Another Shopping Binge and One Concession

After making my lunch of hominy and eggplant, I still felt very hungry -- even faint. So I decided to go buy more local food from Meadowfarm Foods and the Bluebird Gardens stand.

Usually I am a vegetarian, but I was so hungry, I decided this week I'd have to make some exceptions. I bought hamburger meat, locally grown and locally processed with no antibiotics or hormones. I also bought locally-made maple syrup and a head of garlic. This all added up to $14.60.

Still not satisfied, I went to the Bluebird Gardens stand by Kmart. I bought a half dozen ears of corn, another head of garlic, a dozen eggs, and a pumpkin which is supposed to work for pies. The total was $7. Quite a deal, I thought.

I fried some eggs as soon as I got home and put water on to boil for the corn. The eggs were so delicious -- better than any I can remember tasting. My corn on the cob was good too; I had two ears.

Protein is the key. Those eggs are a saving grace. But I still am having lots of cravings... I am seriously considering making chocolate one of my trade items.

100-Mile Diet Week | Inventory

I made a list of all the local edibles -- from the Farmer's Market, Bluebird Gardens, Native Harvest, and an Amish farm -- that exclusively represent my range of choices and ingredients for wood this week. I added to the list the trade items I've used so far: salt, sugar, olive oil, and lemon.

I'm not a natural cook -- I tend to graze throughout the day on a variety of individual food items eaten separately -- and so this diet poses a challenge. How do I transform a mound of local produce into enough satisfying meals for an entire week?

Keep in mind, my diet is limited to items that were grown, processed, packaged and sold within 100 miles of my apartment. That means homemade bread is off limits, unless I can find flour from grains that were grown, harvested, winnowed, and ground all within 100 miles.

So far, the only grains I have are wild rice and dried hominy. I have no sources of protein yet; I still have to investigate sources of local meat, eggs, and dairy. I have parsley and shiitake mushrooms for flavoring (yes, the mushrooms were produced within a hundred miles -- I saw the logs were they grew myself). For starches, I have two potatoes, an acorn squash, a spaghetti squash, and a sweet squash. For desert, I have watermelon. And then I have a ton of veggies: three bunches of kale, two bunches of Swiss chard, a bag of string beans, two regular cucumbers, two lemon cucumbers, and an eggplant. I bought a green tomato, too, but I ate that as soon as I got home to tide myself over while cooking lunch.

My task for this afternoon is to look examine my inventory carefully and plan out meals for the week.

First REALLY Local Meal

After getting back from the Farmer's Market in Detroit Lakes, I was starving. I wanted to do justice to my produce, though, and make a real meal instead of grazing a la carte, the way I usually do.

I took an onion and clove of garlic that I got a couple weeks ago from a local farm (Bluebird Gardens), grabbed olive oil from my cupboard, and decided to fry the hominy with onions and garlic. I fried the eggplant separately and put it on top.

The eggplant was delicious -- and I had purchased it for only 75 cents in Detroit Lakes! The hominy-onion mixture was not so good; the flavor was too overpowering. I thought it needed something acidic or tart, and I settled on adding lemon -- committing to that as my fourth trade item (10 trade items are allowed). It was a good choice; lemon juice significantly improved the dish.

100 Mile Diet Day 1 | Spending Binge

Breakfast was horrible: under-cooked hominy with a little homemade yogurt from my friend, Gretchen. I sweetened the yogurt with sugar (which I decided would be one of my ten allowed trade items). The hominy had been cooked with a little salt -- another trade item.

Hungry, I went to the Detroit Lakes Farmer's Market where I spent $31.25 on produce. Then, we went to an Amish farm where I spent an additional $6. For $37.25, I ended up with six big bags of locally-grown vegetables and two watermelons. Although the items felt expensive when I was forking over the cash, in perspective I realized I would be thrilled to get this amount of stuff for under $40 at Whole Foods. This loot, combined with hominy and wild rice from Native Harvest, will serve as my primary sustenance this week.

Countdown to 100 Mile Diet

Starting tomorrow (with breakfast) and for the next seven days, I have to limit my diet to foods grown, processed, and packaged within 100 miles of my apartment. Why? It's as assignment -- our whole class is doing it. And we're keeping a daily online diary of our local food experience, which I'm hoping will allow for some tips and consolation.

The philosophy behind the 100-mile diet is explained in a book and on the website, http://100milediet.org

The diet is supposedly inspired by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, who spent all of 2005 eating nothing but local foods.

I'm partially excited about the challenge, and partially anxious about having enough to eat. We're going shopping at the Detroit Lakes Farmer's Market tomorrow to stock up on locally-grown food, but part of our assignment is to scavenge for other local food sources by talking to neighbors, farmers, or surfing localdirt.com. It's not supposed to be as easy as one-stop shopping... It will take creativity, research, and initiative to scrounge up tasty local meals for an entire week.

The 7 days culminate with a pot-luck celebration, composed entirely of local foods (and local ingredients).

Tonight, I'm having a beer and making cookies... which tomorrow have to go in the freezer.

Welding and Wilderness

I started the day touring a conventional beef feeding lot, with the intention of identifying forage in the pastures that go unused by the fenced in cattle. It was raining, and our whole class got soaked wading in knee-high grasses while seeking out the elusive species of which we need samples.

This afternoon, I learned how to tie several knots, such as the reef knot, the clover hitch, and the sheet bend. Then, I got a quick lesson on welding and proceeded to weld rebar onto a metal rod that we were transforming into a coat hook. The professor offered to let me take the coat-rack to my apartment, since I welded much of it, but I declined -- so it will hang in our classroom.

After I got over my initial fear, it felt empowering to weld. I considered for about a minute looking for welding jobs in Fergus to finance my education.

I left class today with a jar of homemade yogurt and a crate of pears, which I assumed were grown locally and found out later came from Washington.

First Days in Fergus

I've been in Fergus Falls for 2 weeks now. Actually, I should say I've had my apartment for two weeks. I've probably spent just as much time in Minneapolis as I have in Fergus Falls lately.

I just completed my fifth day of class, and I'm amazed at how much I've learned. Today I drove a 4-stroke John Deer mower with a trailer attached; I practiced driving up and down hills, and "parking" the trailer by driving in reverse. This morning, I collected samples of several forage plants, including Kentucky bluegrass, alfalfa, timothy, sweet clover, smooth bromegrass, birdsfoot trefoil, and pea vetch. This afternoon, I learned about electric fencing and started designed an organizational system for a 12 foot trailer to hold the fencing supplies for the Sustainable Food Production program.

It was an odd feeling, passing by classrooms filled with students hunched over open textbooks while half-listening to the professor's Power Point presentation, while wearing rubber boots and carrying a bouquet of plants to press. Or walking by football practice to the back field where our class was sorting tools and fencing equipment, getting sunburned and eaten by mosquitoes.

This is not the kind of "school" I'm used to. It's so hands-on -- so practical. I feel like an idiot most of the time because I don't know the basics about farming or carpentry or mechanics, whereas most of my classmates do.

My book-learning has come in handy, though. Yesterday, when a grass-based beef farmer quizzed us about the source of all food, I provided the answer he was looking for: photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn sunlight into sugars.