Why confess...

I thought I would post my Thanksgiving diary because there is an important point to be made. While many ingredients we used were not local, at least they were bought and used with awarness of where they came from. When given a choice in the grocery store we picked Pennsylvania potatoes over those from Idaho and Michigan beet sugar over cane from South America. We did have some items where we did not know where things came from, a couple of them important, but for the most part we know what we ate for our Thanksgiving meal. And that at least is a step.

As I was going through our meal I realized it was a little more local then I had thought, but we are coming into a time of year when eating locally becomes a challenge. So take this challenge this winter, even if you cannot eat from within 100 miles of your home, eat with awareness of that distance. Every year we can get a little more local, with each other's help.

Know the map of your food.

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!

Kind of Local Thanksgiving... Part 2

So now we come to the star of the show! Mr. Turkey... I would love to say to you "I fist meet Mr. Turkey in April at a local farm where he was just a little poult! As the summer went along he wandered fields and enjoyed being outside, as his heritage breed should be." But alas, I cannot. A couple years ago we did have a heritage bird and it was fantastic, but for the crowd we were cooking for it was just not worth it, and the cost not justifiable for the little turkey people would be eating.

Every year my Sister in Law's company gives every one a turkey, so that is the one we used. A 11 pound conventional bird from...? We stuck it in our Romertopf clay roaster and did not touch it for the next two hours!


Then comes my favorite part of thanksgiving - THE STUFFING... Yum! We did a bit better on this although we could not find dried "stuffing" bread at the three local bakeries we tried so we started with...

• Stuffing mix - again not local, not organic, just peppridge farms from Giant Eagle


• Bread from Great Lakes Baking Company - but the flour... ?


• lots of butter - again the Amish roll type


• Onions - our garden's only contribution to this meal


• Celery - we picked up at the farmer's market


• Spices - Marco Polo rule again
  

The mashed potatoes were about the same, and while I would love to say we used all our own potatoes, the few we kept for this meal did not store well for us. I would love to say that we bought some other local farmers potatoes, but that would require thinking ahead! So we went to the Kreigers and did our best with...

• Potatoes - from somewhere in Pennsylvania


• lots of butter - again the Amish roll type


• Cream - again conventional and not local
  

The cranberry sauce was equally embarrassing to someone trying to eat local...

• Cranberries - from Maine (some day I hope to have our own!)


• Sugar - Michigan Beet


• Oranges - Florida
  

The corn came from a can with a Green Giant on the front. And we had no other veggies. Why spoil an otherwise perfectly unhealthy meal with green stuff?

The biscuits --- Lets not talk to much about them except to say they came more from a big yellow box than from anywhere else!

And that was my Thanksgiving meal...

I feel like I'm at an AA Meeting -

Hello my name is CSA Farmer Girl and I am not a locavore.

Thankful...

On this Thanksgiving day we should all take a minute from our turkey induced coma to be truly thankful.

Thankful for those who are with us here to share new memories.
Thankful for the memories of those who are no longer with us.

As we face challenges in our lives and our families we need to be mindful of all of the blessings both large and small which we all have.

Thanksgiving next week!

Can you believe it! It is next week already!

Please visit us at the Peninsula Holiday Market next week...

If you mention this blog post I will give you a special deal if you buy 10 or more onions. Remember you'll need enough to last you until the next market the week before Christmas!

If you need more onions than that let us know, and we can make a special deal for you. Our yellow onions should store well into Janurary or Feburary... How many onions do you use in that time?

The food it takes...

This weekend was a little bit of a wake up call on just how much food we consume, and that it would take to truly supply a family. I guess it is easy to forget, when you are just a couple, how much people really eat!

We cooked a series of meals this weekend. Wednesday pasta and sausage for 4 adults and 2 kids. Thanksgiving morning, biscuits and gravy with sausage links and eggs for 6 adults and 2 kids. Thanksgiving dinner for 7 adults and 2 kids. A light supper for 4 and 2. Friday brunch, ham, eggs, and hash browns for 4 and 2. Then our traditional day after Thanksgiving waffles and gravy for 10 and 2.

WOW, did we go through a ton of food. 15 pounds of potatoes, 1-1/2 gallons of milk, more stuffing then I thought we would possibly use (2 loaves of stuffing bread and 2 bags of stuffing mix), two 12 pound turkeys, more butter then is polite to speak of, 4 quart boxes of chicken stock, 2 gallons of homemade turkey stock, a bag of carrots, two bunches of celery, a loaf of peasant bread, 1-1/2 jars of tomato sauce, 3 batches of biscuits, and on and on....

I guess the reason I am posting this is because it really made us think about what would be necessary to feed our region locally. This is no small task. My little holiday get togethers used HUGE amounts of food, and while everyone does eat more on holidays it is still staggering the scale you are talking about.

How much food would it take to actually feed a family of four for a year? How much land would you need to do that on? How much more if they are not vegetarians? I need to do a little research....