Still at It!

It has been quite awhile since I have posted. I have still been eating locally. I have also been focused on other things. Jon has been canning like crazy. We have tomato sauce, tomato paste, spicy tomato sauce, jelly and jam of every flavor, apple sauce, pear sauce, you name it. In the midst of very cold February we will be eating the best food ever!

We have had so much fun visiting the North Tonawanda Farmer's Market on most Saturdays. We have aslo visited Bond Lake Park in Niagara County that has fruit orchards! We have been there four times to pick pears. It has been amazing. The trees are covered with beautiful bosc pears, a little small, but otherwise perfect. I was at the grocery store today and saw some that were not nearly as good looking. There is an apple orchard as well. We hope to adopt some trees to see if some pruning and care will increase their yield next year.

These orchards are there for the public to benefit from. It is amazing and sad to see the number of pears that will end up on the ground. So much food going to waste is such a disappointment.

I have to admit I have not really been eating local food as much as I had hoped. I have changed my habits so that when I eat prepared foods I get them from the Lexington Co-operative Market (www.lexington.coop). So even though I have not kept to my original plan as well as I had hoped, I have kept with the spirit of the plan.

Thinking and planning for eating locally affect many of my other choices. I think about other things I might buy from local sources. I drive less (most of the time). The choices we make really do end up making a difference.

Filling the Cupboards

Over the past few weeks, I have been keeping long hours at work followed by long evenings with other stuff to do. Jon has been keeping up the preparations for the long winter to come. I found myself flat out last weekend with some kind of bug that kep me sleeping all day Saturday. Jon was up and out to the market -- he was determined to get tomatoes to begin canning them for the coming months. And so he has. He has made tomato paste and tomato sauce. In the past we would have said we don't eat many things with tomato, but this year will be different. We figure a jar of tomato sauce will be good on just about anything in the cold of winter when fresh foods are sparse.

Every evening as we sit down to eat, one or the other of us comments on how much better the food we are eating this summer is than our usual fare of the past several years. One of the things we decided was that if I was having a lunch meeting at work, the local rules would not apply. I had several of those last week, just before I caught whatever bug I caught. I blamed part of my ill feeling on the food I had been eating. Not as fresh, more processed, nowhere near as nurturing.

We have now had local chicken -- pasture raised, and local beef. They are so good. At first we think about the cost, $3 - $12 per pound, and think it is impossible. Then we think about what we would spend eating out, which we would do, and how much better what we are eating tastes than what we would get while we were out, and we know we are on to something for ourselves and all the people we can convince to eat this way.

We bought a 1/2 bushel of peaches a couple of weeks ago. I think they were the best peaches I have ever had. They were juicy and sweet. So much better than most we get at the grocery store. We are so fortunate in living where we do. We may not have bananas or citrus fruit, but the food we do have is amazing.

Dog Days of Summer

The humid days of August have arrived. These are the days when the fruits and vegetables are ripe and plentiful and it is too hot to cook anything. I think about a raw diet rather than a local diet. But we are committed to local this year. Last week the Massachusetts Avenue Project sponsored "Be Vocal, Eat Local," a campaign to encourage folk to eat locally grown and produced foods. I am not sure what effect they had, but it was a good effort on their part.

This past Sunday, the New York Times had an article about local eating that questioned whether local really was better for the environment. If one lives in a place where growing food and raising livestock is challenging, it is probably better to eat food produced elsewhere. Buffalo has no such problem. I suspect people in Western New York could get all of their nutritional needs met by eating food from within 100 to 150 miles. We are fortunate with the lakes providing the perfect climate for all of the things we could want -- well, there is coffee and chocolate and bananas. Almost everything we could want.

The farmers' markets are bursting now with peaches and plums, tomatoes are starting to be plentiful, potatoes, onions, peppers. Anything we need we can find. Jon tried his hand at some raspberry jelly using homemade pectin, peach butter, zucchini pickles. He has plans for more jellies and butters as well as plenty of tomato sauce and salsa. It is amazing to see what we can do, when we determine to eat foods that we know are fresh.

Ups and Downs

We seem to be getting into a rountine these days. Fridays are the hardest for me. We used to always go out to dinner and then to a movie or the bookstore. Now we try to eat at home and we are coming to the end of the food from our CSA and making something new out of summer squash usually eludes me. Jon has been finding new places to get local food. He discovered a farm that has a variety of grains (soy beans, rye, oats and a few other) that we will probably visit soon. We also found out a local beef farm sells at the Elmwood Farmer's Market (http://www.foreverelmwood.org/). So today we stopped by and got some ground beef and a small roast. Tomorrow, the grill. The market was fun, music and kids and relaxed milling around. The other market we often go to is much more crowded and the people are more focused on getting in and getting out.

