In Defense of Locavorism: Let's Cultivate Our Garden

In The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet, a controversial response to Michael Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pierre Desrochers and Hiroku Shimizu take a stance against the locavore movement. Yesterday, The Daily Beast promoted The Locavore’s Dilemma in a post entitled, “Why Locavorism Doesn’t Make Us Happier, Healthier, or Safer.”

Desrochers’ and Shimizu’s main argument is against the idea of “food miles,” or the distance between the farm and the consumer’s plate, as a proxy for greenhouse gas emissions. Citing many Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies, they point out that:

As American researchers have documented, in their country the “food miles” segment (from producer to retailer) contributes only about 4 percent of total emissions related to what Americans take home in their grocery bags, while 83 percent of households’ carbon dioxide footprint for food consumption can be traced back to the production stages.

Since “food miles” aren’t traversed in a vacuum, other environmental factors have to be taken into consideration when making dietary decisions. Unsurprisingly, certain climates are more suitable for the production of certain foods (fruits, for example). So building a greenhouse where you can grow peaches during winter in New England is less environmentally sound than just transporting those peaches from across the country. I think that would make sense to most locavores.

The Locavore’s Dilemma is well-researched and well-written, and I’m glad it exists. Locavorism is one of those ideas that seem to make sense on a gut level, and ideas like that always deserve to be challenged.

But I take issue with the book on many fronts, including its understanding of most locavores’ motivation. Desrochers and Shimizu assume people who value eating locally produced food over food that has traveled long distances want to impose their dietary habits on everyone on the planet, at the expense of social and economic logic.

Do I think a financially struggling person living in Santa Barbara should attempt to maintain a vegetable garden rather than buy cheap meals at a fast food chain? Yes. Do I think starving families in Haiti should refuse food drops from the U.S. because of the carbon emissions of the planes that delivered them? No. Is it time to stop employing the overused rhetorical device of asking myself questions with obvious answers? Probably.

But the most problematic implication of The Locavore’s Dilemma is evident in The Daily Beast’s defense of it. That is the argument that the food production/consumption situation that exists today is better than any imagined alternative simply because it is what exists today. Huge factory farms have beat out small, family-run farms largely due to government subsidies; presumably, by virtue of that economic victory, they are better for the world we live in today.

That Panglossian mindset strikes me as a grand excuse to be lazy. For all his faults, Voltaire seems to have had at least one thing right: we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. So let’s cultivate our garden.

Clover Food Lab: A Fast-Food Experiment

While I was in college, I subsisted mostly on peanut butter toast. Sometimes I ate bacon, too, when I made it downstairs to the dining hall in time for breakfast. But that’s because Clover Food Lab didn’t open until the year I graduated, 2008.

It was founded by MIT graduate Ayr Muir, who wondered whether “fast food” always had to be greasy and mass-produced. He decided that no, it did not, and now there are Clover Food Lab food trucks and permanent locations all over Boston and Cambridge.

I noticed the Harvard Square location just before heading into nearby Finale for a four-course family dessert excursion, so I called my friend Adam and asked him to meet me at Clover Food Lab for dinner afterward. Like I always say whenever someone gives me a dessert: eat dessert first.

Adam loves Clover Food Lab, so he biked over in a severe thunderstorm to meet up with me. My sister and her friend Claudia joined us, too. We ended up stranded inside the restaurant while the storm passed, but that was fine with all of us, since it was a pretty fun place to be stranded.

At Clover Food Lab, they serve sandwiches, soups, and salads made from all local, mostly organic ingredients; fair-trade, locally roasted coffee; and they just got Allagash Belgian-style beer from Portland, Maine (distance: 111 miles) on tap at their Harvard Square location - for just $3!

The company slogan, “Everything Will Be Different Tomorrow,” is one of those awesome sayings that manage to be physically obvious and philosophically inspiring at the same time.

Their sandwich-style, screen menu supports that slogan: it can update itself at any minute, and then maybe that soy BLT you wanted won’t be available anymore (!).

Next to each menu item on the screen is listed the expected amount of time it will take to prepare it, from the moment the order is entered into the cashier’s iPhone until the moment it is delivered to your hot little hands.

