Eating Local

I've always had the urge to do what I can to "save the planet", or live green, or leave a very small carbon foot print. I must admit that I don't always recycle that shampoo bottle or aluminum can as I should. In our little town there is no recycling pickup, but you can haul plastics, newspapers, aluminum cans, & cardboard boxes to the recycling bins at the high school. I've also been thinking about eating "local" since I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In the past week I've noticed 2 new produce stands popping up on vacant lots in the middle of town with one advertising fresh, local produce. I'm going to stop by them very soon. Today, however, I went to The Windmill Market in Fairhope after seeing their facebook post announcing local strawberries just picked this morning. Pints were $2 and flats were $15. I bought 3 pints and a bunch of locally grown spinach. I wanted to see just what I could buy and prepare that was organic and/or locally grown. For lunch today I made scrambled eggs (from local yard chickens) with garlic, onions and chopped local spinach and a salad which included today's spinach, carrots from my garden and the strawberries. My granddaughter Miss T declared it delicious.! Dessert was yogurt topped with Magnolia Granola which was made a few miles from here using organic ingredients. For dinner we enjoyed shrimp cooked in garlic & butter sauce. (The shrimp was purchased last fall from a local shrimp boat & stored in the freezer.) We also had Pappardelle's spinach lemon, herb fettucini ( not locally made, but also purchased at The Windmill) Tomorrow we're having hamburgers made from the beef of grass fed cows raised 30 miles away. It wasn't cheap $6 a pound.

Though it was hard, I walked away from all the homemade bread and pastries, deciding instead to bake bread myself with the help of Miss T. She learned how to knead bread today. We made one white loaf and one cinnamon loaf that we're having toasted for breakfast in the morning with those delicious strawberries or with strawberry jam I made last week.

I still have quite a way to go in my effort to eat local, but it will get easier in the next few months with the community farmer's markets starting up and our garden's tomatoes,peppers and cucumbers producing as fast as we can eat them. I'm going to try canning tomatoes this year if all goes well.