One Local Summer: a little theory

First a new word to describe local eaters, now a university study. It's not - as far as I can see from a summary I've skimmed - about pioneer locavores, it's more about projected total population change. Early-adopters are, in the nature of things, likely to have been drawn in because they've already changed their diet away from industrially-processed offerings. This study is more about outcomes if and when large populations start to change their foodprint, as the only way individuals can make a real personal difference to global warming.

The argument is that what you eat is more important than where the food came from. It would be better, so the argument runs, to eat less beef, even if it was only a switch to chicken (rather than to, say, lentils or vegetables). There's a frighteningly well-informed discussion in the comments, well worth taking a look, despite some of the usual angry partisan stuff from people who think their way is the only way.

Here's a short extract from the Ethicurean post to give you the general idea:

“All Local” vs. Dietary Shifts

As a thought experiment, the authors examine how an “all local” diet — i.e., a diet that has zero emissions between producer and eater — compares to shifts in diet in terms of GHG emissions. Since that is nearly impossible to achieve, they found that one could achieve equivalent reductions through the following changes:

* Reduce red meat expenditures by 24% and spend the savings on chicken
* Reduce red meat expenditures by 21% and spend the savings on a nondairy vegetarian diet
* Reduce red meat and dairy expenditures by 13% and spend the savings on a nondairy vegetarian diet

The authors also use a automobile comparison to illustrate how changes in diet compare to changes in driving. Using a 25-mile per gallon car as their baseline, they provided the following estimates of mileage reduction through diet shifts:

* An “all local” diet is equivalent to driving 1,000 fewer miles per year
* Shifting one day per week’s calories from red meat to chicken/fish/eggs is equivalent to driving 760 fewer miles per year
* Shifting one day per week’s calories from red meat to a vegetable-based diet is equivalent to driving 1,160 fewer miles per year
* Giving up red meat and dairy in favor of chicken/fish/eggs is equivalent to driving 5,340 fewer miles per year
* Switching to a completely vegan diet is equivalent to driving 8,100 fewer miles per year


For me, the difficulty is that greenhouse gases (or GHG, as I see we must now call them) are only one part in a complex range of issues that fuel my interest in locavorism. For me, one of the best things is the human scale: I know the butcher, the farmer, the cheese-maker. No hope of personal contact at the supermarket.

I'm one of about 140 people taking part in One Local Summer, the challange to prepare one meal each week for three months this summer, using only locally-grown ingredients - the exceptions are oil, salt and pepper, and spices. It's thought-provoking and delicious in equal measure - and it's the best way to grapple with these issues, really grasp the nettle. There's a huge range of experience involved in this project, some of us are beginners, some can produce an all-local meal without having to think particularly hard. I'm hoping to be able to think more clearly about this by the end of the summer.

My challenge to YOU

DO think about joining us in this project, even for one week - registration has closed for a whole summer of one local meal a week, but I'm inviting all bloggers to the challenge of producing one whole local meal this summer, and I'll include you in the weekly round-up of the main challenge. I've found - and I know I'm not alone - that the first meal sparked off a lot of thought about the food we eat here, where it comes from, how it gets here, who produces it and how much they are paid for that work. There's a bonus for you - so far, the food has all been delicious!



Related posts

One Local Summer, week three
One Local Summer, week two
One local summer, week one round-up
OLS, Saturday lunch in the garden
OLS, first thoughts
Introducing OLS


Related links

The Ethicurean, Food miles vs food choices
Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States, by Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews

my thanks to Kathryn at Limes and Lycopene for my original link to this research


Links to One Local Summer:

Farm to Philly
Amberism
Leafy Cooking
Garlic Breath
Rural Aspirations
Diario
Karen's Home on the Blog


Useful links for locavores in the South of England

Rapeseed oil from Gloucestershire
Wessex Mill

One Local Summer week three

It's taken a while to round up all the international section this week ... but it was worth the wait.

