In the past, I’ve had to indulge my nostalgia with classic movies from the 1940s. Most of those focus on the battles, which interest me not one little bit. I am far more intrigued by the determination, patriotism, and stamina of the homefront heroes — specifically, the women who held it all together during those dark days. The clothes are nice, too.

I’ve recently read several books that highlight the women who contributed so much to the Allied war effort, and I decided to share information about some of those books with the readers of this blog. (Most of these books have been or will be given to the young women I know who can use a reminder that females are capable of so much more than entering beauty pageants and snagging boyfriends. Honk if you think that’s important.) I’ve linked the titles to amazon.com for your clicking convenience, but I’m sure they are all available –or should be!– from your favorite bookseller.

Escape From Paris by Carolyn Hart – The story of two American sisters in Paris who help downed airmen escape from the Gestapo. Hart really captures the atmosphere of deprivation and terror that burdened the people of France during 1940, and she does a masterful job of showing us how ordinary people put themselves in danger to save others. This is actually one of Hart’s earlier books, but was first published with heavy editing (cut by almost half!). It’s now available in the complete version.

Miss Dimple Disappears by Mignon Ballard -The quiet little town of Elderberry, Georgia is still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor as Thanksgiving 1942 approaches. For the town’s Gold Star mothers, there is little to be thankful for, and for the rest of the town the constant threat of enemy attack and fear for their loved ones serving in the military casts a gloom that has little to do with autumn’s long nights. The war isn’t just over there, either; Elderberry is about to learn that there is just as much danger on the homefront as anywhere.

This is the first in a new series by Ballard, who works her literary magic once again.

Mare’s War by Tanita S Davis – You’ve probably heard of the Tuskeegee Airmen, but have you heard of the 6888^th, the African American battalion of the Women’s Army Corps? Thought not. This young adult novel is so smoothly written and so full of fact-based events and people that I couldn’t stop reading. It’s a perfect book for those snowy days when you want to curl up with cocoa and a great read.

Women Heroes of World War II by Kathryn J. Atwood – This is a nonfiction collection that tells the stories of women who were not part of an organized military effort but fought alongside their male counterparts in the Resistance movement or who simply did the right thing as individuals. From teen girls to world-famous celebrities, these are the women we want our daughters to emulate!

Nella Last’s War by Nella Last – Here’s the cover copy: “Writing each day for the “Mass Observation” project, Nella, a middle-aged housewife from the bombed town of Barrow [England], shows what people really felt during this time. This was the period in which she turned 50, saw her children leave home, and reviewed her life and her marriage – which she eventually compares to slavery. Her growing confidence as a result of her war work makes this a moving (though often comic) testimony, which, covering sex, death and fear of invasion, provides a new, unglamorised, female perspective on the war years.”

Nella doesn’t hold back! Her journal entries for the Mass Observation project are detailed and honest, from the gossip about neighbors and friends to her creative dinner menus. Most of all, it’s the genuine emotion infuses her diary that takes the reader right into the heart of Britain’s nightmare years.

This short list of books is my gift to you who share my fascination with and admiration for the everyday folks who are so often overlooked when we talk about war heroes. I know you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I did, and I hope you’ll pass them along to others who appreciate the spirit and sacrifice of that Greatest Generation.

Most readers of this blog are likely to understand why eating locally
raised, whole foods instead of processed and industrially manufactured
foods is best for individual health and economic vitality. Sometimes
we need to be reminded of those reasons and have them spelled out in
clear terms. Whether you just need a gentle reminder or you would like
to pass along an introductory primer to a friend or family member who
needs some convincing, here are the top 10 reasons why you should
never eat fast food again:

It’s Not Real Food

Fast food is a chemically created product that contains numerous
chemicals and preservatives. Even the “food” ingredients that it
contains — namely soy and corn — have been highly processed and
often genetically modified. This is slop that does not contain needed
nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.

It Contributes to Health Problems

The high fat, salt and sugar content of fast food has been shown to
lead to a number of adverse health outcomes including obesity,
diabetes and heart conditions. Fast food is also especially high in
trans fats, which have a more insidious impact on health.

Soy and Corn are the Primary Ingredients

In Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he tested a typical
fast food meal of a hamburger, fries, and soda and found that it was
comprised primarily of corn. Soy and corn are used to feed the
animals, make the oil to cook it and are used to make fillers to mix
with the food. Both of these are already grown in excess and have
shifted the market for farming.

It Supports Unsustainable Agriculture

Most fast-food companies get their ingredients from industrial farms
that are grown with harmful chemicals and pesticides and without
regard to the care and preservation of the land.

