Where are you from?

The average American meal has traveled 1500 miles by the time it reaches your table. Where are you from? Where do you buy food? How did you hear about our project? Please, leave a comment!

Saturday, August 4, Day 4: What we ate

Breakfast was Rhode Island Johnnycakes with bacon (heavenly, heavenly bacon--this from a vegetarian of 15 years), and cider.







Lunch was straight from the fridge, muskmelon, blueberries, a Cherokee Purple tomato with onions and cheese curds.



Dinner was an experiment in corn. We soaked some field corn in cal last night and ran it through the food mill to make masa. Then we made tortillas! Yummy! We had that with shredded pork, salsa verde, sauteed green beans (sauteed in delicious bacon fat) and cucumbers thinly sliced and soaked in the apple cider vinegar we made--still not that "vinegary" but a nice taste difference.





Fresh, early, new apples for dessert!

Saturday, August 4: Day 4 - What we bought

Oh the bounty! This picture brings such a smile to my face--it is most of what we will eat this week. We had some meat in the freezer and we will buy fresh sweet corn and melons this week from Old Stage Vegetable Garden. Our monetary outlay for the week is $120 (adding in the meat we already had). Twenty-two dollars of that was for 20 lbs. of wheat, that will take us through more than one week. We also traded with a farmer for a 5 gallon bucket each of corn and oats.

We all vote with our dollars every time we make a food purchase. Assuming you are willing to leave conventional factory food behind, what do you replace it with? Local? Organic? Sometimes you can get both, but what if you can't? Which is "better"? Anyone who is a committed Certified Organic shopper should read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. This fascinating book will help you understand what you are actually getting (as opposed to what you think you are getting) for the premium you pay on Certified Organic.

Organically grown food has fewer chemical inputs, which we consider to be a good thing. But is that offset by the diesel fuel consumed in trucking food from California, or the jet fuel from South America? And we are starting to hear that China wants to be a player in the US organic food market. Do you get to keep the frequent flier miles if you eat the food?

There is no one right answer. But you have the power (we would say the responsibility) to make decisions that support what you value. But do us all (yourself included) a favor and don't go into this blind. Think about what you care about, and figure out how your consumption habits relate to this.

So what do we choose? For us, local trumps everything. Organic and local earns bonus points. Why is local so important to us? We feel it's fresher and tastes better. There are varieties of things like tomatoes and apples that just can't survive travel. We keep our money close to home. Many national brand Organic labels are owned by huge multinational conglomerates. My neighbors need my money more than Unilever does (not that I'm giving up Ben and Jerry's once September rolls around). And we get accountability. Have you thought about food safety in the last few years? Let's see. . . Mad Cow, tainted spinach, beef, chicken, peanut butter, etc. Most of this contamination is a result of factory farming practices, and the only way to protect yourself from that is to know the farmer. And for those of you who have not yet done the homework, I am sorry to break it to you that Certified Organic absolutely does not guarantee that factory methods were not used, and in the case of animal products, it does not guarantee humane living conditions.

Educate yourself. Read some of the books we've mentioned here, and
listen to this NPR story about grocery stores selling local food.

Vote with your dollars!

Friday, August 3: Day 3—Why 100 miles?

Why not 200, or 250, or something less arbitrary, like using the borders of Wisconsin?

It all comes down to what you think is local. For us, a big part of it is to know who produced the food. Wisconsin is a medium-sized state, but it is possible to drive 6 hours and not cross out of it. That's a long way, and by no standard that we recognize does that constitute local, particularly when we can be in northern Illinois in just over an hour, which you have to consider much more "local" by comparison. We are buying most of our food from people who had a hand in growing it, and only under special circumstances could this happen for a producer that was hours and hours away by car. But this is why we made our exception for buying in person. We traveled to Door County, WI in July, which is an area famous for its cherries. We bought cherries at the orchard where they were grown, and we'll continue to enjoy them despite the fact that they come from "too far away". Likewise, Harmony Valley Farm is a mainstay at the Dane County Farmers' Market. As the crow flies they are about 92 miles from here, but I have no doubt that the odometer on their truck registers over 100 miles every Saturday. But when we buy from them we are buying directly from the producer. I think it meets the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish, which is to know where our food comes from and to spend our food dollars with people we know.

So what did we eat today? Well, we were all on separate tracks today. Jen was out working, so after a breakfast of wheat bran cereal, she packed a multi-stage lunch including cauliflower, cheese, popcorn, peanut butter, yellow-doll melon and a Caprese salad picked from our driveway garden.

