The Dog-Days of Eating Local

I've certainly noticed a, shall we say, "drop-off" in blogging the last week as we muddle through mid-August here in Seattle. Perhaps we're all now accustomed to what it's going to take to get through the month eating locally. Perhaps we're backsliding a bit (moi?) and are not taking it as seriously as we were in the first few weeks. Perhaps the Stumbling Goat represented the zenith of the experiment?

For me it's been a combination of all three. And while I've had my fill of tomato sandwiches for the month, I'm getting comfortable with where I can find local products, which is definitely a revelation, and something that I'll take beyond this month.

I'm also backsliding just a little--and some days more than a little. As I realized right at the outset of this experiment, eating local can be really hard, and takes a LOT more advance planning. I definitely realize how much I've prioritzed "easy" food.

And as we're all still talking about that dinner at the "Goat," I keep thinking that maybe we should have saved it for the end of the month, it really was THAT good--and I don't think we'll get that good for the rest of the month.

We're giving ourselves a day "off" tomorrow as we spend the day on a plane heading to Hawaii, but are going to pick up the cause with a ton of great fruit, Maui onions, Kauai grass fed cattle, and anything else we can scrounge up for the next week until September 1st, when we break-out the Ben and Jerry's!

Aloha and Mahalo!

Local Eating Done Right--A Night at The Stumbling Goat

Jill, Tim, Barb, and I had a chance to join our friends Jess, Nate, Megan, Paul, and Maria on Friday night for some local wine tasting at South Lake Union, followed by dinner at The Stumbling Goat, known for its local cuisine. Aside from the great company and general merriment, we were all blown away by how great the food was from top to bottom.

From the list of over 15 websites listing where the ingredients from our dishes came from, to the variety of the menu, to the surprising affordability of the bill at the end of the night, it was one of those meals that I'm sure we'll be talking about for quite some time.

As I become more grumpy and older I'm generally a bit dubious of menu's where the server tells you that "everything is good" and doesn't have a super keen insight into which dish of the 2-3 you're down to really shine. However, this place was the exception to that rule, and after tasting many of the dishes on the table, I can see why. The butter lettuce and hazlenuts in the salad complemented each other perfectly, and while I somewhat of a chance on the duck, since it wasn't the first thing our server recommended, the combination of the fennel bulbs, apples, and berries with the demi glace sauce was fantastic. Finally, for dessert the tabls shared several ice cream sandwiches, which contained the most berry-tasting ice cream I've ever had--it was like they'd just scooped it out of the churner.

All in all a great evening with friends, and a place that we're sure to visit again long after our August experiment is complete!

Finding Great Foods Made Locally

One of the side benefits of this project--and honestly maybe it's going to be my big takeaway now that we're 1/3 of the way through--is having a much broader understanding and knowledge of what food actually *is* local, and being somewhat surprised when I find a local producer or manufacturer of my food where I least expect it.

For instance, seeing that there's local honey in my store doesn't exactly bowl me over given all the bees we attract in the lavender plants that grow everywhere around here. But local flour and sugar and coffee? That was news to me.

I've become a different kind of label reader already in this project. I currently care far less about the nutritional value in the products I'm eating, and moreso about where the products are being made. I guess I assume with all the fruits and vegetables on our plates right now that my diet is inherently a lot better (although the Iben's BBQ for Seafair on Sunday was a step backward, albeit an allowed one in our household).

Still, finding local colas and chips, breads and cheeses, wines and even salami's for the picnic in the arboretum is keeping me motivated right now. I've always appreciated the local bounty of fruits and vegetables around here--but it's the other staples of my diet that are the most ripe for a permanent change in branding come September.

Whole Foods Does Not Equal Local Foods

I thought I had found a great loophole in the eating plan yesterday for lunch as after my dentist appointment I stopped by the Whole Foods right up the street from my office. I was sure that it would be super easy to find local greens and veggies that would make for an easy salad or something that would not take up too much time--again, I'm trying to keep my same routine and do this project, not stop and forage for grass clippings for an hour everyday to make a meal. So needless to say I was feeling pretty confident.

What I was not prepared for was how quickly my view changed of the Whole Foods experience in light of our project this month. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Whole Foods, love shopping there, and have spent many a pleasant hour sampling cheeses, wine tasting, and choosing the perfect tuna steak for dinner. Absolutley no arguments or complains on that account--the selection of organics and natural foods is unbeatable, well presented, and of generally good quality.

What changed was the veneer that dropped when I saw how few local products were actually on display in the store. Now I'll freely admit that I didn't take the time to go up and back every aisle, but in all the fresh food areas--which is where I concentrated my search--there were no labels on any of the salad bar food, desserts, mixed salads, prepared meals, etc. And as I started wandering the produce aisles I saw a lot of California produce, lots of Texas, but virtually nothing from the northwest. I saw packaged organic products from Georgia, Florida, and Illinois; meat from Colorado, fish from Maine and Massachusetts--you get the picture.