It Endangers Resources

Some fast-food companies have been found to purchase ingredients that
are grown in endangered or protected areas. For example, McDonald’s
gets soy-based feed that is grown in the Amazon rainforest to feed its
chickens.

It Encourages Overproduction of Meat

Hundreds of thousands of animals are grown each year for slaughter and
are grown quickly in poor conditions and without regard to the
sustainability of the land or the humane treatment of the animals.

Meat is Grown with Unhealthy Methods

Chickens and cows are fed corn- and soy-based feed — neither of which
is part of their natural diets — to make them grow fatter and
quicker, leading to health problems for the animals and those who eat
them. They are also fed hormones, to encourage growth, and antibiotics
to treat the inevitable health conditions that arise because of their
poor diets. All of this makes it into your meal when you choose to eat
fast food.

Poor Working Conditions

Poor conditions have been documented in slaughter houses and on farms,
including worker injury, over work and unsanitary conditions. Many
immigrants are employed in factories and slaughter houses and some
reports have suggested that they are paid poor wages, given poor or no
benefits and offered no protections (either for employment rights or
safety).

Companies Contribute to Overconsumption of Natural Resources

The growth of the vast quantities of meat and crops needed to create
the food and the transportation of that food to points around the
country and the world consumes excessive amounts of natural resources
like oil and produces harmful emissions.

What are some of the reasons that you avoid eating fast food in your
own life? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for
CollegeGrants.org. She has a bachelor’s degrees from the University of
Delaware, and has recently finished research on alabama
education grants and student
grants in california.

If you read this blog regularly, you are probably among the few sensible people who 1) didn’t plan to go shopping on Black Friday in the first place and 2) won’t go shopping on Thursday just because the sales are on.

In fact, if you read this blog regularly, your holiday shopping is minimal and already completed. You’ve pared your gift-giving list to immediate family and you recognize that gifts should be about the honest intent– not about the dollars spent.

But if the universe has conspired to interfere with your financially sound and efficient gift shopping this year, please keep this in mind:

SHOP LOCAL

In one of the most ironic twists outside of political campaigning, American Express is backing Small Business Saturday. They encourage us to shop at small, independently-owned shops on Saturday, November 26, 2011 — the day after most of the herd will have exhausted themselves in the malls.

Sure, it’s good for the small business owner to get an extra burst of sales. It’s good for the shopper, too! Build a relationship with your local shops and you’ll probably get some discounts you haven’t thought of. You’ll certainly get a stronger community, and you’ll contribute to the health of your local economy.

The bonus is that, when you’re shopping for gifts, the small local establishments are going to offer unique items, high-quality items, handcrafted items. This is where you’ll find gifts that will stand out and leave the recipients wide-eyed and appreciative.

Skip the mall madness and shop small and find gifts that embody the spirit of the artisan. And then, if you don’t mind, leave a comment here and tell me about the coolest item you found. (For me, it’s the new Scent Sticks from Totty’s Bend Farm)

If you’re a small business owner, be sure to include your town and state, so that visitors to this blog can find you.

Friends and family are not entirely helpless, however. There are things you can do to help an abuse victim.

• Believe her.

• Trust her to make the right choice. She knows her situation better than anyone, and if she chooses to stay with the abuser, she has reasons for doing that. Only she can know when she’s ready to leave.

• Stress safety. Help her create a safety plan for herself and the children. Make her aware that her computer and cell phone activity can be traced. Help her develop a signal, an escape route, or other plans of action to use in an emergency.

• Help her to understand that the abuse is not her fault. She does not deserve it and she does not bring it on herself. Abusers alone are responsible for the harm they do.

• Stay in touch. Abusers often isolate their victims from anyone who may support or help the victim. She may feel pressured to stop visiting or calling you. If that is the case, you can still visit or call her. Knowing that you are there can make all the difference in her efforts to end the abuse, even though she may not tell you so.

• DO NOT tell the victim what to do. Remember — she already has someone trying to control her thoughts and actions. What she needs from you is support and understanding.

• Protect yourself. Never go into a situation that you believe may be dangerous.

The more you know about the dynamics of domestic violence, the more you will be able to help. Your local DV shelter almost certainly has training for volunteers and they will probably be happy to let you participate even if you don’t want to join their volunteer program.

To find the shelter nearest you, call the National DV Hotline :

1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

Domestic violence is one small part of a greater culture of violence. If you want to make a difference, you can work to end all violence in whatever way is best suited to you — through donations, volunteering, or simply by eliminating violent acts and words from your own life.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Salvor Hardin

Batterers often isolate their victims from friends and family, sometimes from the entire world. Victims may be literally locked in their homes without transportation or telephones, with no way at all to communicate.

