Eat Local, Eat Local, Eat Local

It's blog action day and bloggers are supposed to blog about the environment (caveat, thanks kelly for spotting it).

*okay, it WAS blog action day when I started drafting this...I'm late...but whatever...it's not like the environmental sustainability issues all got fixed yesterday... Caveat or not, I don't need to be eating cherries from Argentina or kiwi from New Zealand. That part I got down pretty good. But what about all the yogurt Ivano and I eat from breakfast? Is it grassfed sustainable yogurt or is it corn-fed, uber-industrial yogurt taxing both the cows and the land and the water supply? It turns out that we were doing good, eating Straus Family Creamery yogurt until about a month ago, when Trader Joe's did it's typical bait and switch. They replaced the Straus yogurt with a fake version. The graphic design on the tub is almost identical. But the source? I don't know. I am going to try to find out. But I seriously doubt it's the same high quality stuff coming from Straus.

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm almost done reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. And i'm all fired up about trying to eat more local and when I do eat animal products, to eat grass fed animals -- and eggs and dairy that come from grassfed animals. If you're interested in finding grassfed animal sources near you, check out http://www.eatwild.com/ And if you live in the DC area, i'm totally jealous of you right now, because you can join a buyer's club and get food directly from Polyface Farm. Email them at polyface AT ntelos DOT net and ask for the buyers club info. I hear the eggs are out of this world and there is no minimum order. The only bummer is that you have to be at the drop off point within a 30 minute window. I'm going to try to get my mom to get some food from there. Polyface is the farm that Pollan visits and dedicates about a third of his book to. It's grassfed farming that works (assuming what i've read is actually accurate). It touched something deep in me. It's more of how my grandparents used to farm and so different from how my uncles now farm.

In San Diego, eating local is a little tricky because it doesn't rain here, so there is not too much sustainable agriculture. I'd still like someone to help me figure out if it's better to eat locally grown food from San Diego county that relies on water from either the San Joaquim delta, the Colorado River and/or the melted snow pack from the Sierras (the mountains east and north of southern California), or to get food shipped in from some part of the world where getting water is not such a huge deal and environmental cost.

I did eat a local apple today (2 actually -- who eats just one local apple when you have a whole bag in your office?). I bought them at the campus farmer's market, which happens every Tuesday when school is in session. I forget the name of the apple, but it's small and green and similar to a Granny Smith. It's an heirloom variety (according to the farmer, who also almost didn't give me all three grapefruits I bought, so I'm not sure how reliable he is :) ) The reason I mention the apples is because the cold snap that killed so many of San Diego's avocados last winter did wonders for the local apple and persimmon crop. See, the stone fruits like periods of cold.

If you're not a persimmon eater, try them out. Ivano introduced them to me in Italy, where they grow all over the outskirts of Milan along the myriad railroad tracks. Picture industrial scense with broken terra cotta tiles atop old plaster walls, trees with no leaves loaded with orange objects. Not oranges. Some strange fruit. The tree silhouette is spooky and messy, not graceful. It's like Martha Stewart on acid doing set design for a Halloween kids show using misshapen plastic pumpkins and WAY TOO MUCH hot glue gun supplies.

What should I be for Halloween?