Springfield Locavore

Day 1 Results. Really!

My dad and step-mom visited us on Thursday and Friday, so Saturday was the real first day of our latest foray into local eating.

Breakfast

For breakfast I made a cheese omelet for Dawn and scrambled eggs for myself. In addition to local eggs (from Bear Creek Farm & Ranch in Palmer), we had 3 non-local eggs to use up, so each dish was a mixture of local and non-local eggs. When I cracked open one of each type of egg, I noticed the significant difference in the two. Take a look:

Can you tell which is which? Here's a hint: The local egg has a much richer yolk and a more clear white. Now can you tell? Yes, the one on the left is the local egg.

That's apparently a common thing: Eggs from chickens that are raised in what we think of as the more "traditional" way (i.e. true free-range chickens, roaming outside in the pasture) tend to have eggs with a darker, more distinct yolk. Eggs from chickens that are raised in what are commonly called "factory farms" (i.e. inside, eating grain) tend to have eggs with a paler yolk that doesn't sit high in the skillet.

That's what I'd heard, but I'd never had one of each for a side-by-side comparison.

Oh, and the local eggs supposedly taste better, too. I mixed everything together, so I didn't have the opportunity to do a blind-folded taste test!

Lunch

We went to the annual Springfield Area Highland Games, which meant bagpipers, Scottish dancers, and fair food -- funnel cakes, brats, potato chips, sodas. Not a local food item in sight!

Just as we did last year, we're allowing ourselves a "social exemption". This means when we're out with friends or attending events, we'll eat what's available. Part of our motivation at eating local is to deepen ties with the local community, so it wouldn't make sense to declare that we can't eat out with friends!

Unfortunately, it was rainy, windy, and cold -- typical Scottish weather, perhaps, but it did put a bit of a damper on our fun!

Dinner

For dinner we had non-local pasta with our Brandywine pasta sauce. Last year's garden yielded lots of Brandywine tomatoes, so we froze quite a bit, which we periodically use for pasta sauce.

Dawn sent me out to the garden to harvest some of our volunteer basil to add to the sauce. I came back with several leaves, which I handed to her. "That's not basil," she said after she had sniffed them. "That's mint!" Sure enough, it turns out the numerous volunteer herbs we saw coming up (where we had planted several varieties of herbs last year) were not basil, as we had thought, but were instead peppermint! Oops! Oh well. Dawn used them to make a quick peppermint tea.

We also had a salad: mesclun mix, waldmans dark green lettuce, cherry belle radish (all from Oak Tree Farm in Ashland), and colby cheese (from Ropp Jersey Cheese in Bloomington), with non-local dressing.

Challah bread (from Central Illinois Event Catering in Elkhart) and strawberries (from Livesprings Berries & Produce in Chandlerville) completed the meal.

So that was day 1. Not 100% local, of course, but a pretty good start!

Day 1 Results. Not.

Today was supposed to be the first day we again tried to eat local. The Illinois Products Farmers' Market opened today, so it seemed like the logical time to start. However, after my interview with Kathryn Rem, in which I told her that we would start on May 13, it occurred to me that there were only two problems with my plan:

1. The Illinois Products Farmers' Market is held in the evening, 4:00-7:00. In other words, after breakfast and lunch are but dim memories. Makes it a bit difficult to eat local for the first 2 meals of the day.
2. My dad and step-mom were arriving today from Texas to visit for a couple of days. This means going out to eat. Another strike against eating local!

So I wouldn't really call today Day 1. (I won't be calling tomorrow Day 1, either, since we'll still be entertaining company. Let's talk again on Saturday, shall we?)

We did make it to the farmers' market and pick up some local food. Here's what we got:

• Strawberries (Livesprings Berries & Produce, Chandlerville)
• Eggs (Bear Creek Farm & Ranch, Palmer)
• Challah Bread (Central Illinois Event Catering, Elkhart)
• Mesclun Mix, Waldmans Dark Green Lettuce, and Cherry Belle Radishes (Oak Tree Farms, Ashland)
• Colby Cheese (Ropp Jersey Cheese, Bloomington)

Dawn and Lando had never been to the evening farmers' market, since I normally just drop by on my way home from work, so it was a good opportunity for them to come along, as well as my dad and step-mom. This let them see everything, but it also meant that I didn't spend as much time chatting with people as I normally do. I did get a few photos, so I'll try to get them posted soon.

