what i've been doing, what i've learned & how i'll move forward

When I began eating locally, I still had a kitchen stocked with non-local foods: Annie's mac&cheese, brown rice, lentils, dried beans, couscous, canned pumpkin, sugar, all-purpose flour and chocolate. Now that my month-long experiment is over I want to use-up all that non-local food in an effort to move forward and eat as locally as possible. I would never waste food already purchased, just because it traveled serious mileage from farm to plate. That wouldn't make sense. So for the past week or so I have been using old food and eating at a lot of local restaurants -- Old Fashioned, Indie Coffee, Laredo's -- mainly because I am way too busy to look at recipes right now. In order to use-up most of my sugar and flour I made Troy some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins with cream cheese frosting for his birthday. I used the left-over batter for bread and it tastes delightful. I think I really missed all-purpose flour.

I've really learned a lot in this past month and I wanted to write a wrap-up both for myself and for those who have been reading this whole time.

Breakfast: Before eating locally I usually ate toast with peanut butter, oatmeal with fruit and nuts, or yogurt with granola for breakfast. I always had a cup of coffee too. While eating locally, I learned to make bread with honey, maple syrup and local flour. I also became an expert omelete maker. I ate way too many eggs. As I move forward, I plan to compromise. Local yogurt, eggs, and bread made by local bakeries (I never learned to enjoy breadmaking, but I think it was a time constraint issue). I will probably make my own peanut butter on some occasions, but I plan to buy it at the store as well. As for my beloved oatmeal, I went out and bought a huge container of Quaker rolled oats, but will try to purchase oats as locally as possible from now on. I found some in Welcome, Minnesota.

Lunch: Before this project, I ate a lot of beans and rice or lentils and couscous for lunch. I really missed rice and beans while eating locally. I hope to reintroduce these items into my life, but as a more conscious consumer -- as local as possible and organic (if it means a better product and more sustainable farming practices). I will also eat sandwiches (which I can make quickly and transport) with bread from local bakeries and cheese and vegetable from local farms. For as long as possible (until the season/storage-life lasts), I will eat potatoes, soups and stuffed squashes. The vegetables I froze last month will be useful for salads and soups. And I just discovered that Sno Pac Foods is only 166 miles from Madison! Sno Pac sells bags of frozen and organic vegetables that are grown and packaged on-site at their Minnesota farm! Available at Willy Street Co-op and most likely at Copp's.

Dinner: Pretty much the same as lunch. I used to eat local vegetables, sweet potatoes and squash, which I continued to do last month, obviously. I learned to make several soups with local ingredients, and I plan to continue this effort, especially if the soup freezes well. My favorite was the sweet potato and sausage soup with spinach, which I plan to make more of this week. I also learned the joy of homemade pizza and pasta sauce. I plan to keep making homemade pizza and pasta sauce with local ingredients. I plan to support RP's Pasta by purchasing fresh pasta from them instead of dried pasta in the grocery store.

Clearly the summer and fall months are better for eating local and the winter will present a challenge. I plan to get as much as possible at the weekly farmers' market and after that, buy as local as possible (oats from Minnesota, for example) by investigating websites for farms in near-by states. When I cannot bake or make something, I want to support local businesses, such as RP's and Nature's Bakery. When the item is from super-far-off distances, I will also support local businesses and fair trade practices (coffee from Just Coffee, chocolate from Divine). Although I want to improve my cooking experience by exploring other cookbooks like Alice Water's "The Art of Simple Food" and Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" -- I have to recognize that a busy life demands dining out, and I have no qualms about eating at the myriad local restaurants in Madison.

I'm still entrenched in locavore literature. In order to stay sane during midterms, work, and general life chaos, I have been blocking-off half hour time intervals to both knit a new scarf and finish the stacks of books I got from the library this past month.

Thank you, readers. Continue to check back. I will be posting local meals and recipes, as well as new information as I learn more and more. I am excited for the challenge of winter cooking with local ingredients.

developing a wrap-up session & a good read

To everyone who has asked, I am still here and still intending to continue with this project. I am still gathering the main points I want to wrap-up the month's experiment with and I will report back soon.

