Sustainability – Grow. Cook. Eat.

February 20, 2012

25 Tips for Going Local without Going Crazy

No matter where you live, eating seasonally and locally offers a different way of thinking about food. While some areas of the country are relatively blessed to have locally grown fruits and vegetables for longer seasons, such as California and Florida, even these regions still have strong seasonality as to when each type of produce is at its best.

Locally sourced and seasonally raised foods taste better. They spend more time in the fields ripening – developing sweetness and flavor – because they don’t need to be picked under-ripe for shipping thousands of miles away. Picking under-ripe vegetables also reduces the nutritional value. Farmers can grow more diverse varieties, bred for quality and flavor rather than long shelf life. And though a region may experience a drought or unusually cold weather for a season, the fruits and vegetables still grow at their optimal time, ensuring the best possible taste. Picking under-ripe vegetables reduces the nutritional value.

Buying local also benefits the environment and economy. When we reduce our “food miles,” the distance our foods travel from farm to table, we reduce our carbon footprint – the impact of transportation, refrigeration and packaging needed to carry produce around the country. With each local food purchase, you ensure that more of your food dollars go to the farmer and local economy in the form of revenue and taxes. Buying
local food keeps your dollars circulating in your own community. In Massachusetts alone (where I live), if every household purchased just $12 worth of farm products for eight weeks (basically the summer season), over $200 million would be reinvested in our local farmland.

Here are 25 tips for eating local without going crazy.

Out and About

1. Shop at the Farmers’ Markets
This is the most obvious… the farmers’ market is the best place to find local foods. Here in Boston, you can find year-round markets. The summer months are brimming with greens, tomatoes, melons and other veggies. And the winter is bright too – with green house veggies, storage roots, and plenty of meats, dairy and grains.

2. Circulate the Farmers’ Market before you buy
Cooking with what’s available locally requires a little more flexibility. When you get to the market, look around and see what’s available. This will help inspire ideas of what you can prepare.

3. Shop at your local grocery store
Getting to the farmers’ market isn’t always possible. Schedules with work and kids can get in the way. You can still support the local economy, if not by purchasing local food, by purchasing at local markets. You are still keeping more of your food dollars in the local economy.

4. Eat in restaurants that support local agriculture
Now-a-days, more and more restaurants are supporting local farmers. Check out The Chefs Collaborative website for restaurants that support local ag.

5. Store your produce well
Often times, it seems that produce from the grocery store only lasts a few days before it wilts and rots. Properly stored, you’ll have more time to use everything you buy. You’ll be making fewer trips to the market, and spend less.

6. Purchase through an aggregator.
In the Boston area, we have Boston Organics and Farmers to You. Both deliver farm-fresh produce, on a schedule, and reduce the hassle of shopping.

On a budget

7. Eat the whole vegetable
Don’t throw away the beet tops or radish tops. They are great in soups and stews.

8. Subscribe to a CSA
Probably the most economical way to get the freshest produce available. For about $25/week, you will get a variety of what’s in season. Find a CSA on the Local Harvest website.

9. Cook at home
You know where your food is coming from and it’s cheaper

10. Avoid processed foods
There is nothing local (nor sustainable) about high-fructose corn-syrup. If you want prepared foods, buy what is made in the grocery store, instead of a plant out in the middle of nowhere.

11. Ask for seconds
Locally grown produce, from small production farmers, tend to have more lumps, bumps and bruises. It still tastes great, even if it doesn’t look perfect. Farmers’ will often discount the “seconds.”

12. Get to know your farmer
They can help you figure out what’s most economical and best tasting. They can also offer tips on how to cook up the lesser know items.

13. Learn to cook with cheaper cuts of meat
Free range meat is more expensive, there’s no way around that. But you can stretch your food dollars by buying the less expensive cuts. They tend to have more flavor, but also require special attention when cooking. Ask your farmer the best way to cook each cut. Some are better for stewing. Others are good grilled after a good, tenderizing marinade.

14. Volunteer
Either at the farmers market or at the farm. You can get the best, freshest food, for the cost of a few hours of your time.

Planning

15. Can sauces, pickles and tomatoes
Produce is cheapest (and of course most flavorful) when it’s in season. Take advantage and stock up. Preserving food by canning is a great way to extend the tomato season, and create your own specialty pickles.

16. Freeze herbs, corn and leafy greens
Some items freeze better than canning. Herbs should be washed and dried well before freezing. Leafy greens should be cooked. Corn can be frozen cooked or raw.

17. Buy in bulk
And freeze. You can usually get a discount, and you can have your favorite foods year round.

18. Eat nutrient dense food, you’ll need less food
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve felt hungry even when I don’t need food. Just as often (and probably more), I’m hungry for nutrients. When I eat nutrient dense food like legumes or kale, I feel sated quicker and eat less.

