Eat Local Meat

Our Supply of Cow Slowly Dwindles as We Make Room for Our Lamb

Well, my wife, who it turns out does not like to be referred to as the Condiment Queen (who woulda thunk?) declared the sirloin steaks we had last night the best she's ever had. I'll say this for our local cow. It's good. Belying the grass-fed rap, it's quite tender. That may because Farmer Vicki fed the cow a good deal of vegetable scraps. She says it's the pumpkins that make the meat so sweet. Also, the knock on frozen meat is that it won't crust up nice. Not true. Now, I make sure to well pat dry the meat before throwing it on the grill, but crust has never been an issue. Of the two steaks last night, one got restaurant style grill marks. The other one, meant to be more well done for the kids, got a near Luger finish. In retrospect, I wish I would have got that crust on both pieces. When the sirloin steak came off the grill last night, there was just this incredible pure beef aroma. I bet if I was older it would make me nostalgic.

Not on purpose, but we have been working our way around the sirloin end of the cow. We had the football shaped roast, then last week we had the bottom sirloin roast, which looked like an open book. Last night were steaks cut about 3/4th of an inch. All have been done on the grill, with the last two being done with direct heat. When I made the bottom roast, I starting asking my wife about the condiment. "Green sauce, salsa fresca..." She stopped me. "No sauce. I want to taste the meat." Truth be told, the heavy beefiness of the bottom roast needed something to cut it, I ended up improvising with pickled jalepenos. Last night's steak however truly needed nothing more than Bruce Cook's Dalmatian rub (salt and pepper). We had it over a salad of farm fresh vegetables. We are spoiled in our eating.

If I could raise one complaint, I would say the cow was not very expertly butchered. Before the cow was processed (farm talk is so matter of fact), I spent tons of time researching how I wanted it cut. The problem, however, was when the time came, my butcher was not so much a butcher as a man with a very good band saw. The locker (more farm talk) had a standard way of cutting, and to the dismay of all my research had no idea what NAMP was. I managed to talk them into various cuts and such, but at the end of the day, things like the hanger steak disappeared. What arrived was a lot (a lot) of ground beef. The locker especially did not use the chuck and neck very well. With this sirloin we have been eating, they cut it latitudinally (horizontally from the back, did I say that right?). It leaves the bones out, but some of the sirloin cuts have large swaths of inedible cartilage running through them. I mean right smack in the middle. It's all a small price to pay for affordable local meat.

As to all that burger, the last package we opened went into making Middle Eastern style kefta. The meat was mixed with chopped onions, curry powder, red pepper, parsley and garlic. My burger is pretty fatty, the result again of the artless processing. Still, with burger, especially kefta, this fat's a good (great) thing. I cooked these kebabs all the way through yet they remained incredibly juicy.

Joining our remaining cow in the freezer will soon be 1/2 lamb purchased from the Wettsteins. Again, by getting the meat in its primal state, one saves a bunch of money. In this processing, the locker seemed confused as to what was the rack of lamb, the loin or rib. I think my rack is gonna be a bit of both. As with the cow, the fun comes in the unwrapping. Also, the processor found it odd that I even wanted the breast. It took three tries to find out how big was a lamb brisket. After much query, I just punted and said anything left over, grind. 1/2 lamb is significantly smaller than 1/2 cow, so I do not fear 200 lbs of burger.

My wife is not so keen on the suckling pig made available to us, but I have a few days still to work on her.

What's Local at Taste of Chicago

Lagnaippe

I'm not a Taste of Chicago snob. I enjoy a yearly visit, AND I had dreams that a Robert Randolph seat would open. The latter did not happen, but I was surprised to find a place expressly offering local produce.

Lagnaippe, the only stand at Taste of Chicago that features LTHForum in their signage, offered a crawfish boil with "Illinois corn" and a jambalaya with "local produce". Although I was pretty full on Harry Carey's fresh fried Idaho potatoes, I had to try the local item. So my wife and I split the eight ticket jambalaya.