We used some zucchini to make pickles this afternoon. Jon made pectin from green apples last night. Our bread making is coming along so that it tastes the way we hope. We actually have as much food as we could imagine wanting. It is different than the junk food or processed food we have often eaten in the past. It takes more effort, but usually we find it's worth it.

Settling In

I was talking to a friend of mine today, telling him about our 100 mile eating plan, and he said, "That just seems like too much work."

I replied, "No it is great, we have a common goal, we have the challenge of finding things we want to eat, we have planning and gathering to do before winter gets here. It's fun. And besides, your average plate of food has travelled 1500 miles before it gets to your table. This is better for you and for farmers and for a community. And our whole congregation is doing it." Many in the congregation are committed to some form of local eating. Another person in the conversation said he was doing his part by cleaning out his freezer. He used to keep sheep and pigs and had slaughtered some and hadn't eaten all the meat yet.

Some things I have noticed:

1. We are spending more time and gas driving to find foods. I think this is because we are seeking out local farms. Once we have a better sense of where things are we will not drive so much (I hope).
2. We are only using one car these days. I walk or bike to work and errends when I can, so there are some days when the car doesn't move. When we do go out, we try to consolidate trips more.
3. We are sitting in our backyard more. This is becasue we are cooking at home more often and we got a table so that we do not have to eat from our laps. When I say backyard, I am talking about a space between our house and garage about10 feet wide and 25 feet long. This space has grills, grape vines, garlic beds and our two chairs and a table. It is not much of a yard, but we have found that it is quite pleasant this summer.
4. We are seeing and talking to our neighbors more. Jon has gotten to know many of them becasue he is often outside during the day working in the yard or on the house. I am not there as much. But now I am. And we say hi, encourage the kids to let the grapes get ripe before they eat them, neighborly things.

We think more about food, but it is helping us become more of who we want to be. We take a little more time with things now, we are not so rushed through our dinner. We are getting the bread making routine down. I figure by the end of the year we will have conquered the art of making the perfect loaf of bread. We are trying things we had not eaten before. Local eating is helping us make eating more of a celebration and less of something we have to rush through so that we can get to the next thing. Cool!

Baseball, Families and Farms

Friday night we went to the Buffalo Bisons game. We decided to go to support an organization that serves the refugee and immigrant population in the area. We didn't plan well. We thought there would be food included with our tickets and that it would be interesting food from some exotic location. Instead the will-call booth had an exceedly hard time finding our tickets, there were several other parties using the same space as our party and there was only ballpark food. The people from the organization had been told, no food. At the same time, the other groups seemed to have food they had brought in. So we ended up eating ballpark food -- Italian Sausage, chicken fingers, peanuts, cracker jack red licorice, beer, soda and bottled water. After just a couple of weeks of eating local food, we found this to leave much to be desired. And none of it was local, I am sure.

What we have realized is that if we are to stay within our 25% goal for food grown and/or produced further away, we will have to keep better track of our spending. So we have a new goal for next month.

We spent Saturday looking for local food. We started at the farmers, market in North Tonawanda. There are the local farmers who sell their produce. And there is a coffes vendor selling coffee beans, puveyors of flowers and plants, cheese and sausage, hats and sunglasses, you could get a lot at the market. We were looking for garlic, blueberries, dill and anything else that caught our fancy. We ended up with beets, carrots, onions, green apples, garlic, leeks and dill. The green apples are for making pectin. They have quite a bit. We plan to boil them and put them through a mill and store what is left until we are ready to make jelly later in the season. We have been getting tons of summer squash as part of our CSA, so Jon is going to try making some pickles from it.

Since the blueberries cost more than we wanted at the market we went to pick some. We followed the map from the website for Greg's U-Pick (http://www.geocities.com/gregsupick/index.html) and found a field of blueberries waiting to go home with us. The place had all kinds of people there picking and having fun. There were families with young kids and families with teens, all looking for those berries that had achieved that magical blue-black color on the bush. There were plenty of berries that were not yet ripe. If one was inattentive, one could begin to pick the berries that were dark burgundy, thinking they were the ripe ones, only to be reminded when seeing the actual blue beauty.

I realized what a great idea u-pick farms really are. The farmer gets free labor to pick the produce and then the laborers pay for the privledge! Of course, there is a lot of stuff picked too early, and the inevitable eating before the weighing. Even so, it is a great idea. We hope to go back leter this week, there were plenty of berries still to become ripe.