For now, I will tell you about this amazing book I am reading called "The Real Food Revival." I wish I had found this earlier, but I have been inundated with locavore literature, so perhaps I wouldn't have had the time to read it before now anyways. It's all about the different foods humans consume and the ways we can do better. I am not too far into it, and will provide a more substantial review later. So far I highly recommend it.

day 27: eating locally on special diets, a farmers' market breakfast, and another farmers' market

After finishing up the amazing sweet potato soup, I made a few more large recipes with tons of portable leftovers: pasta and roasted acorn squash with mushrooms and garlic. The pasta was from RP's again, and it was gluten free, which actually tasted super good. I also made Martha's recipe for roasted acorn squash with mushrooms and chicken breast. This did not go as planned. I couldn't find local cuts of chicken breast sold separately so I decided to buy a half chicken and just roast it with the vegetables anyways. There is a local market in Spring Green that actually does sell individual chicken breasts, but with my schedule, I wasn't able to get there this week. So a half chicken it was.

I thawed the chicken all day and by dinner time I was ready to cut it apart and roast it. I started cutting into it and couldn't handle it. The Lynch family commented that when you buy meat locally it is impossible to ignore the fact that the meat is coming from real animals. So true. I'm not sure which half of the chicken I bought, but there was definitely some sort of liver or heart or who-knows-what in it. I tried so hard but ended up not cooking the chicken at all. I seriously have never been pushed so close to vegetarianism. I simply cannot handle raw meat on my own. I guess I have to stick to fish fillets, sausages, or anything pre-portioned and neat and tidy. Or eat prepared meat at restaurants, like I always used to do.

These two meals got me thinking more about eating locally on special diets. A gluten allergy could have some benefits, as you wouldn't have to worry about mediocre local wheat. But you would have to eat some rice for sure, and Minnesota might be the closest you could get wild rice, but I'm not sure about anything else. You might be forced to rely on potatoes and corn for your carb-intake. Likewise, being a vegetarian and eating locally in Madison might be impossible. No beans. No tofu products. Unless you wanted to eat a lot of eggs and other dairy products, you might have to eat locally with a looser definition of what that means.

Anyways, today I had breakfast at the Local Tavern. If you live in Madison and have never had the Saturday Farmers' Market Breakfast here, you really need to try it. I love breakfast and I love eating breakfast at local restaurants. This might be the best breakfast in Madison; seriously. The menu is really unique and I had eggs, sweet potato hashbrowns, and the most amazingly rich cornbread. Ever. Wow.

The farmers' market was less crowded and there were signs declaring things like "last week for salad mix." I bought salad mix. I also bought more sweet potatoes at Harmony Valley. I learned that they cure their sweet potatoes, which doubles the sugar and makes them taste better. Apparently they don't taste great right from the ground, which explains why the ones I got a few weeks ago were really bland and acorn-squash-tasting. Also got some bok choy and green onions for a recipe I saw on a food blog. It was funny because I was commenting about how long (like 4 feet long) some of the green onions were this week, and then the farmer at the stand totally gave me the longest ones ever. They were sorta scary and stuck three feet out of my market bag.

Okay - well expect a bigger wrap-up post in a few days. But I don't see this project as ending at all. So it won't be the last post, by any means.

day 23: catching up here

I really believe that local eating is for everyone. Just on different levels and in different ways. Maybe you are a student who can't afford to buy all of your groceries locally, but you could still buy things that cost much less than at the supermarket. Think vegetables and cheeses. Or maybe you eat at a lot of chain restaurants and could take a step to begin eating at locally owned restaurants. Or even better, at local restaurants that support local farmers. Think Roman Candle, Bluephie's, and L'Etoile (if only we could all be so lucky, regarding the latter of those!). Or maybe you are like me, without much cooking experience, kitchen space, or enough time to sleep. But with the greatest of intentions. In that case, maybe you could try to buy everything you need for your meals at the farmers' market, and support local producers such as RP's Pasta or Oakhouse Bakery for things that take too much time and energy for you to make yourself. Think pastas, breads, and desserts. No matter who you are or how much local eating you are ready for, I think the creators of the 100 Mile Diet were on to something when they said "START SMALL." That probably means not putting an extra stipulation on your local eating -- like cooking every meal from a cookbook that only has 3-hour long dinner recipes. This will leave you bitter about eating locally. Because you'll feel like a failure.