Monica Eng rated it eh. Local be damned, it was well beyond forget it. For one thing, I was hard pressed to find any produce, local or not in this red mess. For another, it was overloaded with powdered sage, the same flavor that can over dominate some soul food. I mean this was really bad. I guess I don't instantly like everything local.

One of my Taste of Chicago fantasies remains a Nicholl's Farm stand at the fest.

7 For 1

It's been a very (very) busy few weeks as we put together the arrangements for my older daughter's call to Torah. Not much time to blog (even cut back on the computer poker), but as busy as I am, I'm always filled with thoughts of what to blog. If I could I'd expand on these I would [ed., like the promised farmer's market reviews?]:

Organic Farming is Hard

Farmer Vicki reports that the typical Chicago quick change from cold to hot keeps her job that much harder. Sugar snaps, we hardly knew ya.

Where There's a Nicholl's There's a Market

The Thursday Eli's Cheesecake Factory Farmer's Market had one stand, but when the one stand is Nicholl's Farm, what the hey. Five kinds of strawberries, ranging from good to great, red currents, shelling peas that were tiny orbs of green sugar, beets, carrots, greens. We are lucky in Chicagoland that the most ubiquitous farmer's market vendor (present at about 20 markets) is also one of the best.

Local Beats Seasonal

It's always someone's asparagus season, but when I want asparagus again, I can eat from the several bags I froze. I've taken the time to put away broccoli and greens too. I have rhubarb piling up, I just hope I can get to it.

Save, Save This Restaurant

Time Out Chicago's Save This Restaurant is like a running list of "my places", i.e., the kinda places I really like (even if I had not known of them until the column appears). David the Hat Hammond pleas for us to save Klas in Cicero, a place really, really in need of saving.

Hate This Restaurant

Trattoria Pepino, Elmwood Park

Book Reviews

William Grimes in today's NYTimes compares the current round of Eat Local books against the ultimate global food, sushi. His heart seems to be with the latter.

Vital Book

Enjoy shots of raw meat as much as me, then you'll appreciate that the River Cottage Meat book, by my guru Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has been search and replaced for the the US market (keeping stateside readers from having to figure out their topside from their bottomside, their chuck from their clod). Wonderfully informative, a text book for any foodie.

Every Day a Market

If It's Wednesday It's Not Forest Park


I really like Drake's Farmer's Market calender, but in need of market today beside Green City, I ran into the little boo-boo. The Forest Park French Market is on Saturdays. In search of other market advice, I came across this good calender of Farmers Markets and the like from the Illinois Department of Agriculture (especially helpful for roadtrippers like the VI family; I'm keen on the Heritage Market in Pekin, which seems to run all year).

Today's Ringing Endoresment

In the News

The CTrib's Food Section reports on a new store in Bolingbrook, Great Steak's and More:

The new shop is owned by Quantum Foods, which sells meat to such restaurant giants as Applebee's and Olive Garden. In fact, said Jane Fitzjerrell, store launch project manager, the "ribs might be the same as those in Applebee's."

Eat Local Cheese

Create Your Food Culture

Jeanne Carpenter of the Cheese Underground ponders the new Atlas of American Artesian Cheese (h/t the hated Martha B at the Reader)

California is home to the most artisan cheesemakers, with 36; Vermont has the most per capita, with 34, while Wisconsin weighs in with a paltry 22 artisan producers.

Rightly, she's miffed. She wonders if it's due to a limited definition of "artisan". I wonder if it's just lack of respect for the heartland.

I had a very good meal at Avec last week, a Chicago restaurant that does a pan-Euro take on wine bar food. It's not really Avec's fault that its cheese list contains no local cheeses. I mean it does not even have any American cheeses to offer. But what about local non-cheese? Avec's Chef, Paul Kahn, is a very visible and notable farmers market shopper. I recognized him at Green City Market (because he was always there) before I knew he was Paul Kahn (and before I ate at Avec or his main place, Blackbird). Yet, after interrogation of the staff at Avec last week, it was determined that the menu contained about one local ingredient, asparagus for a salad. Avec wants to be of another place. It is of another place. Fine.

