out at my parents' house and will be roasted chicken, potatoes, chard, kohlrabi, and our-of-this-world peaches and strawberries (thank goodness for the everbearing variety!)

Scott baked our bread for the week in our wood fired oven today--all 100 mile certified and delicious!

I am posting early today because we are headed out for dinner in the country and watching the Perseid meteor shower. We have been overwhelmed this week with people's generosity of time, knowledge and food. Thank you to all who are enthusiastic about our project, we are thrilled that so many people find this experiment interesting. Some of you eat like this already and want to know that there are "more out there." For others of you these ideas are new--thanks for coming along for the ride

Saturday, August 11: Day 11

2007-08-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Today was, once again, food procurement day. Scott went to the Dane County Farmers' Market as usual. He also went to the Westside Community Farmers' Market (for milk and yogurt) as usual.

We also got food from two new sources today. First, we are lucky to have a friend who goes out of town at this time each year and we get her CSA box from Harmony Valley Farm (click the link for a list of what was in today's box). Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a partnership between a grower and a consumer whereby the consumer pays to cover the farm's operating expenses in exchange for a portion of the harvest. The business idea originated in Japan where the practices is called teikei, literally "putting a farmer's face on food." Belonging to a CSA is great for people interested in eating locally but who choose not to garden or who want more variety than one family's garden can provide. CSA is a relationship that provides a healthy business, healthy land stewardship and delicious food to eat! You can pick a CSA with with mostly standard produce or pick one that throws in the unusual occasionally. We had fresh amaranth greens in our box today and served them as a salad with a warm bacon and shallot vinaigrette (our vinegar is finally ready!) We also got two exotic melons (Butterscotch and Orange French) that we can't wait to try. For more info on local CSA options in Madison contact the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition. Click here to find a CSA anywhere in the US.

The second place we visited knocked my socks off. It is a farm West of Madison called The Tree Farm (thanksKevin!) The place has been in business since 1973 and is a pick-your-own vegetable and tree farm. They have tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, potatoes, herbs, flowers--you name it! The quality is wonderful, the quantity is staggering, the setting is amazing and the prices and fantastic. You must bring your own containers and follow their rules (nothing onerous) and the joy of harvest can be yours. Honestly, after today I feel I never have to yearn for a giant garden again. I can go harvest every year and preserve for winter. We picked a few tomatoes (ahem!) and sauce is reducing in our kitchen as we speak.

It took the whole day and quite a few dollars to outfit ourselves for another week of feeding ourselves from our immediate surroundings. I appreciate the hard work of farmers more than ever and I marvel at the diversity and succulence of what grows right here at home.

Oh yeah--what we ate:
Breakfast: toast with peanut butter and cider and blueberries
Lunch: snacked on produce and cheese and crackers all day
Dinner: cornbread, amaranth salad with bacon, corn on the con, red peppers and cucumbers

Friday, August 10: Day 10

2007-08-10T19:48:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest inspirations of this project has been the number of people who have been motivated to join us, even if for just a day. Today we were invited for dinner at the home of friends, and the meal was made to the same criteria we have been using at home (all except dessert, thank goodness!). We had an appetizer of fried squash blossoms stuffed with havarti cheese (excellent), a delicious chowder of corn and fingerling potatoes with bacon, and Greek-style lamb burgers with feta and garlic served with yogurt sauce, cucumbers, and tomatoes on homemade whole wheat pita. Dessert was out-of-radius: flourless chocolate cake, but as I love bread, Brook loves chocolate, so I wouldn't have had it any other way. The whipped cream and strawberries were legit, though.

My lunch was a pot pie made of all leftovers--a scrap of pie crust and some bits of chicken and veggies laying around from prior meals. We were all separate today, so I have no idea what the others ate. I love pot pies, so I never throw away scraps from pie making. This was 100% whole wheat and a bit old, so the color was a bit off-putting (quite brown with a tinge of greenish-yellow to it) but the flavor was very good.

