Local Food in My Kitchen This Week

In my sidebar I keep a running list of locally grown or produced food currently in my kitchen. Since some people may be reading my blog posts as aggregated elsewhere, they won't see what's in the sidebar, like my quote of the week and this list. So I'll try to remember to include those items in my posts at least some of the time. And for you aggregate-readers, remember to stop in and see the full site sometimes.

So, this week in my kitchen you'd find:

• New potatoes and green beans, from last week's trip to the farmer's market. Gotta use up those beans!
  
• Jam made from strawberries from Lorence's U-pick
  
• Bread from the Brick Oven bakery (but purchased at the co-op)
  
• Cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden
• Milk, yogurt, butter and cheese from Minnesota and Iowa dairies, from the co-op
  
• Organic eggs from Owatonna, MN, from the co-op
• Rainbow chard, green onions and a small melon, all marked as local at the co-op
• Salsa Lisa (a staple in my kitchen) - made in Minneapolis
  
• Callister Farm free-range chicken (boneless chicken breast) from West Concord, MN, from the co-op

Some of these items invite a discussion of what should be considered local food. Bread, for example. Wheat isn't grown around here that I'm aware of, though quite a bit of it comes from the Dakotas, which are traditionally two of the top wheat-producing states. I'm not a hard-liner. If the raw ingredients aren't readily grown here, I see plenty of "local" value in transporting them here and adding economic value to them by turning them into staples like bread that are consumed right here. So if it's from the Quality Bakery or the Brick Oven or other local bakeries, or if it's cereal made at Malt-O-Meal, it passes for local in my mind.

How Are Your Gardens Holding Up?

Tomatoes
Originally uploaded by Penelopedia

It's been dry! After quite a lot of rain in the late spring but very little since then, we are running quite a moisture deficit. Since my garden is all in pots, I have to water just about every day. I can tell that the cucumbers have been stressed -- they start to form, and then some of them just shrivel up. The tomatoes are doing okay, particularly the ones in the largest pots, like the Golden Girls in the accompanying photo. What's doing well in your garden, and what's suffering?

Why Eat Locally? (Part two of an ongoing discussion)

Last week I wrote about the fuel dependency argument for increasing the amount of locally-produced food we eat. This week I’m thinking about the words by Wendell Berry that provide my quote of the week: “Eaters must understand… that eating is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat, to a considerable extent, determines how the world is used.”

The essay from which these words are drawn goes on to talk about the industrial food economy, in which “the overriding concerns are not quality and health, but volume and price.” The scale of production has increased, at the cost of plant and animal species variety, the health of the environment, and the ability of the smaller farmer to compete.

Articles about the benefits of eating locally often discuss the hidden costs of “cheap” food -- the mass produced, commodified, packaged food that fills our supermarkets. Those costs come in the form of tax money going to subsidize commodity crops through price supports and tax breaks, road transport subsidies, the below-market price of the water used in western agriculture, long-term environmental costs, and more. The price of our groceries often doesn’t reflect these costs, but we pay them, regardless.

I suspect that our country, and the world, needs some large-scale agriculture, but I’d be very sad to live in a world where that’s all there was. I want us to think about “how the world is used” and make choices as if the future of small-scale farming were at stake -- because it is. I’d like to know that in every suitable climate, family farms can use sustainable practices to produce varied and healthy crops and make a decent living doing so because consumers (literally, "eaters," in Berry's wording) value high-quality farm products for their freshness and flavor and beauty and variety and nutrition ... and also value the local farmer's essential contributions to our culture, our landscape, our local economy, and the future of our food supply.

Getting Adventurous With Chard (and Cellists)

I missed yesterday's farmers' market, as my younger daughter and I had a chance to attend a rehearsal of the Minnesota Orchestra with guest cellist Daniel Mueller-Schott, playing Dvorak's Cello Concerto -- one of the most glorious pieces of music ever, and Daniel was phenomenal. Check him out! (I'm listening to his recording of a Bach sonata from his website as I write.) The New York Times recently described him as "the magnetic young German cellist ... a fearless player with technique to burn ... [and a] gorgeous, plush tone." The perhaps hackneyed phrase "caramel tones" kept flitting through my head as I listened to him yesterday.

But I digress.

Having missed the farmers' market, I took myself to the co-op this morning to see what locally-grown goodies would catch my eye. I left the produce aisle with an adorable little muskmelon, a bunch of green onions, and a bunch of beautiful rainbow chard (all yellow stalks in my bunch).

And here's where I confess: I have never before cooked with chard, nor ever eaten it as far as I'm aware. I've admired it for its multi-colored stalks and deep green leaves in the seed catalogs, and I know chard (also known as Swiss chard) was widely recommended as a spinach substitute during the recent spinach safety scare, but this is the first time I've ever bought it. I decided it was high time I did.

Many of the recipes for chard call for chopping it coarsely, removing any large, woody stalks, and sautéing it briefly in olive oil and garlic. It can be used in place of spinach in any cooked recipe, and even eaten raw when the stalks are young and tender. I haven't decided exactly how I'm going to prepare my chard, but I will report back.

Helping Farmers Make the Switch to Organic

A recent report on Minnesota Public Radio notes that the supply of organic food -- including organic feed for livestock -- isn't keeping up with demand. Farmers have been slow to switch from conventional crops to organic, but a county in Northwest Iowa is trying to do something about that:

"There are efforts underway to encourage farmers to make the leap. In Minnesota, the state helps pay the cost to certify a farm's organic status.

"In Northwest Iowa, there's a more ambitious program. Officials in Woodbury County, the Sioux City area, are trying to build an organic food industry. As part of the effort the county has trademarked the brand name "Sioux City Sue Foods," based on the old country music song. Local farmers can use the name to market their products. The county offers tax breaks and other incentives to farmers who switch to organic production.

"Woodbury County Rural Economic Development Director Rob Marqusee says he hopes to attract a major soybean processor to the area. Marqusee says organic foods are one issue where local governments can lead. ...

"He says Woodbury County is trying to build a farm to market infrastructure for organic foods. Things like processing plants, storage units, shipping links. Already the Whole Foods Market chain has starting buying from county farmers."

Read more and listen to the piece here.