Here and Now

Everybody's doing it. First it was Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, then Michael Pollan, and now Barbara Kingsolver. Everybody's talking about their efforts to eat locally, or grow their own food. It all started with The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Eating Locally by two resourceful and thanks to the diet, much thinner, Canadians: Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon. Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life is on the best seller list. Michael Pollen's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma was mentioned in many 2006 year-end reviews. So heck, if everyone's so interested in what these folks have to say and to eat - why not me too? What's Barbara Kingsolver got that I haven't got? Better writing skills and a publisher? Who needs 'em. I can eat locally too.
All I needed was a gimmick, some rules to my self-imposed local eating campaign. I couldn't spend a year eating only food I'd grown or raised myself (that was Barbara's angle), so I decided to start as easily as possible, this summer I vowed to eat at least one locally-grown item per day. How hard can that be? Not very, provided one enjoys lettuce and lots of it. At my disposal is our backyard garden, currently a major source of lettuce, our plot at community gardens, a second source of lettuce and future source of carrots, sugar snap peas, tomatoes and zucchinis. Bay End Farm's CSA provides us with a biweekly source of whatever they decide to put in the bag. Coonanmessett Farm is my source for basil, among other things, and later in the season Tony Andrews provides us with corn.
So let's recap, that means one locally-grown component per day in any meal. Aren't you interested in how it's been going? Well, wonder no longer, I've been keeping a record and thought I would periodically provide you with some highlights.
The odyssey began on June 9 when Ken and C went shellfishing and brought home steamers which we had for dinner along with pesto made from Coonamessett Farm basil (an odd combination to be sure), the potato salad had chives from the backyard and the barley salad had backyard radishes. A pretty good effort.
June 11: Made quahog chowder from quahogs gathered by Ken and C.
June 12: Strawberry rhubarb crisp made from both local rhubarb and local strawberries. Despite having a friend who offered to counsel me in homemade pie crusts, I think I'll stick to my crisp.
June 15: Already there are problems. Do leftovers count? I had some of the spinach quiche and a handful of strawberries Tony Andrews Farm kindly dropped off at the front desk of the Enterprise this afternoon, but I didn't actually make anything. I guess leftovers count. Leftovers have to count.
June 19: Today was tough. I had leftover salad for lunch and I chopped up something green and leafy from last week's CSA bag and added it to the chicken lo mein we had for dinner.
June 17: Father's Day. Salad with CSA greens and pesto made from Coonamessett basil, topped with tomatoes, also from Coonamessett. Garlic bread was made with CSA garlic and I even threw in some chives for good measure. Everything's better with chives. It was all well and good but I've come to realize that which I already suspected - my cache of locally-grown meals is somewhat limited, salad and pesto being the top two meals.
June 20: The worst local food day yet. Leftover chicken lo mein with that nameless CSA green was all I could muster. Ken took the kids out for dinner and I ended up eating Steve's pizza leftovers when I got home.
Yesterday Glenway came by and I loaded him up with lettuce to bring to my sister. We also gave lettuce to Jim who vowed to give us some arugula. That would be good because I got some in the CSA bag but didn't used it and it wilted beyond repair. I was going to try an arugula pesto. I've heard you can do that but when I mentioned it to Alex he didn't think much of the idea.
June 23: Tonight we went to Conamessett Farm for Cajun night. I have to assume something I ate had locally grown ingredients in it. I should have had more from the salad bar as that would have cinched it. This morning and yesterday morning we put strawberries on breakfast; yesterday on cereal, today pancakes.
June 25: Here's a caveat, just because it's local doesn't mean it will taste good. I made the blandest spaghetti and clam sauce ever, using the clams I'd frozen after the shellfish outing. The sauce I normally make, which features canned clams, tastes much better.
June 26: Just lettuce.
June 27: Had to throw out pea tendrils, arugula, and the rest of the nameless Chinese green, which turned out to be joi choi, along with some store-bought cilantro in order to make room for this week's CSA pick up. It included more cilantro and more arugula. Guess there's still time to make that pesto. Kale in the bag will go towards kale soup and the very round zucchinis will batter and fry up nicely. It won't exactly be healthy, but it will taste great.
June 29: Total failure! At least I bought my lunch at a locally-owned shop on Main Street. Unfortunately it was the least satisfying chicken salad with walnuts and cranberries I've ever had. Usually it's delicious, to die for actually, but today it was unusually dry. Yesterday we brought salad to Alex and Laela's to accompany dinner which was met with high praise. We also added some peas from the backyard, peas that I'm now convinced are snow peas after originally thinking they were sugar snaps. I kept telling C not to pick them because they hadn't fattened up yet but they never fattened, they just kept getting bigger.
June 30: Today I fried up those zucchini rounds for dinner but nobody would eat them but Ken. For the most part H dined on spoonfuls of ketchup and C had six pieces of watermelon. How does that factor in to the equation? Does everyone have to like my locally-grown creation?

song: Here and Now • artist: Letters to Cleo