Oh, we went straight from the farmers' market to a restaurant for dinner, with our purchases in an ice chest in the trunk, but I had to eat a strawberry as an appetizer in the parking lot. It was good!

Welcome (Again!), SJ-R Food Section Readers!

About a year ago, Kathryn Rem, editor of the State Journal-Register's food section, wrote an article about this blog and our plans to become locavores. She called the other day to find out how the year had gone so that she could write a follow-up article. I think the new article will run in tomorrow's edition of the paper, so I'm posting this as a "Welcome to my blog!"

As I wrote last year, if you haven't read my blog before, welcome! If you enter your email address in that box on the right and click the "Subscribe" button, you'll receive an automatic email notification every time I post something. (No, I won't spam you. I'm busy enough without coming up with more things to do with my time!) Of course, if you use a feed reader (such as Google Reader), you can subscribe there as well.

This blog began as out outgrowth of another blog of mine, Talking to Myself Again. Over there, I just blog about things happening in the life of our family. Over time, more and more of the entries I posted there were about the latest goodies we bought at the farmer's market or received from our CSA membership. (CSA = community-supported agriculture.) It occurred to me that some of my friends might not be nearly as interested in this stuff as I was. :-) So I created this blog, copying from there the relevant entries.

The earliest one, from December 2007, was a Christmas recap that included this paragraph:

I also quickly devoured one of the books, "Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally", by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. This is one of those books that I have the urge to buy a dozen of and give them to all my friends. I plan on talking about it more later. At length. Be prepared.

What an understatement that turned out to be!

As I did last year, I plan on blogging here about what we've been eating, local food sources that we've found, what we're still searching for, etc. However, it certainly won't be just a food diary! (How boring would that be to read!) To give you an idea of what to expect, here are some entries you might want to read. (These tend to be longer entries. Most of the stuff I post is much shorter. Honest!)

• 1/10/2008 - The 100-Mile Diet
• 1/27/2008 - "King Corn" and Community-Supported Agriculture
• 4/14/2008 - Eggcellent Adventure
• 6/17/2008 - Eggs with Character (Plus Free Chicken Poop)
• 6/28/2008 - Photos from First Evening Farmer's Market
• 9/11/2008 - Return to the Illinois Products Farmers' Market
• 10/10/2008 - Michael Pollan writes to the next Farmer in Chief
• 1/7/2009 - Review: The $64 Tomato, by William Alexander
• 5/15/2009 - Post #100 - Square Foot Garden Beds are Ready!
• 5/27/2009 - Day 4 - Yes, We Have No Strawberries
• 7/6/2009 - My Locavore Weight Loss Plan
• 7/12/2009 - Today's Meals
• 7/24/2009 - Fresh Produce - Use It or Lose It
• 8/4/2009 - Faux Local
• 8/6/2009 - What's Cooking? Not Us!
• 8/8/2009 - Freezing Sweetcorn
• 8/26/2009 - Homemade Pizza!
• 3/18/2010 - So...

Update: The article in the State Journal-Register is Springfield blogger tries again to eat just locally grown foods.

First Strawberry Blossoms!

First Strawberry Blossoms!, originally uploaded by Wally Hartshorn.

The strawberry plants we planted last year are doing quite well this spring, and the other day I noticed several strawberry blossoms! Huzzah!

So...

So you might be wondering why I haven't posted anything here since September 7, when I wrote a stimulating piece about the wonderful nutritional benefits of Froot Loops. (Or, more likely, this post has just shown up in your email or feed reader and you're trying to remember what this blog is about.)

It's not that I didn't have anything to write about. (Not any less than normal!) I frequently thought of things to write about, but then I always thought, "yes, but first you need to explain why you haven't posted anything since September 7." And since that wasn't an explanation I particularly wanted to write... I didn't.

But now I will.

We officially started our locavore attempt on May 20. Things went quite well for the first few months. Through the end of July, I estimate that I was eating about 80% local food. In August and September, we got busy for some reason, or perhaps just disorganized, and I would guess that I had slipped to about 50% local food. I was also a bit disheartened when I computed how much food we needed to store to stay local through the winter (answer: lots). And I fell behind on posting here.