Scott and Evie had a special treat for breakfast—brun-uusto from Brunkow Cheese. This is a Finnish cheese that is in a slab about 5/8" thick, and it is baked on both sides until it is golden brown. You bring it home and reheat it until it is soft inside. The flavor is insane—buttery and salty, it tastes like a whole grilled cheese sandwich (I consider it a bit Willy Wonka-ish, to be honest) and the texture is a little chewy, almost rubbery, with a bit of cheese curd squeak to it (I'm sure we'll post on sqeuaky cheese curds in the future for those who don't know), and a creamy finish in your mouth. Plus buttered toast, maple yogurt, and Evie finished the last of the apple cider. Oh, the yogurt. I know that the FDA or the USDA has a standard for what can be called Lowfat yogurt, but I swear those people at Sugar River Dairy must be cheating. Their yogurt is unbelievably creamy. A lot of national brands have additives in them to enhance the mouthfeel. Nothing sinister—pectin is a common one, and Stonyfield Farms uses some sort of natural dietary fiber (Inulin I believe it is called), but I'm here to tell you that there is nothing like the real thing, baby.

Lunch? Hot dogs (all beef from Pecatonica Valley Farms), potatoes (Driftless Organics), and broccoli . Couldn't find the homemade ketchup we made last year, so I ate everything straight up and have no complaints (do not normally use ketchup on broccoli, BTW).

For dinner we went out to Jen's parents house (1/2 hour away) and had bison burgers, salad from Harmony Valley Farm , pasta from RP's Pastas, and dessert of whipped cream and raspberries on graham crackers from Potter's Crackers. This was a meal that did not meet our criteria 100% (flour in pasta and crackers, for example) but we were thrilled that Jen's mother put so much thought into where everything came from. This, after all, is the whole point of the exercise. We're after mindfulness, not mindless allegiance. More on this topic to come.

On Saturday I have 2 markets to hit. I'm bringing a long list, a big appetite, and a wad of cash. . .

Thursday, August 2: Day 2

Scott here. One thing that has quickly become apparent is how reliant we become (or at least I have become) on my regular foods. I have to adjust my psychology for this project because I am feeling that if I can't get the foods I'm accustomed to that I am not getting enough to eat. When you figure that we're cooking just about everything in bacon grease it seems obvious that we're not going to starve, but when you are convinced you are hungry for X, it does not matter how much of Y you eat, you still crave X. Not sure how long it will take to break the old habits. For me, it's quality bread (I was getting close, but then I ran out of flour, more on the way Saturday), protein (yogurt is OK, but meat is really where it's at) and on these sizzling hot summer days, sweet drinks (lemonade is my favorite, but luckily I also love cider).

Our menu today:
Toast and cider for breakfast (pictured with the homemade peanut butter with the bacon grease—yum!).









Lunch was a hodge-podge of cauliflower, eggs (from friends), potatoes (Driftless Organics), Canadian Bacon (Pecatonica Valley Farm), melon (Old Stage Vegetable Gardens) and cucumbers (from our neighbors across the street).









Dinner was fabulous Italian sausages (again from Pec Valley Farm), a pile of sweet corn (Old Stage Vegetable Gardens), green beans (some home grown, some from JenEhr farm), and a bit of homemade toast.


We have an ongoing project to make cider vinegar. We let the cider go hard for a week or so, and today we introduced the Mother of Vinegar to turn the alcohol into acid. Not sure if it will work fast enough to be of use, but we'll see. We also allowed an exception—we have some spoiled red wine that comes from outside the radius, but we figured that the karma was better in putting spoiled food to use than just throwing it away, so that's going to be vinegar, too.(SCL)

Wednesday, August 1: Day 1

We went out with a bang last night at the annual REAP potluck. We brought a quiche with the most traveled ingredient came from about 30 miles away. We met Terese Allen who will be mentioning us in her column in the Isthmus later this month, learned about the work of REAP and made some wonderful new acquaintances.

Today we made crackers (turned out great), popcorn (in the microwave in a paper bag, no oil needed) and peanut butter. Turns out I was supposed to roast the peanuts in the shell but I ended up toasting the shelled peanuts in a dry skillet. I needed oil to smooth it all out in the food processor, the only fat we had besides butter was bacon grease, melted--it worked like a dream and OH MY GOODNESS is the peanut butter good!

Thanks to a tip from a reader Scott went out to meet another wheat farmer today who grinds with a stone mill. They only had a little available for experimentation but will have more this week--we are hopeful.

Finally:

Breakfast was wheat bran hot cereal with honey and Sugar River Dairy yogurt with strawberry sauce I had preserved last month.
Lunch was beets with hot peppers and onion, fresh corn and melon.
Dinner was fresh pasta with homegrown tomatoes and herbs, cheese and butter. We also had broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and onions from market and cucumbers from our neighbors.

Day one down, all within 100 miles of home!

Soy Sauce

A number of readers contacted us about the Kikkoman plant in Walworth (thank you!) We emailed the company and received the following response:

"The all-purpose Kikkoman Soy Sauce is produced at Kikkoman Foods, Inc. in Walworth, Wisconsin but the soybeans and wheat are purchased throughout the USA and Canada."

Wheat and soybeans are some of the biggest commodity crops in the world, origin traceability would be remarkable from a company as big as Kikkoman, using solely local crops for a local plant is, I guess, out of the question.

Out of curiosity we looked into brewing our own--it would be ready by September of 2008. Maybe for next year!