Kind of Local Thanksgiving... Part 1

OK! I thought I would come clean on the origins of my Thanksgiving dinner. I would love to be able to tell you how we enjoyed a totally local meal only stepping outside for the rare item covered by the "Marco Polo Rule" for things like ginger and cloves. But that would be lieing, so instead I will give you the whole truth!

The first truth was that Thanksgiving this year was not planned. Yeah, we knew we were having it, but we really did not think about it much until the day before! It was only going to be five people and we did not expect to go through much food, so we were refusing to stress. (Maybe a little more preplanning would have been good!)

We woke up Thanksgiving morning and hubby said "You don't have to get up yet, I am just going to do the chickens." *make sure their food and water are good*

But I looked at the clock and it was 7:30 and I figured I should start the pies. Now, I GOOD Farmer wife would have done the pie the day before or the weekend before, or AT LEAST made the crust the night before, or AT LEAST picked the recipe...

So I go down stairs, grab the "New Best Recipe Cookbook" which is our standby cookbook and look at the pumpkin pie recipe... Quick math - make crust - refrigerate - blind bake - make filling - bake.... 11:00... SHIT!!! How long was that turkey supposed to bake? OK - dinner is at 2:30 instead of 1:30!

So I start the crust... Anyone who has tried to eat all local for any time has come up against FLOUR! This most ubiquitous and yet most difficult to find locally product. Well, not totally, we do have locally grown and milled spelt flour from the co-op we belong to, but I wanted a TRADITIONAL pie and was not about to try something crazy like a spelt crust for Thanksgiving... WHAT IF THE PIE DID NOT TURN OUT!?! So I improvised...

• King Aurthur Organic All Purpose Flour


• Butter - Amish Roll butter - I have no clue if this is really local


• Lard - Purchased from Duma Meats - local


• Sugar - Michigan Beet sugar - not organic

The filling was more embarrassing for a localvore farmer! You would think I would have thought of this meal in the spring and planted for it! But our squash did very badly this year. At least I could have thought of it at the farmers market and bought a squash to use... Yeah --- No... So the filling went...

• Libby canned pumpkin - BPA and all - who knows where it comes from!


• Brown Sugar - regular Domino from who knows where?


• Spices - Marco Polo Rule - always


• Eggs - Local and free range - but frustratingly not our own


• Milk - Hartzler's - Local and pretty natural


• Cream - Conventional and not local

Eventually the pies went in! They took a while to cook, I think I used a deeper then normal pie pan, but they came out great!