That's how I had been feeling about local eating. Until I stepped back and realized that it wasn't eating locally that made me bitter. Eating locally has filled me with happiness -- from walking around the farmers' market with heavy bags of fresh ingredients from farmers I have gotten to talk with, to the taste of unprocessed products and produce that last longer than usual in my fridge due to less miles traveled in a truck before getting to my apartment. No, it couldn't actually be the buying and eating locally that made me bitter. It was feeling forced to cook from Martha only. Now to be fair, Martha Stewart has some fantastic, if not outrageously time-consuming, recipes. I have enjoyed learning how to cook things and use equipment I have never heard of before this month. I am now less afraid of knives and meat (kind of). But maybe I need to try some other cookbooks, with faster and simpler recipes. Not Rachel Ray -- but I noticed that Alice Waters just released a beautiful and minimalist cookbook called The Art of Simple Food. Maybe I'll go that way. But eating locally is not something I intend to abandon with Martha or the end of these four weeks. No -- it is something I hope to continue as best as I can, for the person I am and the level I am comfortable with. It's really easy to make the choice to not eat locally, but I think it can be just as easy to make the opposite choice.

On the food front, this past market was really nice -- much cooler outside, and I was able to get normal-looking sweet potatoes from Harmony Valley. I love this farm so much that I really am considering getting a CSA through them next year. The only reason I haven't gotten a CSA yet during my time in Madison is that I was afraid of being so overwhelmed with produce that I wouldn't be able to buy anything at the market. And going to the market is my favorite thing to do in Madison. After this past month, I realize that is an absurd thought. There is so much MORE at the market than I had ever imagined!

Still on the run like crazy this week due to midterm projects, taking-on extra hours at work (need to learn to say "no") and whatnot. Having made the decision to abandon the Martha aspect of eating locally, I made some things in bulk for the past few days. More crackers (this time I added some herbs) and a huge pot of an amazing and filling and warming soup from the October issue of Bon Appetit. I am a magazine junkie -- can't leave the store without the latest celebrity gossip, real/political news, or music news in-hand. I also am weak for nice food photography (Saveur magazine is my National Geographic). So I was excited to actually cook something from a magazine I bought. And it's the best recipe I have made all month, right up there with the zucchini fritters and the homemade pizza! So simple too -- just start with an onion/garlic base. Add sweet potatoes and regular potatoes. Then add chicken broth (oh yeah -- I made this myself with local ingredients!) and the browned sausage. Finish by adding a ton of fresh spinach, simmering until it wilts. It's called Sweet Potato Soup with Sausage. Check it out.

Otherwise, still eating locally with quick-grab items like apples, peanut butter, popcorn, green beans and yogurt. I wish I could have become a better breadmaker, but the time involved was an unfortunate issue for me. Still thinking positively though. Eating locally has so many heart-warming benefits, not to mention all those bigger benefits for the environment and economy.

days 18 & 19: pork overload and locavore-levels

I finally got a chance to sit-down for a few meals this week. The bad news is that they all included pork. I was delaying my meat cooking experience as long as possible, mainly because seeing all the plastic-covered blood really bothers me. Seeing it is bad enough, and touching it is another thing. I had to continually remind myself that this was local meat -- well-raised, and free of crazy diseases. So I pulled the pork chops out of the freezer and tried Martha's recipe for porkchops with apples and shallots in a wine glaze. Everyone advised me to undercook the porkchops, as they have a tendency to dry-out quickly. I took the advice and didn't have any problems with moisture levels. But I realized that porkchops aren't my favorite meat. By any means. Bone and fat was all I really got. At least the apples and shallots tasted fantastic on the side. Too bad I had to eat the other portion for dinner later that day. I saw some promising pork tenderloin recipes though, and I think if I really tried hard, I could handle the extra-blood involved with cooking those.

