Update

I would start out by apologizing for not blogging, or for the fact that the focus of this blog is drifting from cooking to eating out, but in many ways this is mirroring my life. I need to develop better organizational skills, I need to develop better scheduling skills, and I need to just be more proactive. But, in the meantime, I've had a bit of fun, and Human # 1 and I even *gasp* went on an actual date! Or at least we had a couple nice dinners.

Back in Maryland, and about to leave

I am the station waiting to catch a train to visit my brother in Manhattan. I left my laptop at home so my updated pacific northwest posts with pictures will have to wait until later in the week. So instead I will give some thoughts about local food and the pacific northwest. This would be random blathering that likely is of no real interest to most people.

The movement of eating locally is much better developed in the Pacific Northwest than it is here. I noticed that almost every restaurant, even the tourist trap on the space needle, advertised its local cuisine.

The resources at this time of year were fabulous - beautiful berries, plump cherries, tasty salmon, creamy oysters. The wines were good - not fantastic, but we weren't on a wine trip either.

My favorite part of the region's food was its absolute simplicity and loyalty to the ingredients. My dad taught me two important lessons as a kid - anyone who can eat can cook, and a good cook is really a good shopper. I'm a big believer in simple preparations and not too many ingredients. I hate it when too many things are going on at once. Simple is, in my opinion, best. When you have really great ingredients, you want to highlight nature's magnificence, not your own skills heating and mixing. This would be another Dad lesson. He also goes (and used to drag me and my brother - hated at the time and my fondest memory as an adult) to the Jessup fish market at o dark thirty to look dinner in the eye before simple grilling or flaming (the man loves flambe) preparations. Of course, being Bengali he also made curried fish - but unlike anything in an Indian restaurant. A truly Bengali fish preparation tastes like fish, not sauce, and the sauce is simple and lightly applied (mustard sauce for shrimp, a light tumeric dyed paste for salmon, etc). To be fair and equal, I must here note that mom makes excellent dishes on the same lines - simple, good ingredients.

The density in Seattle and Vancouver allowed for mature markets in sustainable local produce. I'm not sure if we have the density in Howard County for the markets, but right now I really do think there is a strong opportunity for more paurings between local restaurants and local producers. I have to admit that I chuckled at Aida Bistro earlier this year when I noticed Larriland berries being advertised - mostly since we had been to Larriland that morning.

Yes, the Pacific Northwest is fantastic and we will never have their salmon, but I can't help but think that the mid Atlantic has as fantastic an opportunity to showcase our regional specialties. And I don't just mean blue crab. We have amazing soil and an amazing history - and our gastro-cultural melting pot is as wide and exciting. The blueberries, strawberies, cherries, and apples we grow are every bit as good as elsewhere. Why is it rare to see local restaurants proudly stating they use local fruit? Or our awesome veggies? Or tomatoes - really, we have amazing tomatoes and a history of doing cool things with them. And of course Maryland seafood is rightfully lauded - but not just the crab should be celebrated, but our rockfish, oysters, and other sustainable species. Almost everything is tasty - remember not all that long ago in Massachusettes rebellion consisted of refusing to eat lobster more than three times a week. We do live on land that has great natural bounty. We should enjoy it.

Of course, as always when talking about eating locally, it is important to be reasonable. It takes a lot of gas for a hundred farmers to drive their trucks and cars to markets, and a lot for each consumer to schlep that stuff home. Certainly trains and yes, even ships sending containers may cost less in terms of energy resources. Plus, increased efficiencies of mass scale farming has dramatically increased global calorie production, even though there are extreme social and environmental consequences. Then again, negative consequences also exist from an organic farm that serves only customers in a 25 mile radius. Its impossible to universally laud or demonize any type of food production. There are too many moving parts, too many consequences.

Food politics may be complicated, but food should not be.

Community Supported Agriculture

Community Supported Agriculture ("CSA") refers to programs in which community members purchase shares of a farm (or group of farms) output. Basically, you pay for a share of what's grown, though you don't know

On the importance of eating locally

I'm not one of the nutty people. I swear. I'm not going to tell you Red Dye 40 will kill you, or that chicken from the supermarket will make you sprout wings, or anything like that. However, I will say that I have a pretty strong preference for eating locally grown foods. If I have time, I was planning to do a 100 mile challenge this summer.

There are many reasons to eat locally. First, quite often what is local and in season tastes better - it's fresher, it's more likely to have been picked when it was actually ripe, and it's often grown on small scale. Second, there are real social issues to local food security and agricultural preservation. Third, it takes less energy, and therefore less waste and carbon emissions, to move the food from place A to your table. Fourth, well, you get to know the people who feed you. There are a myriad of other reasons to eat locally.

I'm not going to throw a hissy fit about the mass production of food. Actually, a lot of it is incredibly beneficial to society. The number of people who are hungry has drastically reduced. Malnutrition is combated by some of this mass production. There is a lot of good in the food industry. But there's also negatives - and balancing those is something that every person must do for himself or herself.

I'm not going to pine for the time when every family fed themselves off their own land. I like my job, and my work doesn't allow me to run a farm at the same time. I like my baby townhouse, despite it's lack of land. My husband likes it for the lack of yard work. I like the fact that my husband can take mass transit to Our Nation's Capital, and do whatever it is he does for a living. I like the fact that I can visit just about any store I want, all within 5 miles of my home, eat at a myriad of restaurants, walk to the grocery store, and at the same time trek not too far to hit farm land.

However, a change is coming - localization is the wave of the future. Energy prices are going through the roof, consumer preferences are changing, and the revolution in communications allows for specialization and customization, rather than the mass standardization of the last wave of agricultural and industrial changes.

I like getting citrus from far away in winter. But in the spring and summer, I'm lucky enough to be able to taste our local bounty instead.