Testing on Others...

Doug making beet pasta. Using local beets,
of course.

Moving into mid-month brought house guests.

Wanting to show off our local eating thing, Doug and I conferred on the menu for dinner the night his sister Nancy would be visiting from the east coast.

Nancy is an ex-VP from the CIA (Culinary Institute of America), so the bar was set pretty high.

We settled on homemade pasta. Doug had purchased a pasta machine a few weeks earlier, and we had some local flour. I knew a pretty good butternut sauce, and decided to experiment with the nettles he bought at Green City Market.

Results: kinda average. Barely. We’re still struggling with the flour. I have had great luck with the flour I purchased from Breslin Farms, but any effort to get a larger quantity to save some $$ was not working. They only seem to mill smaller batches, and I’m too disorganized right now to order well ahead. Organization is key when eating local.

So, I had some flour from another local source, but it seems to be milled coarser, and the results with bread, cookies, and ultimately pasta, are disappointing. The pasta was a little heavy and gummy.

The butternut squash I used for one sauce was obviously so last fall. Still fresh, but it seems the flavor had matured in storage, and had a stronger squashy taste - not the milder taste I really loved.

A hit! and the lettuce is local, too!

The nettle sauce was ok. I think I get points for using nettles. They’re supposedly amazingly healthy, but the sauce was not amazingly tasty.

Nancy was polite, but probably eager to get to some not-so-local eating at her meeting downtown the next day.

Now, Doug’s mother came in Thursday, and that was a different story. We had just received our first CSA order from Majestic Farms, and had fresh mushrooms. Lot’s of them.

I found a recipe for a Hungarian Mushroom Soup from Allrecipes.com. (click here for the recipe). Our CSA farmers, Randy and Gayle, had also put a package of local corn meal in our order. Local corn meal + local flour + local honey + local eggs = local corn muffins! We were crankin’!

I have to say, this meal was a success. The soup was pure comfort food. I used stock I made from chicken raised locally, and the soup was rich and super tasty. That's what I love about this local eating deal: I never would have purchased all those mushrooms on my own, and attempted to find this recipe.

My mother joined us, and she was still talking about this meal two days later. This is high praise from my Polish mom.

First Full Week...

Doug's haul from Green City Market.

The first week of eating locally wasn’t a total bust, but I’m not beating my chest, either. It had it’s high points, and low points.

After receiving a low local score from Doug on one of the meals I prepared (Doug is enthusiastically applying a scoring system to rate the locality of our meals, a system I think we both now agree is best applied to our own efforts, instead of someone else's), I decided to send the hunter out to track down and bring home some local food.

The beginning of May is tough, especially the first year of eating local; nothing preserved, nothing fresh. The farmer’s markets in Brookfield and LaGrange hadn’t opened yet. The closest way I knew to get some good vittles was at the Green City Market at Peggy Notebart.

Doug make the very valid point that driving into Chicago wasn’t improving our carbon footprint, but unless we wanted nothing but meat and canned things from our pantry for the next week, this was our choice.

Following is a transcript of Doug’s texts to me while he was hunting and I was working.

Doug - “$%@* this!

Judi - What’s wrong?

Doug - No parking anywhere. They moved to an outdoor spot. City is having some event

Judi - Sucks. Like me and Sylvia at the outlet mall.

Doug - 45 minutes after getting to Peggy Notebart - finally in!

Judi - good job, my hunter of local food!

Doug (later) - We are about a hundred bucks poorer. But we can eat dinner tonight. But only tonight.

Judi - You are so funny

Doug - I wish I was joking.

I came home from work that afternoon expecting to see a measly haul, but I was amazed! Oats, black beans, squash, spinach, mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, cabbage, even nettles (?)! One meal my arse!

Still, as we approach the middle of our first month, there have been many times I’ve appreciated the stuff remaining in our pantry from our “pre-local” days. For example, there is literally no fruit to be had this time of year. If it wasn’t for the canned pineapple and dried mango and apricots I had leftover, my girls wouldn’t have any plant-based item in their school lunches at all this month. (not big into carrot sticks). However, that stuff is getting depleted. A lot less waste, a lot less trips to the supermarket, and a bit more creativity is the trend this month.

