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7 Days 100% Local Challenge Completed!

The first 7 Days 100% Local Challenge is done! Congratulations!

We did it. For many people it was a cold local shower–no coffee and no chocolate can be hard. But is was an eye opening experience for everyone involved. Many new and wonderful local foods were found. Several mainstream products were replaced. A few hiccups were discovered along the way. And we learned a lot about the process of going local.

Thanks to everyone who participated.  A special thanks to each of you that came out for Last Day Local dinner tonight.  It was a small but good group.

One of the great things about doing the 7 Days 100% Local Challenge is learning about new products.  The funny thing is that everyone latches onto something.  There is always some item that they end up eating a lot of that week.   Here are some of the things that were found:

• Popcorn.  Kate and Ian found popcorn at the Gee Creek stand.  This quickly became a popular snack for everyone.  Popcorn!  Who would have thought?!
• Prunes.  Not sure why, but prunes floated to the top.
• Hazelnut Butter.  We found that Proper Eats in St. Johns has a Hazel Nut butter grinder that grinds Freddie Guy’s Hazel Nuts.  At $7.50/lbs. for local Hazel Nut butter, we all used this as a peanut butter substitution.
• Fresh Pasta.  The ladies had a pasta making party and this worked out well for everyone.
• Beer.  Rogues OREgasmic Ale has become my personal new favorite beer.  100% local and delicious!
• Pork chops.  This was a special high point for Tenneal and Trevor.  The Payne Family pork chops from Fork Revolution were divine, apparently.
• Sea salt.  As the only food additive available, sea salt was a big hit.  Many people swore that salt and butter saved the week for them.
• Olive Oil.  The Oregon Olive Mill’s donation of a case of 100% local olive oil was very much appreciated by everyone.
• Bread.  A huge shout out to Grand Central Baking for making the 100% local loaf.  Everyone enjoyed this and ate plenty of it.

There were some rough parts too.  Here are some of the pain points:

• Coffee.  Coffee was sorely missed.  For others this was something they cheated on.
• Snacks.  Little treats here and there are hard to come by when you’re eating 100% local.  Berries and popcorn only go so far.
• Cheese.  As far as we could find there is no 100% local choice for cheese.  This was missed by everyone.
• The general shock of limiting your food choices.  The idea that eating local takes preparation was definitely felt by all.

We also talked about the next 7 Days 100% Local Challenge and everyone was into it, even with the hard parts.  This is the thing, once you take the cold plunge, it gets easier.  The second 7 Days 100% Local dinner will take people in new directions, lead to new discoveries, have people understand more about the choices they make and why they make them, and lead us to find new ways that the local food economy can be a richer and more complete option for those who choose it.

Personally, I find it very exciting. What started as a challenge for one family has grown to include others. And they are embracing the challenge now too.  And Grand Central Baking helped out.  And Oregon Olive Mill helped out.  The idea that this simple idea can grow is just great.  What we put in our bodies matters.  And how we participate in our local economy matters too.  Taking seven days to face these topics straight on can be a wonderful experience, even if it is a challenge.

7 Days 100% Local Challenge Starts Today

The challenge to eat 100% local for seven days begins today.

Being a part of the challenge means taking seven days to push your personal eating in a more local direction with the goal of going 100% local. The Challenge lasts until Sunday, April 24th.

It has been great to hear about people getting ready for the week and the things they are finding–both the good things and the challenges. For instance, yesterday Tineal hosted a pasta making get together with some of the ladies in the neighborhood. 100% local pasta is really easy to make, and it’s even easier if you have a few people to do it with. Using half local triticale flour, half Stone-Burh flour, and local eggs, the ladies rolled out quite a bit of pasta for local week.

Dre has also been on the move, finding new sources for vegetables and making some great connections that may become a more regular feature of the St. Johns SwapNPlay food buying group.

People are also facing some of the challenges right away. The high cost of local food shows up immediately. Also, the limitations of local food can test the resolve of family members.