Other victims of violence appear to have all the freedom in the world — they attend church, hold jobs, socialize– and yet they, too, feel that they can’t escape the abuse.

The dynamics of domestic violence are more complicated than I can explain in a single blog entry, but the Women Are Safe website contains a lot of information that can clear up questions.

Here, though, is a simple but critical piece of information: Domestic violence shelter programs are bound by confidentiality. If you call the hotline number or speak to an advocate in person, everything that you say will be kept private. No details about you or your situation will be shared with anyone outside the program.

If you’re a victim, please call and talk to someone about your situation. Even if you don’t feel that you need shelter or support groups, just talking to an advocate on the crisis line may help you to better understand what is happening.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline can put you in touch with the domestic violence shelter program nearest you:

1 -800 – 799 – SAFE (7233)

1- 800 – 787 – 3224 (TTY)

A lot of people do know the problem exists, but there are so many myths and misunderstandings surrounding domestic violence that the real answers get lost. (Let me point out that both women and men are victims of domestic violence. The thing is, the great majority of victims are women and so we use the feminine pronoun. It’s simpler, but it is certainly not intended to exclude men.)

Instead of asking Why doesn’t she leave?, the question we should be asking is Why doesn’t HE leave? As has been pointed out many times, until we hold the abuser responsible for his crime, no progress will be made.

But if you insist on knowing why she stays with him in spite of the injuries to her body, to her mind, to her soul, here’s the short version:

• She has nowhere else to go
• She has no money, no job, and no way to support herself and her children

• She fears he will take her children
• She has no support from family, friends, or church
• She believes she is over reacting to the violence

• She can’t believe that the man she loves would really hurt her
• She believes his apologies and his promises that it won’t happen again
  

• She believes his excuse that drugs and/or alcohol make him violent 
• She believes his excuse that he loves her so much he just can’t help hitting her

All of these are very real and very good reasons in the mind of a victim of domestic violence for staying put. Her feelings and her situation are far more complicated than any outsider can understand or than she can explain.

There’s one very simple and understandable reason that she stays: Victims of domestic violence are far more likely to be killed after leaving the situation.

Domestic violence is about power and control. When an abuser senses that he has lost control of his victim, that his power is waning — that is, when she takes charge of her own life and leaves the violence behind– the abuser gets scared, angry, desperate. That’s when he presents the greatest danger to his victim.

It is pointless and heartless to ask why a victim doesn’t stop being a victim. Instead, let’s all ask How can I help?

Domestic violence is considerably more complicated than that. It’s also a lot harder to spot than many think. On this first day of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, please take a moment to read my earlier post When is it domestic violence?

Want to help get the word out that victims have a safe place to go? That abuse is not normal nor acceptable? Here’s a replay from one of my earlier posts that might interest you: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

For almost all of human existence, family farms fed the world as a matter of course. Times have changed, though; the population has exploded, fewer households grow their own food. Is it possible to grow enough food to feed the nearly 7 billion people on this planet using sustainable practices?

The answer is yes, but… drastic and immediate change of strategy and perception is required.

The World Watch Institute, a non-profit agency dedicated to promoting an environmentally sustainable society, focused its 2011 State of the World report on the problem of hunger and innovative solutions to solve that problem. In the foreword, Olivier De Schutter writes:

“We live in a world in which we produce more food than ever before and in which the hungry have never been as many.” As it turns out, we are quite adept at producing food, but our delivery system fails on a grand scale.

What happens to that glorious abundance of food? Jonathan Bloom author of American Wasteland, reports that “Americans waste more than 40 percent of the food we produce for consumption.” It’s tossed out because it isn’t perfectly round or perfectly red, much of it rots in storage while waiting to be delivered to hungry people, or it rots during transport across continents and oceans. The obvious course correction is to return to a local-food system; in other words, eat it where it’s grown.

State of the World 2011 reports on a number of strategies aimed at eliminating hunger through just this sort of local strategy. The One Acre Fund, founded in 2006, provides rural farmers in Kenya and Rwanda with resources to help them grow enough food to feed their families with surplus to sell. “After one growing season, Kenyan farmer Lydia Musila sold enough beans to build herself a new house.” Others sent children to school, purchased livestock, and increased the ability for local growers to become self-reliant.