This is our second trip out for picking fruit and one interesting thing about the places is the ways they choose to keep birds away. At the cherry orchard the farmer had sounds of gun shots every 3-4 minutes. At the blueberry place there was a recording or a bird just screaming. It would play and play. It seemed to work.

After the blueberries we collected our bag from the CSA -- lettuce, squash, beets and cucumbers this week, and headed up to Bond Lake, a park in Niagara County. We had heard about orchards there and wanted to check them out. After careful study of the map at the entrance, we walked along the path we thought would get us there. Soon we were surrounded by a huge orchard. We were near apple and plum trees. Row after row of trees planted years ago and left to grow wild for many years since then. We did not discover a lot of fruit on the trees, but know that come harvest time, there will be a bounty beyond measure. As we were leaving the park we looked at the map again and realized there was a small peach orchard in another area of the park. Off we went looking for it. To get there we had to walk a bit closer the the local gun club (yikes!) and through a forest. We really weren't sure if we would find it when suddenly around the bend was an orchard -- of trees that had died. It was heartbreaking to see. So much potential, but nothing realized. The black limbs of the trees still reaching to the sky for light and warmth, but the sap had long since stopped running through them.

Back to the car we went, knowing we could find more apples than we could eat later this year, satisfied with our abilities to find great tasting local foods with which to stock our shelves for the coming winter.

Back On Track

Last week, I was working on a big project at my office. Then we were out of town for a few days helping my mother move. So, we weren't diligent about our local eating.

One of the things that I realized while I was so focused on my project at work was that I don't spend much time planning my meals. I would go the whole day without having much breakfast or lunch, becasue I hadn't planned. Before our commitment to eating locally, I would have just picked something up at at a carry-out place. I hope I would have chosen that over McDonald's, but who knows? I ruled out carry out as an option -- so I just didn't have much of anything for lunch. By the end of the day I would be so hungry and have no idea what I wanted to make for dinner. Luckily, we still have some leftover choices from before our commitment to local eating. Hotdogs rule!

When we were out of town, we decided that we could have what people offered. We also picked up a few things that we wanted but can't get here. They were not local to Pittsburgh, but they were unusual and of good quality. On our way back to Buffalo we stopped and picked cherries near the PA - NY state line. They were SOUR cherries (good for pies) and they were so ripe. The tree I picked from had hardly been touched. I could grab them by the handful. We ended up with a little over 13 pounds. Jon pitted them and they are in the freezer waiting for us come January and February when the local selections may be a bit slim around here.

What we have noticed is that we are eating at home every night. In the past we would eat out 3-4 nights a week. We are members of a CSA (community spnsored agriculture) and every week we get a bag of fresh organic vegetables straight from the farm. So far we have had a lot of lettuce and summer squash. I made a dessert out of zucchini. The people I shared it with loved it, I was not so sure. We are planning to try some bread & butter pickles and maybe a some soup for the freezer. We also just came across a chicken farm that delivers. We can get locallay raised chicken and fresh eggs delivered to our door every other week. This might turn out to be better than we imagined.

I have never been a big planner, so it will still take some work. Also, there are those moments when I am tempted by a can of soda or a Lindt chocolate ball. As Jon said to my brother on the phone this evening, "Dude, we're on the 100 mile diet. Ya gotta love it!"

Eating Out, Eating In

Saturday I realized that I have spent a lot of years not giving much thought to what I eat. I decided, at the last minute, to go with Jon to Niagara Falls to visit the Outlet Mall. Jon was doing a wedding and what better thing for me to do than shop? So right before we left I remembered there would be no snacks for me at the mall and I had better eat something like breakfast. So I had a piece of the bread Jon made the day before.


While walking through the mall I was very thirsty. In the past I would have purchased something to drink, and probably a snack along with it. But soft drinks do not fit our local criteria. One of my friends did remind me that we have a bottling plant here, so it must be local. But, soda does not meet our criteria. I picked up the things I was looking for at the mall -- a new salad spnner since our cats broke the old one, a metal scraper for the bread board -- things we need for all of our home made food. And then I went back to pick up Jon.


We wondered if there was a farmers' market in Niagara Falls and drove around looking for one, but found nothing. I mentioned to Jon how even on the third day there were lots of changes. He said, "Yeah, before we would have stopped somewhere for lunch by now." And that is the challenge for us. We have been eating out a lot. We always talk about eating at home more, but still have found ourselves eating out, frequently. So now we eat at home.


We are still eating things we already had -- so lunch was hotdogs, at home. They were good. Then we had dinner with vegetables from Porter Farms, and homemade pesto on homemade bread. Local food, made at home -- really is the best thing ever.