19. Cook enough for left-overs
Cooking at home is the best way to ensure you know where all your food is coming from. But cooking 3 meals a day is laborious… and honestly… who has the time? Cooking enough to have left-overs takes only a few minutes more and can save hours every week.

Keeping it Interesting in Winter and year-round

20. Use Condiments
Espeically in the winter time, root vegetables and grains can get a little dull. Spice up your meals with chutneys and other condiments. Most grocers will carry a stash of locally sourced jams, pickles and other condiments. Have fun!

21. Experiment with new recipes
Of course, my cookbook is a great source for new recipes. And there are plenty of recipes out there. Rutabagas and kale don’t have to be boring.

22. Compost
Get a second life out of our food scraps. By composting, you are creating soil to put back into the eco-system. Better still, you will become more aware of what you are wasting. It can help you become a more conscious shopper, cook and eater.

23. Start an herb garden
For the same price as a package of fresh herbs, you can buy an herb plant (and use your compost to fertilize it). A little bit of fresh thyme or basil will brighten up any dish.

24. Purchase seasonally
Food tastes best in season, has the best nutrition and is the most cost effective. Learn what’s seasonal in your area. To learn about what's in season in your area, go here.

25. Think beyond produce
With the exception of folks living in California and Florida, it’s hard to eat 100% local, year-round. But you can do better if you think beyond produce. Meats, grains and dairy are all available locally and year-round. Do what you can.

April 29, 2011

Sustainable Seafood

Barton Seaver’s new cookbook hits shelves on May 3rd. What? You’ve never heard of him? Neither had I until 3 weeks ago, when at the last minute I decided to attend a lecture on sustainable seafood at Harvard. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the issues surrounding sustainable seafood, and this seemed like the perfect venue to learn more.

First, let me say, if you ever have a chance to hear Barton Seaver speak, DO! A former chef and fellow at National Geographic, he is an incredible story teller: seamlessly weaving together the issues affecting the oceans and sea-life through the globally shared experience of enjoying dinner. And for the first time, I have a better grasp about why farmed fish is not always better than wild, and why some fish make better choices than others.

Overfishing has been a consistent concern of sustainable advocates. Cod used to be a good choice. But then itspopularity rose, leading to overfishing and diminishing stocks. But to look at the issue a little differently, consider the reproduction of the fish. A shark produces one pup every 2 years. For each shark that is harvested for dinner, the overall shark population is also reduced. On the other hand, herrings produce 10,000 fish twice a year. They make a good choice because they can maintain their population size more easily.

As a result of overfishing, many advocates and consumers have turned to farmed seafood. But this too poses problems. First, farmed fish can spread their unique bacteria (which is fine in the farmed environment, but disease spreading in the natural habitat) when they escape into the “wild” waters.

Second, farmed salmon and tuna require more inputs than food they produce. For every pound of farmed tuna, for example, 25 pounds of wild fish food is required.

It should be noted, however, that farmed oysters, scallops and clams, act as water filters in the ocean; and a beneficial to the ecosystem. They clarify the water, reducing red tide and other toxins (including toxic run-off from commercial farms). They promote a healthy balance of phytoplankton.

There are certainly more issues to understand, but I’m definitely getting a stronger grasp.

April 27, 2010

Soil Amendments (Recipe: Banana Bread)

Photo Credit: My Recipes

I thought I had just watered the ficus tree in the hallway, but when I looked at it this morning, the soil was bone-dry. I gave it a quart of water, but the water quickly raced to the bottom of the pot into the base plate. Within hours, the soil was dry again. It’s a miracle the plant is still alive.

I bought the ficus tree a few weeks after moving into my first Boston apartment. Like me, it’s had several homes in the last 15 years… moving into larger and larger pots. Its current home is a 5 gallon, ceramic planter.

The soil is depleted of nutrients and structure. After several years in the same pot without refreshing the soil, it can no longer hold water. The tree has sucked out every ounce of life from the soil. Sure, I can add fertilizer or plant food to the soil, but it won’t rebuild the soil to help it retain moisture and nutrients to slowly feed the roots.

The same type of soil erosion happens in our gardens and in our farm lands. Plants take the nutrients out of the soil to support their growth. And if we don’t replenish the soil, we can’t continue to grow healthy plants. Many commercial farmers (and home gardeners) opt for chemical fertilizers and amendments to add the nutrients back.

The chemical soil amendments give the requisite nitrogen and phosphorus, and commercial farmers can grow more corn and wheat. But unless the soil is regenerated, these fertilizers are like a crack addiction: the farmers must add more and more to get the same effect. And the sea-life becomes collateral damage. The run-off from these chemically treated fields in the corn belt of the US flows into the Gulf of Mexico, creating algae bloom, depleting oxygen levels in the water, and suffocating sea life. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where fish no longer survive, spans approximately 7,000 square miles.