In Kenya, produce grown by students in school gardens is used for school meals while any surplus is made available for local families. These gardens not only produce healthy and fresh food, but contribute to the success of communities in a myriad of ways: knowledge of gardening skills is passed on to younger generations, awareness of local food is encouraged, entire communities learn sustainable use of soil, and everyone gains respect for the environment.

But what about urban areas? Can growing a tomato plant on a balcony or in a postage stamp-size yard really make a difference in the fight against hunger? In Africa and Asia, surveys have shown that people involved in growing at least some of their own food ate more meals and had more balanced diets. According to State of the World 2011, “Children in farming households were better nourished than those in non-farming households….” And “By growing their own food, city dwellers gain an important source of employment and income that can be spent on school fees, clothes, and household necessities.” It’s estimated that approximately 800 million people are producing 15-20% of the world’s food.

Some of us grew up with the admonition to clean our plates because children in third world countries were starving, and we wondered how eating lima beans in Illinois or Montana made anything better for kids in countries on the far side of the world. What our mothers really meant was Don’t waste that food; you’re lucky to eat three meals a day because lots of people don’t even eat once a day. As it turns out, the lesson still waits to be learned.

We know the current system does not work. We have examples like Kenya to prove that locally grown crops and sustainable practices can feed the village as well as support a healthy local economy. How long do we have to watch failure before we change course? What can we do to transition to a sustainable and workable system of food delivery?

• Break it down to the basic unit — the village, the community, the neighborhood, the backyard.
• Recognize that there is an abundance of food; we don’t need more factory farms or genetically modified organisms; we need more efficient distribution and recognition of of the importance of nutrients over calories.
• Recognize that nothing is more efficient than eating it where it’s grown
• Eliminate spoilage and waste by going local
• Return to traditional organic methods, plus innovation sustainable practices like permaculture and microfarming
• Use biodiversity as insurance against blight
• Remember that smaller amounts of nutrient-dense food nourishes and fills better than excessive consumption of artificial fillers
• Recognize that a significant percentage of food cost is transportation
• Remember that soil is the foundation

“What is she talking about?” you city folks ask.

The annual fair is a cornerstone of small town and country life. There’s always the Midway — that long stretch of property filled with roller coasters and other rides that bring you to the brink of adrenaline depletion as well as games of chance and all manner of food that no one should put into their bodies — cotton candy (yum!) and the delights of the year such as deep-fried Kool Aid.

Over in the ag area, you’ll find pigs and cows and goats and chickens. FFA and 4H students raise these animals from infancy and enter them in the fair hoping to win the blue ribbon. (You remember Charlotte’s Web, right? Think ‘Wilber.’)

And then there are the domestic entries, which is where I’m placing my hopes. Categories range from arts and crafts to knitting and sewing, from baked goods to houseplants, from eggs to giant pumpkins.

I’ve got my goods lined up on the table in my office — a crocheted lavender vest, a daffodil yellow crocheted baby sweater and cap, jams and jellies, pickled okra, handmade jewelry. At the last minute, I’ll gather the most perfect peas and okra from my garden, the ideal eggs from the chicken coop, and I’ll bake a cake. Once I’ve delivered them to the fairgrounds, I can only sit back and hope that the judges are sufficiently impressed to award me a ribbon. I don’t even care whether it’s blue, just please don’t let me embarrass myself!

Provided that my domestic arts receive good marks at the fair, I’ll donate them to a United Way fundraiser that’s coming up in a few weeks where they will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. (Not the cake, of course.)

So wish me luck, please. If you’re in the area, drop by the exhibits and see how I did. If you notice that I don’t have any ribbons, feel free to grumble loudly about the injustice of it all.

Her article, entitled “Homeland Food Insecurity and Down-to-the-ground Food Activism” came along  just as I was wrapping up my month of local eating, and it is an excellent summation of the food and nutrition issues we face.  If you can get your hands on a copy of this issue, I urge you to read the entire article.

A sidebar contains Stafne’s “30 Ways To Get Involved in the Ground Foodie Movement”, and with her kind permission, I’m including that here:

• Buy from organic farms

• Purchase food shares, join a CSA

• Get active with a local food co-op

• Visit and support farmers markets

• Eat whole foods & local produce

• Shop for value-added products

• Donate healthy food to the Food Pantry

• Serve up meals at Community Kitchens

• Transform the menu to include local food and organics

• Schools, colleges, nursing homes, employer food services

• Eat out at locavore food establishments

• Host events with local organic caterers

• Read what food bloogers are saying

• Transform your backyard: food not lawns

• Grow anarchist plots: guerilla garden

• Restore native plants

• Grow a medicinal herb garden

• Take a wild edibles or weed wealk with the local herbalist

• Volunteer to co-create gardens with kids

• Shop local, grow community economy

• Save seeds (heirloom, non-GMO, native)

• Preserve culturally diverse heritages & traditions

• Be active in the small farm revival

• Support biodiversity, organics, permaculture, biomimicry projects

• Support urban agriculture

• Volunteer at a prison garden

• Build raised beds for elderly neighbors

• Become a wild forager!