On Monday, the 25th, we’ll be having a potluck at the St. Johns SwapNPlay to get everyone together and talk about how the week went, what we learned. Non-participants are welcome to come too if they want to learn more about the challenge, hear the experiences, and find out more about local sources for food. Just bring a 100% local dish for the meal and you’re in!

Why I Am Doing 7 Days 100% Local

This is more of a personal post, but I felt I needed to say something.

I always get asked why we are doing this or what the point of this experiment is.  It may mean different things to different people, but I wanted to take a minute to write about why I am doing 7 Days 100% Local.

This started out as an experiment my family did last year.  Here is what I wrote at the time on my personal food blog about it.  This reasoning is still true today, so I thought I would share.

After a moderately successful attempt at local braised lamb shanks in October 2010, I wrote this:

Local Is Hard

This is not a particularly local meal, and it certainly wasn’t planned (unlike the other meals I’d posted about).  But what I’m finding is that it really isn’t that easy to cook local food all the time.  Imported stuff creeps in all over the place, and it’s almost impossible to stop it.

Even with the best farmers markets in the country, local markets and co-ops that are open every day of the week, and farms that are just 30 minutes out of town, it’s still a struggle to eat 100% local. Why is that?  I think I know the answer.

Toilet paper is not local.

You go to the store for some butt wipe and while you’re there you remember that you also need some broccoli and the apples look good and how about some bread for lunches this week and might as well pick up some onions while you’re at it…etc., etc., etc.

Pretty soon you’ve conveniently done all your grocery shopping and making an extra trip to the market seems like a huge pain in the [butt], so you don’t do it.  And you don’t eat local.  We don’t at least.

End of confession.

The Local Plan is Born

What to do about it?  Well, here is the thing.  I’m going to try to convince my family that we should eat 100% local for one week.  That is 7 days of local only produce, meats, condiments, spices, herbs, and dairy.  It’s mid October and this may be the last realistic chance we have at doing this.

What does this mean?  No vegetable oil.  No pepper.  No oregano.  No avocado.  No mango.  No lemon. No pasta.

What else does it mean?  Truly fresh food.  Eating only what is at its best right now.  Realizing that Autumn is more than sweaters and frosty breath–it’s squash and nuts and late season tomatoes that fill your mouth with meaty sweetness when you bite into them.  It’s seven days to realize where we are. It’s seven days of here and now.

In getting ready for the first 7 Days 100% Local challenge, I wrote this:

We are trying to go seven days eating only 100% locally sourced foods.  This does not mean locally produced foods, like artisan breads.  It means only foods that are grown here or are made from ingredients that are grown here.

Local can be a subjective word.  Does it mean within 20 mile radius?  Within an hour’s drive?  Within the Willamette Valley?  Within Oregon?  For us, it mostly means foods that are grown withing about an hour’s drive.  Most of what we’re getting is from the farmer’s market and most of those farms are within an hour or 90 minutes drive.  There are some things that come from farther away.  Grains grow best east of the Cascades, so our bread and pasta will be regional (Oregon and Washington) but the yeast for the bread is from our own house.

We are doing this because we want to know what it really means to eat truly local.  It is easy to say “eat local”.  What most people seem to mean by that is choose something that looks great at the farmer’s market, then they go home and surround it with all kinds of things from everywhere around the world.  Having a local star with a foreign cast can hardly be considered a truly local production.  If the local food movement is going to be anything more than a curiosity, it has to be able to provide all the pieces of the pie.  If the desire really is to move from industrial agri-business to small batch, local food culture, then that local food culture has to be able to meet the omnivorous needs of the people involved.  It is understood that this will require some bending on the part of the consumers involved, but how much bending?  And in what ways?  We live surrounded by grocery stores and restaurants and food carts that literally offer a world of edible delights.  Is there really any way that a strictly local, non-industrial, small batch food ideology can realistically compete with that?  When faced with such outlandish and comprehensive competition, can the ideas of the local food movement be anything more than a whim?

