What's Local This Week at Caputo's
What's Local Everywhere

Well before the farmer's market season started, my wife and I would find local food in the oddest of places--like Michigan apples and Minnesota potatoes at the dollar store. I also noted that on any given week, if one looked a bit, one could find something local at your neighborhood market; for instance Caputo's.

Am I just paying attention or is there more focus on local produce?

Whole Foods has realized that there is a 32 degree of food coolness out there, that organic hardly cuts it with the cutting edge foodies. They now offer pamphlets on how they stock local. Recent visits to their store in River Forest, Illinois found much local produce including many vegetables from Wisconsin (local AND organic); peaches from Southern Illinois and some so-so (and expensive) heirloom tomatoes from Michigan. The Seedlings people from Green City (and other markets) have told me that their melons will soon be for sale at Whole Foods (if they are not there now).

Or Sunset Foods on the North Shore. Scroll down their weekly flier to see the ads for local (really local) vegetables.

And my neighborhood Caputo's, plenty of Michigan apples and peaches and plums intertwined with their other produce.

My wife speculates that the stuff was always there; it's just that stores are labeling things more because local food is "in". I'm not sure that's the case. I think because local food is more in, the market has opened up more to local food. Regardless, it's a good thing.