• Ensure egalitarian access to whole foods

• Join a food justice organization

It’s gone well. I haven’t adopted a single critter, largely because I know  this is an excellent shelter that will do whatever it takes to find good homes for the animals. None of that ‘three days and they’re sent to the farm’ stuff around here, no sirree. The animals stay as long as they reasonably can (some stay for months!) and many of them move on to rescue groups where they are adopted by loving families. This week, in fact, the shelter staff received a pic of one of their former dogs enjoying a cruise on his yacht!

Every time I go there, I learn something new. I’ve learned that there are two different kinds of mange, that nursing mama cats will happily take on a motherless 2-week-old kitten, and I’ve learned that some people think it is appropriate to drive around with a dog in the car trunk.

This week I decided that I can be trusted to foster animals. That just means taking a shelter animal to my home for a few days to give it a break from the shelter and to help it gain socialization skills with different humans and other animals.

See that adorable face in the pic? That’s one of the triplets who are visiting me this weekend. They’re four months old and totally laid back. I’m calling them Bashful, Sleepy, and Chubby  but when they go to their new adoptive homes they’ll probably receive new names. I’m sure they don’t care what they’re called; as I said, they’re laid back.

I’ll bet you’ve often thought that you’d like to help those sweet babies at the animal shelter but you just don’t have room for a new dog or you’re not home enough to care for an animal or the cat you already have is too old to accept a new step-sibling.

But have you considered fostering? Have you considered donating food to your local shelter? Have you considered volunteering to walk dogs and play with kittens at the shelter?

See? The title of this post is not just pretty words to lure you in. You really can improve your karma while having fun and doing something you enjoy. If you decide to give it a try, please share your stories here.

Last year I shared my recipe for Cinnamon Pickle. I’m fully stocked on that now, and I will not want for Bread and Butter Pickle, either. Still the cucumbers sprout. The bell peppers are keeping up with them, too, so I went looking for a new way to use the bounty.

I found a recipe for Amber Relish, tweaked it just a bit, and came up with a mouth-watering accompaniment to beans, peas, or whatever else lands on my plate.

I don’t have a name for this variation, but suggestions are welcomed.

Deb’s Experimental Relish

• 12 ripe cucumbers, grated

• 6 large bell peppers, diced

• 1 onion, diced

• 1/2 cup salt

• water

• 1 quart cider vinegar

• 2 cups sugar

• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon ground mustard

• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

• 1 Tablespoon turmeric

• 2 Tablespoons curry powder

Combine the cukes, onions, and peppers in a bowl. Add salt and enough water to cover. Let stand 1 hour then drain off brine.

Boil vinegar, sugar, and spices together for 20 minutes.

Add vegetables and cook slowly until tender.

Pack hot into clean, hot jars. Seal.

Process in simmering water bath for 10 minutes.

Enjoy.

I’m sharing this post on the Weekend Gourmet Blog Carnival, where you can also find links to other fabulous REAL food recipes.

Oh, there was coffee first thing this morning, but it didn’t taste as good as I remember. There was whole wheat toast with butter.

Lunch, however, will be a different matter. In anticipation of the end of my 100 Mile Diet Challenge for July, I picked up organic baby spring mix greens. I’ll have it with cucumbers from my garden and the last of the feta from Bonnie Blue Farms.

Tomatoes are ripening faster than I can keep up with them (the Vorlons have arrived, Julie!) so while I’m cooking up marinara for the cupboard shelves, I’ll keep a little aside to have with my whole wheat pasta this evening.

Throughout my month of local eating, I made mental notes about my meals for this first day without restrictions. Cake with buttercream frosting for breakfast. Fried cheese sticks. A glass full of refined white sugar as a snack.

And now I don’t want those things. My body rather enjoys feeling clean and healthy, and it’s lobbying for more fresh local food. Not all the time, of course. One day soon I’m going to hit Waverly Cafe for some of the to-die-for carrot cake.

At this point, though, I anticipate changes. I see more organic food, including coffee, in my life. I expect that coffee to be strictly a breakfast thing, with rare exceptions (see Waverly Cafe, above). And refined white sugar and flour? Not so much.

