glorious day in vermont

Most beautiful day ever.

Breakfast: organic yogurt (butterworks diary in Westfield, VT - 85.9 miles) with maple syrup (Bristol, VT - 2 miles), french toast

Lunch: left over pasta with home made pesto, spinach with home made maple citrus dressing, homemade refried beans

snack: monument farms milk (Weybridge, VT - 13 miles)

Dinner: Quesadillas with home made corn tortillas (Corn meal from Winter Moon Farm in Hadley, MA - 101 miles, Whole Wheat Flour from King Arthur Flour in Norwhich, VT - 139 miles, homemade butter), Bread (Red Hen Bread in Middlesex, VT - 35 miles)

I also had some home made chocolate chip cookies. I don't know where the ingredients are from. Since chocolate is my exception i figure they are half ok. they were gluten free. that has nothing to do with local. but they were so good and so worth it i don't regret it at all. but i figured i should tell you.

I'll be meeting some friends for some local brew tonight. Boy have I missed vermont beer. A lot of bars and restaurants around here serve almost all local beers, which is awesome! They restaurant in town (the only one) even exclusive serves their own homebrews. super sweet. My favorite vt beer is switchback made in burlington, they don't even bottle, just sold on tap, but can be found in almost every restaurant and bar in the state. Happy brews :-)

The experience

The whole point really of doing this project has really been to experience local eating. What's it like? How does it affect those around me? What is it like for these beliefs to become more tangible?

This is new kind of thought for me, What does it feel like to eat locally in different places? I haven't been in vermont for 24 hours yet, but I just realized it feel so natural here (no pun intended). If I had to describe how it feels in boston, I would say desperate. Desperate to find food, to resist the temptations. Perhaps it feels more natural here because I can look out the window and I see farm land that grows food instead of apartment buildings and restaurants. Its an interesting thought....the way my choice to eat local feels so different here.

This also has made me do some more thinking about what it would be like to do the project in a rural area. Vermont makes tons of its own food, but being so rural it has much farther to travel to get to the various health food stores. Which also brings up how much driving I would have to do. As far as I know there aren't any winter farmers markets here, and the general public has to drive on average a fair amount to get to local health food stores. So in this regard procuring your food in rural areas becomes much less efficient (unless involved with a csa perharps) than the city. The thing that cities have going for it (like nyc) is a preexistent infrastructure to serve a lot of people in a small area. I'm going to new york in a few days and I'm exciting to check out the local eating scene. Doing a little research new york boast probably close to 50 farmers markets around the metropolitan area, with at least 10 open in the winter. the sheer volume amazed me. With such a concentration of people, it becomes much more efficient to have farmers markets than say in the summer in my town population 2,000 the farmers markets maybe sees 2o-30 people in an afternoon. It becomes ironic that the cities have the potential to more efficiently feed its people than the sprawled out rural areas. US cities right now consume 70% of our resources. US cities could adopt a little more self reliance and take advantages of the spaces that do exist to grow food, like many european countries have done in the threat of food security to produce up to 80% of a cities own food. how spectacular!

Battle of the Diets

So when I met my dad today to grocery shop and eat lunch at our lovely local independent health food store we found ourselves with a little of a situation. My father had decided to return to a past vegan diet about 5 days ago. Great! In reality our diets don't mesh well in the winter. He's not eating meat, diary or wheat. The three things I can pretty much count on to not need a growing season, and that are involved with a lot of my food. Not only did we have to deal with the practicality of choosing food, but conflicting ideas about what was best to eat. This is an interesting point that I started to learn about today listening to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma while driving to vermont: Our nation's eating disorder. With diets coming and going, what is bad for us continuously becoming good or vice versa, and array of experts, its becomes rather overwhelming and confusing for the consumer to figure out what to eat and where to get it. I feel this is especially hard when trying to figure out the healthiest food for your body and the planet. I think local eating gets at the general picture of how we should be eating: real food that isn't processed and from real people. But I'm also understanding that its also a quite nuanced issue.

In real life, practicality mostly wins. After food shopping we checked out the deli section for lunch. Nothing was entirely local and thus there was nothing I could eat. I wasn't terribly surprised. While the health food store had a decent selection of healthy food, not a terribly not of fresh produce is in season in vermont right now, and us americans, while we want healthy food, we don't want to have to sacrifice our oranges and bananas.