That’s right – the moment it is entered into the cashier’s iPhone. Because the cashier wasn’t really a cashier, strictly speaking. Her name was Laurel, and after she entered our orders into her iPhone and swiped our credit cards (also with her iPhone), the orders were sent to the iPhones of the cooking staff right behind her. She didn’t give us a receipt – they’re basically paperless, except for rolls of recycled paper available for particularly artsy customers to draw on (or perhaps use as a place mat).

I ordered the chickpea and vegetable sandwich, which Laurel recommended as their most popular menu item. It was a huge sandwich for the price, tasted fresh, and looked quite colorful:

My sister just ordered a side of spicy green beans, since she was full of dessert and has a less ambitious stomach than I do:

Spicy asparagus

Claudia ordered their seasonal sandwich of roasted parsnips and spinach:

It took them about eight minutes to call her name – apparently, this was about three minutes too long (according to the preparation time listed on the sandwich-board menu screen), so they gave us free fries!

The French fries are sprinkled with the rosemary growing all around the restaurant. That’s about as local as you can get.

Two Towns Diverged in a Wood: The Great Farmers Market Schism of 2012

This morning I arrived in Massachusetts on the red-eye flight from Los Angeles, starving and exhausted. As I rode to my parents’ home in the town of Westwood, my mood improved drastically when I saw signs advertising the inaugural Westwood Farmers Market, which was to take place at the senior center this afternoon and every Tuesday afternoon henceforth.

The Westwood Farmers Market

I was thrilled to have timed my visit so perfectly. But little did I know, the circumstances surrounding this seemingly innocuous new farmers market were rife with tension.

The drama began over a hundred years ago when, in the late 19th century, two towns diverged in a wood. The people who lived in the woods in the northern part of a town called Dedham thought to themselves, “Hey, we live in the north wood. Let’s start our own town and call it Norwood.” Done.

Twenty-five years later, the people who lived in the woods in the western part of Dedham copied the new Norwoodians and thought to themselves, “Hey, we live in the west wood. Let’s start our own town and call it Westwood.”

Despite the appalling lack of creativity these people demonstrated in the town-naming process, they were successful: today, Dedham, Norwood, and Westwood coexist peacefully.

Until now. Norwood and Westwood have recently become entangled in what I have ridiculously decided to deem The Great Farmers Market Schism of 2012. Way back when the towns diverged in a wood, there were farmers markets all over the place. There wasn’t any other kind of market.

But now, farmers markets are kind of a big fancy deal, and since there are only a few months of the year during which it makes sense to even have a farmers market in Massachusetts, there is stiff competition for farm stands.

This year, Norwood decided to relocate its farmers market from the humble parking lot of a paint shop to the much more centrally located town square and gazebo. But that meant that all the farms that had been setting up shop there for years wouldn’t be able to park their vehicles close enough to transport their goods easily.

According to the disgruntled Norwoodians at the Norwood farmers market today, Westwood jumped at the chance to steal away the farm stands from Norwood. But if you ask a Westwoodian frequenting the new farmers market, they’ll say the farmers responded to Norwood’s random and inconvenient relocation by coming over to the better side of the woods.

However you look at it, all the farmers who used to sell in Norwood now sell at Westwood’s new market, and Norwood had to scramble to find new farmers to fill the booths. Both markets are held on Tuesday afternoons, so they’re in direct competition for customers.

Exhausted as I was, I committed my afternoon to seeing for myself which farmers market was the better of the two. The Norwood market is certainly bigger, with eleven booths (including Foxboro Cheese Company, which almost won me over with samples of goat cheese).

The Norwood Farmers Market

But the Westwood market has gumption. I chatted with Jim Cellucci, who owns and operates Great Harvest Bread Co. in Newtonville, MA (distance from my parents’ house: 14.7 miles) with his wife, Cheryl. He told me how they grind their own flour each morning on site at their very own stone mill. My mom purchased a loaf of their honey wheat bread, and we enjoyed it with olallieberry jam at teatime.