Honestly, I didn’t expect a single month of local food to have much impact on my life, but I got that wrong. The simple act of paying attention to every bite I ate has made me more aware of the need for keeping small farmers in business, and for educating others about the joy of real food.

I hope some of you are inspired to give this a try for yourselves. If you do, I hope you’ll share your thoughts here. Even if you don’t go all local, all the time, I hope you’ll get out to the farmers market now and then, show some love for the folks who feed you, and maybe try your hand at a tomato plant on the balcony.

I could’ve been enjoying coffee all month!

You can read Louise’s review of the book on her blog.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, Louise!

Several years ago I noticed a pretty fungus had sprung up in my back yard in late April. Year after year I would see it there and think, “That’s beautiful!” then go about my business.

I finally realized that it was actually a mushroom and because it was so distinctive, I decided to hit the internet to identify it. Several experts assured me that it was a Hen of the Woods and perfectly edible. (One of the experts warned me that some people develop numbness in their lips after eating the Hen. Now you’ve been warned, too.) It’s called a Hen not because it tastes like chicken, but because it has the texture of cooked chicken breast.

Every year in late spring I would watch for my Hen to reappear. Sometimes I added it to stir fry, sometimes I sauteed it and ate it with mustard on a biscuit.

This year the Hen didn’t arrive until July. I suppose it has something to do with climate change. Whatever the reason, I was thrilled that its sprouting coincided with my Local Eating Month!

Eating locally not only makes me more aware of the food that is grown in my area — it also reminds me that food should never never never be wasted. (Believe me, when you’ve shucked and de-silked 40 ears of corn, every kernel is precious!)

On the day of the Hen, I happened to have some potatoes and carrots that needed to be used. I sliced all of those things together with some onion and garlic, tossed them in olive oil, added a pinch of salt, and roasted them together in a cast iron skillet at 400 degrees until everything looked … done.

Served up with sourdough whole wheat French bread slathered with Amish butter, it turned out to be one of the most satisfying and tasty meals I’ve had so far this month.

Winging it in the kitchen works for me.

Meanwhile my own garden is coming in and some days entire meals come from the backyard. (Yesterday it was pinto beans, creamed corn, and rosemary potatoes.)

But after 21+ days, I woke up one morning and thought No more vegetables!

It was local pizza time, and it turned out perfectly on the first try. Here’s the recipe I used:

Sourdough Pizza Dough

• 1 1/2 cups  sourdough starter

• 1 T olive oil

• 1 t salt

• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

I put the ingredients into the bread machine and used the ‘dough’ setting. If you enjoy kneading, go right ahead and do that.

When the machine had done its job, I rolled out the dough onto my pizza pan and left it alone for about 15 minutes. Then I baked the crust for 5 minutes at 425 degrees.

While all that was going on, I cooked up some sauce from local ingredients.

Local Tomato Sauce

• Italian Noire tomatoes, chopped

• green bell pepper, diced

• small banana pepper

• 2 garlic cloves, minced

• 1/4 cup onion, diced

• pinch of salt

Cook the lot of it until it’s tender. Strain through cheesecloth, then puree in food processer.

Return to heat and add oregano and basil. Simmer for a half hour or so.

Spread the sauce on pizza crust, top with feta cheese from Bonnie Blue Farms.

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.

The herbs came from my backyard, of course. Normally I dry them for use throughout the year, but this time I happened to have some fresh basil in the kitchen. Back in January, Mary Saums gifted me with this amazing little Herb Keeper which has turned out to be the second greatest convenience in my kitchen (after running water).

David and April Harrison, Honeysuckle Acres -- find them at www.dicksonfarmersmarket.com

Honeysuckle Acres positioned their board perfectly! Note how it is directly underneath the Pick Tennessee promotion.

I’ve mentioned in this blog that readers can find their own local food by going to localharvest.org to search for farms, farmers markets, and other places by zip code.

Those of you in Tennessee also have the PickTNProducts website to help you locate sources of fresh locally grown produce, dairy products, honey, and specialty items.

If you’re a meat eater, beef and other animal products can also be found there. You know, if you’re going to eat meat, it’s best to know where it comes from and how it was slaughtered. It’s in your own best interest to ‘shake the hand that feeds you.’

Berry Farms is another of the vendors I found at the Dickson County Farmers Market. It’s really a full service farm, too! They offer corn mazes, fall decorations, pumpkins, hayrides, and a load of other activities. Their farm is also available for field trips, so why not let the little ones have some hands-on experience with real food? If you don’t live near Dickson County, check Local Harvest; I’ll bet there’s a nice farmer near you who would gladly welcome an opportunity to show off the crops and livestock.