The following day I made Martha's recipe for linguini with yellow peppers and sausage. She called for turkey sausage, but no luck finding that locally. I substituted Pecatonica Valley's red wine Greenbush italian sausage instead. Now, I gave myself some lovely exceptions here. After my homemade pasta attempt a couple weeks ago, I decided that buying locally produced pasta from RP's Pasta was okay. Learning to cook and eat locally is a process and not an event. I am realizing that if I want to incorporate this into my life for good, I need to use this month to really decide what is worth my own time, and what is not. Homemade pasta is NOT. Especially when I can use my food dollars to support a wonderful local business like RP's.

Likewise, the sausage most likely includes some non-local spices. As the weeks have progressed, I have been connected with several other locavores across the country, and have been interested to see the various locavore "levels" on the continuum. Most allow themselves one major exception (coffee or olive oil), along with salt and pepper. I fall into that camp. Many others allow themselves the "Marco Polo" exception, which includes spices -- or anything that could be carried in a sailor's pocket for six months at sea (thereby not leaving a large ecological footprint). Barbara Kingsolver and her family experimented with local eating for an entire year, and by the end of the year she said that any year without eating corn syrup was purist enough for her. I'd have to agree. But back to the pasta ... it was awesome! I was more than happy to eat the leftovers for dinner, before running-off to a weekend of nearly 30 working-hours between all three jobs!

day 17: sameness, midweek market and homemade crackers

As I mentioned, this week is flying by whirlwind-style, and my meals have all looked something like this: maple-apple bread with fried egg, maple-apple bread with homemade peanut butter, maple-apple bread with yogurt and raspberries, maple-apple bread with yogurt and peanuts (leftovers that I didn't use for the peanut butter). Sameness, blah-ness -- but every little bit counts in local eating, and I have successfully avoided all vending machines and chain restaurants. I am happy to report that the sameness will end soon! My next meal is an all new Martha recipe with pork chops.

Went to the Wednesday Farmers' Market to find arugula for a pasta recipe. Like I said, so many vegetables I like are disappearing with the cold air, and arugula is one of them. Instead I bought raspberries (farmer told me this was the final batch), green beans and a half chicken. With all the meat recalls lately I can't imagine how anyone could complain about the cost of buying local meat. I would rather live a life without meat protein than get e-coli from non-local meat. So I'll buy local.

Since I am almost out of my portable maple-apple bread, I decided to try Martha's cracker recipe. I used local flour in place of the all-purpose flour and honey instead of sugar. These turned-out great! Laugh all you want at the picture though; I won't mind. I know some of the crackers look smooshed and wavy-like, but hey -- they were hard to scrape off the table and onto the baking sheet! Now I have a little bag of crackers to carry along with me and spread homemade peanut butter on.

Thanks to everyone who keeps reading and keeps me going. You are all so sweet and helpful.

past the half-way point: marketing, preserving, and peanut butter

So I think I am really getting the hang of buying most of my food at the Saturday Market. This time I waited until the last stretch to get the heavier things. I got more of the amazing honey-crisp apple sauce and talked a tad with the grower/producer. I also found peanuts, which is really exciting! I didn't realize they grow on a grapevine-type-thing. Again, the farmer looked at me strangely for being so overjoyed. The farmers in the next stand had hickory nuts. I noticed that Letoile restaurant uses local hickory nuts and am curious about their taste. Maybe next week. Bought all the other standards, as well as some pork chops and sausage (the same kind they sell to Greenbush). I'm excited to try-out some meat recipes, since I've been shying away from preparing anything red and bloody.

As I walked around the market I realized that the next couple weeks might be harder. Vegetables and fruit are getting more scarce, and fewer vendors tend to show-up the last couple weeks of the outside market. So I decided to stock-up on broccoli and cauliflower in order to freeze it for future use. I remember my mom teaching me how to blanch and freeze foods, so I put a pot of water to boil and got to work. I froze four large freezer bags of vegetables and now I feel better about my vegetable outlook.

