eating local
I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and its' one of the most inspiring things I've read in quite sometime. I've had an interest in eating local for a while as well as giving up factory farmed meat, and after reading this book I'm going to go for it. One of the interesting points made is that eating local is perceived as a diet for the elite, the moneyed, but how it doesn't have to be as long as one is willing to think through meals and cook. I cook anyway - why not make the extra, minimal effort and try and give back to the community, support local agriculture? Plus, while I don't feel it's wrong to eat meat, I do think that factory farming is cruel and it's not that difficult to change my eating habits in order to see that my food lives a good life. It sure beats picking up a drippy yellow chicken at Kroger and feeling bad about it.
Plus, processed foods taste like crap (no more high fructose corn syrup!) and I'm tired of hearing of all the food recalls. Seems like every time we turn around, there's another thing we're not supposed to eat.
Doing a bit of research yesterday, it amazed me to see the wealth of local food within a 100 mile radius of my apartment. I found a local winery 10 miles or so from my apartment, and there are several others in the area. The Dallas Farmers Market is amazing, and as far as I can tell, open year round. I found two fromageries, one French with a great goat cheese selection (I can still get my chevre fix!) and of course the mozzarella place in Deep Elum. Rahr Beer in Ft. Worth is pretty darn tasty and easy to find. And, if I really need a soda, Google Maps tells me Dublin is only 125 miles away from Denton, so I can get a Dr. Pepper fix and not feel bad about it when I need a soda, which is very, very rare. I even found that olive oil is produced in Texas, but I'm not sure where to buy Texas olive oil.
Sure, there are things that I don't really want to give up in the interest of eating 100% local - I don't feel I need to go to the extremes that Kingsolver and her family went to for a year (after all, I live in an apartment, rather than on a farm, so I can't grow that much food, and I certainly can't raise my own heritage chickens and turkey). I don't want to give up coffee, and I'd prefer to continue indulging my Asian food fixation. But, according to the book, if everyone in America ate one locally produced organic meal of vegetables and meat per week (any meal, breakfast, lunch, or dinner), we'd save 1.1 million barrels of oil per week. I can do better than that, easily.
Of note, for anyone in Denton interested in eating local, I found a food co-op that sounds well worth checking out and has a great selection of pasture-raised chicken and grass-fed beef. Check it out at The Cross Timbers Food Cooperative; I'm definitely going to.
Plus, processed foods taste like crap (no more high fructose corn syrup!) and I'm tired of hearing of all the food recalls. Seems like every time we turn around, there's another thing we're not supposed to eat.
Doing a bit of research yesterday, it amazed me to see the wealth of local food within a 100 mile radius of my apartment. I found a local winery 10 miles or so from my apartment, and there are several others in the area. The Dallas Farmers Market is amazing, and as far as I can tell, open year round. I found two fromageries, one French with a great goat cheese selection (I can still get my chevre fix!) and of course the mozzarella place in Deep Elum. Rahr Beer in Ft. Worth is pretty darn tasty and easy to find. And, if I really need a soda, Google Maps tells me Dublin is only 125 miles away from Denton, so I can get a Dr. Pepper fix and not feel bad about it when I need a soda, which is very, very rare. I even found that olive oil is produced in Texas, but I'm not sure where to buy Texas olive oil.
Sure, there are things that I don't really want to give up in the interest of eating 100% local - I don't feel I need to go to the extremes that Kingsolver and her family went to for a year (after all, I live in an apartment, rather than on a farm, so I can't grow that much food, and I certainly can't raise my own heritage chickens and turkey). I don't want to give up coffee, and I'd prefer to continue indulging my Asian food fixation. But, according to the book, if everyone in America ate one locally produced organic meal of vegetables and meat per week (any meal, breakfast, lunch, or dinner), we'd save 1.1 million barrels of oil per week. I can do better than that, easily.
Of note, for anyone in Denton interested in eating local, I found a food co-op that sounds well worth checking out and has a great selection of pasture-raised chicken and grass-fed beef. Check it out at The Cross Timbers Food Cooperative; I'm definitely going to.