Beth Eats Local

…asked my housemates yesterday as they tucked into a curry and swigged tea. “Umm, Ok” I answered. The truth is, they’ve been pretty tough. This, I find, is a mental challenge, not just a culinary one.

On the 30th May, the night before my first day of local eating, I found myself in a tent in Newton-Ferrers, near Plymouth in Devon. My friend Ollie and I had gone to walk the South West Coast Path. Walk we did, at a military pace on the first day as we only managed to start walking at four and needed to get to the campsite before nightfall. I was expecting the night before the challenge to involve relaxing with friends around a meal comprised entirely of chocolate, tea and sugar, all the things that I wouldn’t be able to have for the next year. There would be pats on the back and general warm glow of appreciation for my bravery and single-mindedness. Instead, we cooked pasta and pesto on a camping stove (according to Ollie the most complex meal ever cooked on that stove ) and dropped into bed early because we were so exhausted from walking. I woke up the next day and cooked my first local meal - local to Newton-Ferrers that is. I had asparagus and scrambled eggs from Riverford Farm, a shop that I had found on the internet before the holiday and rerouted the walk to include.

This picture of my first local meal makes it look pretty nice - a romantic and slightly decadent breakfast in a field. The truth is that while the asparagus was great, tender and gently seasoned with posh salt, the eggs were completely rubbery. The gas ran out half way through the cooking procedure and I had to nuke them in the campsite microwave. I hate microwaves, but it was either nuke the eggs or go hungry, so nuke them I duly did.

The past few days have made me utterly fearful of being hungry, even though there isn’t really much likelyhood of that happening. I’ve started having psychosomatic hunger pangs

at times when I cannot possibly be hungry. I thought that I had cut down a lot on ‘non-local’ produce before I started this, but didn’t add in all the snack items that I ate. I didn’t realise how much I snacked during the day until I could no longer do so. No more biscuits on tap at work, no slice of bread when I get in from where ever I’ve been (I’m hoping this situation is going to be different in a week when I have successfully made my own sourdough bread - there’s definitely a blogpost in that particular journey). No quick handful of crisps, no… need I go on? What I am missing isn’t food, it’s time.

Leaving for Plymouth, I felt like I had things completely under control. I had prepared a bunch of snacks in case I couldn’t find any local food in Devon, the first day of my challenge went fine, apart from the rubber eggs. It was arriving back from camping late on Sunday, dog-tired from walking, that I realised the flaw in my micro-managed food plan. While I had prepared food to take with me to Devon in case I couldn’t get any there (the rule is I eat within 100 miles of the place that I am, or take food sourced from within 100 miles of Brighton with me), I hadn’t prepared any for when I got back.

When I arrived home, my vegetable box had arrived and I decided to roast some tomatoes and asparagus (there’s a theme developing here - do you think it’s asparagus season?) and make something involving gluten to wrap around them. Pancakes would have been great but my milk had gone off while I was away, so I ended up making some ‘tortillas’ which rather than the soft, malleable circular bread I am used to, became mishapen and cracker-like. In actual fact, they weren’t bad - kind of like oatcakes - but I wish I had had more time to make something better. This theme of not having time continued throughout the next day. I woke, not knowing what I was going to have for breakfast and opted to make some more of the same cracker-cakes and spread them with butter and honey. At lunchtime, I came home from work as usual, but instead of going back there in the afternoon, I was going to the Houses of Parliament to talk to Lib Dem Environment spokesperson Steve Webb about how bloggers can encourage the government to set higher targets for reducing carbon emissions (more on this later). This left me about two hours to make some food for the evening. I cobbled together a quiche (not a very good one), some honey tarts and honey biscuits all of which were ok but suffered from a) the lack of time involved in their making and b) the fact that they were made with bread flour as I don’t yet have any normal flour. So, a series of hurried and disappointing meals characterised the first few days of the diet, but yesterday I stuck some potatoes in the oven to bake and had them for lunch and dinner today with shallow-fried pepper and asparagus (the theme continues). They were gorgeous, both hot and cold, so I learnt a lesson, two lessons really. Firstly that I always need to be a meal or two ahead if I want to fit this in around my already busy schedule, and secondly that I shouldn’t attempt things I’m not very good at (pastry) at speed and in a bad mood.