Doug's Take

A year of eating locally is Judi's idea.  But those of you who know us probably figured that out.  Don't get me wrong - I fully support the concept of shopping from local Mom & Pop merchants and farmers, I fully support eating healthy and I understand the benefits of organics and the dangers of genetically modified foods.  It just isn't the way I tend to live my life.  I am more inclined to go to the nearby large grocery chain than drive 30 minutes in order to pay 30% more at Whole Foods.  Am I too cheap?  Too lazy?  Probably a good dose of both.

So when Judi first broached the idea to me, my first couple of thoughts weren't exactly supportive.  But if I have learned anything after 15 years of marriage, it is to ask questions first, speak your mind later.  And for once, I did it! We talked about how we could go about this and the effect it would have on us.  She shared some thoughts on what we would learn, as well as our kids.  I realized how much of what we eat is already "local" - this shouldn't be much of a challenge at all [update:  today is Day 11 and I NOW realize the reason some of our food wasn't "local" is because it simply doesn't exist locally - but I already agreed...].  Then we agreed to make April a trial month before we commit to this in May [update: the next thing I need to work on is to be more involved during the trial periods...] and Judi agreed that I get to author The Rules and keep score [sadly, I love rules and tracking performance].



Judi's last crazy idea - a trip to India

And the truth is, Judi's ideas usually work out pretty well.  We still laugh about stories from the summer she and the girls moved to the farm to raise chickens and milk goats.  I thought her idea of a three week family trip to India was crazy [my first ten thoughts, which I voiced before asking], and that turned out fantastic.

For me, this is an adventure, not a spiritual journey.  Tracking down local foods will take time and cost more money.  We will need to change the way we eat (rice, citrus - in Illinois?).  This will be an investment.  But an investment in family memories is an easy investment to make.  So what the hell, let's go for it.  I'm all in!

May is just the beginning...

So here we are, May 1. Or, Day 1 our first month of the “Local Eating Project”.

What does “Local Eating” mean, exactly? It means our family - Doug, Eva, Sylvia and I - has taken a

Sylvia and Judi doing research in Elburn, IL

pledge of sorts, to scrutinize our food choices, research the local options, and find the farmers, dairies, beekeepers, and small business-people who are passionate about creating healthy food for their customers; food that works with our natural environment here in the rich soil of the midwest. Over the next 12 months, we will be shifting our food choices to those grown or produced within 100 miles of either of our homes (farm or city).

But why? Anyone who knows me either in my hometown of Riverside, or at my yoga studio in Brookfield, knows I am passionate about my farm in the country. I’ve been heading 80 miles west of Chicago for weekends and summers since I was 4, and have developed a connection with the farm area, and local farmers. For the last 10 years, more and more of our food comes directly from people we know. I’ve purchased milk from a good friend who squeezed those teats by hand. The chicken my family eats comes from Joe at the Tri-City Market. We’ve raised our own steer. I’ve maintained two gardens. My studio organized a CSA with Randy, and I swam in fresh veggies (thankfully, since my gardens have been hit-or-miss lately.) And, buddies at the farm have generously shared their over-abundance of produce and fresh eggs with me (and I never say no!).

So, I’ve developed a real love for people who have a real love for what I eat. People who really care. These are folks who may complain about no rain, or too much rain, worry about government regulations that make their job tougher (and their product not necessarily safer), leave a party early to put in chickens or get ready for an early morning, and just simply make sacrifices to produce food that is healthy and produced in a kind, conscious way. But I never hear them say they hate their job.

A few years ago I hosted a CSA on my porch for neighbors. The woman who delivered the boxes,

One of the perks of doing research is coming across
beautiful finds, like this barn in the country.

Mary Anne, was a friend. She brought food from about 4 different farmers. She’d often sit on the porch and visit during the drop off.

At the end of the season, Mary Ann told me they no longer wanted to deliver to us. Why? I asked. We’ve loved the food! Not enough people? Too far out of the way?

No, she said. We just miss talking to the customers about the food. At the farmer’s market, we can chat and visit, find out what they like, and help them use the food. Here, we never see our customers. We miss the connection.

Wow. People who will give up business in favor of making a connection.

Anyway...these are the people we feel can feed this family the best. And over the next year, we plan to find them and share them with you. Some will be individuals, some will be small companies. And all of them will be local.