Breakfast was toast and yogurt, plus a bit of that yummy yogurt smoothie drink.

Busy day tomorrow: 2 farmers' markets and a visit to a pick-your-own place to stock up on tomatoes for sauce. May also need to make a separate stop for cider (can't live without it anymore) and I'll also have to scavenge some firewood for the bread oven.

—SCL

Thursday, August 8: Day 8

2007-08-09T16:35:00.000-07:00

What did we eat today?

For Breakfast: Toast with butter and/or peanut butter and Raspberry Yogurt smoothie from Sugar River Dairy (probably a bit of a cheat as I think it has sugar in it, but it was a gift from a very supportive friend)

For Lunch: Grilled cheese (hooray, the king is back!) with tomatoes from the driveway.

Dinner: Leftover roast chicken, sweet corn, boiled potatoes with herb butter, green beans sauteed with tomato sauce, shallots, and some other goodies (they were getting a bit old), and Jen's signature beet slaw (grated beets sauteed with jalapenos and shallots). They were chiogga beets, which is why they look sort of putty-colored in the photo. Fresh they are spectacular. If you cut one it reveals concentric rings of white and bright pink.

As you can see, we now have sandwich bread, which Jen and Evie are thrilled about. I myself have turned into the bread grinch. I think it is too crumbly and both too bitter and too sweet at the same time. Instead of rising and doming in the pans, as soon as it cleared the top it oozed over the side so I had to flop it back in. I'm glad my family is happy with it, but truly there is no accounting for some people's taste.

Now for the lecture. . .

Someone asked recently what we normally eat. I think that the underlying question is, how much of a departure is this for us, really?

In terms of menu, in a typical week (where we are home all 7 nights), I would guess that 1 or 2 nights we make something super-fast because we have to be someplace. Examples would be grilled cheese or breakfast-for-dinner (pancakes, french toast, or scrambled egg sandwiches). Basically something with zero prep. Then we have a bunch of "routine" meals that we make so often that they go together quickly, such as pizza (we know how to time it so well that even homemade crust seems quick), stir fry, burgers or sausage on the grill, any of several noodle dishes, etc. These cover us for probably 4 nights a week. Then once or twice in a week we'll have something more elaborate. Often it's something new we saw on a cooking show, sometimes it is an old favorite that takes a lot of elbow grease. Mexican flavors are a favorite, roast chicken or turkey, onion soup gratinee, and any number of dumplings (dumplings are something of a specialty of mine), such as potstickers, latkes, meatballs, samosas, steamed pork buns, pan-fried gnocchi, and some others. Not that the finished meals are always elaborate--they seldom are--but I like to fuss over things in the kitchen, and if you've ever made samosas, you understand the time commitment.

In terms of the substance of what we eat, there are some things that are off the table with a 100 mile radius in effect. The list of kitchen staples I normally rely on but am currently without is a bit grim—olive oil (how about "all of" oil, as I have no liquid fats at all), black pepper, balsamic vinegar, curry powder, cumin, coriander (could probably get this if I could figure out how to harvest it from a cilantro plant), white and brown sugar, citrus, and on and on. As Jen noted previously, at this time of year there is so much in season that you can eat fresh and do just fine--but this project does give an increased understanding of where the stuff in all those little bottles comes from. The modern kitchen is like a United Nations in a cupboard. I guess there's a reason people were willing to pay someone to sail around the world and collect the stuff for them as far back as the 1600s (1500s?).