Jim Cellucci at the Great Harvest Bread Co. stand

We also bought a dozen eggs from Copicut Farms in North Dartmouth, MA (distance from my parents’ house: 58.7 miles). Elizabeth Frary, who owns Copicut Farms with her husband, Vincent, was operating the stand with her little boy, Emmet. They raise pasture-fed chickens and turkeys, selling poultry and eggs at farmers markets and operating a farm store during limited afternoon hours. Emmet won me over by pointing to the picture of a chicken on their business card and telling me, “That’s my chicken!” Apparently, its name is Scarlett.

In conclusion, in case it’s not clear by now, dramatic farmers market battles are quite silly. The more opportunities for local farmers to sell their goods, the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll frequent both!

Two towns diverged in a wood, and I –
Cared too much, I think.
And that has made no difference whatsoever.

Don't Cry Over Raw Milk

One of my parents’ favorite stories to tell at family dinners involves raw milk. We were living in Germany when my siblings and I were quite young. On a road trip through a rural area of the country, we stopped for a meal at a tiny farm. My mom asked the proprietor if she could have some milk for my little brother, Brian, who was a baby at the time.

The proprietor disappeared for about a half hour, during which time my parents couldn’t help noticing a distinct moooooing coming from outside. Finally, the man returned with a bucket of warm milk, which my parents could only assume had been extracted within the past half hour from a cow’s udder.

And that’s how my baby brother got mad cow disease.

Just kidding! My parents weren’t on crack. But that story is always greeted by laughter, groans, and expressions of disgust. Why are we grossed out by milk that comes directly from a farm cow, without pasteurization or additives, but not by milk that has been pumped by huge machines from incredibly cramped, force-fed animals on factory farms?

It might be because “raw” milk can be contaminated with all kinds of things. But nowadays, dairies that produce raw milk in the United States are held to stringent testing standards. And because of the enzymes raw milk contains, it can be used as a tool to strengthen human immune systems.

So this week, I decided to try raw milk for myself. At the Saturday farmers market, I struck up a conversation with Nathan Glazebrook at the Organic Pastures farm stand. He told me that Organic Pastures, located near Fresno (distance from me: 232 miles), has been owned and operated by the McAfee family since 2000. They produce raw milk, butter, cream, cheese, as well as organic beef, raw almonds, and eggs.

Their cows graze in green pastures every day of the year and are never given antibiotics, hormones, or GMOs. They’re only fed things they would naturally choose to eat (so never soy or cotton seed). As a result of their lifestyle, the cows can live more than four times longer than their counterparts on factory farms.

My perception of these people as badass was slightly shaken by the McAfee family photo on the homepage of their website, which seems to be a recreation of something from Mitt Romney’s campaign brochure. But so what if they coordinate wholesome outfits and pose in a field surrounded by grazing cows and human-sized bottles of whole milk? I’d do the same thing if I had human-sized bottles of whole milk lying around.

Especially if it was from Organic Pastures. This stuff is delicious. I bought a quart of whole milk after trying a sample of it at the farm stand. It’s hard to describe how it tastes different from pasteurized milk from factory farms, but somehow it tastes fresher and smoother.

I was a bit nervous to try it because my stomach is pretty much always in a bad mood, and I thought that introducing raw milk might provoke a rebellion. But my stomach did not rebel – in fact, I didn’t experience any negative effects at all.

My budget can’t really support a raw milk habit, but I’ll definitely return to the Organic Pastures farm stand on special occasions. For instance, when my little brother Brian comes to visit, I’ll take him there to try to recreate that traumatizing raw milk childhood memory. Brian: you’re welcome.

Stone Fruit Special: Apricots and Pluots with a Cherry on Top!

Today is my first day being ABD, an acronym used by academics (and no one else) to mean “All But Dissertation.” It means that yesterday, I passed the oral portion of my qualifying exams and I’ve finally advanced to candidacy. This milestone makes me happy for two important reasons: first, it means I haven’t entirely wasted the past three years of my life. So that’s always good news.

Second, and much more important to you, Dear Reader(s?), it means I can get back to blogging about the food I eat and where it comes from. Now that I’m done with the stress of exam week, “the food I eat” and “where it comes from” no longer refers to “an entire tube of raw cookie dough, eaten with a spoon” and “the grocery store that has a self-checkout aisle so I can avoid the judgmental eyes of cashiers who can’t believe one person could possibly need that much raw cookie dough.”

