Loca-vore update

(Posted by Himanee)

September comes to a close tomorrow. With it, the loca-vore challenge ends technically. Since I was out of state for the first 11 days of September and my husband was immersed in canning peaches and tomatoes, we decided that we would give ourselves two more weeks to try and meet the challenges we set. Nevertheless, with the month coming to a close, I wanted to offer a brief progress report on our efforts, to date.

One of the things that I learned this month is that being a full-on loca-vore is not as easy as it appears. My husband and I already do a lot to eat out of our backyard and to buy the bulk of what we eat from local farmers. But as the month went by I came to realize that there was a lot more that I could do.

I also realized that there were a lot of things about my lifestyle that didn't lend themselves easily to local eating.

For instance, my husband and I both trained this summer for the Adirondack Marathon, which we ran happily and successfully on Sunday, September 22. Happiness and success depended on being able to keep ourselves properly hydrated and fueled with quick energy over the course of the 26.2 mile route. For me, that meant sipping the Powerade (a Gatorade equivalent) beverage offered at the water stations every two miles in order to keep electrolyte levels in my body steady. It also meant downing a packaged "power gel" or "energy shot bloc" every four or five miles. I got the gels at the local EMS shop and they were, according to the package labeling, 90 percent organic and had brown rice syrup and natural fruit extracts as their primary ingredients. But they were manufactured (and I do mean manufactured; after all, they come in foil, vacuum sealed packages) by a national company that markets its product worldwide. I did investigate possible alternatives, but in the end decided that the tried and true sins of corporately-produced replenishers were a safer choice than the dizziness, dehydration, and nausea that I might experience if I ran without such aids.

Another blip in our goals toward goodness turned out to be chocolate. To put it mildly, both my husband and I love it, and see no harm in indulging ourselves with a post-dinner Hershey's Bar or Nestles Crunch. Chocolate can serve as a pain reliever for mild soreness and fatigue, so its consumption can be justified. But trying to find a locally-sourced chocolate bar that's not outrageously expensive can be quite challenging. I did find a somewhat happy resolution tonight, however, while shopping at a new store, Healthy Living, in Wilton, when I picked up a bag of semi-sweet chunks of Callebaut chocolate in the bulk food aisle. The chocolatier is Belgian, but a search of the company's website shows that they engage in fair-trade practices and buy the raw materials used to produce their chocolate from small growers in the regions where cocoa beans and other chocolate-making ingredients grow naturally.

A final "sin" was our binge two nights ago on late-night nachos. I had signed on to volunteer for the Adirondack Ragnar Relay's two-day event, and my shift was from 7 p.m. to about 11 p.m. at a transition point a little north of Lake George. In preparation, we made an early dinner of a mussel stew served with vegetables from our garden and our homemade bread. But by the time I was headed home I was ravenous, and could only think of one word: nachos! We had homemade salsa, and a hunk of cheddar cheese. At least the cheese was Cabot's New York Cheddar. But even if the package of tortilla chips that I picked up on my way home said "Stewart's" -- a local convenience store chain -- the chips themselves were most likely manufactured elsewhere.

On the success side, I discovered that stevia is a wonderful sugar substitute. I used dried stevia leaves to make a pear pie about a week ago and in a blueberry pancake recipe this morning. Both of the recipes called for sugar, which the stevia stood in for wonderfully. I look forward to growing more of it next year, and to getting used to seeing small flecks of green in dishes that require sweeteners.

We also learned that we could make our own butter in our Cuisinart with Battenkill Dairy's wonderful cream. I had made butter in the past with the famed jar-shaking method, but the Cuisinart whirs the cream to butter in about five minutes, and eases the process up considerably. I also learned that a pint of cream will yield more than two cups of butter (which is essentially the equivalent of a box of four sticks), and if I buy the cream directly from the Battenkills at the Saratoga Farmers Market, the price is about 50 cents cheaper.

With two weeks to go, we still have a lot on our list to conquer: building a root cellar (we've been so busy harvesting that we haven't had much of a chance to think of storage, beyond the ground itself which happily remains unfrozen); finding a source for local grain for making bread; and doing a community assessment on the strengths and challenges in our local food systems. We'll do our best to make a dent in these challenges as October approaches.