But back to the question. Most of the mass of what we eat is normally procured from local sources--the meat, eggs, milk, cheese, and vegetables in season. Dry goods are the big exception--sugar and flour (and man, do we go through flour). For most of the year, we have 3 food shopping destinations—a farmers market, our natural foods co-op (the excellent Willy Street Co-op) and a mainstream grocery store. This felt weird to me, but I just heard a story on NPR that it has become typical for Americans to hit 2 or 3 stores to get everything they want, so I guess at least in this respect we are somewhat typical. At the grocery store we normally get some dairy (still local!), stuff like orange juice, and some prepared items like crackers, plus household supplies like garbage bags, toilet paper, and soap (and our beloved Ghirardelli 60% cocoa chocolate chips which they have at a great price--oh how I miss them). As the selection of fresh stuff at the farmer's markets falls off we shift more to the Willy Street Co-op (non-local organics out of season, of course). By mid-winter the farmer's market is pretty much down to meat, potatoes, cheese, eggs, maple syrup, and honey (heaven for me, but I am told you can't live on it, so we are forced to shop elsewhere to supplement).

So that gives you a picture of what our food life is like most of the time. We are all eager to see how much our shopping, cooking, and eating habits change as a result of this experiment.

—SCL

Out to Lunch

2007-08-09T03:40:00.000-07:00

There are two takes on the above phrase, this post will address both.

1) What if you are really committed to supporting local small farms, what if you love fresh local flavors AND what if you want to go out for lunch? Luckily there is an exciting new campaign out there called Buy Fresh, Buy Local. Buy Fresh, Buy Local is the brainchild of the FoodRoutes Network which creates partnerships with community-based nonprofit organizations across the country already involved in nurturing strong regional markets for locally grown foods. Each local organization creates and implements a Buy Fresh, Buy Local marketing campaign to bridge the gap between community farmers and consumers. Thanks to REAP (Research, Education, Action, and Policy on) Food Group you can click here for the Buy Fresh, Buy Local participants in Madison. Click here for a list of all the local organizations (nationwide) involved with Buy Fresh, Buy Local. Don't see your favorite restaurant? Give them the above Madison (or national) link and ask them to contact the local coordinator!

2)The other meaning of "out to lunch" is checked out, uninformed, uninterested or not paying attention. Someone left a comment a few days ago that they enjoy our blog but feel it should be reaching people who don't already know about benefits of local eating the, "HCFS devotees," or people who may not have easy access (for whatever reason) to local food. One of the best ways to reach people with these ideas is to feed them. Here in Madison we have Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch: A Midwest Farm-to-School Program. The mission of Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch is:

"To introduce healthy foods grown locally and sustainably to Wisconsin schoolchildren while developing stable markets for the producers and processors of those foods. By building respectful, working relationships between school educators, the school food service and our local food producers, we will establish a Midwest farm-to-school model to grow and thrive into the future."

Again, REAP is leading the way. Can you tell I love this organization?

So, it all comes back to eating. Choose restaurants that participate in Buy Fresh, Buy Local. Introduce the idea to restaurants that don't know about it yet. Feed people fresh, local, sustainably raised food, get them involved in the growing and preparation and the devotion will follow.

Wednesday, August 7: Day 7

2007-08-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

It has been one week since we began eating within 100 miles of our home. We have learned that the high humidity of our area does not make for good bread wheat but there are other ways to use it, we have learned that people are excited about the project (we are getting hits from all over the place and are being contacted by a variety of media outlets), we have learned that our friends are excited and generous, we have learned that the small farmers in this area are diverse, amazingly talented and generous and wonderful.

Today we visited Wollersheim Winery. We learned that they only have four types of wine made from grapes grown on the property, other juice and grapes come from Washington and New York. We took a wonderful tour and tasted a purchased the Prairie Blush, one of the local ones of course!

Today we also had pizza! It is a family staple and a family favorite, we always use homemade tomato sauce and tonight everything from the crust up was local--thank you Willow Creek Farm for amazing sausage, thank you Brantmeier Family Farm for providing delicious wheat that we are learning to use in new ways, and thank you Farmer John for the cheese.

It has been a long day, check back tomorrow for some info on eating out and on outreach into the community.

Breakfast: Eggs, fresh salsa and cheese
Lunch: HEAVENLY corn on the cob and yellow doll melon
Dinner: Pizza

Tuesday, August 7—Day 7

2007-08-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

A quickie. Menu:

Breakfast: Yogurt with maple syrup, english muffins with butter and/or peanut butter. Need to get more apple cider but it's a bit early still.

