Sofia runs up to me the other day with a box of blueberries and puts it in the shopping cart. I look at her and say that we have to put it back because they come from Chile and are not in season. I then tell her that when blueberry season comes towards the end of summer and we see blueberries from Oregon that we'll buy lots and lots of them and freeze. She agrees, puts them back and then shows me how many she will eat when the time come.
Around here I do my best to buy my meat, eggs and produce as locally as possible. Check out this post I did a while back about buying local. What I can't get local, I try to make sure that it is a product of the USA. I also eat as seasonally as I can meaning that I buy produce in the correct growing season and once my stored harvest is gone I wait until the season comes around again to buy that fruit or vegetable. This would make me more or less what serious foodies call a locavore.
At this time there was also the 100 mile diet craze, where you were to try not to buy anything that wasn't produced within 100 miles of where you live. Now buying all local food sounds like a great idea, and it is, however the problem arises with location! If you live in Coastal California, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, up state New York or other very fertile and reliably rainy places you can bet you have a really great local food sources. But if you live in the desert or harsher mountain climates then it will become so much harder.
For example, if I were to go by the 100 mile diet I would have to cut out all grains, tropical fruits, coconut products, most pulses, nuts, sea foods and plants and sugar, except for honey. I think spices were left out of the list. Here in Arizona I can get beef, lamb, goat, pork, chickens, eggs, veggies, herbs, apples, peaches, pears, pecans, honey, olive oil in very small quantities and under the table raw milk (sales of raw milk in AZ are very very restricted). Oh yes, and wine. What I can't get are most fruits, nuts, grains of any kind, sugar, oil, milk. More or less I would have to restrict myself to a paleo diet, which has its perks, but I like my sourdough bread and slice of homemade cheese.
My dilemma arises as an urban dweller in that I can't grow everything in my limited space. I can't even keep chickens here. And really it's not possible to grow everything you would want to eat, though it is so fun to imagine you can, thank you The Backyard Homestead. Eating is such a community activity. We depend so much on others for what we eat. Every grocery store trip is a balancing act for me full of reading labels and deciding how far this product as had to travel to get to me.
How much of a locavore can I call myself if my flour comes from Vermont and my bananas come from Puerto Rico, my salt from Ireland as well as my butter? At the end of all this writing you know what just came into my head, "Ah, first world problems!"
Do you ever think about where your food comes from? Are you willing to cut major food groups out of your diet because you can't get them in your state?
If you haven't yet, read these books:
Ominvore's Dilemma
Fast Food Nation
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
First world problems, indeed. But ones that we often consider with great thought as wel (and I love all three of those booksl. It's hard to decrease our diesel footprint when it comes to food. I try to follow similar guidelines as you do - buying locally as much as possible and trying to refrain from those out of the country fruits. Having said that, we do have a hard time giving up our bananas, apples and avocados. Sigh. Looking forward to summer when my trips to the grocery store don't involve stopping in the produce section - it makes it all so much easier - the summer season of growing when just about everything plant-wise that we eat comes from our garden.
ReplyDeleteI aspire to eating only veggies from my garden one day. I realize to do that I actually takes a lot of space. Much more then two or three raised square foot beds.
DeleteSuch a tough call. We try hard to consider where our food comes from, but like Lisa, giving up those things that come from far away is difficult - I like my avocados, bananas, coconut oil, and so on.
ReplyDeleteFarmers market season is just around the corner and so is growing season - both of these make eating so much easier on my conscious and my heart.
I wish we could eat locally all year long, but with our winters, it is difficult. I do freeze a ton of local produce in the summer so we have a stash for the winter, in fact I will be cooking up the last of our tomatoes this afternoon. And we still have some strawberries and green beans left too.
Trying to do what we can, every little bit helps, right?
I think about my northern friends all the time when I make local choices. I think about how hard it would be to go totally local up there as your growing season is so short.
DeleteI don't think I could do without coconut oil or avocados. I love them too much!
I hope every little bit counts. They always say the biggest place to make a change is at home first. Change yourself change the world?!
We try to think and buy local too. We're in upstate, so in the summer it is easy, but this time of year, and the last few months it's hard. Simply the process of being food conscious is so important (and important to share with your little ones). But oh dear - banana's and so many other little things are hard to go without.
ReplyDeleteDarn those bananas! They are such a useful fruit. I tried to go without them until my toddler wanted to try them. They are now her favorite fruit and sometimes the only snack she'll eat!
DeleteAre you really from up state NY? I would love to hear about your food adventures!
When we lived in Oregon, eating locally was easy and trendy! But here in the desert it is so much more challenging. I have spent lots of hours pondering and obsessing over the whole eating locally thing and frankly, I just don't have the time to do it right now... So I do what I can. We get a farm box from a local farm each week that we LOVE and it makes me feel VERY good inside. I have a rancher that I buy a lot of meat from, and my brother is a hunter so we get elk meat from him every fall. We eat a lot of citrus from friends and neighbors. I make prickly pear jam/sauce/juice every summer. I have a garden where I try to grow a few things. My boys love bananas, so I buy a bunch every week. Honestly, they are too nutritionally dense for our family to give up and because I don't like packaged foods, bananas work well as a very portable snack too. I don't feel guilty about having them in my cart.
ReplyDeleteBTW, why can't you keep chickens? HOA? I think I have *finally* talked my husband into letting me get a few girls...I'm researching coop plans now...
Sounds like you are doing just what I am.
