Friday, March 7, 2008

Eating gradually more locally

My dinner tonight:
I made myself a gluten-free, low sodium soup out of the following:
-Water from the tap.
-Dulce (a type of seaweed): from Maine. This is the only seaweed I've found thus far that is produced by this country. Ix-nay on the ory-nay and the ombu-kay.
-Canned Roma tomatoes: from my garden that I canned last October.
-Canned black beans: that I purchased as dried beans from Whole Foods (origin unknown) and canned last December. I ran out of scarlet runner beans quickly this fall. These are fantastic- easy to grow and make the loveliest dried beans! Note to self: grow more beans to dry next summer. Easy local protein!
-Canned no-sodium turkey: that I purchased frozen the week before Thanksgiving via my local CSA from a grower within 200 miles of here and that I canned the next day. All the next day.
-Green savoy cabbage: from California.
-Broccoli: from California.
-Garlic: from California as my stash from our CSA ran out about 1 1/2 months ago.
-Tahini: fresh ground at Whole Foods. Origin unknown. Bet I could find out where they get it from...
-Bob's gluten-free cereal (corn, rice, white sorghum and buckwheat). Bob's is in Oregon, however I'm not certain that all cereal ingredients were grown and processed there. I have found a source of gluten-free oats in Wyoming. For glutenivors in my house, I've located a source of whole-wheat flour from a farm (Wheatland Farms) within 100 miles of here, one county over. They sell it at the local King Soopers market.
-Apple cider vinegar: from Pittsburgh, PA. I used to get Balsamic, but stopped when I realized that all the Balsamic comes from Italy...
The Dagoba chocolate that I had for dessert is organic and marketed by a company in Oregon (Ashland). They claim to source their chocolate from suppliers who operate equitably and sustainably. Their chocolate comes from Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru and Madagascar.
My approach to the whole idea of eating locally is that if I keep working away at it, eventually I'll have it under control. It was a bit of a shock when I started to really look at not just the fruits and vegetables, but all the other staples as well. I also had to start with ways to make it possible while hunting down substitutes. Obviously I have more work to do, but I'm making progress.

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