312 Chicago is another place that shops some local. Chef Dean Zanella is known to buy an entire Wettstein pig (yes!). Yet again, a recent meal at his restaurant found that local ingredients comprised less than 1/4 of the menu. Here it was like asparagus AND beets. And again, it's because Zanella looks to another place. He is through and through an Italian restaurant. His focuses seems on foods that would be in Italy like squid. He goes local only when it fits, as in using the Wettstein's piggies to sub for a Tuscan porchetta.

I've actually been on tour of late, checking out local restaurants that serve local food. I've had recent meals at Hot Chocolate, Lula's and Vie. (North Pond's next on the list.) So far, only Vie really produces a menu that's mostly local. Vie, however, still reads mostly foreign in its dishes.

Something I think about when I think about my vocation of eating local is, what defines my local. Not what defines the boundary of where food has to be farmed to be considered local. I mean what is the local as in our local culinary custom. I mean I am not so sure myself. I had pasta carbonara last night...

I have one idea and one source to mill. The source first. Cathy Lambrecht and others are spearheading a Midwestern Food Alliance. As reported in the CTrib's food blog:

A Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance is in the works to celebrate, preserve and promote the region's food traditions and treasures, including top Chicago chefs and homecooks, church suppers and Wisconsin fish boils, barbecue, hot dogs and pies. The organization is modeled after the well-known Southern Foodways Alliance and promises to set a "common table" where "black and white, rich and poor--all who gather--may consider our history and future."

That shoud be a great start. I look forward to participating.

I do have one idea of what our food is about. It's hard to think of a Midwestern cuisine. There are few if any axiomatic recipes, our bagna cauda, cassoulet or gumbo. Instead, we are a region of foodstuffs. The raw not the cooked. From persimmons at one end to those lawyers (burbot) off the other end. Black walnuts to wild rice, we do have many unique products. Moreover, we are blessed with about the ideal climate and conditions for farming. Anything that can survive a winter can grow and prosper here, and we have outstanding examples of cherries, tomatoes, peaches, grapes (maybe not the kind you ferment), apples, potatoes. It is no accident that the Green Giant took his first giant steps in Minnesota. Finally, we are blessed with artisans, people who care about the land and care about their food. They make caviar, chocolates, roast coffees, brew beers, and they make cheese. Don't ignore our cheese makers because they are in the Midwest. Don't ignore them because we have no local in our local.

We will.

I (Continue) to Hate Martha Bayne

Gets Her Bottle of Death's Door Vodka

About a month (now), I was up in Madison shopping. Not only did I get to the Washington Island Coffee House after it had closed for the day, but my (feeble I admit) attempts to buy some Death's Door Vodka* went to no use. The Reader's Martha Bayne, who shares my affection for Washington Island, claims to be the first one in the Chicago area with a bottle, the only locally made vodka (I mean gin) we know--vodka (I mean gin) made from wheat grown in Washington Island, Wisconsin. The rest of her time in Washington Island sounded pretty fun as well, although there were no reports of fried lawyers.

*Death's Door=the straits between Lake Michigan and Green Bay.

Eating Our Cow

As Hash

At this pace, it will take a while to eat 1/2 cow. My wife and I battle over buying more freezer meat, especially when offered 1/2 lamb and 1/2 pig from the Wettstein's. "We don't have room," she sez. "We save so much money," I say. "The kidz don't like lamb." "We do." In a moment of relenting, I ordered more meat, the lamb. We have not, however, made any more dents in the freezer supply.

We had a good deal of sirloin roast left from the other night. My wife knew exactly what to do with it, make hash. She's started a new job, making pies professionally. She now works Sunday and Monday nights. These have become the nights now, for frying in the Bungalow.