Lunch: Hamburgers (beef from Northwood Farm), watermelon, carrots from Harmony Valley Farm.

Dinner: the whole shebang. Roast JenEhr chicken with garlic and rosemary, roasted potatoes (in bacon fat--yum), broccoli, and popovers that tasted great and were better than I feared they would be, though they were not as popped as their out-of-state cousins. The chicken was particularly succulent. I am not a master chicken carver so it comes of in bits and pieces.

On the philosophical side, one thing I have noticed is how many people who, upon hearing about what we are doing, find it strikes a chord in them that they had not been able to quite articulate without a bit of stimulus. To me, this seems to suggest that this whole eat local business is on the verge of going one step closer to mainstream. Come on, all of you local food junkies, you know you're not mainstream, right?

Monday, August 6, Day 6 - Fast Food?

2007-08-06T19:42:00.000-07:00

Today was a blur. What I am noticing is that because all of our food is fresh and basically ready to go "as is" we are tending to plop it on a plate and call it dinner. We are not spending as much time preparing meals and I am missing the complex favors. We are certainly spending TONS of time getting out a few grain-based basics. Crackers happened today and we are all grateful. It takes a long time to mill and then sift the wheat flour, it gives me a new appreciation for what the Ingalls family went through in The Long Winter !

Breakfast was english muffins with peanut butter and cider.

Lunch was whatever we could pull out of the fridge, including more tortillas with fresh salsa.

Dinner was a mad dash out the door with cornbread, sauteed green beans and salad.

Appendix by Scott:
After dinner we went to a minor league baseball game with our hometown team the Madison Mallards. Great fun was had by all. We also had a bit of ballpark refreshment. Jen had a beer (which I think was made in Pennsylvania from ingredients obtained from who knows where, Evie had processed ice cream that may have been made in a lab somewhere, and I had a soft drink, made of our friend High Fructose Corn Syrup, a product that is probably the most commoditized agricultural product on the planet). So what gives? Did we fall off the wagon after less than a week?

I would say we did not. This is, for us, an exercise in making conscious choices, not in doing penance or keeping kosher. When we go to Rome, we intend to eat like Romans. I don't think we would have gone to an evening ballgame expecting to eat our whole dinner there, but on a steamy summer night everyone needs to cool off a bit. If friends invite us over for dinner this month, we'll be thrilled if they embrace our project (as many have done), but if not, we'll make no mention of it and enjoy ourselves in the company of friends.

That's the easy part. I have a morning meeting at a coffee house tommorrow. To hot chocolate or not to hot chocolate?

Sunday, August 5: Day 5

2007-08-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, today some of the novelty wore off. Scott is sick with a nasty flu and all of a sudden I realized how much time we've been spending on food procurement and preparation (it took 2 1/2 hours today to roast, shell and then make the peanut butter).

Necessity is the mother of invention, however, and two new things were made today that may prove very important over the course of the month.

1) English muffins. We are regular english muffin bakers but had never tried it with wheat we had milled ourselves (see last week's entries about our flour woes). Scott ground the wheat very, very fine and I sifted it today. The english muffins came out gloriously--we have all eaten about 5 apiece today. They have to be kept in the fridge because, of course, the mold and griddle were greased with lard!

2) I really wanted a decadent dessert--chocolate would have been perfect. Instead I made some popcorn and drizzled it with melted butter and honey--WOW! It doesn't replace chocolate but it did curb my dessert tooth until we can make ice cream later in the week.

We haven't gotten ahead of our snacking needs yet so I am often feeling at odds when I just want to grab a quick something. Crackers are to come this week and of course, melon, melon, melon.

For breakfast we had muskmelon and blueberries and bran hot cereal.

Lunch was english muffins and peanut butter, veggies and fruit.