We’re taking seven days out of our lives to find out for ourselves.

And that is what the 7 Days 100% local challenge is about for me.  7 Days of here and now.  7 Days to find out from our own experiences what the hype is all about.  7 days to try.

That is why I am doing the 7 Days 100% local challenge.  Now that others are getting involved, I can’t wait to find out what it means for them.

–Jason

7 Days 100% Local Sample Menu – Spring 2011

When they think of doing 100% local for 7 days, many people have a hard time imaging what that will look like.  What sorts of things will they actually be eating?  Will it be seven days of asparagus and beets?  Well, not exactly…

Here is an idea for a 7 Days 100% local menu.  This is based on what we actually ate for the last 7 Days 100% Local challenge.  Helpful things here are turning one dish into two by using left overs the second day.  Pan sauces become important for flavor when spices are not available.  Vegetables will vary based on availability. (See Aglink.org’s Seasonal Vegetable Chart for a list of seasonally available vegetables.  There may be more than this available at the actual markets because many growers are using hothouses now.)

Breakfasts are basically cereal or eggs.  Lunches are simple and portable.  Dinners are meat centric to be filling. Plus most meat left overs can be transformed into something else like soups or pasta dishes the next day.

Note—cheese may pretty much impossible to find 100% local because of the colors, salts, and enzymes that are added to it.  I’m working on a solution to this.  In the mean time, here’re some ideas.

Day 1
Breakfast: 5 grain cereal with milk and honey.

Lunch: Hazelnut butter and jelly sandwich

Dinner: Braised lamb shoulder sauted baby potatoes and asparagus

Day 2
Breakfast: scrambled eggs and homemade tortillas.

Lunch: Hazelnut butter and cheese quesadilla.

Dinner: Lamb soup with bread.

Day 3
Breakfast: 5 grain cereal

Lunch: Leftovers (if you got’em)

Dinner:  Shellfish in white wine and butter.  Salad of spring greens. Bread.

Day 4
Breakfast: Poached eggs on toast

Lunch: hard boiled egg.  carrot sticks.  bread.

Dinner: Roasted Chicken with beets.  Steamed asparagus.  Bread.

Day 5
Breakfast: Poached eggs on toast

Lunch: Hardboiled eggs, cheese quesadilla

Dinner: Homemade pasta with chicken cream sauce.  Salad of spring greens.

Day 6
Breakfast: 5 grain cereal

Lunch: Hard boiled egg, apples with hazelnut butter,  salad with chicken on top

Dinner: Pork chops.  Sauted fiddleheads.  Boiled baby potatoes

Day 7
Breakfast:  Scrambled eggs and toast

Lunch: Hardboiled eggs and apples, leftover pasta

Dinner:  Homemade pork ravioli with pan sauce.  Bread.  Salad of spring greens.

 

Need more ideas?  Here are some food concepts that could be done 100% local:

Apple Cider Custard with Honey Bourbon sauce.

This could be a great dessert.  Just make normal custard but use apple cider to flavor the cream instead of vanilla and sugar.  Use bourbon (Rogue Brewery) to thin the honey to make a sauce.  Cook off the alcohol.  OR as a bonus, drizzle the honey then pour a couple warmed bourbon shots over the top and serve flaming!

Black Bean and Fiddle Head Pate with Italian Parsley Vinegar Drizzle.

Squash beans into a paste.  Mix in whole Fiddle heads for texture, color and taste.  Use Egg whites to make it stiff and bake in a terrine.  Serve sliced like pate.  Use some vinegar flavored with parsley for a sauce and drizzle over.  The parsley has a nice peppery taste and the acidy vinegar should help counterbalance the density of the black bean paste.  Pates are usually pretty heavy on spices, so a generous helping of herbs will have be added.