What became apparent is that although I have always associated Whole Foods with fresh and local, it has the exact same supply chain optimization that exists within my local Safeway, just with the word "organic" slapped on the front of the labels. There's almost no difference for me to buy anything at Whole Foods if the point is to eat locally and shorten the time from production to me.

Now again, not an indictment of Whole Foods, they are who they are, and I love the store--but as a marketer, I felt a bit foolish as I foraged for some trail mix and Kettle Chips that I found from Oregon how hard I had fallen for the image they are trying to portray. They may have great food, great lighting, and great displays, but that doesn't mean their food is any fresher than what I can get at the farmer's market every Thursday by my house.

Is eating "San Juan Granola" for 30 days really the point?

OK so I'm on my 3rd day of breakfast for our project, and once again I headed right for the cupboard and the local granola that I snagged over the weekend. Now admittedly I'm a creature of habit when it comes to breakfast, as I usually eat it standing at the kitchen sink listening to sports radio and can actually perform a maneuver where I scoop the cereal into my mouth, swallow it while I'm moving the bowl down to the sink, and rinse it out in one fluid motion as I run for the door and my first call of the day at work. It's impressive, trust me.

So I could literally eat granola every day for the rest of my life I love it so much, and with a ready supply of flavors and local availability, one could say that I easily have 1/3 of my daily challenge this month licked and crossed off my list.

But as I ate my oats this morning it occurred to me that being lazy about my breakfast choices and availability is kind of what gets us ingrained in a rut around not caring where our food comes from in the first place. As long as it fits into our routine and our time schedule, we grow to tolerate it, and that's not really the point of this exercise.

I'm already seeing that our food supply chain--even locally--is too easy and well honed to really make this a challenge if all I do is eat the same cereal, the same salad, and the same frozen dinner from the "Eat Local" store every day for this month. Now on one hand this is good news--if we can make it easier for people to eat locally and reduce the cycle time between grower and eater that's ideal and what we're ultimately out to prove is possible. But like my culinary hero Anthony Bourdain, I fear I will need a bigger challenge to make this worth my while for the next 4 weeks than frozen dinners from grass fed beef on the Spokane plains.

So I will now limit myself to granola 2 times a week, and find something else for the other 5 days--AND promise to actually eat breakfast, and not just drink my shade-grown-picked-by-fairies approved latte's every morning. And after today, no more frozen dinners as well--not only are they frozen and come out mushy (I am still struggling with the whole concept of frozen and local--shouldn't local mean fresh? See Barb's post yesterday), they are boring. And this project shouldn't be about boring.

Although homemade peanut butter grosses me out, so I don't think I'll be eating lunch with Tim anytime soon...

Eating Local is $#%#@ Expensive!

This is the first roadblock that Barb and I immediately encountered as we stocked up for our project. What becomes immediately apparent as you search labels for locally sourced products is how distributed our food supply chain has become. Now, sometimes that's OK--I love Bordeaux wine, parmasean cheese, and Argentinean beef and don't seem to have any issues with the distance THAT food has traveled to my plate. But I also don't have any issues with the *quality* of that food and to be fair, that food is also single ingredient food, not a melange of 31 ingredients like that of the BBQ sauce in my fridge (to be fair, the onion salt in the recipe is apparently organic--who knew this was an option?).

So we're finding quickly that the fewer ingredients in foods, the more expensive they seem to be--isn't that perverse? You pay less for a sceptic cocktail of chemicals that approximate the taste of the real thing. What an upside down world we've come to live in.

In any case, finding local replacements for the things I like to eat is already driving me to the edge. I paid $88.65 at the "Eat Local" store yesterday afternoon for a single plastic bag of food that just a day earlier at the local Fred Meyer yielded 4 similar sized bags. At this rate we're going to use our 2010 food budget by Labor Day.

Must find another path to make this work...thank goodness for the abundance of Walla Walla wines and Pyramid Summer Ale beer!

Does it Matter "Why" I'm Going Local?

Barb and I were excited to get started on this month-long initiative on eating local. Truthfully I'm as much into this for the challenge of seeing if I can do it vs. the virtues of shortening my food supply chain. Now don't get me wrong, I am all for freshness, organic food, humane treatment of animals, and all related and associated causes. I truly do believe there are health benefits to fresher produce that doesn't have chemicals all over them, and I like the idea of looking the grower of my pepper or green bean in the eye vs. seeing a sticker on a piece of unripened fruit that says "product of Chile."

Having said that, I just have to admit at the outset of this project that I'm approaching this much more to understand how eating local can be incorporated into the routine of a person who works outside of the house and travels around the world. And I think eating local initiatives should have room for this viewpoint and approach as well, given that we end up in the same place.

So off we go!