November 2008 Archives

I didn't anticipate this lengthy absence, primarily due to our family being sick most of the month of November. Thankfully, at least for the moment, we're all back to about 80%.

The month of November saw the close of the Mobile farmers market, and sadly I missed the last day because I was out of town.

November also brought the harvest of our four remaining satsumas and our one Meyer lemon. The satsumas were good, though a bit watery compared to some I've had, so I think we may have left them on the tree too long, and a couple seemed to have been touched by frost. The lemon is good. I'm still using it, parceling it out squeeze by squeeze on a variety of things from crepes to salad dressing.

Also of note in the backyard garden, we have cabbages and broccoli starting to head up (though I've trimmed the broccoli to encourage growth of side shoots), arugula persisting, some late beet seedlings, lettuce finally starting to take hold, rows of garlic for next year's harvest, and young fava bean plants.

We've also been enjoying the company of a Great Horned Owl. Remember how I complained about our abundance of squirrels? It seems to have caught this predator's attention, as he (or she) has taken to perching in the top of a tree that leans over our yard, announcing his territory. We've heard him any time from 5:45pm to 5:45am, and as well as I can judge he seems to fly from perch to perch throughout the neighborhood hooting. I assume he's trying to attract a mate, but so far I haven't heard a second one. I just hope he's catching squirrels occasionally.

We're into November now and I've put an end to my local foods diet. I've been battling a rough cold and am thankful that my husband could make me a pot of chicken soup.

LESSONS LEARNED/PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR

If we do this again next year (which I think likely we will), some things will definitely have to change.

1. We will plan ahead and have more food put by. I made an admittedly last minute decision to participate in the challenge and had no opportunity to store food. There were plenty of things I could have put up - strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and peaches, for example - that would have given our month more variety, especially in terms of fruit.
2. Likewise, I'd try to plan our garden better so as to have more food available in October. By the way, we never did get to use our lemon. It hasn't ripened enough yet.
3. We will expand our local radius. We went with 150 miles, the default terms of the challenge, but in our area that's too restrictive. While we do have available to us things that people in other parts of the country don't have - fresh tomatoes and seafood being prime examples - there is simply not enough variety in the range of staples and fruits. If we expanded our area we could encompass rice and corn meal, which would be two welcome additions. For some products I might also try to buy from within a regional area (say the adjacent states).
4. Making ALL your own food is a lot of work. I had exempted flour so I could keep baking, and I found myself baking not only multiple times a week, but on occasion multiple times a day. This meant the kitchen needed to be cleaned multiple times a day. I didn't anticipate the significant increase in labor. It was tiring. That's another reason it would be nice to fall back on rice every so often.
5. You can get a lot of pleasure from making food with simple ingredients. Sandwiches, among other things, are a brilliant invention.
6. Eating locally is a great way to reduce your household's waste stream. I already knew that most of the trash we generate is food packaging, and that became abundantly clear during the Eat Local Challenge. With the bulk of our diet being made up of fresh produce and baked goods made by hand, we had MUCH less trash, perhaps a quarter of a kitchen trash bag from the entire household per week (not counting our cat litter waste), whereas normally we might have one loosely packed kitchen trash bag, sometimes a bit more or less.

SURPRISES

1. There were two items that, for practical reasons, got added to my list of exceptions: onions and butter. I looked for, but could not find, local onions (you can get them here in the spring/summer, but not in the fall). In my ordinary cooking I use onions on an almost daily basis, and I found that particularly with a reduced list of ingredients I could not do without them. I tried to use as few as possible. Butter, on the other hand, is more of a luxury, but we ate a lot of eggs and I find it difficult to fry an egg in anything but butter (I've tried using oil but did not like the results). Again, I bought organic butter and tried to use as little as possible.
2. You can get tired of things you like, even things you really, really like. I LOVE fresh baked bread, so much so that baking is a standard part of our cooking routine. But after a month of eating bread as my only grain I didn't want to eat bread any more. Ditto with sweet potatoes, which do not rank nearly as high as bread on my list of favorite foods. I'll be happy if I don't have to eat any more of those for a while.
3. Sometimes exposure does not broaden your palette. I hoped I would learn to like greens, since I knew we'd have to eat them during the challenge and prior to this point, frankly, I have not enjoyed them. Turnip greens are what's widely available here this time of year, and in the end I decided that I found them tolerable but still did not like them. It's disappointing, because greens are really good for you.
4. We did go about $125 over our typical monthly grocery budget. We also spent a bit more on gas by driving around to get some of that food. I hoped it would be less costly.
5. I actually did not lose any weight during the Eat Local Challenge, though I suspected I might, and my husband said he thought he had. I think my high consumption of baked goods (mostly bread and muffins, but also pancakes, popovers, and the like) kept my weight steady.
6. I did not miss chocolate as much as I thought I might; there were only a couple of moments of true craving. Though many people exempt chocolate, I did not even though I consider myself a True Chocolate Lover. Perhaps it was knowing the challenge would only last a month.
7. What I missed most: onions were up there at the top, though I eventually gave in and added them to the list of exemptions. Next probably came rice, oats, and fruits like apples. (I won't say pasta because theoretically I could have made my own.) I found myself fantasizing about the baked Indiana apples I had made earlier in the month. Also salad greens and broccoli.

CONCLUSIONS

It's not very feasible for an average family here to subsist long-term on only a strict diet of local fare. There's just too much that you need in your diet that's not available locally. I think a reasonable amount of vegetables and protein can be had locally, but not grains or (fresh, in-season) fruits. Therefore, a modified local diet could work. If you disagree with me, I'd love to hear about it!