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5th Annual Dark Days Eat Local Challenge

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Laura over at (not so) Urban Hennery is continuing the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge tradition. The rules are to cook one meal each week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients and write about it on your blog. We set our own food zones and exceptions.Weekly recaps by group are posted over at (not so) Urban Hennery or maybe at Not Dabbling in Normal (I’ll have to get back to you on that).

The challenge starts today and is on until Saturday, March 31st, 2012.

My local food zone is about 100 miles. For a few ingredients, I may reach beyond the local and tap the regional food shed (the rest of New England and upstate NY). My general rule all the time is if it grows in my food shed, I’ll get it in my food shed. If it doesn’t grow here, I’ll get it from the nearest, most responsible source. My specific exceptions are oils, coffee, chocolate, spices, baking ingredients like baking powder, baking soda, and yeast, and tropical and citrus fruits.

I am really looking forward to this year. After all these years of eating locally all the time, finding the food is not the most challenging aspect. There are far more winter farmers markets and open farm stands than there used to be. (I like to think it’s thanks to us!) My biggest challenge is time. My favorite winter meals require hours of slow and low cooking. When that can’t happen, I default to frittatas. In the end, local is local!

After all these years, it is still fun and interesting. I like learning from other folks and their ideas help me avoid repetitive food syndrome. I’m excited about the new people. As people give this a try, they realize that putting together one local meal a week is supremely achievable.

Good luck to all the participants!

If you’re still thinking about it, you have until December 4 to join!

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Locavore Chocolate

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For me, being a locavore means I eat local food, but not only local food. I eat food as locally as possible. If something grows in CT, I get it from CT. If it doesn’t grow in CT, I’m open to getting it from its natural habitat. Coffee and chocolate come to mind. When I do get things from out in the world, I prefer that they come from a small farm or producer with a name rather than an anonymous industrial operation. I still want to know where my food comes from and want to support a small-farm model, even outside my 100 miles (such as beans from Cayuga Pure Organics).

It’s no secret that I love chocolate and often claim it as an exception in an otherwise local dish or meal. So imagine my delight when I heard about direct-trade chocolate from the Chocolate: the Raw Truth article in Delicious Living magazine!

Following in the coffee industry’s footsteps, some chocolate makers are adopting a direct-trade model, dealing one-on-one with small-scale cacao farmers and paying fair-trade prices to obtain superior beans while supporting cacao communities. “Direct trade is a lot of legwork, but you get much better quality ingredients, and you can also ensure the transparency of your supply chain,” says Alex Whitmore, cofounder of Taza, a direct-trade artisan chocolate maker in Somerville, Massachusetts.

I think it’s excellent that you can find out the exact origin of the ingredients of any coffee bar you get from Taza Chocolate!

To ensure integrity, Taza prints a batch number on the back of every chocolate bar; buyers can enter the number on Taza’s website to trace exactly where the beans and other ingredients in that bar came from.

I put in an order and we’ll see if the taste lives up to their ideals. I’m certainly looking forward to trying  out their stone-ground organic chocolate!

Note: Tazo Chocolate is 133 miles from me which puts them out of my 100-mile local zone and into what I call my regional zone, in case you’re counting.

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Thinking about rules

I’m thinking about my rules…what constitutes a true locavore to me? Idealy, I’d like to be a 90% local foodie. The only non-local items would be stuff that just doesn’t happen in the 100-mile foodshed around Newtown, Connecticut.

Those who have been reading along know that I haven’t been doing this long enough to have significant stores. I got more serious about puttin’ by at the beginning of the Fall. Somehow it hit me that the bounty party was about to end. You also know I never planned on puttin’ by. I was hoping to be able to find what I needed as I needed it. Well, you can’t get there from here.

The Farmer’s Markets are done. The Brewster’s Farmer’s Market stayed open until the weekend before Thanksgiving, but all the other ones in my area were long closed. Holbrook’s Farm Stand is winding down, and once Christmas comes, it’s closed for the season.

I’m not even in the bad months yet and I can’t even hold 60%. Today (fairly typical mix), I had (not in this order):
– Sliced fennell bulb (from the world)
– Beef loin steak (local, Stuart, Bridgewater)
– broccoli (worldly, California)
– chestnuts (local, Cherry Grove, Newtown)
– Macoun apple (old, falling apart, but local! Blue Jay, Bethel)
– hard-boiled egg (local, Holbrook’s, Bethel)
– coffee, Kona and Sumatra (worldly)
– milk (some from who knows where and some from the CT Farmers)
– tea (worldly)
– honey (Cherry Grove, Newtown)
– leftover turkey (worldly–Butterball)
– leftover mashed potatoes (local, Holbrook’s)
– sauteed red and yellow peppers (local, Cherry Grove, Newtown)
– sauteed mushrooms (worldly, California)
– wine (local, McLaughlin’s, Sandy Hook)

I really don’t want to drop below 50%. It’s going to be an experience for sure!

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The Marco Polo Exception

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It turns out that there’s already a locavore phrase for those foods that don’t grow locally: the Marco Polo exception. Bill McKibben coined the phrase:

And I made what might be called the Marco Polo exception—
I considered fair game anything your average 13th century
explorer might have brought back from distant lands.
So: pepper, and turmeric, and even the odd knob of ginger
root stayed in the larder.


While I’m drinking my coffee, mixing cinnamon into my granola and apple cider, enjoying vanilla ice cream, and sautéing with olive oil, I’ll be sure to call out “Marco Polo!”