Here's an approximation of the VI hash recipe:

Find the least grottiest potatoes in the cellar, scrub off star-shaped growths, boil--in this case I used purple potatoes from Driftless Organics, purchased in Madison a few weeks ago. Cube after boiled to barely soft. While the potatoes boil, chop up one keeper onion, sweat in a cast iron pan with some grapeseed oil. Cube the leftover sirloin, ditching the sinewy parts. Add the meat and potatoes and more oil to the pan. Hard fry to crust. Flip and turn. Fry. Add a knob of butter. Mix. Flip. Turn. Season aggressively with salt and pepper, use more fresh ground pepper than you can imagine. Serve.

With the hash, we had a bread salad made from stale Gonnella and squishy tomatoes--an alchemy, old tomatoes and drecky bread makes for a delicious salad. The key to a bread salad is to give the bread time to absorb the tomato juice, plus the juice of 1/2 lemon, a heavy hand of kosher salt helps the liquids flow. I also added a few mashed cloves of garlic. I would have used a jalepeno, but what was in the house was spoiled. After that absorbtion time, I added Vicki's mint, basil and arugula, fresh mozz from the Farmer's Market, and Italian olive oil. Strawberries for dessert. We sat on the couch and watched Mythbusters while we ate.

In a Hurry for Old Fruit

Oak Park Farmer's Market June 9, 2007

For sad reasons (death of a friend's mother), I could not spend much time at the Oak Park Farmer's Market this week. I did not even bring the camera. A donut, two types of Nicholl's stawberries, ordered my lamb from the Wettsteins, and I was about done. Except for the biggest reason I got up early.

Last week, when also in a rush, I espied keeper apples at the stand of Walt Skibbe. Interestingly enough, also last week, I had some e-mail correspondence with another eat local fan, and she wondered specifically about apples. Apples are the potatoes of fruit. They keep. Well. Especially varieties like red and yellow delicious. With good facilities, the previous crop can stretch almost until the next crop. The local zone for Chicago includes the ample fruit farms of Michigan, where many apples grow and many apples wait. It is common to find Michigan apples off-season at Caputo's, Costco, even Trader Joes (although never (ever) at Whole Foods. My friends at Serrelli's on North Avenue stocked leftover's from Berry's Berries most of the winter. I advised her that local apples were quite available--just pay attention to the label, box or package.

Even more available as Skibbe is selling them right now, along with his strawberries, asparagus and lettuce at the Oak Park Farmer's Market. In general, I'm a fan of his stuff, including his apples. I do not know how long these keepers will last, if they will be there next week, but I'm getting them while I can. The kidz never tire. I really appreciate he kept some of last year's fruit for me this year.

Eat Local Fish

New Vie Menu Posted!

My job is nearly all based on computer research. I'm facing my Dell six to ten hours each day (at least). It gives me ample opportunity (and excuse) to peruse the Internets, working my vast catalogue of bookmarks. Maybe not once a day, but often, especially when it's been ages since a new menu has been posted, I go to my favorite restaurant's site. Has a new menu been posted for Vie?

Yes! The June 9, 2007 menu has posted, roughly a month since the last menu was posted. And Chef Virant has seen our pleas, here and here (for instance). The new menu features:

crispy fried lake perch, mustard aioli, local lettuces,
lemon vinaigrette and house pickled asparagus

And:

pan-roasted walleye pike, smoked fingerling potatoes, pancetta, local spinach and wood-grilled baby fennel vinaigrette

As usual, there are so many things I'm anxious to try. This dish especially appeals to me:

salad of wettsteins house made country ham, confit of spanish judion beans, local tuscan kale and “cepa vieja” aged sherry vinaigrette (I just put an order in for 1/2 lamb from the Wettstein's, still thinking about the pig)

Still, next time I go, I'm getting the fish.