Eggs Benedict a la Portland

Make Eggs Benedict like normal.  Use Grand Central’s Corn Levain bread.  Substitute thinly sliced uncured pork belly for bacon or spinach for veggie benedict.  For the hollandaise sauce, use crushed lemon thyme instead of lemon.  Add salt.  This should make a more savory dish overall but will be delicious, I bet!

Those are a couple ideas for dishes that could be done local this spring.

There are also a thousand ways to use 100% local egg noodles and veggies or meats and cream sauces for a pasta dinner.  And all the simply roasted meats are out there too.

100% local does not need to be hard, but it does take a little bit of creativity.

 

Local? What’s Local?

When you do something with the word “local” in the title, the question inevitably comes up of what do you mean by “local”.

When we are thinking local, we’re thinking mainly 100 mile radius from Portland Oregon.

Why 100 miles?  100 miles seems to be the normal standard for local food.

People who value local as their primary food criterion are sometimes referred to as locavores. The term “locavore” was coined by Jessica Prentice from the San Francisco Bay Area for World Environment Day 2005 to describe and promote the practice of eating a diet consisting of food harvested from within an area most commonly bound by a 100 mile radius.  from Sustainable Table.

Also Canadian Food TV did a show called the 100 Mile Challenge in 2009.

If you search for 100 mile diet, you will find a lot of resources.

In practical terms there are some foods that we use a lot that are not 100 mile available.  Wheat is a prime example (note: I’ve heard that there are some rogue wheat farmers trying to re-introduce wheat to the Willamette Valley). Wheat is grown in massive quantities–975,000 acres in Oregon in 2010.  So big that it really is more of a regional product than a local one. For those products that require more space, we’re trying to keep it within the federal Food Safety Bill’s Tester Amendment definition of small farm: 275 miles.  275 miles for Portlanders is basically the California border to the Canadian border.

All that being said, we don’t map out every source and measure the distances. There’s a bit of the honor system going on. And the hope is that everyone who is participating will give it an honest try.

In the end, we’re just as interested in the ways that people can’t be local as the ways they can be.  Finding ways to fix these gaps is one of our long term goals.

Grand Central Baking Creates the 100% Local Loaf

Bread coming out of the oven.

One of the challenges of the 7 Day 100% Local Challenge is coming up with a 100% local bread.  Knowing this would be a problem for pretty much everyone who is participating in the challenge, I reached out to Grand Central Bakery.  They have a strong commitment to local sources, and I was hoping they would help.  You can imagine how happy I was to get an email back from them saying they were in!

On Thursday, Kim and I were treated to a tour of the main Grand Central bakery.  Mel Darbyshire, their master baker, gave us a tour of the facility and explained how they source their ingredients.  It was impressive the lengths she goes to to support local growers and producers as much as they can.  For instance, they now get 100% of their wheat from Sheppard’s Grain.  Their honey comes from Hood River.  They source potatoes from local farms as much as they can.  Mel is constantly on the look out for new local sources that can replace as many of the industrial products as possible.  It’s not as easy as it might seem.  Commercial bakeries need quality, consistency and volume.  Not many small farms can deliver on all these fronts.

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Mel’s commitment to keeping the production of the bread as close to “by hand” was also impressive.  Because of the size of the operation, some automation is necessary.  But the criteria is always to ensure that the product does not become a “machined” loaf.  For instance, only the baguettes and buns are shaped by a machine.  All the other loafs are done by hand.  This is amazing considering the number of loafs that are produced there 24 hours a day.

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The New 100% Local Loaf

At the end of the tour, we got a real treat.  Mel has created a special 100% local wild yeast bread enhanced with a corn levain and subtle honey sweetness.

It’s delicious.  Especially toasted with butter.

We were treated to a sample.  Mel is still finalizing the formula, but the results so far cannot be denied.  And it’s a beautiful looking loaf.

Once the recipe is finalized, the loaf will be available for sale at all Grand Central locations.  Huge thanks to Grand Central and Mel for a great tour and for taking a personal interest in 100% local food.

100% Local Loaf