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!