So we sucked it up and went to another place in town that my dad's friend had suggested for some local food. We walked in and explained the situation: 1 vegan, 1 locavore. Turns out, much easier to feed the vegan. While they had a fair amount of options that had local food IN it, not really much entirely local. So i compromised and got soup with local carrots that also had coconut milk in it (my dad said, that's not local? no dad, coconuts don't grow on this continent.....), with local greens, slice of local roast beef, salad dressing, and local bread. I'm hoping eating out locally will get easier as it has for vegans.

I couldn't help but feel like we looked overly self-rightous in that deli. But the great thing is that while it may have been a pain for the girl helping us out, it was totally fine and the chef was happy to talk to us about what was in each meal. At the end of the day, as frustrating as our shopping and lunch was, I felt fortunate that I was discussing local vs vegan with my dad than real food vs mc donalds, and that I have a father that is concerned with his health enough to plunge into an intensely vegan dad. I feel like while "going green" is so popular, sticking to your convictions even when its inconvenient or not cool is not always part of the green attitude. So rock on those who do.

So it's been busy!

I've now made Fresh Mozzarella twice! and shared with friends who (i won't try to be humble) said it was AMAZING. it really tasted real. its exciting. I've been on a quest for goats milk to make goat cheese and I met a woman at a farmers market on sunday who was selling goats milk soap and in a month when her babies are weened will be hooking me up with some goats milk that legally "won't be used for consumption" when i buy it. I've been learning how hard the regulations are for small farmers to be able to sell their milk and thus cheese.

Another interesting twist is I have traveled home last minute for car repairs to Vermont. Let me just say the food terrain is a whole new territory. I met my dad in Burlington at City Market to food shop for dinner and grab a bite to eat. The most exciting find? MUSHROOMS!! So exciting, I've been missing them big time. I heard the guy who grooms them is super awesome and has just big rooms of mushrooms growing. I want to try growing some myself.....and meet him......and have rooms of mushrooms....... I was also happy to get some local 7 grain flour. What else did i notice in a local independent, yet decently sized health food store in Vermont? Much more selection. Vermont makes a ton more food than Mass. I found several locally made tomato sauces, many yogurts and milks, several varieties of tomatoes (but at $5.99 per lb i passed), parsnips, potatoes, tons of beers and wines, and too many cheeses to choose from! I didn't even have time to look at everything. I did however notice where foods were from were not labeled as well as places around boston. they has some local signs, but not all local products were pointed out and the signs were rather plain. I wonder if the local phenomenon is not as obsessive as mass or perhaps the people who shop at the co-op know their product and know whats local already... interesting to think about. City Feed and Sherman Market in the boston area are lovely, but i wish there was a bigger local market that could really compete with the big supermarkets. I would say the two independent health food stores in burlington are the same size if not bigger than the whole foods down the street from my house in brighton. This raises a local issue to vermont is whole food moving into burlington. With two existing decently sized independent health food stores in burlington many are concerned with how much business can the queen city sustain? (no pun intended) People can only eat so much, and there is only so much business to be had in the little city of about 30,000, and thus wholefoods with take away business from the local markets. Most people reading this aren't from around vermont so I won't go on, but if you are interested check out this article: http://www.7dvt.com/2009big-fish

This also brings up a discussion on whole foods in general. I'm starting to learn more about the food system and what would be helpful to remedy it, so I will meditate on it all some more before discussing it. I do know that at this time of year I can buy very little from a store that boasts such abundance.

Local Things I have been able to find at whole foods in the last 5 1/2 weeks:

-milk, eggs, yogurt (once), pasta (once), Tomato Sauce and Pesto (once), apples, cider, flour, tomatoes, fair trade chocolate.

Ok that list doesn't look super meager but really besides the milk and eggs, I'm unable to get the bulk of my food Whole Foods. That question has been popping up a lot when i tell people about my project, "Where do you get your food?" These days I mostly go to a farmers market once a week. This has turned out to far superior to driving all over the city to different specialty stores. I get better prices that go directly to the farmer, who I can directly meet and create a relationship with, better and wider selection of food, and I only need to go to one place which reduces my traveling.

dinner from Jena Duncan on Vimeo.

Food

What I ate:

Saturday-

Breakfast/Lunch (I slept in): Toast (home made) with Jam, yogurt with Maple Syrup

Snack: Fresh Mozzarella (while making it!)