Dinner was eggs with onions and jalepenos on a tortilla with melted cheese, topped with tomatoes from our driveway.

Where are you from?

2007-08-04T17:50:00.001-07:00

The average American meal has traveled 1500 miles by the time it reaches your table. Where are you from? Where do you buy food? How did you hear about our project? Please, leave a comment!

Saturday, August 4, Day 4: What we ate

2007-08-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

Breakfast was Rhode Island Johnnycakes with bacon (heavenly, heavenly bacon--this from a vegetarian of 15 years), and cider.

Lunch was straight from the fridge, muskmelon, blueberries, a Cherokee Purple tomato with onions and cheese curds.

Dinner was an experiment in corn. We soaked some field corn in cal last night and ran it through the food mill to make masa. Then we made tortillas! Yummy! We had that with shredded pork, salsa verde, sauteed green beans (sauteed in delicious bacon fat) and cucumbers thinly sliced and soaked in the apple cider vinegar we made--still not that "vinegary" but a nice taste difference.

Fresh, early, new apples for dessert!

Saturday, August 4: Day 4 - What we bought

2007-08-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

Oh the bounty! This picture brings such a smile to my face--it is most of what we will eat this week. We had some meat in the freezer and we will buy fresh sweet corn and melons this week from Old Stage Vegetable Garden. Our monetary outlay for the week is $120 (adding in the meat we already had). Twenty-two dollars of that was for 20 lbs. of wheat, that will take us through more than one week. We also traded with a farmer for a 5 gallon bucket each of corn and oats.

We all vote with our dollars every time we make a food purchase. Assuming you are willing to leave conventional factory food behind, what do you replace it with? Local? Organic? Sometimes you can get both, but what if you can't? Which is "better"? Anyone who is a committed Certified Organic shopper should read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. This fascinating book will help you understand what you are actually getting (as opposed to what you think you are getting) for the premium you pay on Certified Organic.

Organically grown food has fewer chemical inputs, which we consider to be a good thing. But is that offset by the diesel fuel consumed in trucking food from California, or the jet fuel from South America? And we are starting to hear that China wants to be a player in the US organic food market. Do you get to keep the frequent flier miles if you eat the food?

There is no one right answer. But you have the power (we would say the responsibility) to make decisions that support what you value. But do us all (yourself included) a favor and don't go into this blind. Think about what you care about, and figure out how your consumption habits relate to this.

So what do we choose? For us, local trumps everything. Organic and local earns bonus points. Why is local so important to us? We feel it's fresher and tastes better. There are varieties of things like tomatoes and apples that just can't survive travel. We keep our money close to home. Many national brand Organic labels are owned by huge multinational conglomerates. My neighbors need my money more than Unilever does (not that I'm giving up Ben and Jerry's once September rolls around). And we get accountability. Have you thought about food safety in the last few years? Let's see. . . Mad Cow, tainted spinach, beef, chicken, peanut butter, etc. Most of this contamination is a result of factory farming practices, and the only way to protect yourself from that is to know the farmer. And for those of you who have not yet done the homework, I am sorry to break it to you that Certified Organic absolutely does not guarantee that factory methods were not used, and in the case of animal products, it does not guarantee humane living conditions.

Educate yourself. Read some of the books we've mentioned here, and
listen to this NPR story about grocery stores selling local food.

Vote with your dollars!

Friday, August 3: Day 3—Why 100 miles?

2007-08-03T18:27:00.000-07:00

Why not 200, or 250, or something less arbitrary, like using the borders of Wisconsin?

