By Dani Greer
Do you love cooking and eating foods from all over the world? My own tastes for the exotic were cultivated growing up in the military and traveling around the world as a child. Today, just about everything I ever tasted in foreign lands is easy to find in the United States. Whether we go to a restaurant or buy foreign ingredients from specialty shops in any major city, almost all cuisine is available to us at a relatively modest cost.
But about ten years ago, I started to seriously consider the impacts of food miles on the environment, and consciously made an effort to become a “locavore”, or a person who eats most of their food from sources within 100 miles. Because I live in the land-locked dead-center of the U.S., this seriously limits my food choices, especially in the winter months. Even the cheapest supermarket staples like bananas and tuna, I realized, were really luxury items despite costing less than a dollar each. Think about the enormous cost to the environment of getting these two foods to your door, and you’ll realize what I mean. So we had a shift in thinking and changed our ways. Tuna is now a holiday treat (which might appear on the table on Christmas Eve when my family traditionally eats fish), and a banana is no longer a standard ingredient in a daily fruit smoothie. Instead we use homemade yogurt from local cows milk and fruits grown within the state.
I love exotic spices in cooking, and if you learned about Marco Polo and the Silk Road in history class, you know that beyond salt and locally grown herbs, spices like black pepper, cinnamon, and turmeric (which makes your mustard yellow) were once highly prized imported treasures from Southeast Asia, and should be viewed in the same way today, at least when we put our eco-conscious hats on.
Some imports like spices, coffee, and chocolate are not foods I’d easily give up, so at my house we’ve devised a personal “Marco Polo” scheme in our kitchen. We try to grow or buy 80% of our food locally and seasonally, and put our long-distance food dollars into items we simply cannot grow here which include almost all spices. This way, we can still enjoy the flavors of the world at home using unique recipes, but without buying common staple foods that have been shipped from thousands of miles away. It’s all a matter of choosing recipes using foods we share with other cuisines. After all, foods like eggs, potatoes, cauliflower, yogurt, and beans, to name just a few, are eaten all over the world, but can be obtained locally almost everywhere. Just a few spices can spark up dishes using these ingredients and make you feel as though you’ve traveled to the Orient or to France, depending on which spice you’ve used. Add a little ethnic music, and voila, you’re at a Mediterranean café in spirit (and stomach!) if not in reality.
While we’re talking about global foods, we would like to share with you an event happening in Sausalito, California, on March 16th. It’s a cooking class presented in collaboration with ITK Culinary and Little Pickle Press called, What Does It Mean To Eat Globally? You’ll learn how to introduce new flavors and foods to children, as well as various cooking techniques. Learn how to create a global experience in your kitchen! For more information, click here or call 415.331.8766.
All participants of the class as well as you, dear blog readers, can start your global experience with Rana DiOrio's book, What Does It Mean To Be Global?, and get 25% off your entire purchase by using coupon code LPPITK at check-out.
What about your family? Do you enjoy global menus at home? What are your favorite cultures? Tomorrow we’ll share a few favorite recipes from around the world.
14 comments:
We are conscious locavores, but I'd like to get us to the 80% local/20% elsewhere standard. It is certainly much easier to achieve that goal in Northern California than where you live, Dani. As for introducing new flavors to the pickles, my children are currently infatuated with truffle salt. Try some (sparingly!) on your popcorn and test it yourself. Yum!
I love salt of every kind, but I do have to watch the intake, alas. Just as well as the only easy place to get something like truffle salt in my slice of the middle is amazon.com! I'll have to tell you the story sometime of our research into growing truffles ourselves. I'm probably one of the few people you know who actually have way too much info about this process. Including the only source of tree stock in the US. LOL.
Wow that sounds amazing!!! I would love to go to that class!!!
Sounds like a lot of fun! I will spread the word to all my mommy friends!
I like your approach, Dani. We try to be conscientious locovores, but organic olive oil is top of my must-haves, spices and Indian lentils come next, and hubby needs his coffee. Your 80/20 formula provides a good boundary, something to test against to make sure we don't stray into a mindless, lazy comfort zone.
I take advantage of local farm markets for veggies, and have zero tolerance for wasting food. But other than that I have to admit I'm not very conscious of the sources of my food. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Pat Bean
Olive oil is another one of those treats for me. I try to at least get in grown in the 49 states, but it's very difficult. Most is blended and imported. This summer, we plan to try growing oil sunflowers and pressing our own oil! There was a time when oil mills were common in most states, but that's become part of the factory farm model in the modern day. We cook with ghee a lot these days... made from local milk. It's all very interesting and much inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
49 states? LOL. How about two? California and Texas are two producers of olive oil that I know of - are there others?
Thanks, Dani, for this terrific reminder about the environmental costs of shipping food and the fact that we all share in the responsibility. I like the Marco Polo idea: eating 80% locally, and then spicing it up a bit. This is a great image that I'll share with my husband, and see if we can come to an agreement to use this thinking in our shopping. He's the one who does most of the cooking. Lucky me.
Thanks, Dani for this tasty little piece. I love your thinking... ~Land
What a concept--teaching children to eat globally! I followed the "try two bites" system, and it worked reasonably well. I gave my kid what he liked, but asked that he try two bites of an unfamiliar food. He'll try anything now, and enjoys learning about new foods.
After all that work, it seems a little sad to think that it's actually better to limit one's diet to foods grown locally. I see the point, but I mourn the diversity.
Yes, we've definitely been spoiled with diversity. Sometimes I think we have too many choices on an everyday basis. Simpler food fare during the week makes special cooking days more... well, special. It's probably also healthier and there are some compelling studies that show food allergies in children are connected to eating out of the immediate agricultural environment.
Really interesting post which makes so much sense. It's really hard to limit a diet to local foods, but I do love the summer and the farmer's market! We live on the coast and have plenty of opportunity for seafood.
Monti
NotesAlongTheWay
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