One of my pleasures in life

... is cooking. I really enjoy crafting an incredibly delicious meal, preferably with fresh-from-the-farmer ingredients, and savoring the flavor. I'm constantly on the lookout for new recipes and ideas (just ask the librarian in the town where I work ...)

So I was excited to come home from an extraordinarily long day to find in my mailbox not just dairy-case coupons from Wegmans, but the latest issue of Wegmans Menu Magazine as well! The magazine's all the more exciting now that they've begun putting coupons in it.

The cover shows a luscious-looking piece of Cedar-Plank Salmon still on the slightly charred plank, garnished with some lime slices. In fact, the issue seems to focus on seafood in general. Not something that's in my budget these days, given recent events, but there's nothing wrong with quietly drooling over the food-porn images, right?

In addition to the seafood, sandwiches and smoothies (ample alliterations abound!), there is a section devoted to heirloom tomatoes. I saw a handful of these irregularly shaped and colored beauties at my local Wegmans the other day, so I'm not terribly surprised to find them featured in the Menu magazine ... but they aren't at all in season. Well, they must be somewhere ... just not here. I guess.

Anyway - immediately following the heirloom tomato recipe section is a special article on Wegmans' commitment to locally grown foods. It looks like a nice article, one that prompted a flood of thoughts.

First of all, I started scanning the article for mention of any of the farmers I know - Wyllie Fox Farm, Wake Robin, Stone's Throw Farm, etc. Nope; not this issue. (The magazine has a multi-state distribution, so the editorial board understandably took a sampling of farmers from around their operating area.)

I realized that I know at least half a dozen more local food producers this year than I did last year at this time. I've broken bread with wonderful people who I wouldn't have met if it weren't for one person who introduced me to the Eat Local challenge last summer.

And then it struck me - the difference just one person can make in a neighborhood, a community, a county, a state, a nation.

Because I learned of the Eat Local challenge, I was compelled to seek out locally produced fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, beverages. I found other people in town doing the same thing, and I got to know the people who grow the food I use to feed my family. And now my family and friends have learned about eating locally and where to go to find what they need, and they're telling their friends.

And that brings me back to a conundrum. Do I make the weekly 20-minute drive to the Regional Market, where there are plenty of local food producers I can actually chat with and who offer the most amazing veggies to be found anywhere ... or do I drive 2 miles to the Wegmans down the street any time I like in season and purchase my locally grown veggies there as an anonymous consumer?

The thrifty side says, Save on gas. Just go to the store and be done with it.

The rest of me says, But where's the fun in that? Where's the sense of community, of connection?

So I think I'll be making regular trips to the market (that is, when I'm not hiking in the woods somewhere) and savoring the experience as my weekly treat to myself. I'm sure I'll find whatever's called for in any of those Menu magazine recipes ... and then some.

Local news article on eating locally

Just wanted to share the news that Hamilton College here in central New York has taken part in the Eat Local challenge by means of a picnic Sept. 25. Good for them!

Story's at the Utica Observer-Dispatch: here.

eating locally - challenging in twists and turns

It's amazing how it's easy in some ways to eat locally, and so hard in others.

When I was at my stepson's house visiting with his family (home of the new baby!), the first thing his wife did was ask me if I wanted some tomatoes from the garden of one of her clients. Of course I said yes - I would never turn away a gift of food. In exchange, I gave her half a dozen ears of corn I'd picked up at the Regional Market. Supper that night included corn on the cob.

(Perhaps tomatoes are runners-up in the competition for most prolific vegetable, second to the ubiquitous zucchini? A co-worker brought in at least a dozen cheerfully red tomatoes with a Post-It note reading, "help yourself." She told me she was making a fresh batch of spaghetti sauce every week by pureeing her tomatoes, 18 at a time, and adding canned tomato sauce and spices. Frankly, I would love to see her garden.)

Later, at my sister's house, she had a bag full of rhubarb from a friend's garden. It was a mere fraction of her original quality of leafy goodness because she used the rest of the rhubarb to make some of her incredible strawberry-rhubarb pie, complete with lattice top. She also whipped up several loaves of, yes, zucchini bread.

Every day for lunch, I have a sandwich with locally grown lettuce and Sundance Farms' delicious organic heirloom tomatoes (or tomatoes from my own garden). I wish more of my sandwich ingredients were local. And that brings me to the finer points of what challenged me about eating locally.

But eating locally can mean giving up on some things, depending on one's level of strictness in regards to compliance. Rice, for example, isn't local to my area (that I know of). Wheat might be ... or at least, there's a local flour mill that produces outstanding flours and mixes. Then there's the bakery at the Regional Market that sells scrumptious loaves of artisan breads but their flour is made from wheat grown in Quebec. My husband (who is not participating in the Eat Local challenge in any way) came home with several varieties of (non-local) sandwich meats, but I can't find local sandwich bread. Is there a local pasta? Coffee isn't local - but there's a local roaster or two.

I debated all these things this month. How local did I feel comfortable going? Did I perceive the challenge to be about buying food that was 100 percent locally produced or buying from small, local grocers/producers? At what point on the map did "local" end? How much driving (ie., adding greenhouse gases to the environment) was I willing to do in order to get to where the local food was, and couldn't I just ride my bike and get some exercise in on top of that? Should I give up making curries because nobody around here grows the key ingredients in garam masala?

These are all valid questions that not everyone would answer the same way. Some would absolutely say if it isn't from around here, it won't make the cut. Others would commit to replacing as much "imported" foods with locally produced items as they could fit into their budget and busy schedules. To me, the important part has been being more aware of the benefits of eating locally - financially, culturally, environmentally.

It's been a exciting month (I know, it's not over yet!) as far as being more cognizant of where my food comes from and where my grocery dollars are going.