Firsthand Experience Eating Locally
(Page 2 of 3)
January/February 2008
Jennifer Kongs
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That week also marked the start of late night cooking. Going to school full-time and working multiple jobs, I wasn't left with much time for daytime cooking. This meant I was often up well past midnight, preparing lunch and usually dinner for the next day.
Through the Kansas City Food Circle, I was able to find Lee Quaintance of Soaring Eagle Acme Grains in Edgerton (about 30 miles), the man who supplies organic wheat flour to a local bakery (Bread of Life). Driving out to his house, the irony of what I was doing sank in. To get flour grown and ground within 100 miles of my home, I had to drive myself in my little green Dodge Neon out to his land, but to get flour from who-knows-how-far, all I had to do was walk a few blocks to the grocery store. To me, there is something inherently wrong with a system that favors generic homogeneity over regional variety, and that emphasizes retail cost rather than the environmental or human costs of production.
A New Kind of Grocery Shopping
Talking with Lee and picking up a bag of flour from his back laundry room, I asked him about his production methods, the difficulties of growing wheat organically, and the challenges development is creating for his farmland. Whether grabbing a value bag of bleached white flour off the shelf or scooping organic wheat flour from a natural foods store bin, this interaction could never have happened in a grocery store. The loss of connection between producer and consumer only feeds the mechanization of agriculture, the industrialization and processing of our food.
In the remaining weeks of my diet, I continued to improve my culinary skills, creating my own 100-mile stout barbecue sauce, creamy sweet potato soup with rosemary, and several sweet honey breads. Three days before my diet was scheduled to end, I set out with a friend on a camping trip, planning to get by on vegetables I brought from home and fish from the stream less than a mile away. The first night, wily raccoons put an end to my local food exercise, devouring all my local provisions. The next morning, I enjoyed a New Zealand apple and a bear claw from who-knows-where (not likely that small town in Missouri), relishing the long missed flavors on my tongue, while contemplating the effects of that breakfast on the global food market.
Now A Locavore for Life
Although my diet officially and abruptly ended months ago, my locavore attitude has only strengthened. For Thanksgiving, my roommates and I featured local free-range turkey, local cream gravy, local butternut squash and potatoes in our au gratin, and local pumpkin in the pumpkin pie. Our homemade rolls were served with local butter, and local wine accompanied the meal. In the future, we plan to employ canning and preserving methods more intensively so that local fare can remain integral to our diets even through the winter months.