Most of the weekend I was either eating at local restaurants or eating the leftovers. Bluephie's, Cafe La Bellitalia (on Sherman Ave, and SO good!), and the diner where I work. I felt like I was cheating a lot, but since the inception of this project I have neglected important things in my life in favor of cooking and doing the dishes. I still thought about from where every ingredient came and delighted in the fact that Madison has such amazing locally owned restaurants. Something my hometown has much fewer of.

The week ahead of me is more busy than usual -- filled with meetings and extra work hours. I needed to make some things in bulk that I could take along with me, so I made maple-apple bread and peanut butter! I was hesitant to replace and entire cup of sugar with maple syrup and honey, but the taste was perfectly sweet enough and I had to stop myself from eating it all immediately. Martha also called for bananas instead of apples, so I pretty much changed the recipe entirely. I was not about to abandon local apples for extrememly non-local bananas. Even though some bananas are fair trade certified, I can't help but think about how many miles they have traveled to reach Wisconsin.

The peanut butter wasn't a Martha recipe, but like I said, I was so excited to find local peanuts and I needed to make some things in bulk to get me through the week in a local manner. This was interesting. To start with, the peanuts were super dirty and I felt like I had to wash them. So I did. Then I was concerned because they didn't seem to be roasting quite fast enough. I ended up roasting them longer than I should have and they still seemed semi-raw. I figured it wouldn't matter too much and so I started to de-shell them. It took me two hours to get a cup of peanuts. The hard part isn't removing the larger shells, but rather removing the nearly-invisible red skins. Some of the peanuts were really wet and slippery. I was still hoping for the best. I finally put the peanuts in the food processor with some oil and things came-out okay. Not the best tasting peanut butter, but it'll have to do for now. Next time I will just let the dirt bake in the oven and avoid drenching the peanuts in water.

Half way there.

days eleven & twelve

I've been thinking about the idea versus the reality of eating locally. Before starting this project, I thought about local eating all the time and really supported the idea. I thought that eating locally 100 percent would be a tiny change for me, and actually pretty easy. As it turns out, eating locally theoretically is really easy for me because I don't battle with cost issues etc. I have always wanted to support local farmers with my dollars, even when I had fewer jobs and couldn't afford to. Yet the reality is that eating locally all the time needs to be done and not just thought about, before you can really say what you think about it (if that makes sense). I was drifting about on this ideal, trying to explain it to family etc ... before I had actually committed to trying it for real. Which is totally different than thinking about it. I am whole-heartedly committed to this in theory, and trying as hard as possible in reality. I just didn't realize the difficulty involved with cooking and the time involved with buying each product. I can't just run to the co-op when I need an ingredient. I need to think about where it came from too. I'm almost to the half-way point and I already feel like some days I want to eat a huge non-local cupcake for lunch and then do the same for dinner. But I'm also so glad I am going through this. Because now I know what is worth spending the time to do. And I know what I miss and will appreciate so much more (sugar, chocolate, oats, balsamic vinegar, bread, convenience). And I know what is available to me locally that I didn't know about before. And I will continue keeping the market as my first grocery stop, forever. I will buy every ingredient that grows locally, locally, whenever I can. I will buy from local stores and restaurants when I can't control the ingredients themselves. I will only buy non-locally when it's something that doesn't harm the economy/environment (spices). So all this is good. Okay - just processing a bit. Here's how I did:

On Thursday I went to Lazy Jane's for breakfast (see above paragraph about eating locally all the time in theory versus reality). I actually ended up eating something I could have, in theory, made locally by myself. A waffle with berries and cream. Yum.

For lunch I made mashed sweet potatoes. I bought a potato ricer last week and I can't believe I lived so long without one! Seriously, this made the mashed potato process delightful and beyond easy. When I bought the sweet potatoes at the market I was concerned that they looked so "scary" I guess. But I figured they were just a different variety than I was used to. Well. They cooked into a yellowish color and tasted like acorn squash. Still good, but not what i was going after. I'll look for sweet potatoes from a different vendor next week.