Then, in October, disaster struck -- Our septic system died.

Our first clue that there was a problem was when our toilets wouldn't flush. Not even the brand new, ultra-low-flow "rated best flush" one. I went outside, removed the lid from the septic tank, and found that it was filled nearly to ground-level.

If you cast your mind back to October of last year, you might remember it being a bit damp. Actually, very damp. Drenched. We had over 11 inches of rain that month.

We live within the Springfield city limits, but when our house was built in 1973, this was still the boonies and there was no sewer service. There was an opportunity several years ago to get the neighborhood tied into the city sewer, but for whatever reason it never happened.

Anyway, to make a long story short, our new septic system couldn't be installed until mid-December, due to all of the rain. That meant going for a full 2 months without a working septic system.

If your septic system doesn't work, then you must drastically reduce your water usage. For us, that meant doing laundry at the laundromat; taking showers only every few days (and even then keeping the water turned off until it was time to rinse); and flushing toilets according to the rule "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down."

Most importantly from a locavore viewpoint, it meant that we had to avoid washing dishes or using water for cooking. The practical effect of that restriction was that we ate out nearly every day for 2 months! Doing so did very bad things to my attempts to lose weight, of course, but it also effectively killed our attempts to eat local food! It also meant that I didn't have much to blog about here. (I suppose that I could have posted "Ate out again" every day for 2 months.)

By the time we had a working septic system, winter was upon us. No more fresh veggies for us!

However, spring is almost here! I recently received an email from Garrick Veenstra about this year's CSA, and yesterday we began preparing our garden beds for this year's planting. In fact, the strawberry plants that we planted last year are already greening up, which is very exciting!

I'll try to write a "lessons learned" post here soon, discussing what we did well last year and what caused us problems. Stay tuned!

(You can see photos of the septic system installation on my other blog, Talking to Myself Again.)

Froot Loops: A Smart Choice

In the book In Defense of Food, one of the things Michael Pollan discussed was "nutritionism", which is thinking of food only in terms of their nutrients, rather than in terms of the whole food. One distinguishing feature of "real" food is the general lack of nutritional claims.

In a grocery store, in the aisles of processed food, you'll see plenty of labels on the packages boasting of the great nutritional contents and the wonderful health benefits of the product. "High in Vitamin C!" "Heart Healthy!" "Bursting with Anti-Oxidants!"

Meanwhile, in the next aisle over, you'll find broccoli, with no nutrition and health claims plastered all over it. Yet few people would argue that broccoli is less nutritious than, say, Froot Loops.

Yes, that's right, even Froot Loops is being labeled as a healthy food! There is now an industry-backed label program in which food products that meet a certain standard can bear a green checkmark symbol indicating that the product is part of the "Smart Choices Program".

Froot Loops qualifies. Why? Well, apparently the claim is that Froot Loops is healthier than donuts. I guess if a food exists that is less healthy for you, then they can call their food healthy. Or something.

Actually, I think the real criteria is that if the food has been mixed with enough vitamins, then it's considered healthy. I guess if McDonald's sprinkled some vitamin C on their french fries, they would become a health food.

Skip the "Smart Choices" labels. Buy the food in the periphery of the grocery store. You know, the stuff that doesn't have any labels.

Attack of the Killer (Brandywine) Tomatoes

Today's garden harvest: 19 pounds of Brandywine tomatoes.

Tomorrow's cooking activity: Making tomato sauce. Lots of tomato sauce!

I like tomatoes, but sheesh! Remember that book, The $64 Tomato? I think it's safe to say that our tomatoes are costing us far less than that!

Homemade Pizza!

We've got tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. We planted 8 Brandywine heirloom tomato plants, and they have been producing plenty of massive, tasty, gorgeous red tomatoes! I like tomatoes, but I can only eat so many straight off the vine! We needed to find a way to use them up in large quantities.

Enter our desire for local pizza!