In Brussels, Labelga has taken up the challenge, but I didn't get her urls, so she's checking in here for the first time. In week one, she visited her very local market and found that she should have heeded Alice Waters' advice to scout all the stalls before buying anything. Even so, she cooked a three-course meal.

Week two in the market and Labelga found a Belgian-grown cauliflower and some greeny-blue Araucana eggs, so cauliflower gribiche with poached egg and spring onions was on her menu.

Week three and she couldn't get to the market. Luckily, her local organic shop had a few local items in amongst the produce from Egypt Spain and France. Tartare of tomato followed by braised pointy cabbage using a Surinam / Dutch traditional recipe. Very useful to me, as my vegetable box is full of pointy cabbage at this time of year.

And I've found, too, that it's harder to find what you want when you have to go beyond your one trusted easy supplier. Actually, it can be hard to find what you want period when you're only buying local.


Karen bought a ready-made meat pie with beef raised at the Well Fed Food farm shop - Black Angus cattle, since you ask. Now before you go asking why she didn't make it herself if she wanted it local - the enterprising farmer has these pies made locally for the convenience of his customers.

Amber says her week three looks a lot like week one - fish. But, as she says, she's near the ocean. And she's found a local food market - transformed from a tourist market, sounds like progress to me! She's raised a problem familiar to every locavore - although sugar beet is grown in Alberta, she hasn't been able to find a local source, it all seems to go to agribusiness. So, halibut, roasties and salad were on Amber's menu.

Mariah at Rural Aspirations feels she's made good progress this week. So much so that she found she'd made an all-local meal without having to plan it out. Her week three menu was: portobello mushrooms, red peppers with Raclette cheese and homemade bread using locally milled organic whole wheat and unbleached white flour.

Riana's in the south of France, so she's ahead of us here in the UK - great, because she's got lots and lots of ideas for the courgette / zucchini mountain that's coming. I'm still at the stage where I'm just loving the courgettes, but it won't be long before we're wondering what on earth to do with them next. Her post is seriously useful to locavore gardeners everywhere.

Sally in Bristol had one of those weeks, and her local meal used up some leftover week two ingredients. But, driving around in the course of her work, she spotted a number of local farm shops which she's planning to visit this week. Her post at Diario makes the point forcefully: if you want to eat locally produced food, you have to make a special effort, and it's not always easy or compatible with the other things going on. It shouldn't be like this.

Donna's email says: My local meal was a simple omlet, local eggs, asparagus, and cheddar cheese. Salt not local. What could be better?

This week I wanted to crack the meat problem. I was passing a much-recommended farm shop where I know they sell meat. It was virtually all labelled as produce of England, not really good enough. I bought steaks for the children which were labelled produce of Berkshire, our next county, but felt that even that labelling wasn't enough. What farm? Where exactly? The children ate the steak while we were out, so my local meal was breakfast .... my favourite breakfast, actually, tomatoes on toast. I made the bread with locally milled locally grown wheat (I pass that farm every time I go to Oxford, it's about 10 miles from here). And the tomatoes - some came from my vegetable box, grown in Hampshire, some were last year's slow-roasted frozen, and two tiny ones came from the garden, the first of the year. I'm just off to the farmer's market. Right now. Watch this space!


Related posts

Roasting tomatoes
Slow roasted tomatoes
Homemade tomato ketchup




You can find the dozens of others taking part in the One Local Summer challenge at Farm to Philly

One Local Summer: week two

After last week's success in finding good local cold-pressed oil, this week hasn't been great. I didn't manage one single meal that was entirely local, although most were mostly local (75%+). What stopped me succeeding was a queasy feeling that too much driving round looking for suppliers wasn't the best way forward.

This was the week I intended to find local meat. Horatio arrived home unexpectedly for vegetarian supper, and announced: A meal without meat is a wasted opportunity. Next year he's living in a student flat with four other young men, and I wonder how long he'll continue with that attitude will last once he sees how far his money will go.

