Back from Bioneers!

We're back from the first "beaming" Bioneers conference in Cleveland, Ohio. I've been hearing about Bioneers for many years and haven't ever had a chance to travel to San Rafael, California to attend the shindig in person. Last year, we heard about the "beaming" satellite conferences and nearly attended the one in Traverse City, Michigan. When we heard that there was going to be one at Cleveland State University this year, we knew that we had to go!

I talked to several people prior to the conference and attempted to explain what Bioneers is and had nearly as much trouble as I do defining my MA in Transformative Leadership. A day out from the end of the conference I would define Bioneers as a collection of people of the leading edges of the environmental, social justice, and spiritual movements of our times. We'll be posting some reflections from the coference over the next several days.

Yikes! Fame!...if only fortune would shortly follow...

Today we were featured in a local newspaper article (Akron Beacon Journal) about our local food journey. The story was called "Ohio grown, Ohio eaten" and may be accessed at www.ohio.com. We were a little nervous about being featured in a story, but it turned out very nice....and if it gets more people to look into local eating then that is a great thing!

On another note, we had our last week at the Peninsula farmer's market saturday. We stocked up on what we could, and have a freezer full of extra meat and cheese. We are considering buying a small chest freezer as an auxiliary place to store extra supplies to help us get through the winter. For now we are enjoying the plenty that we have.

Long time...no post

Wow! I can't believe I haven't written for a whole month....and I don't really have any time to do so now, either. We are doing well! Local food has been going pretty darn good. This is the "easy" time of year. Apples, squash, heavenly cheeses. We went and visited "Amish Country" in Holmes county this past weekend to celebrate our anniversary. Stayed at a very nice Inn that had an environmental/nature theme. Was great! We were very excited to see that Guggisberg Swiss cheese now has a Grass-fed variety (which of course we had to buy an entire wheel of!) Local food aplenty in Amish country. Farm stands, local vendors, and we even found a great little natural foods grocery in Berlin, OH that sold lots of local, organic produce. Who knew?!?!!? Even in the heart of Amish country!

Anyways, need to go catch some zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzss now! Adieu...

local food...soldiering on...

hello readers! we are continuing on our local food journey...there is so much available in late summer in Ohio! Delicious peaches and raspberries...local watermelon! Sweet corn and zucchini, zucchini, zucchini! Hope everyone is enjoying the local delicacies while they are around! Plus, I've had so much fun this summer talking with the farmers at the farmers market. Nothing beats being able to have a conversation with the people who grow/harvest/ raise your food directly! They are always so passionate and interested in discussing what they grow and how they grow it! Try that at Giant Eagle! Last weekend I had a great discussion with the roaster for Crooked River Coffee company... such great cold-pressed iced coffee! I commented on its delicious caramel flavor, and he let me smell another variety that had a hint of blueberry in it. Imagine, blueberry flavor naturally roasted in a coffee! The excitement and pride of these farmers and purveyors in their products (I hesitate to even call them that...) is contagious!

Difficulties in local food land...

The farm market at Stan Hywet in Akron (on thursdays from 3:30-7pmish) is very nice. visited there today.

Our most difficult obstacle in this local eating project has been our previous reliance on some convenience foods (frozen trader joe's stuff) or restaurants (we do try to patronize locally-owned ones), particularly on busy nights towards the end of the workweek after long exhausting days. Don't mind me complaining, I'm in a funk right now. The lure of the convenience food has taken us down a few times on this journey. But we journey on...

In the news...

