Once again, I’m cheating. I never considered myself a rule breakin’ rebel, but here I go again. For this week’s Dark Days challenge, I’m highlighting the components of my Thanksgiving meal that are local. I don’t think any one dish is 100% local, but each dish has local ingredients.
So, without further ado, my super-cheater version of local Thanksgiving:
Cranberry Sauce from an old Cooking Light recipe
Ingredients include:
local cranberries from Wisconsin
local honey from Ames Farm
local tap water 
juice from 2 non-local oranges
non-local allspice
non-local cinnamon stick
non-local brown sugar
An interesting note about the spices. Both were categorized as local, because they were distributed by a Minnesota company. But the food was sourced from foreign countries. (Mexico and the Philippines, I believe.) While I understand the importance of supporting local businesses, I don’t know if its fair to categorize a food product as local if the food still uses an airplane to get to the consumer. However, it does make me wonder about the potential gradations of local eating and consumption.
Chile Roasted Acorn Squash
local acorn squash from the farmer’s market
non-local brown sugar
non-local canola oil
non-local canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
non-local kosher salt
This one – not so local, except for the ginormous squash.
Sautéed Carrots with Sage from Cooking Light
This dish was our most local and also my favorite, I think. This was super easy to make and had very interesting flavor combinations.
margarine — non-local
olive oil — non-local
carrots — local from the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market
sage — local from our co-op
kosher salt — non-local
Green Beans with Bacon & Shallot dressing from Cooking Light
This one, not so local. Most of the ingredients were from out-of-state. However, the bacon is from Beeler Farms and it is the greatest bacon. If you live in the Upper Midwest, I highly recommend it.
After all those delicious sides, and a stuffing to boot, we still had our turkey.
Back in late September, we decided to go with an all-natural, locally farmed turkey, just to see the difference. While we were picking up groceries at the Farmer’s Market, we decided to reserve a 10-12 pound turkey from Bar 5 Farms. Our little orange ticket told us that we had to pick it up from the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market between 9-12 on November 24.
Well, my mom’s in town and November 24 came and went. We shopped, ate out, and generally had fun on November 24. When it was November 25, I panicked. We could get a conventional turkey, but there was no way we could find a good locally raised turkey. Luckily, I had enough presence of mind to call the farm, just in the off-chance they still had my turkey. Lucky for me, they would be at the St. Paul Farmer’s Market from 10-4, which perfectly fit our schedule. So, disaster averted. As an added bonus, I found my carrots, some kohlrabi and some fresh garlic bread, which we’ll have tomorrow night for dinner.
The turkey, by the way, was delicious and definitely worth the drama.
So that was my somewhat local Thanksgiving. How was yours?
9to5poet
Actually, it’s unlikely those spices travelled on an airplane. Air freight is expensive, and generally only used for perishable foods (such as the Californian nectarines and peaches that arrive in New Zealand supermarkets in the middle of winter). Shipping, on the other hand, is very fuel efficient, which is why I don’t feel too guilty about eating bananas – you can tell from the price here that they are not airfreighted! Your spices probably travelled by a combination of sea freight and then train or truck.
Have you read Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable,Miracle”? In it she suggests that if you are needing to use some non-local ingredients, dried are the best to choose – as in your spices, dried beans etc – because you are not paying to ship all that water.
(No Thanksgiving here – a pity – if we can adopt all the less appealing aspects of American culture, why not giving thanks?)
By: Catherine Fitchett on November 27, 2009
at 5:58 PM
I appreciate that information, Catherine. I did read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but it was at least one to two years ago. Considering the relative weight of my combined spices (probably less than half an ounce), I doubt that it had a huge impact. Thanks for your input!
By: 9to5poet on November 27, 2009
at 7:20 PM