eating local

local dinner
Originally uploaded by deepfry

for just this one little week, r and i are eating only locally grown/raised food. our "local" means the state of oregon. pictured is one of our dinners. we've also had peppers stuffed with pork and feta, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, some really awesome salads, lots of cheese sandwiches (Hideaway Bakery use "as many local ingredients" as they can find, so we're counting them so we can eat bread), lots of oregon beer, a peach rasberry cake and a crawfish boil with crawdads we caught in the siuslaw. we even got a pre-view 1/2 pound of prosciutto from my favorite gourmet grocery so r could have cured meats on his birthday. we each chose one cheat and get to share them; i picked coffee and r picked fizzy water...its funny what foods/beverages people can't live without. and we decided salt was allowed.

i'm surprised at how hard it is to find local foods in the grocery stores around town. we live in the willamette valley, after all. we're surrounded by organic farms! but we've found only two grocery stores that offer any substantial amounts of local produce: Kiva and Capella's. other grocery stores offer bits and pieces of local foods (or at least foods that are labeled as local) so if we don't make it to Kiva or Capella's, we have to go 'round to several grocery stores. We can also get local foods at the specialty stores: Long's, Newman's, etc. Luckily, i stocked up on produce at the Saturday Farmers' Market and we were able to stop by the Thursday Farmers' Market to replenish.

on the other hand, putting so much planning into meals leads to excellent results. we've been eating wonderful, well-balanced, multi-course meals. this is partly because we probably chose the best month of the year to engage in this little eat-local exercise but also largely because we're just thinking so much about what we eat. not bad at all.