Dinner: Fresh Pasta (Somerville, MA), Pasta Sauce, Pesto Sauce, home made mozzarella, cider (Harvard, MA), Kale with Onions

Dessert: Fair Trade Chocolate

Drinks: Shipyard Brown Ale, Harpoon IPA

Sunday-

Breakfast: Pasta with Sauce (I was sick of breakfast foods)

Snack: Kettle Corn (from the farmers market)

Late Afternoon Grazing: Goat Cheese, Homemade Mozzarella (Crescent Ridge Milk Sharon MA - 22 miles and Shaw Dairy in Dracut, MA - 42 miles), Smoked Gouda (Smith's Farmstead Cheese Winchendon, MA - 66.3 miles), more Kettle Corn, left over pasta with sauce

Late evening grazing: Home made Mozzarella, home made tortilla chips, smoked gouda (see above), Fair trade Chocolate, UFO white, Shipyard Brown Ale

Monday -

Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs with refried beans and cilantro

Snack: Leftover Meatball

Snack: Leftover Kettle Corn

Dinner: Salad with green and red lettuce, carrots, goat cheese, pesto, oil, apple vinegar, also sauteed chard with onion.

Dessert: Apple with maple butter

Tuesday-

Breakfast: Apple Pancakes

Snack: Carrots, left over pancakes, beans

**Arrive in Vermont**

Lunch: Local mixed greens with Maple balsamic vingarette, few slices of local roast beef, bread (Red Hen Bakery), Coconut Carrot Soup (with local carrots, had to compromise on the coconut)

Dinner: Local Pasta, home made pesto, sauteed local mushrooms and tomatoes, garlic bread (local bread, home made butter, generic garlic), Wine (Snow Farm Vineyard in Grand Isle, VT - 43 miles)

Dessert: Entirely Organic Mint Ice Cream (Strafford Diary in Strafford, VT - 94 miles

The foods I lusted after today 3/4/10

-Cheeseburger while adam was eating one next to me in class
-Some sort of processes snack when chris asked us on our break if we were going to the store
-Coffee when anna said she was going to starbucks
-Grilled cheese while we were sitting in brueggers while carlie ate hers
- Spaghetti and Tomato Sauce during a lecture in class, also again when I ate plain meatballs for dinner
-An orange while Gabby ate one during class, also again later looking at the peels sitting on her desk
-Indian food while anna talked about going out with justin after class for indian food
-Popcorn while thinking about going to the silhouette which serves free popcorn
-crackers and cookies while in the library where there was food for a reception
-Grapes when the left over food from the reception was put at the front desk that I walked by on my break from class


So all except for one time, I only craved food when I saw other people eating it, talking about it, or saw the food itself. This was not always the case. I used to crave foods all the time. I think I'm becoming more adjusted to my diet for sure. The things i miss the most are fruit and tomato sauce/pasta. I'm living alright without the processed foods. I'm almost done week 5 here and I've been thinking more about what it will be like when my 60 days end. I think I will try to keep eating locally as much as possible but without the complete off limits of everything else. One thing I really feel I will change is local meat. The terrible conditions the animals are kept in basically packed into barns so close they can't move, living in their own excrement, and never seeing sunshine or grass their whole life. Also something interesting is that grass fed animals are actually healthier meat. When they are grass fed, instead of grain fed which has never been natural to their diet, the Cholesterol is actually the kind that is good for you instead of bad. I thought that was wildly interesting, and make a lot of sense if you think about how what we eat affect our health, that it would affect the animals health by what they eat.

I've learned a lot in general from reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbra Kingsolver, which I highly recommend.

Despite all the awesomeness I still get pissed I can eat free food. I used to be the queen of taking advantage of free food: free pizza at school for lunch, wine at openings, snacks at receptions!

Food Update

What I ate:

Thursday-
Breakfast: Toast with jelly
Lunch: 2 small sandwiches with home made bread, home roasted chicken from owen's poultry farm, lettuce from red fire farm, and smoked gouda cheese from smith's farmstead.
Snack: home made apple muffins
Dinner: Home made meatballs
Snack: Ice cream (from Crescent Ridge Dairy, which is where I get my milk. I discovered that it has corn syrup in it, a big no no of local eating! but i ate it anyway because i had already been eating it the last few days and it was so good, and it is gone now so i won't get it again) , cheese, muffin (not all together! just bites)

Today-
Breakfast: Toast with jelly
Lunch: Lunch: 2 small sandwiches with home made bread, home roasted chicken from owen's poultry farm, lettuce from red fire farm, and smoked gouda cheese from smith's farmstead.

Dinner: Kale! with onions, black beans with onions

Drinks: Harpoon Celtic Ale, UFO White