Dropped an egg on the floor and thought: Damn. Now there’s one less to get me through until the next CSA egg delivery in about a week. I know I could get local eggs elsewhere, like at Outpost, but I’m starting to think this way about food, being careful not to waste anything that might not be so easy to find later.
    Larry and I have even been quilty of a bit of hoarding, like the bread I need to make stuffing for the chicken I’m planning to roast later. We get a bit childish–both of us claiming we don’t have enough to spare the other any bread, even though we both plan to eat the stuffing.
    But later on, when we eat roast chicken with stuffing from my bread and the herbs we are growing on the porch, roasted potatoes, parsnips and carrots, all feels right with the world. I am really getting to like these back-to-basics-meals we fashion.

 

    I’m meeting my son for lunch at Beans and Barley at Farwell and North. Should be a snap to eat local here where I’ve been a regular customer for many years, and where I know they serve much organic, local and vegetarian meals. But today, I can’t find a single lunch item on the menu that’s 100% local. The waitress explains that they always participate in the more widespread eating local challenge, but today, she can’t guarantee all the ingredients are local. We both ponder the situation as I sit there with a glass of local Lake Michigan water, and then her face lights up with an idea. “Hey, we have local wine,” she says.
      “But it’s noon,” I say. “I never drink at lunchtime.” She smiles and shrugs. I order a glass of Wisconsin wine, and when my surprised son shows up a few minutes later and points to the wine, I shrug and smile. “It’s local,” I say. He orders cheesecake, and we sit and chat as I get more and more mellow. I could get to like wine at lunch.
    I’m learning a new lesson: never leave the house hungry!

 

Day Five

We meet a friend at the South Shore Farmer’s Market. Immediately, I discover local oats. (Well, from  near LaCrosse, about 250 miles away. But who’s counting!) I am excited to be able to eat oatmeal again. I beam at Larry who looks puzzled because while he always likes oatmeal, I never have liked it before. It’s amazing what hunger leads you to like!

We talk with Sandra Radienz from Pinehold Gardens. She tells us they have CSA subscriptions available for next year. We talk local food sources for a while and then move on.

Next, we stop at the table of East Side Ovens and learn that they have been offered rhubarb from Poland and raspberries from China to put into their bread and pastries. They decided that they wouldn’t want to eat food from that far away and that it would be hypocritical, therefore, to serve it to their customers.

On the way home, we go to Outpost Natural Foods in Bay View hoping for lunch. But not from their deli section either. When I ask the clerk why the spinach soup is not from local spinach, her answers don’t satisfy me, so I ask to speak with the manager. He comes out of the back of the store a few minutes later, smiling, I am glad to see, and says the problem is that when they make spinach soup for the stores, they need 80 lbs. of spinach. It’s hard to reliably be able to get that kind of quantity. Or he says, when they try to get local chickens, they come in frozen, and for their chicken salad, they like to use fresh chickens. Again, it’s easier to get them from a bigger organic company. (I’m beginning to think this is one of the best reasons for staying smaller, making it easier to buy directly from local people.)

Later, I peruse the shelves looking for nuts. Outpost at least tells you where its products come from. Among others, I see nuts from Mexico, from the southern United States, from British Columbia. I remember how Alissa and J.B. in Plenty ate a lot of nuts during their year of eating local. But that won’t be part of my diet. I see no nuts here from Wisconsin.

 

We meet a friend at the South Shore Farmer’s Market. Immediately, I discover local oats. (Well, from  near LaCrosse, about 250 miles away. But who’s counting!) I’m so excited to be able to eat oatmeal again. I beam at Larry who looks puzzled because while he always likes oatmeal, I never have liked it before.

We talk with Sandra Radienz from Pinehold Gardens. She tells us they have CSA subscriptions available for next year. We talk local food for a while and then move on.

Next  we stop at the East Side Ovens table where we learn that they have been offered rhubarb from Poland and raspberries from China. They decided that they wouldn’t want to eat food from that far away and that it would be hypocritical, therefore, to serve it to their customers.

Before we go home, we go to Outpost Natural Foods in Bay View hoping for lunch. But not from their deli section either. When I ask the clerk why the spinach soup is not from local spinach, her answers don’t satisfy me, so I ask to speak with the manager. He comes out of the back of the store a few minutes later, smiling, I am glad to see, and says the problem is that when they make spinach soup for the stores, they need 80 lbs. of spinach. It’s hard to reliably be able to get that kind of quantity. Or he says, when they try to get local chickens, they come in frozen, and for their chicken salad, they like to use fresh chickens. Again, it’s easier to get them from a bigger organic company. (I’m beginning to think this is one of the best arguments for staying smaller, making it easier to buy directly from local people.)

Later, I peruse the shelves looking for nuts. Outpost at least tells you where its products come from. Among others, I see nuts from Mexico, from the southern United States, from British Columbia. I remember how Alissa and J.B. in Plenty ate a lot of nuts during their year of eating local. But that won’t be part of my diet. I see no nuts here from Wisconsin.

Day Three

I get up at 8:00 A.M., early for me, get out my old Tassajara Bread Book and five hours and two burns later, I have four loaves of freshly baked oatmeal/wheat bread that is filling the entire house with wonderful smells. As soon as it’s out of the oven, I break open a loaf and tear off a hunk, the steam rising into my eyes nearly makes me cry. It’s medium brown in color, soft, slightly sweet, chewy and nutty. It’s heaven in the form of bread!
For lunch, I have my first grilled cheese sandwich in about four years. I sit at my kitchen counter and savor it. If I keep this up, my cholesterol will rise, but at least I’m not hungry!