So, I’m feeling more positive now, but then I have breakfast and lunch in the fridge and lots of time to cook the next meal tomorrow evening. At the moment, this is what it comes down to, it seems. Half of my brain is living my life (organising conferences, twittering, organising trips to Paris), and the other half is performing complex culinary equations - ‘What am I going to have for lunch?’ Could I also have this for dinner tomorrow?’ ‘Do I have the right ingredient in the house to make this?’

My final taste of chocolate for a year - pear and chocolate tart at Riverford Farm Cafe…

Sunny Savage did a similar experiment in America in 2005. I got the idea from her when I read about it on her blog wildfoodplants.com. Here’s what she says about the experience.

“On September 1st, 2005 seven of us, connected to the White Earth Reservation through our work or family, challenged ourselves to eat foods grown within 250 miles of where we lived for one year. We allowed ourselves 12 ‘trade items’, which we could have at any time, to make the Challenge more realistic. These included salt, oil, pectin, and chocolate. This was an amazing experience in perseverance and sense of place. The sense of community, of people working together to create a peaceful and balanced way of life, was empowering.”

250 miles in a small country like Britain seems a little too much, so I lowered it to 100 miles and got rid of the trade items because I found them confusing. Idly googling ‘eat within 100 miles’ one day I found www.100milediet.org.

James and Alisa ate within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver for a year and they wrote a book about it. It’s quite hard to get hold of in the UK (or at least it was when Amazon (minus points for non-local book buying) tried to get my copy. Below you can find their 13 reasons for eating locally.

1. Taste the difference.

At a farmers’ market, most local produce has been picked inside of 24 hours. It comes to you ripe, fresh, and with its full flavor, unlike supermarket food that may have been picked weeks or months before. Close-to-home foods can also be bred for taste, rather than withstanding the abuse of shipping or industrial harvesting. Many of the foods we ate on the 100-Mile Diet were the best we’d ever had.

2. Know what you’re eating.

Buying food today is complicated. What pesticides were used? Is that corn genetically modified? Was that chicken free range or did it grow up in a box? People who eat locally find it easier to get answers. Many build relationships with farmers whom they trust. And when in doubt, they can drive out to the farms and see for themselves.

3. Meet your neighbors.

Local eating is social. Studies show that people shopping at farmers’ markets have 10 times more conversations than their counterparts at the supermarket. Join a community garden and you’ll actually meet the people you pass on the street. Sign up with the 100-Mile Diet Society; we’ll be working to connect people in your area who care about the same things you do.

4. Get in touch with the seasons.

When you eat locally, you eat what’s in season. You’ll remember that cherries are the taste of summer. Even in winter, comfort foods like squash soup and pancakes just make sense–a lot more sense than flavorless cherries from the other side of the world.

5. Discover new flavors.

Ever tried sunchokes? How about purslane, quail eggs, yerba mora, or tayberries? These are just a few of the new (to us) flavors we sampled over a year of local eating. Our local spot prawns, we learned, are tastier than popular tiger prawns. Even familiar foods were more interesting. Count the types of pear on offer at your supermarket. Maybe three? Small farms are keeping alive nearly 300 other varieties–while more than 2,000 more have been lost in our rush to sameness .

6. Explore your home.

Visiting local farms is a way to be a tourist on your own home turf, with plenty of stops for snacks.

7. Save the world.

A study in Iowa found that a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across the country. The ingredients for a typical British meal, sourced locally, traveled 66 times fewer “food miles.” Or we can just keep burning those fossil fuels and learn to live with global climate change, the fiercest hurricane seasons in history, wars over resources…

8. Support small farms.

We discovered that many people from all walks of life dream of working the land–maybe you do too. In areas with strong local markets, the family farm is reviving. That’s a whole lot better than the jobs at Wal-Mart and fast-food outlets that the globalized economy offers in North American towns.