Visiting the Grocery Store

We just came home from Shakespeare in Delaware Park. All's Well that Ends Well is a long play. And the outdoor theater is all about picnicking. We made some dinner to take with us. Jon made fresh bread this afternoon. We had some zucchini and mixed up a little pesto and pasta and had a great feast. But then we saw the people with strawberry shortcake and M & Ms and chocolate cake and suddenly found ourselves feeling like we were missing something.

We needed more flour for bread-making tomorrow. So we stopped at Wegmans, our local grocery store, on the way home. While we were planning this local eating effort we thought about flour and wheat. Western New York is great for growing a lot of things, but we don't remember seeing wheat among them. So we scoped out local mills and the specialty flour in the super-market. We diecided that for the first few weeks we would purchase the closest flour we could find, which happens to be milled in Vermont. We don't know if the wheat is grown there or not, but going without bread at all from the beginning seemed mor ethan we could do. So we bought some flour.

We looked at the ice cream made locally, but it has corn syrup and other stuff we knew was not local. Jon prepared for this, he has been making his own ice cream for a couple months now. So we went to check out the milk. It turns out the Wegmans organic milk is probably within our 100 mile range. From a careful read of the label it looks like most of the milk comes from outside Rochester which is in our area. So we came home with some milk and flour. That was all. I thought maybe we'd find something else that met our criteria, but no such luck.

My lesson for the day was that late night trips to the grocery store will be much cheaper than they used to be.

Day One

When Eliot Spitzer was elected governor of New York last fall, he assured everyone that things would begin to change on Day One. Many of us are of the opinion things haven't changed much.

Things changed for me on Day One. I work at a community center and, among other things, we operate a community dining room (Loaves & Fishes Dining Room). Some would call it a soup kitchen. I had to work over there today and, though we make every effort to serve nutritious food, not much of it is local. Our food choices are often dictated by what is available at the local food bank and what has been discarded and subsequently donated by local grocery stores.

When I work over there, I often check out the selection of desserts. I usually have one. Today I arrived just before we started to serve and there was this beautiful chocolate cake with cherries on top served up ready to go. I walked over ready to help myself to a piece when suddenly, I remembered this is Day One! No cake for me. Who knows where the chocolate and the flour and the cherries and the sugar and the whipped cream came from? No one in that kitchen knew. So instead, I worked through lunch and went back to my office and heated up the leftover beans and rice I had brought from home. I sure did miss that chocolate cake!

One of the things Jon and I decided before we started was that whatever we already had in the house when we started was fair game. We had already purchased it, so it made sense to eat it. Wasn't I lucky to find some potato chips in my office after I finished the beans and rice? Not many, but a few. They were followed by some raisin, sunflower seed, pumpkin seed mix. So, I was still able to have a bit of a snack mid-afternoon that wasn't local, but had already been purchased.

Things have already changed. Too bad it wasn't so easy for the governor!

Starting a New Habit

A couple of months ago a member of the congregation of which my husband, Jon, and I are co-pastors, said, "Let's eat things from within a hundred mile radius for the next year, as a congregation." I said, "What about a month?" And he was sure we had to do it for a year. And so Jon and I and others from the congregation began to talk about it. I was fascinated by the idea.

The challenge for us will be that we live in Buffalo, NY. Not much grows here in winter. So Jon & I decided we needed to start right away so we could can and freeze things to get us through the winter. We thought about July 1st and then our friends invited us over for a cook-out for the 4th of July. We decided the 5th would work just fine. Others in the congregation -- Riverside Salem Church in Grand Island, NY --are starting at their own time and pace. We are setting it up so that people can commit to whatever works for them. The point is to make an effort to eat locally grown and raised foods as much as possible.

Part of the plan is to chronicle our experience -- we want to figure out how much it costs. Is it more or less than what we spent before? Could a family who relies on food stamps eat mostly local foods? Are there local sources for wheat? Will we ever stop missing bananas and oranges and all the other tropical fruits to which we have become accustomed?

There has been a lot of publicity about people who have committed to eating locally and written books. Barbara Kingsolver has written, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," a chronocle of her family's efforts to eat locally for a year. Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon have written a book called, "Plenty," in which they describe their first year of eating locally.

Our commitment to local eating is about many things. It is something tangible we can do to use less fossil fuel. It is good for the local economy. We expect the effort will help us eat more nutritious and better tasting foods. We will build community with those who grow and produce our foods, others who are joining the effort, and people we come across as we search out local sources for the foods we love.

We start tomorrow. Stay tuned for the adventure.