Hey everybody! I heard several interesting stories in the news recently which are relevant to local food. I've included links for them here. On "The World" on NPR yesterday, they had a story about local foods that is sure to irritate some local foods supporters...it attempted to raise an argument that local foods may not always be best, because of economy of scale arguments (I've gotten into a similar argument with a professor concerning this sort of thing.) For instance, driving 20 minutes to the farmer's market to buy 3 tomatoes may use more fuel and release more greenhouse gas per tomato than trucking 50,000 tomatoes from California to an Akron, Ohio grocery store all together. It is a very one-dimensional argument which doesn't take into account the benefit to local farmers, food safety issues, pesticide issues, human rights issues to growers/harvesters in foreign countries, etc. I've included the link to listen to the story, it is only about 4 minutes long. Click on the link below and scroll down to "Does eating local really help?" to hear the story.

http://www.theworld.org/?q=taxonomy_by_date/1/20070709

One print story I found is about the ubiquitousness of GMOs in processed foods (apparently 3/4 of processed foods contain them in some form!)

There's a Lot You Don't Know About What's in Your Foodhttp://www.alternet.org/story/55847Nearly three quarters of all processed foods contain genetically engineered ingredients, but you'd never know it by reading package labels. Author Andrew Kimbrell discusses the risks of genetic engineering and how to avoid it.

The second article concerns radiation of foods, and with fresh foods travelling farther, more of them will soon be irradiated (or "pastuerized", as they're calling it.) One more reason to choose local.

How Much of Your Food is Being Nuked Before it Hits the Shelf?http://www.alternet.org/story/55959From fruit to spices to meat, contamination fears and market possibilities are spurring a food irradiation revival. But how safe is the practice?

The third article is about why soy may not be best as your primary source of protein...although the jury is really still out on that one...

The Dark Side of Soyhttp://www.alternet.org/story/56087Is a staple of heathly diets in America making us sick?


Happy eating!
Erica

Vacation plus holiday = food and fun!

Last week we rented a cabin in Hocking Hills and spent the week hiking, canoing, and enjoying the peace and quiet of being away from the city. We started off the week by loading up the coolers with all of our local goodies from Crown Point and the Peninsula Farmers' Market, packed up the car 'til we couldn't stuff any more in, and began our three hour drive to Logan, Ohio. While in the area, we ate at several restuarants with the Ohio logo on the door, signifying that they use locally-grown or raised ingredients in their menu. We even made a stop for dinner at a restaurant in Athens where my brother cooks.

Saturday we returned to Akron, stopping at Crown Point to pick up our weekly veggie share. Yay! Carrots are here! I have to admit the three of us ate most of the carrots on our way home, they are by far the best carrots we've had.

Wednesday, July 4th, we met with family for a fantastic picnic/cook-out in the park, featuring Rose Ridge grass-fed burgers! Yum! Of course, we had to top the burgers with Meadow Maid grass-fed cheese. So, this may not be the most low-fat weight-loss inducing diet, but we aren't going hungry! We also munched on the last of our delicious Crown Point sugar snap peas. They are so good raw that I never even cooked any of them this year...we've been eating them as snacks and in salads. Ethan (our 4-year old) loves them!

That's all for now!

In the works...

Hi All!

A new entry from us is coming soon. Spent a fantastic week in Hocking Hills enjoying the peace and quiet of nature...will have lots to talk about soon...once we find a few free minutes! To be continued...

Fantastic Farmers Market!!!!!

This past saturday, I spent a fantastic morning at the farmer's market, loading up on local goodies for the week....Heritage Farms has a great farmers market saturday mornings from 9am-12noon. I bought delicious bread, veggies, organic grass-fed beef & pork, jam, berries & apples, and locally-roasted coffee. We also get veggies and goat cheese in our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share with Crown Point Ecology Center. What a great start to our food week! If anyone is interested in following up on any of these ideas, you can use the following websites to look into local NE Ohio food on your own! Eat well, be well!

http://www.cvcountryside.org/

http://www.crownpt.org/

http://www.heritagefarms.com/farmers_market.php

Got Beer?