And next we have the Pangles:

As you can see, they have produce for sale, but they are also the only shitake growers locally (so far as I know).

Mushroom lovers are probably drooling over this. While I don’t despise mushrooms, I also don’t like them well enough to pay for them. It’s fungus, after all, not food. (Watch for my upcoming post about my wild mushroom dinner).

The Pangles and I had a hearty conversation about politics. I am a hopeless liberal, they are leaders of our local Tea Party. The odd thing about our discussion was that we agreed on everything except whether or not I really am a liberal.

This is what happens at farmers markets all over the country. People meet, they talk, they share recipes and ideas, they argue politics, they inspire each other, they build community. Isn’t it amazing that food — plain simple food– has the power to create all this?

“Taking care of the land is our passion. To leave it better than when we purchased it.”

It’s not just about making money, you see. Passion and purpose are key ingredients in their produce.

Now. Take a look at that odd little veggie on the left. That’s kohlrabi. I’d heard of it but never met one in person until I encountered these at the market. I’m pretty sure it was this lady

who gave me 101 ways to use kohlrabi. Because I like simple, I went for this one:

Kohlrabi Oven Fries

Peel kohlrabi and julienne. Toss with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt. Bake at 400 degrees until tender.

I ate these fries all by themselves, but if my plums had been ripe at the time, I’d probably have made a plum catsup for dipping.

While I was learning about kohlrabi, another customer was inspecting the yellow squash. She mentioned that she cuts up squash and onions, then scrambles it all up with her eggs. Sounded like a good idea to me, so I tried it last night for dinner (I also scrambled in some Italian Noire cherry tomatoes, cut into halves)

The Cottons fill their booth with veggies grown from plants they start in their own greenhouse, and they dress it up with flower creations by Susan. They don’t use harsh chemicals on their gardens. Like almost everyone you meet at the farmers market, they understand that whatever goes on the plants and into the soil also goes into the body.

A friend recently told me about some nutrition bars that she ordered from California. She said she felt a bit guilty about that in light of my local eating experiment, BUT that she got to choose the ingredients in her customized bars.

But she has the spirit, doesn’t she? She is aware of what she’s eating, and taking steps to make sure that she knows the ingredients. That’s one of the lessons of this 100 Mile Diet Challenge — learning to pay attention to what we put into our bodies. Recognizing the difference between fresh, nutritious food and chemicals that simulate food.

Earlier I suggested that a first step toward eating local might be to make out a menu and figure out where you’d get the local ingredients. Now I’m thinking that might be the second step.

Why not start by simply reading the list of ingredients on every food you eat this week? Jot down the ones you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce. Think about whether you really want to eat them. Just be aware of what you’re feeding yourself and your family.

I woke up early one Tuesday morning in July and decided to hit the farmers markets in West Tennessee. Starting in Paris, I picked up sweet corn, bell peppers, and a mighty onion. I was in full-blown local food mode by then, so I turned my little red car around and headed to Huntingdon, where the flea market offers a little of everything. My great hope was that I’d find local butter and milk there, although I knew it was a long shot.

As I drove through Bruceton, I passed Robison’s peach stand and slammed on the brakes. The peach harvest is reported to be a bad one this year, and I believe it because the well-known local peach growers weren’t stationed along Main Street as they usually are. I’d almost gotten used to the idea that I’d have no peaches to see me through the year, and then lo! the Robisons brought joy into my life.

The scent of fresh peaches filled the car as I drove on to Huntingdon. I was practically giddy, so delighted with those peaches that I hardly cared anymore about the dairy products. I picked up an assortment of yummies, including roasted peanuts and blackberries. Stopped to admire the many chickens, bunnies, and turkeys for sale. Considered buying a few pieces of antique cast iron cookware but thought better of that (I have tons already!)

And then….
Yes, my friends. The sign on the cooler announces that there is Homemade Butter for sale!

And this is how it all came together…

Local Food Peach Cobbler

• Peel and slice peaches into an oven-proof dish

Mix together until crumbly:

• 1 cup whole wheat pancake flour

• 1/4 lb. butter

• 1/4 cup paneer

• 1/2 cup honey

Top the peaches with the flour mixture. Bake at 350 degrees about 40 minutes (until the crust is golden brown)

My haul for the day

It’s all part of the local experience, and the easiest way I’ve found to do my holiday shopping. I don’t know anyone who really needs another gadget from the superstore. Whenever possible, then, I give friends and family inexpensive but meaningful items that are handmade, well-made, fairly traded, or all of the above.