Eating Our Cow

Sirloin Roast, A Day Later

I really admire the poster Bridgestone on LTHForum.com. He posts about various meals he makes. For one thing, I appreciate that is ouevre is Sweden, a place with a much different coastline than Chicago but a not dissimilar climate. For another thing, I love how the meals are always so complete with the veg and the drink (usually a beer and a snaps or schnaps). Look at the repast in this fish dinner. This meal has the requisite snaps and two beers. Finally, he chronicles so well, the process, from ingredient to table. It's about all summed up in this telling of his Julbord 2006. I always want to make posts like Bridgestone. Except when I remember my camera, the meal's already a bloody mess.

Too damn bad, because this bloody mess of a sirloin was so nice. I wish I had captured it's various stages. Stage one would have been the look on my wife's face when I unwrapped the meat on Wednesday. Certainly one of the thrills of our 1/2 local cow is that we are not exactly sure what we get when we open each package (besides the burger). I had thought this sirloin roast was kinda the tri-tip. I expected a thick/wide piece of meat. Instead it was more of a true roast shape, a beef-football. There was no way I could get dinner on the table at a reasonable time with that hunk of meat on Wednesday.

Yesterday, I gave myself more time. Stage two meant having enough time when I found out I had only a 1/2 chimney's worth of charcoal. Luckily, Serrelli's near me sells the real stuff. Stage three would be encrusting the meat with a good rub. Stage four would be me cooking it directly over lump charcoal, rotating every 15 or so minutes. Frozen meat is not supposed to char up, but that was not so. With the burnished deep red-brown from the cooking/rub it did look like something Cedric Benson would fumble. Stage five would be the cutting. Inside, the pointy ends met the kid's needs while the fattest part was French red. It all had pure non-supermarket extra beefiness. My only quibble was the line of sinew running about 2/3rds through the bottom of the roast. It made some slices near impossible to eat. I wish I had trimmed that away (if possible). Next 1/2 cow, I'll do that, as there's no other cut like this with this package. Stage six will be the leftovers as good sandwiches.

Bridgestone would have shown the final ensemble. On the grill I roasted up the last of our asparagus and the first of our purple new onions. As the meat rested I made a lemon intensive salad from Farmer Vicki's arugula. It worked well to cut the richness as did the salsa I made from Vicki's parsley, Forest Park French Market (Geils) jalapenos and garlic and Italian olive oil. All together it would have made a nice picture.

Well sated, I waited a while to dig into left over rhubarb-sour cherry (the later coming from the freezer) crisp that my wife and daughter made last week. If I had taken pictures, you'd really be impressed.

For Mom

In the News

For over a decade, my mother owned a business teaching the food safety course needed for all Illinois food service providers. She always insisted on making them take the test.

No so one of the competition (allegedly).

A suburban owner of a food-safety business has been charged with fraud after she was accused of cheating to ensure clients obtained state and city certificates to serve and prepare food at restaurants and other establishments...From early 2000 to last month, Koll is alleged to have requested exam books and represented that a number of people would be taking the test through her. Instead, exam answer sheets were filled out for those who paid, authorities said.

CTrib has the full story here.

Eat Local Cheese

Wisconsin Cheese Tour

The great compiler, Adam at Menu Pages Chicago has information on a Wisconsin Cheese tour this weekend as well as some other data/links on Wisconsin cheese. He mentions Bleu Mont Dairy, a favorite of mine (and a reason to visit the Dane County Market).

Conversation with Kingsolver

Recorded at the CTrib

I've not been able to finish Plenty or Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, the two recent eating local books. Plenty, the 100 mile couple's book, is clever, engaging, well written, but there's just no there, there. They set out to eat within their parameters and they do it. Any notable problems like the mouse poop seem incidental. So, while it's fun to read in spurts, it's not the kinda book that's making me wanna finish. Barbara Kingsolver is a bit of a polemicist, more strident, not as cool as Martha Bayne notes. Me, I appreciate the litany of facts, arguments, statistics, the change the world idealism of Kingsolver. More importantly, while her venture is at once more unreasonable, who has a farm to return to, her endevor is more realistic. She, as I, believes that eating local is not a hobby, nor an exotic quest like climbing an Himalayan. She's taken to the road to spread the message, and the Chicago Tribune compiles some of her message from a recent talk.