It all comes down to what you think is local. For us, a big part of it is to know who produced the food. Wisconsin is a medium-sized state, but it is possible to drive 6 hours and not cross out of it. That's a long way, and by no standard that we recognize does that constitute local, particularly when we can be in northern Illinois in just over an hour, which you have to consider much more "local" by comparison. We are buying most of our food from people who had a hand in growing it, and only under special circumstances could this happen for a producer that was hours and hours away by car. But this is why we made our exception for buying in person. We traveled to Door County, WI in July, which is an area famous for its cherries. We bought cherries at the orchard where they were grown, and we'll continue to enjoy them despite the fact that they come from "too far away". Likewise, Harmony Valley Farm is a mainstay at the Dane County Farmers' Market. As the crow flies they are about 92 miles from here, but I have no doubt that the odometer on their truck registers over 100 miles every Saturday. But when we buy from them we are buying directly from the producer. I think it meets the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish, which is to know where our food comes from and to spend our food dollars with people we know.

So what did we eat today? Well, we were all on separate tracks today. Jen was out working, so after a breakfast of wheat bran cereal, she packed a multi-stage lunch including cauliflower, cheese, popcorn, peanut butter, yellow-doll melon and a Caprese salad picked from our driveway garden.

Scott and Evie had a special treat for breakfast—brun-uusto from Brunkow Cheese. This is a Finnish cheese that is in a slab about 5/8" thick, and it is baked on both sides until it is golden brown. You bring it home and reheat it until it is soft inside. The flavor is insane—buttery and salty, it tastes like a whole grilled cheese sandwich (I consider it a bit Willy Wonka-ish, to be honest) and the texture is a little chewy, almost rubbery, with a bit of cheese curd squeak to it (I'm sure we'll post on sqeuaky cheese curds in the future for those who don't know), and a creamy finish in your mouth. Plus buttered toast, maple yogurt, and Evie finished the last of the apple cider. Oh, the yogurt. I know that the FDA or the USDA has a standard for what can be called Lowfat yogurt, but I swear those people at Sugar River Dairy must be cheating. Their yogurt is unbelievably creamy. A lot of national brands have additives in them to enhance the mouthfeel. Nothing sinister—pectin is a common one, and Stonyfield Farms uses some sort of natural dietary fiber (Inulin I believe it is called), but I'm here to tell you that there is nothing like the real thing, baby.

Lunch? Hot dogs (all beef from Pecatonica Valley Farms), potatoes (Driftless Organics), and broccoli . Couldn't find the homemade ketchup we made last year, so I ate everything straight up and have no complaints (do not normally use ketchup on broccoli, BTW).

For dinner we went out to Jen's parents house (1/2 hour away) and had bison burgers, salad from Harmony Valley Farm , pasta from RP's Pastas, and dessert of whipped cream and raspberries on graham crackers from Potter's Crackers. This was a meal that did not meet our criteria 100% (flour in pasta and crackers, for example) but we were thrilled that Jen's mother put so much thought into where everything came from. This, after all, is the whole point of the exercise. We're after mindfulness, not mindless allegiance. More on this topic to come.

On Saturday I have 2 markets to hit. I'm bringing a long list, a big appetite, and a wad of cash. . .

Thursday, August 2: Day 2

2007-08-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

Scott here. One thing that has quickly become apparent is how reliant we become (or at least I have become) on my regular foods. I have to adjust my psychology for this project because I am feeling that if I can't get the foods I'm accustomed to that I am not getting enough to eat. When you figure that we're cooking just about everything in bacon grease it seems obvious that we're not going to starve, but when you are convinced you are hungry for X, it does not matter how much of Y you eat, you still crave X. Not sure how long it will take to break the old habits. For me, it's quality bread (I was getting close, but then I ran out of flour, more on the way Saturday), protein (yogurt is OK, but meat is really where it's at) and on these sizzling hot summer days, sweet drinks (lemonade is my favorite, but luckily I also love cider).

Our menu today:
Toast and cider for breakfast (pictured with the homemade peanut butter with the bacon grease—yum!).

Lunch was a hodge-podge of cauliflower, eggs (from friends), potatoes (Driftless Organics), Canadian Bacon (Pecatonica Valley Farm), melon (Old Stage Vegetable Gardens) and cucumbers (from our neighbors across the street).