My return to carefree farmers market shopping perfectly coincides with the return of certain farm stands that specialize in stone fruit. “Stone fruit,” of course, refers to fruit that is made of stone (!). My favorite fruits to make a return in the last week or so: apricots, pluots, and cherries. I bought as many as I could afford and then, obviously, I built them into a pyramid:

Apricots
I have to admit: until about a year ago, the only kind of apricot I had eaten was the dehydrated kind that comes in the snack boxes you order on airplanes. But recently, I tried a sample at the farmers market and was struck by how perfect apricots are. They take like, three bites to eat, so you don’t have to commit to them in the same way you have to commit to eating, say, an apple. (Note to my boyfriend: Don’t worry! I am only terrified of commitment when it comes to snacking on fruit.)

Anyway, I spent one dollar on a half-pound of apricots from Regier Family Farm in Dinuba, CA (distance from me: 239 miles). Regier Family Farm was founded in 1974 by Jim and Norma Regier and has since expanded to include a branch run by their daugher and son-in-law, Lisa and Anthony Galpin. The apricots are just ripening now, and the couple that I’ve eaten so far have been incredibly juicy and sweet.

Pluots
Unlike apricots, which I always knew existed, but of which I was afraid because of unfortunate airplane-food experiences, I didn’t know about pluots at all until about a year ago. Pluots are, of course, what happens when an apricot and a plum have a baby and name it something silly just to be jerks. Other apricot-plum hybrid types include “apriums” and “plumcots” – so yeah, there’s a whole brood of weirdly named kids running around.

But pluots are not genetically engineered fruits; rather, they were invented in 1989 after much cross-breeding experimentation by mad scientist Californian fruit breeder Floyd Zaiger.

I bought four dappled pluots from the Burkdoll Farm stand. Burkdoll Farm was established in 1858 in Visalia, CA (distance from me: 225 miles), and has been family-owned ever since. Pluots are a bit more of a commitment to eat than apricots, since they are squishy and juicy (and bigger, obviously). I usually slice them up and eat them with my hands rather than biting into them whole, in an attempt to avoid a condition I like to call Sticky Face.

Rainier Cherries
I’ve always loved cherries, but until recently, I’d only ever tried the dark red kind. But this week, I noticed baskets of cream-colored cherries being sold alongside the red ones of Clip Art fame. I discovered after (very) minimal research that they were called Rainier cherries and that they were expensive. They tasted a lot like regular cherries, but I wanted to buy them because they looked funny.

Like pluots, Rainier cherries were created by a fruit breeder. Harold Fogle invented them in 1952 by combining Bing cherries (the common red kind, high in antioxidants) and Van cherries (which resemble the Bing cultivar but are a bit smaller).

By the time I encountered these Rainier cherries, I had decided that if it was the creation of a mad scientist parading as a fruit breeder, I was going to buy it and eat it. Unless it was a monkey with four butts or something.

So I dropped $5 on a basket of Rainier cherries from Erickson Farms in Fresno, CA (distance from me: 231 miles). Established in 1988, Erickson Farms is a family operation comprising 160 acres and specializing only in cherries.

I’m so excited to discover all the stone fruits the farmers market has to offer in the summer. And because I am an eco-friendly girl, I plan to reuse the stone-like pits in creative ways, like making jewelry or setting elaborate booby traps.

Kale Tale: A Romantic Comedy

Like the protagonists in many romantic comedy films (or “romcoms,” as I like to call them), Kale and I first bumped into each other at a farmers market. At first I was skeptical of Kale – it’s not like people don’t eat it at all back east, but they certainly don’t subsist on it like they do here in southern California.

It’s easy to see why everyone out here loves it, though: not only is it an incredibly attractive type of cabbage, it’s high in vitamins K and C, calcium, and contains cancer-fighting sulforaphane. Even so, enjoying kale felt a bit like abandoning my roots.

But I couldn’t help it. Kale just tasted so good on everything, and I had to admit that I got a little kick out of embracing Kale; it made me feel sinfully earthy-crunchy (although I never went so far as to sprinkle bits of Kale on my granola – but there’s an idea for a rainy day!). It even smelled good the few times I accidentally burned it to the bottom of the wok in which I had been stir-frying it.

