How To: Become a Locavore

While it's easy to do this if you live in Southern Cali, what if you live in NYC? I live in San Francisco, and most of what I eat is local, in season. But occasionally I want a banana, chocolate, French wine or cheese, etc. I'd say about 90% of my food comes from my Farmer's Market, which comes from all over California, but if I lived in Manhattan I'd probably be eating produce grown here, Chili, or Florida, rather than no produce all winter.

I think it is an excellent idea to support your local farmers as well as any locally owned health stores.

Here's another good site to check out:

http://www.localharvest.org/

Paul
www.PaulEilers.com

I'm with Julie...I live in Wisconsin. In the spring and summer, I do pretty good at eating locally. I get a lot of produce from my in-laws and my parents. I also shop at farmer's markets and I do try to eat locally. But in the winter, nothing freakin' GROWS here. I suppose I could store up canned veggies and eat those during the winter, but I would seriously miss eating salads and apples and stuff like that.

IF I had to follow this diet, it would primarily consist of oil and wheat ( I live in Alberta). What would people even further north do?

meens said:
IF I had to follow this diet, it would primarily consist of oil and wheat ( I live in Alberta). What would people even further north do?[...]

My understanding is that people in the frozen north have survived for centuries on the meat and fat from seal and fish, and consumed very few if any fruits and veggies.

I'm planning on running with the 100 mile diet this summer, and seeing how long I can maintain it. I'll likely have some cheats, but plan on having the vast majority of my calories generated locally.

As a fellow Albertan, I think "oil and wheat" is a gross generalization. There are a good number of market gardens that produce for the farmer's market trade, and there are any number of farmers/ranchers that are more than willing to sell you beef, pork, poultry or more exotic fare like elk and buffalo. Yes, you aren't going to eat very fresh outside of the growing season, but that's what adaptation, preserving and stockpiling is all about.

As for "the frozen north", Alberta isn't quite there; You're thinking more along the lines of the traditional Inuit diet, and that's a knife-edge subsistence. The indigenous people of Alberta lived largely on wild game (buffalo, elk, deer, and the like), along with berries and other plant material that was harvested and prepared for winter storage.

I think, on the whole, it's a fair generalization to say that the further from the equator one gets, the more meat and animal products one is going to be consuming in their diet if they want to live closer to their land, unless you're willing to put the time and energy into doing preserving during the harvest season.

Thank you for the interesting topics everyday! I really like the idea "The 100-Mile diet", In japan, the social movement "Chisan-Chisho"(local production for local consumption) is quiet similar to it, the land is small, so the 100 mile is equivalent to the size of our prefecture.

I never knew about this book! But a few years ago I read a book which is just over 900 years old (obviously a reprint - haha!) by an old middle eastern doctor (Ibn Qayyum) who suggested this practice and mentioned the benefits of such a diet. He also stated that the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) followed a diet which consisted of eating food of locality. I'm actually looking forward to reading this book now. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

I'd like to do this a little more.. though it doesn't help my raspberries in January craving. :)

I'm in GA where there is a good share of local foods throughout the year.
There's a restaurant here called 5 Seasons that uses local foods.

Woot! Permission to have crawfish boils, jambalaya and alligator sausage. No wonder people in Louisiana are fat.

Yep, we grow lots of good stuff here in Alberta to eat beyond wheat and grain. What about potatoes, beans, carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, saskatoon berries, (not only locally grown but actually indigenous)other berries, peas, canola(just as good for you as olive oil), and I could go on. You can freeze a lot of it for winter. Some of it stores well, and two growers at the Calgary market are still selling their lovely, actually taste-like-carrot carrots, although granted they will run out before summer. Some small hot houses, especially in central alberta, are growing great tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and eggplants (although some people object to greenhouse stuff). These are even finding their way into the local grocery stores - for instance those bags of lovely little cukes are local.

Not all of it is produce either. What about local free-run and/or organic eggs, chickens, beef, bison, and elk, milk and milk products. And my particular weakness, the aged gouda from Sylvan Star Cheese. Mmmm!

You might not be able to keep under the 100 mile rule for fruit, but if you look for the stuff from BC rather than california, mexico, florida, chile, etc through the winter you should be able to always find apples and pears.

I don't make it a rule to only buy local, I don't have time to make it my life's mission. But it's pretty easy, (and much tastier) to shift the balance in favor of local.

I just came across this blog, which I found interesting becasue my husband and I are in the middle of planning a locavore dinner for several friends to be held the last weekend of March. All of the food (ok except the olive oil and wheat) will be locally raised or grown, most of it stemming form our Northeast Wisconsin garden. I'm in the middle of finding the last ingredients for our three course meal.
Appetizer:
Pumpkin ravioli (organic wheat from Minnesota - I really need to find a more local source, and pie pumpkin from our garden).
Main course:
salad - this is one item I'm trying to find a local supply of.
Meat - grilled marinated sirloin steaks (raised by some local farmers who practice sustainable grazing using beyond organic practices), and possibly some pheasant that one of our guests shot himself.
Veggie - Oven roasted root veggies: onion, carrot, leek, and one other veggie that I need to find. Other than the missing one, the others are all from our garden.
Veggie2 - baked potatoes: we just finished our garden potatoes, but I've found a supply of Wisconsin potatoes that we'll use.
Bread - homebaked bread from the organic Minnesota flour.
Drinks - water, Door County wine, and home brewed beer (ok the ingredients fro the beer are imported from whereever the supplier gets them, though next year teh hops will be from our garden).

We live in a small city and have a typical "city lot", but garden quite extensively. In the fall we freeze or can what we can and store the rest in a plastic box in the garage. Since we just started our "eat local" movement about two months ago, we're still learning and finding new things all the time.

Eating local IS possible - even in the frozen north. We just have to look a little harder and be a bit more creative with how we approach things.

I love the idea of buying locally. The longer food travels the worse. I think being in Canada though where certain foods are severely limited certain times of the year might make it a little tougher.

The first step to being a locavore is to determine what local means for you. This is an individual decision that should feel comfortable for you and your family. Many locavores start by trying to eat within a 100-mile radius from their homes and then adjust where necessary, sometimes encompassing an area as large as an entire state or region. The important thing is that by creating a boundary, no matter how large, you are becoming conscious of food's origin. Use this tool to draw a 100-mile circle around your home and guide your food choices.

May I suggest the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Kingsolver's experience with local eating for one year. Included in the book are articles about practically applying the principles of local eating into our lives, no matter where we live (in the city, in colder climates, etc.). It is a great read!