This were my favorite parts:

Q. What can we do up north where we have such a short growing season?

A. Sustainable diversified farms on the outskirts of cities are the fastest growing sector of our agriculture economy. I'm amazed what these food growers are figuring out in terms of season extension. I personally have friends in Western Massachusetts and Vermont who are growing tomatoes in high tunnels -- kind of simple, inexpensive greenhouses -- where you stretch fabric over hoops and it's big enough you can even get a tractor in there -- kind of like small-scale farming in a greenhouse.

We have four months of very cold winter where I live. And we eat beautifully. You just get over the bananas. You get over the January tomatoes. Start thinking about what you have. I'm personally a huge fan of winter squash. They're loaded with beta carotene and there are so many things you can do with them and you can have them all winter.

Q. What is the most important lesson you learned from living locally?

A. [It] was a very deliberate paradigm shift. We stopped asking, "What do I want right now?" and said, "What do we have? What's abundant? What's tasty and delicious right now?" That's what we'll have. It was really for us an exercise in gratitude and because of that it was permanent. We'll never go back.

We had so much more than we imagined. Winter in many ways was easier than summer. We'd made big huge pots of tomato sauce, for example, and froze them and so when winter came, so much of the work was already done. Anyone with a freezer can buy extra foods when they're in season and toss them in there for winter. They'll still be local in February.

With a little bit of extra money invested in our own food economy, we're keeping great faith in the people around our town. We're recycling that money into our own school districts, communities and we're also improving our own food security: If you pay a little extra to our local farmers, we're helping to ensure they'll still be there for us next year.

4 Weeks too Late

Oak Park Farmer's Market - June 2, 2007






My favorite (and home town) farmer's market got off to a rousing start. Of course, it takes at least a few weeks to get the oil temperature ideal for the donuts.




















We got our first peek of the offspring of some defunct chowhounds (still foodies though, does that sound right?).

Farmer's markets make me happy. What makes me unhappy is having to wait.

Look at the Genesis Grower's stand.

Does this look like the work of a just getting started farmer? No, because Genesis Growers has been providing stuff for its CSA since April. It's also been at Green City Market. The food is there. Our purchases (besides donuts) included arugula, strawberries, sugar snap peas, carrots, parsley, basil, and radishes.

The conventional wisdom (if such thing exists) is that our climate cannot support farmers markets until June, that there's nothing to sell. Genesis Growers shows otherwise. Moreover, we were at the Dane County (Madison, WI) farmers market a few weeks ago. Mid-May, the season was about over for morels (the signs said last week), ramps had passed (how's that for funny, Harmony Valley Growers had no more ramps to sell, but Whole Foods in Illinois still had Wisconsin ramps to sell at the time). There was pea-shoots, watercress, spinach, radishes, hothouse tomatoes, lettuces, green onions, chives, rhubarb; in Wisconsin, Wisconsin. On top of all that green, there was cheese, meat, flavored oils, maple syrup (new crop!), canned goods, baked goods, jerky, keeper 'tatoes. There is just no damn good reason that the farmer's markets around here cannot open sooner. Really, they should be year round, like New York's Greenmarkets. If that's too much to ask, at least a May 1 start would make more sense.

Stawberries are Red Damnit

Nicholl's Farm - Oak Park Farmer's Market 6/2/07

What's Local at Whole Foods - River Forest, IL

Come Back Tomorrow

So, yesterday, I needed peanut butter, bread and lunch meats, did not think I needed milk(s, 1% for her, whole for me). I did my usual surveillance of the produce area, especially in light of the Whole Food Promise. California potatoes were bad enough, but Chilean citrus to go on top of the Chilean cherries. Should a localvore survive on burdock root and parsnip (the extent of the local produce)? By the end of morning coffee today, I found both our milks gone.