There's a farm shop at the other end of the village, the sort that's in a barn: several people have recommended it to me. Huge disappointment - the vegetables are all bought in from all over the world, there are loose frozen veggies to help yourself to from a freezer, the meat counter didn't look appetising, and definitely wasn't local, and although the eggs were marked "from our farm" there wasn't a single chicken to be seen. So I left empty-handed.

My usual butcher supplies good meat, and mostly from the UK, but he's not a locavore. The monthly farmers' market in Henley is next week, so I should have better luck then - I didn't feel it was helpful to drive over to Reading specially.

Fish is similarly tricky, as we're a little way from the coast. But there are rivers near here. And fish farms. And the school holidays are about to start, so there'll be time to catch fish ourselves.

Instead, this week, all our vegetables, without exception, came from our box, so were grown less than an hour's drive way, or from the garden (especially herbs). The bread was all made with local flour, oil and honey. The milk - delivered with my veg box - comes from a farm near Marlborough, just over an hour's drive away. Not quite local, but better than the supermarket's offering, lower in food miles too. And I know where it came from, will try to take a photograph when I'm over that way next week. I'll also try to source some closer milk - sadly, the milk that's produced in this village at Lucy's Farm is all taken away by a huge tanker which holds up the through traffic which clogs up our tiny lanes ... but isn't there something mad about a farmer producing good milk which he can't sell to his neighbours, as practised by the whole of humankind for millennia???

Here are links to the international section of One Local Summer:

Amberism, week one - salmon patties
Amberism, week two - cheese omelette on home-made rye
Garlic Breath, week two - pork ribs, artichokes, grilled pointed cabbage
Rural Aspirations - lentil burgers, home-made buns, salad
Diario, week two - toad in the hole, sorbet

Links to related posts

One local summer, week one round-up
OLS, Saturday lunch in the garden
OLS, first thoughts
Introducing OLS

Useful links for locavores in the South of England

Rapeseed oil from Gloucestershire
Wessex Mill

My challenge to YOU

DO think about joining us in this project, even for one week - registration has closed for a whole summer of one local meal a week, but I'm inviting all bloggers to the challenge of producing one whole local meal this summer, and I'll include you in the weekly round-up of the main challenge. I've found - and I know I'm not alone - that the first meal sparked off a lot of thought about the food we eat here, where it comes from, how it gets here, who produces it and how much they are paid for that work. There's a bonus for you - so far, the food has all been delicious!

One Local Summer: Week 1 round up

Was there an international section last year? This year, we've got one experienced locavore, and the rest of us are groping about making a start, with varying degrees of success.

Sally in Bristol UK made egg and chips with mayonnaise and peppery rocket ... it all came from the farm shop near Frome that's close to her work. Maybe she's been working too hard, because she fell asleep and the chips burnt in the oven. Find her posts at Diario

In France, Riana at Garlic Breath took it all in her stride, she's a long-standing locavore, one I've found inspiring over the months since she began her year of not shopping. Her meal this week was from weeds - yes, that's right, weeds - and flowers. Did you know you could eat hollyhocks? Me neither

Mariah at Rural Aspirations is nervous, she's only just started on this journey, but she's decided to go for it. Just not this week, there were problems, so she's made some cheese, and has great recommendations for local cheeses for locavores around Vancouver.

Amber says she was too scared to take part last summer, but now - with a newborn as well as a toddler - she's giving it a go.

One of the problems several of us have had is in deciding what local actually means. I've decided to start with a loose definition, trying each time to choose the most local. I amazed myself by finding local cold-pressed oil - something I never thought I'd find in the UK, and a great relief as my husband doesn't do saturated fats following a heart attack. Our meal was delicious but frugal - the result of lack of forward planning; find it at Joanna's Food

At Karen's Home on the Blog in Ayr, Canada they ate bacon and eggs ... she's going to post about her definition of local - but it already includes produce from her garden.


Because the international section is so small at the moment, I've invited bloggers to join us for one week, or whatever they can manage ...

