Sunday, November 25, 2007

A Fairly Local Thanksgiving

My eldest daughter was home from college this week, and we ate out more than usual. Thanksgiving dinner was undoubtedly my most-local meal of the week. I did not order a special free-range organic turkey, but took advantage of the ".59/lb with a $25 purchase" offer on an Our Family turkey at Econofoods. Not the gourmet's choice, I'm sure, but it worked with my schedule and my budget. I'm certain it was a local turkey, however, since Our Family is the Nash Finch (based in Minneapolis) store brand and this is one of the biggest turkey-growing regions in the country. I really am shifting most of my limited meat purchases to local, small-scale producers, but I didn't manage that this time.

With the turkey we had garlic mashed potatoes (potatoes local, the garlic probably not, though the labeling was unclear in this instance), roasted local carrots, local Brussels sprouts, and Sno Pac local frozen organic sweet corn, and there was a local onion, diced and sauteed, in the stuffing (I feel apologetic that the stuffing was of the commercial bagged sort, albeit improved by the addition of the onion and some non-local but organic celery and browned pecans). And there was some other not-so local stuff as well. My vegetarian sister-in-law cooked a Tofurkey, which she said was really quite good, and my mother-in-law supplied a couple of Baker's Square pies. I'm no longer married to their brother and son, but they are my family too, after 25 years' history together. And I was grateful for that, and for them, and for having all the kids with us this Thanksgiving.

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