Visiting my CSA farm

Yesterday I went on a tour of Dillner Family Farm, where I am getting my CSA from.  It was a great experience, and definitely worth the drive through a monsoon to get there!  The Dillner family farms 122 acres surrounding their house, and they do it all just with help from family.  I was really impressed that just a few people could do so much work on so much land.  It was also really neat to learn a little about their farming techniques, such as using high wind tunnels to extend the growing season.  They also use ladybugs for pest management, and bumblebees to pollinate the crops.  The Dillner family seemed like a very content, hard-working, caring, happy group.  I'm glad to know my food will be coming from such a nice place!

Making Pasta

Last night we had our first nearly-local meal of the year. I know we're supposed to be eating all the non-local food at the house, but there was a farmers market at the Strip District last weekend and I just couldn't resist! I was also excited to try the new pasta maker I got for my birthday. So using Anne Willan's Look & Cook Perfect Pasta cookbook I got from the library, Mark and I made our first fettuccine. And I found out that Mark has serious pasta making talent. We were each kneading our own piece of dough, and Mark's looked exactly like the picture and Mark had to fix mine to make it look like the picture. So thanks to Mark the pasta turned out great!

For a sauce I sauteed asparagus, mushrooms and parsley in a white-wine cream sauce. And for dessert I made a rhubarb crisp. Everything was really easy to make except the pasta, but I bet that will get easier after we do it a few times. The local ingredients were: eggs, cream, asparagus, mushrooms, and rhubarb. Now we just need to eat all the non-local food in the house in the next week and a half.

Social Inequities in Diet and Obesity

I've been reading a lot about the social inequities in diet and obesity. According to the USDA low-income families eat low-cost energy dense diets that result in a higher incidence of obesity. An article I read written by Adam Drewnowski published in Nutrition Reviews in 2009 stated:

"...more healthful foods are also more expensive and beyond the reach of many. Some low-income families limit their food budget to $100 for four people per week, or less than $4 per person per day. The only foods that can be obtained for this amount of money are high in refined grains, added sugars, and added fats, and the healthful, recommended foods are separated by an immense gap in energy costs."

I highly doubt that it is impossible for people to eat healthy food for about $4 a day, that is if people are willing to put in a little extra effort to cook. I predict that Mark and I should be able to eat local unprocessed food for a year for about $4 a person per day. Maximally we should be able to eat for less than we would receive in food stamps, which according to the USDA a family of 2 19-50 years old would receive $80.6 per week, which is almost $6 a person per day. I will keep track of the amount we spend, so that I can tally it in the end. I will also keep track of our weight, since spending less on food tends to correlate with an increase in weight.

Plenty (of time)

I just finished a book called Plenty by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon.  This couple writes about their experiences eating food within 100 miles of Vancouver for a year. I appreciate their stories about finding local food, however I would have liked to known more about their cooking and eating experiences. Overall it is well-written, and has some very interesting details about the loss of biodiversity that has resulted from our international food culture.

The book gave me some interesting ideas about eating locally too. The book mentions that "A study in the United Kingdom showed that the amount of time people now spend driving to the supermarket, looking for parking, and wandering the length ailes in search of frozen pizzas or pre-mixed salads is nearly equal to that spent preparing food from scratch twenty years ago". I thought this was a particularly interesting fact. I probably spend at least 2 hours a week grocery shopping. This summer all I will have to do is pick up my farm share, which will take about 20 minutes. So I will have an extra 1 hour and 40 minutes to cook and preserve food. Despite my concerns about having time to prepare and store foods, maybe I will have Plenty of time to eat locally after all.

The Millennium Exception

I've been getting a lot of questions about what I will include and exclude  from my diet over the next year starting in June. Before I mentioned that 80% of food spending would be local. However, it doesn't seem specific enough, especially since there are plenty of non-local foods that are cheap.

So thanks to my Dad's suggestion, I am adding the "millennium exception" to my local food challenge. This means that anything that has been internationally traded for more than 1000 years will be okay to eat. 1000 years ago trading was occurring with little ecological impact, partially because it was a much smaller scale, but also because the foods were preserved and didn't have "expiration dates", so there wasn't a constant need for shipping.

What foods have been traded for more than 1000 years? So far I found out: spices, olive oil, cheese, wine, wheat, maize, rice, and dried figs. I guess I'm going to get a little history of international food trade while I'm at it!

Bottom line: I'm going to try to eat as much local as possible, but I will make exceptions for some "millennium" foods, especially spices and olive oil.  Also, so as to not socially exclude myself, I will make exceptions for the occasional night out for dinner with friends.