Washington Post's Kim O'Donnel on eating local

Kim's got a good post on eating local for Thanksgiving and some of the other eat local challenges going on right now. It's worth a look (login maybe required...)


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/mighty-appetite/2008/11/making_room_for_local_on_the_t.html

Chipotle & Slow Food DC

So it's not my local meal meal for the week, but it ain't bad for "fast food" The local DC chapter of Slow Food met up today at a local Chipotle regional director for a lunch and learn. I'm pretty wowed. I've been to several places around DC that have really amazing grow/eat local programs, right down to herb gardens in the front of the restaurant. Local is easy, but I'm really impressed by Chipotle's program. For having over 800 restaurants in the US and Canada they are totally committed to 100% natural chicken and pork and making real headway with natural beef. 100% rBGH free milk products and committed to buying local whenever they can, even though it costs more because it tastes better.

After ordering we all sat down together and ate (slowly) and talked amongst the group. Then we headed upstairs in the building to a meeting room and had a really great talk from the regional director Phil Petrilli. Phil talked about alot of great stuff the company is doing, and trying to do. It was great to hear things from the "big corporate" perspective. He mentioned how solar power wasn't working for them, but they were experimenting with solar water heating. How they recycle whatever they can but that stores in buildings had issues relating to the building lease. He also talked about how they wanted to "recycle" other pieces of the business and they were working on small scale composting operations. Local farmers bring in food and take out food waste to compost. Selling the soy oil they use for the chips and tacos for bio-diesel... I was really impressed with how honest he was on what they could and couldn't do and what they had tried and what worked and didn't work. He mentioned that they would love to donate the food at the end of the day to homeless shelters but the legal red tape was so immense, the infrastructure to move and use the food so underdeveloped and the risk of lawsuits so real that very few stores could do it.

It was a fascinating two hours and at the end I've got to say they aren't perfect, but they've got to be as close to perfect as any nationwide chain I've seen. Local, natural and they take care of their workers. So there's my vote, if you are out and you are going fast, go Chipotle and feel good about it.

Stealing "Local"

In the first post I promised an example of something that I've found when I've been away from home and brought back enough of to hold me over for the winter. The first one is tea. True tea is camellia sinensis and as it turns out its another thing that we don't grow here (USA) any more... or almost. Bigelow bought the Charleston Tea Plantation’s – America’s Only Tea Garden and is making tea in the US! To be completely honest, I didn't make it to the plantation and haven't been on the tour. My parents did and loved it. Mom literally bough the T-Shirt.

So I'm claiming tea as a "local". I've got a good friend of mine who lives in Charleston and on a recent visit to see him we ended up with some of the tea. It's good, it was bought within 50ft of the field it grew in and neither it nor I made a trip over 150miles for the sole purpose of purchase for consumption. Beyond that I'm making a point to support a group that isn't exactly commonplace in the hopes that they stick around.

Dark Days Eat Local Challenge!

It's time! This is the blog where I'll be tracking my journey through the 2008-2009 Dark Days Eat Local Challenge. Here's the deal, from November 15th to March 15th I'm gonna cook at least one meal a week from locally sourced (aka grown) everything. Ok, almost everything. Urban Hennery has the signup list and the rules, but I'll post them here too:

The “Rules”:

1. Cook one meal a week featuring at least 90% local ingredients
2. You define local - the standard definitions range from 100, to 150 to 200 miles
3. Ingredients can be things you grew and preserved yourself, sourced from local farms and markets, or purchased at the store
4. Write about the meals you cook, your challenges finding ingredients, why you’re eating local or whatever else strikes your fancy for each recap. Photos are optional.
5. Include friends and family in your sourcing and eating as possible

To clarify my options I'm defining local as 150miles. This isn't a stab in the dark, this one was a bit of research and knowing my local farmers markets. 150miles covers pretty much all of the normal vendors that show up at the markets I frequent. That said, I do travel some and have friends that do the same, so if I have a trip for business or to see family/friends and in the course of my travels (or theirs) can find a good local source there for something I don't have local I'm taking credit for it. I've got some examples of this already for future posts.

I'm not signing up for too much blogging. Right now I'm aiming for one or two a week. I'm half of a working married couple with a 6month old...

Rule 5: Including friends and family is a big part of this challenge for me. It will be as much of a family and friends affair as I can make it. My family eats local and eco-friendly as much as we can so but we don't share that enough. I'm hoping that by the end of the challenge I'll have gotten at least some of my family and friends off their butts and out to a farmers market, or passing up chineese grown garlic in the grocery store and thinking like a locavore.