TracyFood

Hungry Tracy eats local: observations, conclusions, and more. 24 April 2007 1:08 pm

Posted by Tracy in : garden, breakfast, local food, tea, seasonality, work, eating, hungry planet, Morning Glory, cooking , trackback

Quick link: If you were amused by the meal names I sort of made up for my local food logs — “second dinner” and the like — you might want to read this article about the evolution of meal names and times from an old History Magazine. Fun for geeks, fun for geeks… and thanks to Peter for pointing it out. And now, back to my homework!

More than a day after the end of my eating local experiment, I’m still very much in “Hungry Tracy writes down everything she eats” mode: So far today I have eaten cottage cheese pancakes made with Nancy’s cottage cheese and Umpqua sour cream and Raynblest Farm happy chicken eggs and flour and baking powder and suchforth of unknown origin, fried in Umpqua butter and served with Apple Hill Farm applesauce and Danish Orchards blackberry jam. Also I had a little more than a cup of Wandering Goat organic and fair trade french roast coffee with Umpqua half and half and sugar of unknown origin. But Peter and I did the big dumb breakfast because James was visiting and it’s fun to show off for guests. On a more ordinary day we might have just had Tracy granola with Nancy’s yogurt or homemade no-knead bread with cheese.

I don’t always have breakfast before going to work, and yesterday was one of those days. At work, however, I had a tasty little sandwich of a dill roll and a soysage patty, dipped in some tantric mushroom gravy, as well as a little bit of Surata tofu left over from the filling from a Fusion vegan “omelet” — all of these were made in Morning Glory’s kitchen with organic and non-organic ingredients, mostly of unknown origin, with the exception of the Surata tofu, which was made in Eugene with organic soybeans from the midwestern U.S., according to the email I got from them yesterday (woo! exciting! I so want to tour the factory!) Also I had Café Mam organic fair trade coffee with Organic Valley half and half and sugar of unknown origin, and water with lemon slices of unknown origin, a bite of an organic orange of unknown origin as well, the leftover end of an organic carrot of unknown origin (fresh juice is a pain to make but it does mean I get tasty snacks now and then) and an experimental espresso drink involving Café Mam organic fair trade espresso and Morning Glory’s own chocolate syrup and strawberry syrup by Torani, all of more or less entirely unknown origin. And now you know why there was no way in hell I could have done my “eat local” project on work days.

Yesterday’s dinner was just snacking, peanuts of unknown origin and the last of the hazelnuts I bought on Saturday (it was an 8-ounce bag, in case you were wondering) and some imported puff pastry cookies shaped like pretzels (possibly the least local-food item of the past few days). Also I had a glass of Charles Shaw syrah (yay 3-Buck Chuck!) and a whisky sour with Jack Daniels and a maraschino cherry and sweet and sour mix of very unknown origin. If I’d had a little more time before James came over to hang out, I probably would have had a salad of Groundwork Organic mixed baby greens and whatever dressing is in the fridge (probably either honey-mustard or shallot-balsamic vinaigrette, if I remember correctly) and maybe some shredded Groundwork Organics carrots for fancy — in fact I may yet have that salad for lunch today along with some croutons made with the heel of the last loaf of no-knead bread (no worries — there’s another rising in the kitchen even as I write this).

What I Learned

Enough with what I ate already! What did I learn from this experiment (besides the previously-mentioned “don’t quit caffeine cold turkey, fool!”)?

I learned that I probably should have done a little more planning and research before diving headlong into this project, but that it turned out okay. With more of the aforementioned planning and research, I believe that I could eat pretty well using only products grown in Oregon, and definitely eat very well using only products processed in Oregon, although I tried to use the latter loophole as little as possible this weekend because it still feels like cheating. Also I learned first hand what I’ve pretty much always suspected: that just about all processed food, even the local stuff, is made with mystery ingredients. For instance, I have no idea whether Springfield Creamery uses local honey in Nancy’s yogurt, and likewise I have no idea where Umpqua or Tillamook get the salt used in their dairy products. Furthermore I know for a fact that at least one of the farms that supplies Umpqua with milk (Konyn Dairy in Coburg) feeds its cows with truckloads of corn and soybean meal and cottonseed and other feed of unknown origin, so maybe all my so-called “local” dairy falls into the “locally processed” loophole as well — this may also be true of the Sweet Briar Farms bacon, depending on where they get their animal feed from. All of which just illustrates the fact that animal products are incredibly resource-intensive, and that even if milk or butter doesn’t travel very far from a dairy to the store, it may still be dependent on very well-traveled feed. But speaking of animal products, and fats in particular, I don’t know where any of my vegetable cooking oils are grown or processed, and so I couldn’t use any of them during my two-day experiment. Mmm, cholesterol. All my cast iron pans are now deliciously well-seasoned with bacon grease and/or butter.

A few more thoughts: Researching the source of my Oregon potatoes turned up the fact that most wheat grown in Oregon is exported not just out of the state but out of the country, mostly to the Pacific Rim, where it mostly gets made into noodles and the like, because it’s not quite the right sort for bread. (I hadn’t really thought about the fact that there are different kinds of wheat and not all of them are equal for all cooking and baking purposes.) And while I’m on the topic of wheat, its complete absence from my diet for two days might be the most striking feature of the food part of my eating local experiment aside from the huge quantities of animal fat and rampant caffeine withdrawal (but I’ve already discussed the fact that tea would be my superfood except for the fact that it has no calories).

Summary/Conclusion

I have been saying for years that the only way to really know what’s in your food is to cook it yourself, using minimally processed ingredients. After this weekend, I will also be saying that the only way to know for sure where your food is from is to grow it yourself. Period. That said, I don’t anticipate getting into wheat or tea agriculture any time soon, and I am intensely grateful to the farmers who make those staple foods possible for me. I also really like having the option of cooking with vegetable oil instead of animal fat, which may explain why I spent so very much time after work yesterday admiring the baby olive trees on display at the nursery of one of my friendly local hippie home and garden centers. So adorable! I suppose technically we’re actually at the same latitude as the south of France, so sunlight shouldn’t be a problem… I could set up some kind of shelter if I had a spot for one… And how incredibly badass would it be to make even a tablespoon of my very own organically grown olive oil? Sigh. What a lovely dream. But for now I should focus on my garden, and the aforementioned bread and salad, and editing these rambles into a report before class at 4. All told, not a bad plan for the rest of the day.