Since our move to this house almost a year ago, I’m still working to get a garden growing. Without the garden, I don’t have my usual stash of preserved foods so it’s quite a bit more difficult for me to produce a completely homegrown meal. We’re working on it, but we’re not there yet.
Instead of feeling unsuccessful at our attempts in better self-sufficiency, I’ve set a goal of including at least one ingredient from our yard/garden in every dinner I prepare. If that’s just not possible, I try to include something that’s been grown locally. It’s a small step, but one worth taking.
My family has come to expect my dinnertime report:
- Taco night: “The green onions and avocados came from the garden, the tomatoes are from the farmers market, and the beef is local and grass fed.”
- Pizza night: “The arugula, green onions, and basil came from the garden. The mushrooms are locally grown, from the farmers market.”
- Breakfast for dinner night: “The eggs are from our chickens and the sweet bread for the French toast is from Punalu‘u Bake Shop.”
It’s casual, not a boardroom style report, but it’s enough to make my family think regularly about where our food is coming from. In fact, when I served a vegetable stir fry last night, my eldest son beat me to the punch: “Are these snow peas from the garden?”
Why, yes dear. Yes they are.
In a “chasing butterflies” type of Internet exploration the other day, I ran across fellow writer Tamar Haspel’s blog, Starving off the Land where she posts regular reports as part of The Starving Challenge. “We’re trying to eat one food a day that we hunt or fish, gather or grow,” she writes. And I giggled when I read this post about the repetitive nature of her January meals in (cold) Cape Cod. I’ll be keeping an eye on Tamar’s successes!
What techniques do you use to make your family think about where their food comes from? Do you have anything growing in your yard right now that you can incorporate into your meals?
[...] written about our goal of including at least one locally produced ingredient in each of our dinners. As farmers market season kicks off in the USA and gardens begin to offer up [...]