After a while, I tried to find interesting ways to spice up my relationship with Kale (without actually making it spicy). I tried eating it raw, but Kale was not into that type of thing. I realized that if I wanted to eat Kale raw, I’d have to massage it with oils first (oils of the olive variety, not the sensual massage kind). Otherwise, Kale gets revenge on my digestive system. Kale is kind of a spoiled b*tch.

Now that Kale and I were in a long-term relationship, we decided to get to know more about each other. Well, actually, Kale didn’t care all that much about getting to know more about me. But I wanted to know more about Kale. And what better place to rekindle a spark than back where we met for the first time: the farmers market!

At The Garden Of… farm stand, I learned something new: there are many different kinds of Kale. You might say Kale has multiple personalities. Or you might not say that, it’s up to you.

The Garden Of… (which has a delightfully mysterious name; garden of what?!) was selling bags that included a mixture of five different varieties. Here are a few of the most important kinds:

Curly Kale
This is the frilly, fun-looking kind most people are familiar with. It’s also called Scots Kale (but it doesn’t play the bagpipes, or this relationship would have ended long ago).

Chidori Kale
This kale is reddish-pink and tastes sweeter than other kinds.

Redbor Kale
This kale turns magenta (so... kind of the same color as Chidori Kale...) in cool climates and has a crisp texture.

Rape Kale
Don’t accept drinks from this kind of kale.

Dinosaur Kale
This flat, wide kale is prehistoric, planted by God to trick us into believing in evolution.

Red Russian Kale
This kale is grey and spindly, not to be confused with White Russian Kale. Incidentally, if Rape Kale hands you a White Russian, don’t drink it.

I'm Going on a Picnic... and I'm Bringing Local Food and Wine!

If you know anything about me, you know I love wine. Whether it’s a rosé on the porch in the afternoon, a fruity white while preparing dinner, or a full red for breakfast for dessert, wine makes everything just a little more pleasant.

Of course, I’m no wine snob; I don’t have the time, money, or motivation to become one. But make no mistake: I jump at the chance to pretend to be a wine snob whenever the opportunity presents itself. Pretending to be a fancy person is kind of my M.O. and wine snobbery is particularly fun to feign. It involves a lot of mouth-swishing, slurping noises, and – my favorite – haughty facial expressions involving pursed lips and raised eyebrows.

Lucky for me, I live in one of the most important wine-producing areas of the country. Just north of Santa Barbara, the Santa Ynez Valley is home to dozens of beautiful vineyards, most of which have at least one tasting room. So for my twenty-sixth birthday (which was last week, in case you missed it), I decided to have a picnic at one of the most lovely local vineyards of all, Buttonwood Farm. Buttonwood produces not only wine, but herbs, flowers, and peaches in the summer months. They’re known for the sustainable practices of vineyard manager Armando Zepeda.

My friend Sasha’s birthday was the week before mine and we pretty much share all the same friends, so we threw a joint birthday party:

Sasha and I frolic in the wildflowers at Buttonwood.

The morning of my birthday, I went to the Santa Barbara Farmers Market to buy some fruit for the picnic. I got two big baskets of strawberries from Jimenez Family Farm in Santa Ynez, California (distance from me: 30 miles) for just $7. Marcie Jimenez, whose delicious pies are also sold at the farmers market, has been running the farm since 2001 with her husband, Gustavo, and their two children, George and Christie.

I also bought some Gala apples from Fair Hills Apple Farm in Paso Robles, California (distance from me: 123 miles). David and Nancy have been growing all kinds of apples at Fair Hills, from Granny Smith to Fuji, since 1992. The Gala apples I bought tasted perfect sliced and served on a cracker with white cheddar cheese.

Our picnic also included finger sandwiches (made with local cucumbers and watercress), organic meats purchased at Whole Foods, local California cheeses, and a baguette from Our Daily Bread in downtown Santa Barbara:

 

Aside from the delicious food and good friends, the best part about having a picnic at Buttonwood was the wine. We started off with a wine tasting (for $10 each, including the glass), then purchased a couple of bottles to enjoy with our food. It was such a wonderful afternoon that I almost forgot to be depressed about turning twenty-six.