DeleteI'm pretty sure the foothills has an ordinance against poultry. We are also renters...I am unsure how we'd keep out the coyotes and the bob cats.... When we get our own property chickens will be the first thing on my list. We want them, times just not right yet.
you can keep girlies in tucson, maybe not as a renter. we kept between 3-5 of them for a couple years when we were still in tucson. and honestly it isn't so hard to care for them here because you don't have to worry about them freezing to death. we had a nice little coop and lots of shade for them, and fresh water. plus they LOVE scraps.
DeleteWe're in Casas Adobes and our neighbor keeps chickens so I know we could do it here but I have a lot of learning to do before I feel comfortable taking the plunge. We do have a bobcat family that roams the hood that would likely be my biggest worry.
Deletei started out doing the dark days challenge last fall, trying to eat one meal a week that was sourced within 100 miles. it was easy as long as the meal was basically roasted squash, kale, and pork chops from our freezer. and that's a great meal that we would eat anyway. what got hard for me was trying to buy everything locally. for example, my husband makes pizza on sunday nights. it's delicious and i don't have to cook. it's a win-win! i could find every other kind of cheese, but not mozzarella, and it took me forever to find some wheat. so i kind of gave up. i mean, i try to be mindful when i'm shopping, but we still want to have pizza night. hopefully sometime in the future making my own mozzarella won't feel like too much of a challenge, but right now it does, at least on a weekly basis. however, i am making plans to make pizza night more local by planting 9 sauce tomato plants and i have just started researching how to make pepperoni with some of the quarter of beef we are getting this summer. i guess for me the biggest thing is not to be an absolutist about it, otherwise i will throw in the towel. it's just too much pressure.
ReplyDeleteoh, and i love your suggestions of buying items in season even if they aren't local, like citrus in winter for me in oregon. and i love it that you buy your blueberries from oregon! yay!
We have pizza night too! I wouldn't want to give that up. I did find a wheat grower in AZ but they only grow wheat for export to major companies....how silly.
DeleteOregan blueberries are great! So are your apples when they come down here.
I meant to type Oregon!
Deletemozzarella is the easiest cheese to make and fun! and you can use goat milk if you want.
Deletethe wheat i found is whole wheat, so i'm toying with a whole wheat pizza dough recipe. i made mozzarella once last fall and it was delicious and easy. i used raw cow's milk, which was kind of spendy, especially since i was heating it up during the cheese making process. now i'm looking for grocery store milk that hasn't been ultra pasteurized because i've read that kind of milk won't turn into cheese.
DeleteYour right it won't. I was buying raw milk for over a year and half but I stopped because it was getting more and more expensive and it wasn't grass fed or pastured. The gal tried her best to get good hay but I've read the point of getting raw milk is that it's pastured and has all the nutrients from the fresh grasses. Now I know that's hard to do in the desert but there is a lot of open grass land here. It was a long decision to stop getting raw milk. But we do have a source of pasteurized but non homogenized milk out here that is also organic and pastured. I like it and it makes great cheese.
DeleteThank you all for such a great conversation!
ReplyDeletehmmm interesting. while we lived in tucson for years i never thought too much about what we couldn't get because honestly there is so much grown in the state. maybe not grains, but lots of fruits, veg, meats and dairy actually (if you know a goat person which i did) when we moved to maine, i thought well we would be so much better at eating local, except that it is freakin' COLD there. full on nasty long winter. yeah maybe you can get more blueberries, but shoot unless you can can and preserve your harvest and ALOT of it, you would go hungry. now that we are back in AZ i have to say thank the gods! seriously. we get wonderful beef, chicken, eggs, raw milk, raw cheeses, fresh produce, all local and alot of it with in 100 miles. now we can't get bananas here or grains (which we do eat) but if i had to give up all that was not from with in our state i would be ok with what we eat. i mean we do have mesquite if you are truly wanting flour. lol
ReplyDeleteI do love mesquite, I harvested some last season. But it's to distinct of a flavor to use all the time.
DeleteI wish someone would grow berries here. Apples peaches and pears are nice but I'd like some berries.
We are not as far along on the locavore journey as you are but I do try to buy in season, especially with items that go up a lot in price in the winter (blueberries, peaches, strawberries, etc.). We frequent the farmers market regularly for veggies, goat cheese, and bread (although the flour the bread is made out of isn't local, of course). For me, I find it is a challenge to be really consistent about it. Sometimes we can't make it to the farmers market and then I have to go to the grocery store. Last fall, we did do a bunch of apple picking and we are now down to our last quart of applesauce. I am hoping to go to the same farm/orchard this summer since they have u-pick tomatoes and other veggies (it's called Howards Orchard in Catalina). Then hopefully I can pick a bunch and do some canning and preserving for the rest of the year. What CSA do you belong to? I really need to look into joining one but I know there are a few different ones in Tucson.
ReplyDeleteI'd really like to go to the elusive Howards Orchard. I've heard talk of it but can't find any information about it!
DeleteI belong to Sleeping Frog Farms CSA. They are out of Casabel.
we gone to howards. i love that place. we have gone by ourselves and with our homeschool group.
DeleteKathleen, we get a weekly Farm Box from Sunizona Family Farms out of Wilcox AZ and I LOVE it! Their produce is delicious, organic and "veganically" grown. The Farm Box program is a year round CSA program that is super flexible--month to month, you can put a hold on it for vacations, and you can choose either a standard box or build your own box weekly. I've been with them for nearly 6 months and I'm slowly converting all of my family and friends as well!
DeleteThis is a tough one for us too. We do try our very best to eat local. But we can't get local beans or grains. We eat a lot of beans and legumes because we feel that they are good quality frugal organic protein. I try to look at the bulk of our fresh diet and buy in season & local. Then with our pantry staples I do the best I can with US products & making our own.....
ReplyDelete