How to Start Eating Local
Eating local is all the rage these days. It is good for the environment, good for local farmers, often healthier (due to the lack of preservatives and pesticides), and tastes better. I’ve been cooking local for several years now and sharing my passion with anyone who will listen. However there are a few challenges to this lifestyle.
First of all, depending on where you live, there are certain foods that you just can’t have. There are no local avocados in the Pacific Northwest. Oranges and lemons are few and far between and I haven’t had a banana in over a year. Because cooking and eating local requires some sacrifices, I admit, I do not eat exclusively local. I eat about 85% local. I still drink coffee (with soy milk), still use sugar, and will buy lemons and oranges for recipes (but not just to eat).
Since I cook local (and fresh), I have to plan my recipes around what is currently available at the farmers markets. This can often be challenging as foods often appear and disappear quickly and without warning. We’ve had a very cool spring here in the Pacific Northwest and many products are delayed by weeks or even a month. Now that we’ve had our first heat wave of the year, it’s possible that some of the fruits and vegetables I saw just two days ago at the market will be gone by next weekend.
One of the tools I use regularly is a fantastic website that lists all of the fruits, vegetables, legumes, and spices that I could possibly want as well as the time of year they are available. Seasonal Cornucopia is run by a local chef who took painstaking notes over the course of her career on every local food she used. You can search by ingredient name, by month, or by type of food.
Unfortunately, this wonderful resource only works for food products that can be found in the Pacific Northwest. However I’m pretty sure we’ll see a lot more sites like this over the next couple of years as eating local really catches on. If you want more information on eating local, you can visit the following websites.