Dinner was fabulous Italian sausages (again from Pec Valley Farm), a pile of sweet corn (Old Stage Vegetable Gardens), green beans (some home grown, some from JenEhr farm), and a bit of homemade toast.

We have an ongoing project to make cider vinegar. We let the cider go hard for a week or so, and today we introduced the Mother of Vinegar to turn the alcohol into acid. Not sure if it will work fast enough to be of use, but we'll see. We also allowed an exception—we have some spoiled red wine that comes from outside the radius, but we figured that the karma was better in putting spoiled food to use than just throwing it away, so that's going to be vinegar, too.(SCL)

Wednesday, August 1: Day 1

2007-08-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

We went out with a bang last night at the annual REAP potluck. We brought a quiche with the most traveled ingredient came from about 30 miles away. We met Terese Allen who will be mentioning us in her column in the Isthmus later this month, learned about the work of REAP and made some wonderful new acquaintances.

Today we made crackers (turned out great), popcorn (in the microwave in a paper bag, no oil needed) and peanut butter. Turns out I was supposed to roast the peanuts in the shell but I ended up toasting the shelled peanuts in a dry skillet. I needed oil to smooth it all out in the food processor, the only fat we had besides butter was bacon grease, melted--it worked like a dream and OH MY GOODNESS is the peanut butter good!

Thanks to a tip from a reader Scott went out to meet another wheat farmer today who grinds with a stone mill. They only had a little available for experimentation but will have more this week--we are hopeful.

Finally:

Breakfast was wheat bran hot cereal with honey and Sugar River Dairy yogurt with strawberry sauce I had preserved last month.
Lunch was beets with hot peppers and onion, fresh corn and melon.
Dinner was fresh pasta with homegrown tomatoes and herbs, cheese and butter. We also had broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and onions from market and cucumbers from our neighbors.

Day one down, all within 100 miles of home!

Soy Sauce

2007-08-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

A number of readers contacted us about the Kikkoman plant in Walworth (thank you!) We emailed the company and received the following response:

"The all-purpose Kikkoman Soy Sauce is produced at Kikkoman Foods, Inc. in Walworth, Wisconsin but the soybeans and wheat are purchased throughout the USA and Canada."

Wheat and soybeans are some of the biggest commodity crops in the world, origin traceability would be remarkable from a company as big as Kikkoman, using solely local crops for a local plant is, I guess, out of the question.

Out of curiosity we looked into brewing our own--it would be ready by September of 2008. Maybe for next year!

Houston, we have a problem. . .

2007-07-31T06:34:00.000-07:00

I won't say I wasn't warned, but I am feeling as though we may have sentenced ourselves to a month of truly dreadful bread. Wheat, it turns out, is very hard to come by. We managed to find some from Tom Brantmeier . Tom warned us that is not a great bread wheat, as did the folks at Cress Springs Bakery (who mill it for Tom), but what choice do we have? I suppose we could try to gut it out for a month without bread, but that is no choice at all. So on we go.

I do not go in for the 100% whole wheat loaf that I call "hippie bread". In my view, people's passion for whole grain goodness has overpowered their aesthetic sense and caused them to accept a doorstop as a food product. A bread should be leavened, for the love of Pete, or else you might as well eat tortillas (which is where we may end up if this does not work out).

In preparation for our month-long experiment, I made a test batch of bread—a couple of loaves of simple sourdough.

But I must start at the beginning, and the beginning of bread is wheat. I took delivery of 10 pounds of hard wheat from Tom Brantmieir. I brought it home and ground it in the NutriMill. It looked very branny, so I seived it through a medium seive, then through a fine seive. I can't quite believe how much bran I took out, but it was still pretty brown, and it has a fine sandy feel to it. I had done a small experiment with a third seive made of mosquito netting, but all this screening is a pain, so I decided to skip it.