Recently, when our hankering for pizza has been too strong to ignore, we've been ordering from Fratello's Pizza & More. True, the food isn't local, but the business is 100% local, operated by a couple of brothers (thus the name, since "brother" in Italian is "fratello"). They're very friendly, and I've had some nice conversations when I've stopped in there to pick up a pizza.

However, as I said, the food isn't local. To get a truly local pizza, we'd need to make it ourselves.

Awhile back, when I was shopping in Food Fantasies, I saw in the refrigerated food section that they had bags of pizza dough. Take it home, roll it out, add pizza sauce, cheese, and toppings, then bake. Easy!

We decided to try it. Dawn had experimented with making some tomato soup a couple of days before that, and we still had some of that left. It was a bit thick, so we figured it might work as a pizza sauce. With some cheddar cheese from Ropp Jersey Cheese and some sweet red pepper as a topping, we had a pizza!

Our first attempt was reasonably good, so we decided to try again, with a few changes. First, we wanted to use mozzarella cheese. The cheddar cheese just didn't have the right taste, and it wasn't as "sticky" as mozzarella cheese. Second, we wanted to make a real tomato sauce, rather than just repurposing a thick tomato soup. Third, we wanted to make our own pizza dough. The flour would still be non-local, but at least the dough would be truly homemade.

Getting local mozzarella cheese turned out to be easier than I expected. I knew that Ropp Jersey Cheese was planning to start making mozzarella cheese last winter/spring, but I had never seen any at their booth at the farmers' market. So when I went to the Old Capitol Farmers' Market on Saturday, I asked Jessica whether they had any mozzarella cheese. She got a bit of a sly look on her face and said, "Maybe." :-) It turns out they do make mozzarella cheese, but in very limited quantities, and you have to ask for it. She only had 1 pound that day, and she said they only have it about every third week! Yikes! (And now I've just given away the secret! See how much I do for you, Internet?) Well, in any case, we now had mozzarella cheese!

Dawn found an easy pizza sauce recipe on the Internet, so we made up a batch, using most of our tomatoes (from our garden and from the CSA), as well as basil from our garden. It was easy, but it took far longer than I expected to reduce to the right thickness, so be sure you make your pizza sauce well in advance!

Lastly, there was the pizza dough. Dawn bought some whole wheat flour (from Bob's Red Mill in Oregon, which is only within our 100-mile radius if you measure with very long miles).

On Monday evening, were ready to make homemade pizza! But the dough failed to rise.

Well... crap.

The dough did eventually rise, but by then it was well after dinner time. Actually it was bed time! We put the dough in a bag in the refrigerator and vowed to try again the next day.

So yesterday we rolled out the dough, added the pizza sauce and the mozzarella cheese, then finally popped it in the oven! We decided to go without any toppings, to get a better idea of whether we liked the taste of the crust and the sauce.

About 12 minutes later the pizza was ready! Here's my review:

• Cheese: Great!
• Sauce: Good!
• Crust: Not bad!

Okay, so "not bad" isn't the highest of praise. Still, it was acceptable. Being whole wheat, it was a bit heavy. Plus, we didn't preheat the pizza stone in the oven, so the center of the crust was not as crispy as we would have liked. We'll experiment to see whether we can come up with a better crust, but even if we can't, this still made for a pretty good pizza, even without any toppings!

We've got more mozzarella cheese. And more pizza sauce. And there's a green pepper in the garden that's looking ready to harvest. Would it be wrong to have pizza two nights in a row?

We Have Internet Again! How Exciting!

We finally have working Internet access again! Comcast came out and replaced the line to the house. Bingo! It all works again! I just wish I had called them to start with, rather than wasting time trying to diagnose and correct the problem myself! Oh well, live and learn! I'll be posting something more substantial later, but I wanted to get this posted now. Stay tuned!

I'm Not Dead Yet

I'm not dead, but our Internet connection is. A few weeks ago, we began having intermittent outages. Then frequent outages. Now it's down pretty much all of the time, with occasional brief periods of uptime. After calling Comcast to fix it, then canceling the service call because I thought I had figured out the problem, I've finally reached the conclusion that it really is Comcast's fault area of responsibility. Hopefully they'll be able to fix the problem this weekend.

(Don't worry, I'll be writing a much longer dull post explaining the saga in mind-numbing detail.)