For dinner I made butter rolls, replacing the regular flour with whole wheat and the sugar with honey. The dough hardly rose during the rising phase, so I was a bit concerned. I turned the oven on real low, covered the dough with a towel and stuck it in the oven. It rose pretty quickly after that and baked-up amazingly! Tasted so good that I ate 4 out of 12 for dinner alone. I also sauteed some spinach and had some havarti cheese.

On Friday I tried to finish-up leftovers from the week, in anticipation of another huge round of Saturday marketing. Ate the rest of my yogurt, cheese, applesauce, and vegetables for breakfast and lunch. Also ate four more butter rolls (have to repeat this recipe again). Dinner was with Troy's family in Freeport, Illinois, at this nice place called Rafters. I had cornbread-encrusted pork medallions ... something else I could have made locally in theory. That's another thing ... so many recipes, in order to make local, require ingredients that are a two-part process (making pasta from scratch for a spaghetti recipe or making bread from scratch for croutons in a salad).

Troy's family was trying to help me in my local oat-seeking quest by offering suggestions. We also had a nice conversation about the project in general and about government subsidies for farmers growing commodities: corn and soybeans. After dinner we went to the Union Dairy and got ice cream. So perfect. So appreciated.

days nine & ten: sick day followed by all new recipes day

Tuesday I was pretty sick and without an appetite. I snacked on local applesauce, carrots and yogurt all day. I left work early and slept until my night class. In between I stopped at Walgreen's and bought the biggest carton of orange juice I could find. I drank it in 2 minutes flat.

Wednesday was much better and back on-track with local eating and Martha cooking. For breakfast I made a spinach omelette with feta and hot cherry tomato sauce. I only used 2 eggs, as opposed to three -- which worked just fine. I liked how Martha called for adding the spinach to the skillet before pouring in the eggs. It looked much prettier that way.

Troy let me cook dinner at his condo, which was nice because the space is much bigger and I was afraid the fish smell wouldn't dissipate quickly enough in my tiny studio apartment kitchen. I made pan-fried rainbow trout with wine glaze (trout from Artesian Trout Farm). I didn't realize that trout was in the salmon family, and was pleasantly surprised by the cooking process. The local flour I used for breading was great as well. I also made portobello mushrooms stuffed with gratineed potatoes, which was awesomely flavorful. Topped the entire dinner off with a bottle of Wollersheim wine. A great dinner!

days seven & eight: sunday realities and another week

On Sundays I waitress at a local diner, which is a job I love. After we close, the owner/cook feeds us all a huge breakfast/lunch which keeps me full all day. Yesterday I had a Greek omelet with American fries and toast. It was strange to eat the meal and think about how every single ingredient could have been local, but wasn't at all. If you can't eat locally, at least eat at a locally owned place. That was Sunday.

I got an email from Lexy proclaiming the virtues of lard. Seriously. Turns out, real lard (which Lexy asked for and found at the Dane County Farmers' Market) is actually better for you than butter, all-around. Considering the size of my fridge & freezer, I might hold-off on such a purchase (must be purchased in at least 5 pound quantities), however it was refreshing to hear such statistics.

Today (Monday) I had a huge breakfast of pancakes, made with all local ingredients. I simply replaced the sugar with honey and topped them off with maple syrup and homemade whipped cream -- which was a delight to make! I was in the mood for something sweet, and this breakfast totally delivered!

Lunch and dinner were potato-leek soup, which took over 3 hours to make. Martha called for bundling some sage, parsley and bay leaves into cheesecloth in order to form a "bouquet garni." Too much for me; I just tossed the herbs in the pot and all was well. I also don't own the requisite food mill, so I used my blender which was easy and made a nice puree. I didn't plan to eat this for dinner as well, but I made way too much and cream-based soups don't keep well in the fridge in my experience.

Another week begins and I have learned a lot so far. Mainly, that I was too ambitious. Not with the local eating -- which has proved to be only a very minor challenge at best (I miss dark chocolate!). But I realized I just plain don't have the time to cook an entire new Martha recipe/meal three times a day. Leftovers and restaurants are a way of life for busy people. I appreciate so much more now the fact that my mom made a huge sit-down dinner every night of my childhood.