Wendy at A Wee Bit of Cooking made gnocchi with nettles from her weed patch. All the other ingredients are from her native Scotland. I can't wait to try it on mine.


You can find the dozens of others taking part in the One Local Summer challenge at Farm to Philly

One Local Summer: Saturday lunch in the garden

The challenge to produce one entirely local meal a week is harder than you first think. It concentrates the mind, even if you are already committed to local-ish food. What about cooking fats? Where did those potatoes come from? Does 100 miles away count as local? Partial success. Virtually everything was very local, even the spice, but the artichokes were tough tough tough - not sure if I should have cooked them for longer or picked them last week, because that method is usually foolproof. Otherwise good.

My big discovery this week was cold pressed rapeseed oil from Gloucestershire, the next county, absolutely delicious. I bought it at a local market, but later found that it was on sale in Waitrose. The flour for the bread was grown six or seven miles away Battle Farm at Benson, which we pass frequently; I'm going that way later today, so if I've got time, I'll stop to take a photograph. The flour for the fougasse* was milled at the other end of the county, and I bought it in a shop a couple of villages away. The yeast was sweetened with honey from Wargrave, just the other side of the Thames from here (now that I come to think of it, I should be making sourdough bread with yeast captured from our air, rather than the dried yeast I buy). The tomatoes came from Hampshire via my vegetable box. The artichokes and all the herbs came from the garden. I used English mustard seed to pep up the green sauce, also Maldon salt from Essex. My only cheat was wine vinegar ... but as there are wine growers close by, I think I can solve that problem sooner rather than later.


















English green sauce

The green sauce was based on my usual salsa verde. I used mint, oregano, marjoram, a little parsley, and lots of sorrel and lemon balm because I couldn't use lemon juice. That worked well. I blitzed the herbs with R-Oil, a little red wine vinegar, Maldon salt and several pinches of Colman's mustard powder (I kept tasting until it was good).


DO think about joining us in this project - registration has closed for a whole summer of one local meal a week, but I'm inviting all bloggers to the challenge of producing one whole local meal this summer, and I'll include you in the weekly round-up of the main challenge - my first will be on Tuesday. I've found - and I know I'm not alone - that the first meal has sparked off a lot of thought about the food we eat here, where it comes from, how it gets here, who produces it and how much they are paid for that work. Besides: today's lunch in the sunshine was delicious.

Related posts

Introducing One Local Summer
One Local Summer, first thoughts








































* I was in a hurry, so I used dough made in my machine, rather than the full-on Bertinet recipe

One Local Summer: first thoughts

This is the week I've got to produce the first all-local meal of the summer. So first I've got to decide on a working definition of local. Harder than you'd think. I've been having nightmares that the only thing to eat will be dandelion leaves plucked from the lawn before we mow.

My first idea was to buy only produce from Oxfordshire. But Harpsden is right on the edge of the county, and produce from Berkshire or Buckinghamshire will often be more local than food from Oxfordshire. All three counties? Perhaps. Not much scope for fish, unless we catch it ourselves in the Thames, which seems a shame when I'm blogging from one of the great maritime nations.


My photograph shows Alfred out fishing on a backwater of the Thames with Dick in Jupiter, the lovely old dinghy he restored in our workshop. It was taken a couple of years ago, and they didn't catch a thing. I'm not sure they ever have. Certainly nothing has ever reached my kitchen.

The 100-mile diet is a tempting idea, although I fret that the scale is too big, too American for this small island: it would take us north to Leicestershire, which feels a long way from here, west right up to the Welsh border, but it would comfortably allow fish from the coast about 50 miles due south (although I wouldn't be able to buy fish from the Brixham fisherman who comes to Henley market each week, as Devon is a couple of hundred miles from here). On the other hand 100 miles makes sense because overcrowding, particularly here in the south, means that farming land has been squeezed, both for development and by hobby "farmers" who produce nothing at all (many of whom, indeed, treat their fields like extensions of their gardens) (don't get me started).