Image Credit: Fair Food Fight

A primary tenant of organic, sustainable farming is to maintain healthy soil so that it can regenerate itself without artificial enhancements, and without creating run-off that kills other plants or animals. We can amend our soil naturally, keeping its structure healthy so that we don’t need chemical fertilizers.

Organic and sustainable farming practices implement a variety of methods to maintain soil health: crop rotation, cover crops and compost. Cover crops, such as legumes and clover, are planted in off-seasons to replenish the soil naturally with nitrogen. For large-scale farmers this also would mean growing a variety of crops (and
not just miles and miles of corn), rotating the crops across different
plot of land, and letting the land lay fallow every several years.
Unfortunately, most commercial farmers do not do this, nor do government subsidies support this.

For the home gardener, compost offers another option.

Compost is decomposed organic matter, it can be animal scraps (or waste), vegetables or leaves. Compost looks like dirt and has no smell. It can be worked into existing soil to help replenish the nutrients and structure. My compost bin is a receptacle for food scraps, harnessing all the left-over nutrition to feed back into the ground.

Around my house, I have other natural sources of nitrogen. The spent coffee grounds are chock-full of nitrogen, as is the leftover ash from the charcoal grill. I sprinkle these all over the garden in the spring.

As for my ficus tree, I will take it out of its pot, add the old dirt to my compost bin and give it fresh soil.

Banana Bread

The banana peels get tossed into the compost bin. In a few months, I’ll have fresh soil for the garden (and my ficus tree). It also goes great with a cup of coffee.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour (or more all-purpose flour)
2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
6 tbs. butter
2/3 cup sugar
zest from 1 lemon
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
5 bananas – to yield about 1 1/4 cup mashed pulp

Whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
In an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the lemon zest, vanilla, eggs and banana.
Fold in flour.
Bake in a greased loaf pan for 1 hour at 350F.

August 11, 2008

Carbon Neutral Wine. Taste Neutral?

I first tasted Parducci’s wine 10 years ago. I was planning a dinner for my grandmother’s 90^th birthday. The local wine merchant told me the Pinot Noir would be the best pairing with the Pepper Crusted Salmon with Pomegranate sauce, Garlic Roasted Potatoes with Aged Goat Cheese. I heeded his advice and purchased a case. And he was spot on. To this day I remember the bright berry and dusty flavors of the wine and how they enhanced the sweet, earthly flavors of the pomegranates and goat cheese.

Today, many wines today have a gimmick to help sell them, Two Buck Chuck, Sin Zin, etc. “Wines that Love” is a new label that blends wine to specifically pair with different foods. To me, this makes no sense… they have a “Wine that loves…. salmon.” Salmon can be paired equally well with a pinot noir (see above) or with a white Sancerre, depending on the preparation. This particular wine is a white.

When passing through the wine aisle at the Whole Foods the other day, I noticed “Sustainable White Wine.” The bottle tag asserted that this was the first carbon-neutral winery in the U.S (so Europe already has carbon neutral wineries?). Ah, yet another gimmick. But then I noticed the producer was Parducci’s, and all the warm memories of my grandmother came floating back and I had to buy a bottle to sample.

Of course, my first question is what makes the winery carbon neutral? They achieve this through “onsite mitigation” and purchasing carbon credits. “On-site mitigation” combines a myriad of initiatives. First and foremost, they practice sustainable farming – a method of working the earth that does not damage or deplete natural resources. As an example of non-sustainable farming, if chemical fertilizers are used to protect one crop, the run-off could damage water supplies, which could in turn kill fish and damage the natural flora.

By contrast, sustainable crop management requires caring for the current fields, as well future crops and surrounding fields. This can also require managing the local water supply by restoring and maintaining wild life and fish habitats. According to their website, they use solar panels to power the winery. Though they have more panels on the way, the currently only support 25% of their electric needs (hence the need for purchasing carbon credits). They use bio-diesel to power their tractors and cars, and use earth friendly packaging. The corks look and feel like cork, so it's either a really good fake or cork is no longer an endangered resource.

I challenge that the consumer to complete the circle sustainability: first, by not wasting a drop of wine, and second, by recycling the bottle.

Let’s cut to the chase. What you really want to know is how the wine tastes!

Well, let me put it this way. Most products that are sustainable and earth-friendly tend to carry a premium price tag. At $10 a bottle, this would probably compare in taste and complexity to a $5 “normal” bottle. And it lives to that expectation.

The wine is likely a blend of the ever-present chardonnay with sauvignon blanc. Thankfully, the oakiness is kept at bay. The wine is full, but lacks balance. If I were stuck on a desert island, I would joyfully drink it. But given the myriad of other options, I will buy carbon-offsets to maintain my neutrality and drink better wine. I’ll save this bottle for cooking.

Nonetheless, I laud Parducci’s efforts to protect the environment. And, for sure, I will check back with other vintages and varietals to see if they come up with a wine I love.