I'm on you Whole Foods daily. If you make promises of keeping local, keep them. And today they did. Burdock root (who even consumes burdock root?), parsnip AND the same conventional Michigan asparagus I saw last week.

Ask VI

Where Can I Find Local Wheat?

Via e-mail, someone passed me on a question about local wheat. The same query was also posted at the Chicago Localvores.org site.

A running gag for the 100 Mile Diet couple in Plenty is their quest for wheat in their area. Peanut butter and jelly on turnips only works so many times. Can a localvore have better luck in the upper Midwest? Yes. When I visited Henry's Farm in a hilly nook of Central Illinois a few years ago, I was surprised that the farm next door grew organic wheat (commercially, alas). Illinois may be the corn capital and the soy sovereign, but there are wheat farmers too. I found several at this listing (ignore the occasional hit on wheatgrass). The question, however is where to buy locally grown wheat.

I know of two sources. First, Scotch Hill Farms from Wisconsin sold 2 pound bags of ground red wheat at the Oak Park Farmers Market last year. I assume they will do so again this year. Second, and the most reliable source that I know, is the Dane County Farmer's Market. It may be a schlep but oh what a worthwhile schlep if you are an eat local devotee. There are a few farmers each week selling wheat and other grains. See this listing.

Unfortunately, at present, eating locally takes some effort. You cannot just stroll into the supermarket and get what you need. The 100 Mile couple joked about how much fossil fuel they burnt up tracking down their meals. Still, as they say, getting there's half the fun.

Eat Local Cheese

Online and Off

David "The Hat" Hammond takes a break from cicadas this week and profiles Illinois's lone farmstead cheese maker, Prairie Fruit Farms. For those interested in the place, keep an eye on Marion Street Cheese in Oak Park. They organized a trip to Prairie Fruit earlier this year, which I was really sorry I missed, and they plan on organizing additional trips. The Prairie Fruit Farms goat cheeses, including the nearly noxious (but in a good way!) Huckleberry Blue can be found at the store or at the Marion Street Cheese booth at the Oak Park Farmer's Market.

Only to be found right now on paper, Joanne Trestrail in Chicago Magazine does an excellent report on Wisconsin cheesemakers in the Madison, WI area.

What's Local at Whole Foods (The Entire Midwest)

Promises, Promises!

Earlier this year, I was invited to give a small presentation to the 4th/5th grade multi-age class at Hatch Elementary School in Oak Park on eating local. The librarian, Ms. Cox, was especially impressed and pledged to eat more local. So, she was surprised to find me one day in Whole Foods, and you too may be surprised why I always seem on top of Whole Foods. I am there about two (or more) times a week. It seems there's always something we need. (Local) milk, lunch things for the kidz (one of the few things that I have not been able to fully go local on even as we have forsake "baby" carrots), bread, kefir, soy milk, Great Lakes fish, and every time I need to stop at Whole Foods, I do a check for what's local.

What I found yesterday is that Whole Foods is making big (BIG) promises. According to a brochure in their store, they will be providing up to $10 million in low interest loans to local farmers in the Midwest. In addition, they are teaming up with FarmilyFarmed.org to promote local. Their literature names about 45 farms in the Midwest (stretching from Indiana to Nebraska) that will supply Whole Foods.

Count me as skeptical. To me, a strong (better) first step would be to detox the stores of the various evils I saw yesterday. Sweet corn from Florida (oh yeah, that'll be sweet), cherries from Chile (!). I say make people buy what's in season now. Scroll down this blog, it's not like we are lacking right now in local stuff. Anyways, strident, un-realistic me very much welcomes Whole Food's commitment to local farmers. I'll be tracking how well they fulfil their promises.