9. Give back to the local economy.

A British study tracked how much of the money spent at a local food business stayed in the local economy, and how many times it was reinvested. The total value was almost twice the contribution of a dollar spent at a supermarket chain .

10. Be healthy.

Everyone wants to know whether the 100-Mile Diet worked as a weight-loss program. Well, yes, we lost a few pounds apiece. More importantly, though, we felt better than ever. We ate more vegetables and fewer processed products, sampled a wider variety of foods, and ate more fresh food at its nutritional peak. Eating from farmers’ markets and cooking from scratch, we never felt a need to count calories.

11. Create memories.

A friend of ours has a theory that a night spent making jam–or in his case, perogies–with friends will always be better a time than the latest Hollywood blockbuster. We’re convinced.

12. Have more fun while travelling.

Once you’re addicted to local eating, you’ll want to explore it wherever you go. On a recent trip to Mexico, earth-baked corn and hot-spiced sour oranges led us away from the resorts and into the small towns. Somewhere along the line, a mute magician gave us a free show over bowls of lime soup in a little cantina.

13. And always remember:

Everything about food and cooking is a metaphor for sex.

——————————-

And here is my latest inspiration. Fergus Drennan is also doing an eating challenge - the difference being, he is eating wild foods for a year. This blows my mind! Follow the link above for Fergus’ blog in the Ecologist. His attempts to make all-wild bread and his (valid) opinion that blogging is nutritionally futile are definitely worth a look.

Click To Play

One year. One hundred miles.

From June 1^st 2008 to May 31st 2009 every item of food that I eat and every ingredient that goes into that food is going to come from a one hundred mile radius of my home in Brighton. If I’m travelling, food has to come from either a one hundred mile radius of where I am, or from one hundred miles of Brighton. I’m vegetarian, and I’m going to try to eat organic wherever possible. Am I crazy? Undoubtedly. Am I going to cheat? Not if I can help it. Am I going to starve? You’ve gotta hope not.

Why do this to yourself?

1. I like a challenge. Sure, I could just do the London Marathon like everyone else, but I generally prefer eating to running.

2. I want to raise questions about the food we eat and where it comes from. Who knows if I’ll find an answer but I want to find the questions.

3. I’m concerned about the world. Yes, another hairy hippy. Peak oil and climate change are going to drastically affect how we eat. It’s not just about flying mange tout from Kenya. A report published in the journal Food Policy found that road miles account for proportionately more environmental damage than air miles. It stated that “up to 40 per cent of UK road traffic is involved in producing or transporting food; 28 per cent of all freight on the roads of Britain is agricultural produce, and it’s being transported 65 per cent further than it was in the Eighties.”*

4. The carbon footprint of ‘long-distance’ food is not the only problem. The nutrients in fruit and vegetables start to decline from the moment they’re harvested and lots of the long-distance fruit and veg that you find in the supermarkets have been chosen because they travel well, rather than because they taste good. Long distance food is also generally surrounded by a good two layers of packaging which is largely (but not wholly) cut out with more local food.

5. I want to make new friends. Eating locally means you develop relationships with the people who supply that food. If you’re growing your own (we have an allotment) you start swapping tips (and produce) with fellow allotmenteers. I’m going to be having some regular local food soirees and getting friends and interested parties around for chats about canning rhubarb.

I am well aware that food and ‘food miles’ are not a cut and dry issues. There are so many variables to take into consideration. Was this tomato grown in a heated greenhouse? Was it sent to China to be packaged? This year is an experiment and a conversation, not an attempt to convince everyone to turn into an out and out locavore (though if you’re interested, why not try cooking a 100% local dinner to start off with).

I’m going to be building the website as I go along. I’m new to Wordpress and to code and also very busy (not least with cooking) so please forgive any hiccups or lulls that might be experienced along the way.

Beth

xxx

* Taken from Mimi Spencer’s article ‘Your Plaice or Mine?’ published in the Observer Food Monthly on Sunday May 15^th 2005.