Kara & Michael’s Blog

I’d like to try buying all locally-grown food, something that’s all the rage in the crazy environmentalist circles right now. Not because I buy the environmental argument: yesterday the media were all over a report that cutting red meat and dairy products from your diet does more for the environment than eating locally-grown food. I believe it.

Nevertheless, the local food movement intrigues me because it represents getting back to the basics of food choices influenced by climate and seasons, and because it puts money directly into the hands of local producers. Even though the price of food imported from 1500 miles away may be lower, the true cost to this region and quite possibly to society is higher.

So I set out to find food produced within a 100 mile radius of our suburban Maryland apartment. I quickly found that, unless I intend to learn to nixtamalize corn and make tortillas, such a diet is likely to result in our untimely deaths from pellagra. In other words: corn for human consumption is both grown and processed within a 100 mile radius, which was a pleasant surprise, but virtually no other staple foods are.

I expanded out to a 165 mile radius, which opened the possibility of wheat. Specifically, flour milled from Virginia-grown wheat at Wade’s Mill, a 260-year-old water powered mill located in Raphine, Virginia. Hard and soft wheat flours, whole and white, are available. They also produce white and yellow cornmeal and semolina flour, which means pasta and couscous. The prices are not significantly higher than those for King Arthur Flour at the grocery store. As friendly a company as King Arthur Flour may be, I’d rather give my money to the miller, a man whose name I know and who has complained about national energy policy to me on the phone.

Having settled on the 165-mile radius, I’d like to try a week of local eating some time in the next few weeks, after our CSA produce starts coming in. It’ll be during the growing season, which will of course be the easiest time of year to try something like this. I did not manage to convince Kara that it’s a good idea, but she says she’ll play along. We’ll have to make an exception for our Slim-Fast products, obviously.

Based on what I’ve found out so far, here are the foods that make up a healthy diet and how someone in our vicinity might find them within a 165-mile radius:

Staples

• Flour (all kinds, including semolina and buckwheat) – Available from Wade’s Mill.
• Corn meal – Available from Wade’s Mill, or the Union Mills Homestead & Grist Mill in Westminster, MD.
• Rice, oats, barley – Forget it.
• Potatoes – Definitely grown in Maryland, but I don’t know where to find them. Farmer’s markets?

Produce

• Vegetables – Carrots, squashes, cauliflower, eggplant, sweet corn, asparagus, cucumbers, cabbage, tomatoes, leafy greens, celery, lettuce, peppers, onions, beets, spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts, beans, leeks, peas and radishes are all easy to find at local farmer’s markets or through a CSA program.
• Fruits – Apples, cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, strawberries, pears, cherries, peaches and plums can be found at local farmer’s markets. I’ve seen some local fruits during the season at local health food stores and even at chain stores like Giant.

Proteins

• Meat – Local beef and pork products are abundant and easy to find. Check out the Maryland’s Best website.
• Poultry – Chicken and turkey are both readily available from local farms.
• Dairy – Easy to find at a local natural food store, but even dairy products at a chain grocery store are sometimes locally produced.
• Eggs – Always easy to find at a local farm or natural food store. We get the best eggs in the world from Kara’s Aunt’s free-range chickens, and eggs are also available through our CSA (Calvert Farm).
• Beans – Dry beans are pretty much impossible due to the local climate. During the season, fresh legumes like crowder peas and black-eyed peas may be available.
• Soy – There appear to be a lot of small local farms that grow soybeans. All of the ones I’ve found look like small-scale operations, but I’m sure at least one would be willing to sell me a few pounds of dry soybeans if I asked. From there it wouldn’t too hard to make roasted soybeans, soy milk and tofu. Those with infinite time and motivation could even create soy sauce and miso, though local salt would be hard to find. Fresh green soybeans (edamame) are apparently sometimes available at farmer’s markets in the area, though I haven’t seen them.
• Seafood – Obviously there’s crab, but that’s awfully expensive. I was sweating over where we might find fish until I remembered that we’re just a couple of miles away from Shoreline Seafood, a large purveyor of (often local) seafood. There’s also a large seafood market in Annapolis that looks promising. There is a surprising variety of fish that can be caught wild in Maryland: rockfish, monkfish, flounder, bluefish, trout, croaker, perch and catfish. Additionally tilapia and rainbow trout are supposedly farm-raised within the state. It looks like the trick to obtaining local fish is (shockingly) going to a local fish market instead of the grocery store.
• Peanuts – Peanut products, including peanut butter made from Virginia peanuts, are available from The Peanut Shop of Williamsburg.

Sweeteners

• Cane Sugar & Molasses – Absolutely unobtainable. There may be some very small-scale sugar beet production in Maryland, but Domino Sugar (who have a plant in Baltimore) definitely aren’t buying any of it.
• Honey – Local honey is easy to find at a farmer’s market or local natural foods store such as David’s Natural Market in Gambrills.
• Maple Syrup & Maple Sugar – Available from S&S Maple Camp in Corriganville, MD, but expensive.

Seasonings & Luxuries

• Herbs – Super easy to find at farmer’s markets or grow yourself. We’ve got basil, mint and oregano on our balcony and all are doing well.
• Spices – Coriander, anise, cumin and cayenne peppers for powder could all conceivably be grown in a small garden in this climate. Other spices have to be imported, like they always have been.
• Tea – Growing your own tea is apparently surprisingly easy, but no word as to quality. I think I’d rather just import the daily cuppa than bother trying to grow it.
• Coffee – Has to be imported, but you could choose to do business with a local roaster like Mayorga or The Cosmic Bean.
• Cooking oil – Pretty much produced by the national agribusiness machine. Not many options.
• Vinegar – It is entirely possible to make your own apple cider vinegar from locally-grown apples, but given how much vinegar we use on an annual basis I don’t really see the point.
• Salt – Mined pretty much everywhere, but so commercially insignificant in small quantities that it’s unlikely to be sold locally. You could always evaporate water from the bay to make your own nasty and possibly toxic salt.

Just looking at the list, it strikes me how much healthier a “locavore” diet would have to be, and how abundant the food choices offered by this area really are. I’ll be interested to see how this crazy experiment works out.