I think I'm going to oscillate between the two, and you're going to have to trust me to source produce as close to home as I can manage. Actually, that's pretty much a given, because I don't want to be driving around looking for things to eat - much of what we eat is delivered by organic box suppliers, on the grounds that the least eco-friendly part of the food chain is the bit where I get in the car and buy a bag of shopping. (Also on the grounds that someone else puts the shopping on my kitchen table, and the value of that is not to be underestimated.)

We are going to have one massive problem, one that's only just crossed my mind: my blog began because my husband had a heart attack, and I used the blog to keep track of the changes we were making to our diet. Thankfully, a lot of that dark time has receded to a haze, but one thing that still rings in my ears is the last part of the dietician's orders: blah blah blah, blah blah blah, butter - never! So we use oil instead, no butter substitutes, although I do use soft margerine for (very occasional) baking. Our locally-produced fat is butter. There's a bit of vibrant yellow oilseed rape, but I imagine it gets sold to the big producers ... you know that there will be rejoicing on the day I discover a local oil producer, cold-pressing the fruits of south Oxfordshire.


My challenge to you - for one week only, any week you choose:

One Local Summer is largely an American initiative, and registration has closed. I'll be posting the (small) International section every Tuesday for the next three months. I'd really like to increase non-American participation, so that next year it would be worth separating Europe from Canada, and involving other parts of the world too. So have a go, just for one week, send me your link, and I'll include you in the round-up. This is what you do:


The challenge will begin on Sunday, June 1 and run until Sunday, August 31. Your challenge: prepare one meal using only locally-grown ingredients - the exceptions are oil, salt and pepper, and spices. Send me the link to your post, and I'll include you in my round-up.














Useful links for One Local Summer

The Thames Valley Farmers' Market Co-operative - they'll email you with reminders; I signed up this morning
Big British Food Map - this is a Channel 4 initiative, I was asked to contribute some ideas a couple of months ago, but I'm not sure how it's going. Later (I can't do that crossing out thing): Food bloggers' Britain (starting with my recommendations - thanks Andrew!)
The Fife Diet - a lively local food experiment
Local food web - this link is set to Oxon, but you can search for local produce outlets all over the UK
Slow Food UK
Slow Food Oxon ... this week's task: join this group

Links to related posts

Nettle soup
Nettle tea
Nettle beer
Ground elder salad
Elderflower syrup, plus a note on citric v tartaric acid in syrups
Elderflower champagne
Machine bread, local flour, from Wessex Mills

International participants in One Local Summer

Amberism
Rural Aspirations
Garlic Breath ... the only blogger in this group that I already know: Riana is inspirational, and her example played a big part in my decision to get involved in this project
Sally at Diario

AND two other Canadians who may or may not have a blog - whatever, I don't yet have their details.

Seven of us. 133 in total. Please try to rise to this challenge, even once.

Introducing One Local Summer

Here's an exciting project starting this week ... this is the second year of One Local Summer: I was too late to join in last time, but this year I am (drumroll) International Co-Ordinator. This is the brainchild of Nicole at Farm to Philly ... last year I saw lots of One Local Summer posts; this year they'll be everywhere, as there are 133 participants.

The challenge will begin on Sunday, June 1 and run until Sunday, August 31. Your challenge: prepare one meal each week using only locally-grown ingredients - the exceptions are oil, salt and pepper, and spices.

Now it's fair to say that there aren't very many "international" participants - four from Canada and three from Europe (all the rest are from the US), but I'll be linking up with them each week for the next three months. So if anyone wants to join us informally, feel free to send me your permalink, and I'll include you in my round-up. Sunday night is the deadline, and you can find buttons on Farm to Philly.

I'm really looking forward to three months of searching out great local food, perhaps meeting up with the other European bloggers involved in this project, and generally eating some great local food, locally sourced. I'll also try to find some local recipes ... One Local Summer: starting here, next week and every week until the end of August. By which time, let's hope the habit's ingrained.