I mixed up the dough, a simple sourdough (for you bread geeks out there, I gave it a 30 minute autolyse and hydrated it to about 75%). I mixed it in the KithenAid mixer for a few minutes, then turned it out for fermentation (or first rise, to all you home bakers). A long time passed, during which I did a bunch of bread-geek voodoo to it that is supposed to make for better loaves. Finally it was time to bake. Only when I turned the loaves out of their rising baskets to be put into the oven, the bottoms plopped out and the tops stayed in the baskets. The loaves tore in half—a total failure.

So what happened? In short, I have a gluten crisis on my hands. We've all heard of gluten, I expect. It's the protein that allows bread to rise by forming an elastic net that can trap gas bubbles. It is what makes bread dough stretchy. Without it you have nothing but starch. Compare bread dough to cornstarch paste and you begin to get the difference. Tom's wheat is not very rich in gluten (the growing conditions in this region are not right for those varieties), so I need to shift to techniques that will make the most of what little gluten is present. One problem is bran. The bran part of the wheat kernel shatters when you mill it, and it makes tiny particles with sharp edges and little spiky hairs on them that actually cut/tear the gluten mesh. So I will definitely be including the mosquito netting step next time. Also, acid has a detrimental effect on gluten, and the sourdough starters are very acidic, especially during the hot summer months. So I will have to go to a commercial yeast. Lucky for me that SAF yeast is in Milwaukee, a mere 75 miles away, and easily within our radius. I will also use a number of other dough handling techniques that are intended to increase the suppleness and handling quality of doughs made with marginal flours. No need to bore you with the details now, but if they work, I will definitely bore you with the details.

As part of my research, I looked at my home-ground flour under the microscope and compared it to a high-quality store-bought flour. This is what I saw (store-bought on top, home-grown on bottom):

Not sure what I was looking for, but no smoking gun here. The bran particles in the home-grown are bigger, but they are not really any more numerous than the ones in the store-bought. The granule size seems mostly comparable. One thing I will say is that the home-grown flour is much darker in color. This may be because it has more germ in it. Also, I understand that commercial flour is often aged, and that this lightens the color a bit. We'll see if ours changes over time.

I've got 20 more pounds of wheat coming this week. I hope it goes better the next time around. (SCL)

What we will miss

2007-07-30T03:33:00.000-07:00

coffee
chocolate
lemon
vanilla
soy sauce
cooking oil
goldfish crackers
convenience

Practice

2007-07-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

We try to incorporate local foods into our life regularly. It is easy to do. This experiment will stretch us to see can we get everything we need from within 100 miles. It is always fun to practice!

Tools

2007-07-29T11:06:00.001-07:00

We like to make things from scratch. Scott is an excellent baker and it has been over 2 years since we have purchased bread from the store. This summer we finally built a wood-fired mud oven in our backyard. It is brilliant! It keeps our house cooler and makes our food yummier! We also have both manual and electric grain grinders. We are purchasing wheat from Tom Brantmeier and grinding it at home. We then sift off most of the bran, eat that for breakfast as hot cereal and bake with the rest. This piece of equipment is key to our experiment. We tried grinding popcorn the other day and Scott ended up taking apart the motor--we will be hand-grinding that from now on!

We have a food dehydrator that we will use to preserve things we pick, raspberries and tomatoes for sure.

Finally we have an electric juicer. There are many people in our neighborhood who have fruit trees and they don't use the fruit. After asking permission many have granted us total access to their crops and Evie and I started juicing apples today to get a taste of what we will drink for breakfast in August--yum!

Getting ready . . .

2007-07-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

We have always taken advantage of the Dane County Farmers' Market. Fresh, local food tastes better, requires fewer transportation costs, is grown with fewer to no chemical assistance, is not genetically modified and is grown by people we can meet and interact with and enjoy.

We first started talking about a 100 mile experiment after reading Plenty. The books noted in our sidebar had piqued our thoughts and got us wondering how radical could we be? An ordinary family of three, living in a very urban neighborhood.

We decided to try the experiment in August because of the abundance of local choices at that time of year. By May lots of local foods were starting to make their appearance, we started planning.