Day Four

Today, someone asks Larry how long we’ve been at this, and he says, “About ten days.” When I remind him that we’re only on our fourth day, he says, “Feels like ten.” 

Later, he admits that now that we’ve got bread, it’s bearable. I’ve already lost 2 lbs. But now that I have some delicious, soft carbohydrates I can’t help but dream about homemade pasta. I haven’t tried to do that for years, but I just might be motivated now.

The Challenge Begins: Monday, Day One: 

Larry breakfasts on locally produced sorghum cereal (pretty bland) and local milk. I eat an egg. A half a day without bread and already I feel more than a little bereft. By the time we make the trip across town for lunch at Amaranth Bakery on 33rd and Lisbon, we’re both hungry already.  We tell the owner/baker David Boucher about our search for local flour so that we can make our own bread. He uses flour from across the state and from Minnesota. While we talk, I am watching a woman buying cookies. I lean toward her better to inhale the chocolate cookie smell as I peruse the counter filled with scones, pecan rolls, croissants, morning buns. David tells us that by the time you try to get local flour trucked in, it’s more efficient to haul it across country by train from somewhere else. But is it as good?

In the meantime, we order lunch. Amaranth serves as much local food as they can. He is sympathetic to our cause. He has spinach quiche made with local spinach from Growing Power, and local milk and eggs, so we scrape it out of the crust (which is made from non-local flour) and eat it. Larry orders a spinach salad with some local goat cheese, but no olive oil dressing, and he leaves off the walnuts which are not local. While we pick at spinach leaves, David calls his mill to ask where the buckwheat flour they carry was grown. No one answers, and he leaves his number.

On the way home, we decide to stop at Will Allen’s Growing Power, increasingly famous for his inner city, hydroponic gardening and organic food production. Out in front are rows of lovely vegetables, but we are rich in vegetables still, and so we move inside where I spy some pears, bananas and apples. I ask the young man at the counter if the pears are local. “No,” he says, “not the fruit.”

We go back outside determined to buy something, and I select an eggplant and one turnip to put in with the potatoes in the pot roast I have waiting at home. Later, I would ask myself why did I only buy one turnip? I go up to the register to pay and I spot the honey standing nearby. When I ask if it’s local, he says, “It’s from the bees out back.” Can’t get much more local than that.

At home, when I start to use the turnip in the pot roast of local beef, local potatoes and carrots and herbs from my porch, I can’t decide whether to use it all or save some for the next meal. Already this is changing the way I think. The idea of wasting food has become a serious issue. Who knows when I’ll run across another locally raised turnip?  I suddenly recall the old saying: Waste not; want not.

Later, Larry remembers some pancake mix we bought at a local market in Mineral Springs earlier this summer. The label says: Lonesome Stone Organic Pancake Mix: grains are cleaned, ground and packaged by River Valley Seed and Grain, Lone Rock, Wi. It’s just outside the boundary. We call and are told that the wheat is, indeed, organic and Wisconsin. We have to go.

September 24

Got excited about finding bread too soon. I speak to Jeff Ford of Cress Spring Bakery who both mills his grains himself and also makes bread and pastries which he delivers to the Dane County Farmer’s Market in Madison every Saturday morning. (We hear he’s sold out by noon.) His bakery in Bluemounds is only open on Friday.

According to a 2009 New York Times article, Ford has been making pastries and bread in his bakery for twelve years. “His tangy, crusty loaves baked in a wood burning oven built by the legendary mason Alan Scott are made using obscure organic grains that he sources locally and grinds himself using natural fermentation rather than industrial yeast.”

The article goes on to say that according to Jeff, “America’s wheat issues start on the farm. The varieties of wheat grown in this country for industrial purposes are down to about five, so it’s all monoculture, chemicalized, no nutritional value. The breeds are bred to stand up to abuse from machines. We feed people this stuff that their bodies are not designed to eat. Of course, they’re sensitive to it, and it’s not good for them and causes problems.” Ford grinds his grains on mixing day to maximize their nutrition.

Jeff tells that me that he gets his hard wheat from Wisconsin farmers which he uses to make pastries, but mostly the wheat he uses to make bread, comes from Minnesota. He says the weather in Wisconsin is too humid, often too wet for wheat, making it more susceptible to disease. The rye comes from local farmers, and every year they try 3 or 4 samples of local wheat. They have tried the Washington Island wheat, and he says it’s promising, but he used what he had and doesn’t have any more.

It’s all interesting, but I need flour from Wisconsin now . I want toast in the morning with my illicit coffee. It’s Tuesday, and I can’t wait until Friday no matter how good, besides it’s a long way to go for a pastry.  

 

 

Larry greets me on my back porch where I sit, taking in the sunshine and having my illicit morning coffee. “I’m excited,” he says, “I think I’ve found local wheat.”

I feel my heart lighten. Where there’s wheat, there’s bread.

“Believe it or not,” he goes on, there is wheat being grown in Wisconsin on Washington Island in Door County. I know that’s a bit outside our 100 mile range, but at least it’s being milled closer, in Madison by a guy named David Ford, who runs a bakery near there. The grower thinks Ford is milling other locally grown wheat as well. And what’s more, the woman on Washington Island thinks they might be able to send us flour in 25lb. bags, and we could pick it up, maybe, at Ford’s bakery. How about that?” He beams at me, flushed with triumph.

It’s a very good morning’s work, indeed!