So...eating locally was indeed difficult when we were traveling last weekend. But fortunately, enjoying a good beer hasn't been all that difficult at all thanks to the beautiful people at the Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland. I can't tell you how many times people have offered me a "beer," only to see them handing me something that can only be called beer. I always have to decline, fearing that people might think that I'm some kind of prude. I'm no prude, I'm a beer snob!

wedding food...

hello again!
we ran into a bit of local-food difficulty last weekend. my sister got married in dayton, ohio and we had to travel there for the weekend. unfortunately, we couldn't bring all of our food with us... so we had several things that were local to the dayton area while we were there...local wine, Indiana ketchup and green beans, (they are around 20 minutes from the Indiana border), and we ate in a locally-owned Mexican restaurant...although I can't speak to where the food came from.

This has come to be by far the most difficult part of this experiment...how do we deal with eating off of our "home turf?" at home, most things (generally-speaking) can be found locally, but when we leave our home base, it becomes difficult if not impossible to maintain enough control over the food situation to find local stuff... just an observation.

Otherwise, I've also come across people thinking I'm crazy for conducting this "pointless experiment" (their words not mine). This is frustrating, as I don't think much thought goes into where these people get their food from, and the impact of that choice. Anyways, enough ranting for now... 'til later.

Yummy Yummy in my Tummy!

Tonight we had a delicious and locally created meal. It was so good that I had to take a minute to write about it. We had salads with Crown Point mixed greens and kohlrabi, grilled chicken from Tea Hills Farm (the "airline cut" with the wing and breast...so so tasty!), sauteed Crown Point CSA kale with garlic, and sauteed yellow squash and zuchini with garlic from a local farm (purchased at Krieger's Farm Market). We finished it all off (I don't know where we found the room!!) with homemade strawberry pie with strawberries we picked ourselves. Delicious! I am so stuffed! So you see, you can eat locally and still have a fantastic gourmet meal that really didn't require that much effort to put together. No sacrifice or suffering here! Onward and upward!

Ok...so we need to plan a bit.

Ok, so we've completed one week on and off of eating locally, and it has been a learning experience. We have learned that in order to be successful local eaters, a good deal of planning needs to occur upfront. If we don't plan for lunches, breakfasts, going out, we will have a difficult time eating locally. We have become accustomed to eating packaged breakfast cereal, using some convenience foods in our lunches (chips, etc.), and those things really aren't options locally, so far as I know. So...we are reconvening and making better plans for this week!

Getting Into It!

I feel a lot of excitement in our quest to eat local this summer. Aside from all of the details that we haven't yet thought of (what do we do when we go to parties, for instance), I am quite interested in seeing how intentionally eating local food connects us to our community, brings us closer together, and gets us more in tune with ourselves. (Image is of Crown Point Farm's Entrance Gate.)

We'll be highlighting some of our toils and triumphs along the way, including strories of some of the people we meet at various farmer's markets and purveyors of local food. I'd like to start by giving a shout out to the members of the Crown Point Ecology Center's Community Supported Agriculture project that has given us a lot of inspiration to eat good, local food. So come along and join us. Whether we succeed or not, we're going to have a lot of fun doing this and we'll be sure to pass along our experience to all of you.

In the beginning...

So here we are...beginning a summer of eating only local food. At first it seemed like such a simple idea...what's the big deal? There are farmer's markets, a local dairy etc. But then we began talking to people, and they would bring up items that we hadn't thought about finding locally: cooking oil, sour cream, ketchup... Uh oh...what are we doing, I would think... But I still feel like this is more exciting than it is difficult at this point. I think we'll be eating so much fresher, less processed and preserved. I am looking forward to eating food that is more whole, closer to the earth and its natural state, and overall healthier. Maybe we'll even lose a little weight (except for the little guy!)

When Eric and I talked about this, it didn't seem that eating local was a big deal, but as I began to talk to friends about it, it was exciting to realize other people's interest and excitement about the idea. I am now excited not only about the potential eating local has to improve our lives personally, as a family of three, but also to inspire others in the area that this is a "do-able" way to eat...and live. Our journey begins!