While my shopping this month is devoted to local food, I’ve lined up some excellent sources for future purchases. For example:

Three Creeks Farm

Three Creeks Farm in Middle Tennessee raises sheep and veggies. As you can see, the sheep wool is spun on site and turned into the most beautiful yarn you can imagine. Blacksmithing is also a Three Creeks Farm service. Tell the truth — when did you last see a blacksmith at work in the mall?

Cinnamon cranberry bread from Rocky Top Farm

See that pile of bread made with love by Mrs. Buckner of Rocky Top Farm? I overheard her saying that she’d made 60 loaves that week. There’s a reason the pile disappeared so quickly — it’s the best cinnamon-cranberry bread I’ve ever had in my life! Can’t buy that at any supermarket.

See that lonely little bunch of carrots? I took them home and they were sweet and crunchy and everything a carrot should be. Not the cardboard months-old replicas that come in a plastic bag.

The flowers are stressing me out, though. They’re magnificent, aren’t they? I could have stared at them all day. The trouble is that, with so much to enjoy at the market, I got a little fuzzy toward the end and can’t remember whether it was Mrs. Buckner who grew these beauties or  Susan from Cotton’s Produce. (This just in – Sandy Buckner grew the flowers!)

Next time I’ll take an assistant with me when I visit this market, so that I can gawk while someone else takes the notes.

Wherever you live, there’s almost certainly a market near you. Try Local Harvest to find out where all the cool farmers and artisans hang out. Take pics, take notes, and take home a reusable bag full of food and gifts for others as well as for yourself.

This is local!

When the always analytical Outlaw Farmer heard that I was going to eat only local food for a month, she immediately asked, “What’s local?” The answer is not as simple as I’d initially imagined.

My chickens are local, therefore their eggs must be local. But the chicken feed they eat comes in a bag from a farm supply store that gets it from … who knows where? So are the eggs local?

The plants in my garden are grown locally, but from seed saved from last year’s plants which grew from seed saved from the previous year’s plants which grew from seed I ordered from Baker Creek Heirlooms. Is this year’s crop ‘local’ food?

On the first morning in July, I ran smack into another dilemma: is my multivitamin local? Surely not. Does it count as food?

While I’ve chosen to define local food as anything grown within 100 miles of my home, we can all recognize that this is an arbitrary circumference. I could as easily have decided on 250 miles or 50 miles. It isn’t the distance that matters, at least not for my purposes.

J B Crowder

My point, my goal, my reason for setting limitations on my menu for a month doesn’t depend upon a map. The challenge is to find out just what is available nearby, to meet small farmers and artisans who would otherwise pass right under my radar, to get acquainted with seasonal eating, to turn my routine upside down, and to test my own ability to appreciate true food as close to its natural state as possible.

One of the great surprises I’ve encountered is the sheer number of people, young and old, who are maintaining the tradition of the American farmer. Some, like Mr. Crowder, have gardened all their lives. Others, like Wendi Work, have only recently discovered that they have it in them to be earth goddesses. None of them need to take the 100 Mile Diet Challenge in order to figure out where their food comes from; they know intuitively that what is local is healthier — for bodies, for communities, for economies.

Simple Dessert

Sweet potatoes

Wrap sweet potatoes individually in foil and bake at 375 degrees until tender (about 1 hour). Peel and eat.

This morning, a Daily Mail report appears on the Food Freedom website about a Michigan woman who has been charged with a misdemeanor and faces as much as 3 months of jail time for growing vegetables in her front yard — because the city code requires front yards to be ‘suitable,’ and apparently that means they should grow only grass.

We are a nation that prides itself on rugged individualism. We like to boast of our Constitution and Bill of Rights that protect and even encourage independence of spirit, freedom of expression, and self-reliance. At the same times, laws and codes exist to punish those who don’t wear the uniform of the masses.

In Michigan we have a woman who is taking sensible steps to provide healthy food for her family by growing it herself. In the process, she and her family exhibit the traits that we like to think of as ‘all-American’ — self-sufficiency, hard work, and appreciation for the land and its bounty.

The city wants her to hide her fresh produce behind a house or a fence; they are uncomfortable with the explicit nature of agriculture, offended by the sight of genuine food displayed for anyone to see. The City Planner wants a uniform appearance to front yards — nice and grassy, with no hint of real life spilling out.

I wonder if this same city is offended by our nation’s health crisis and by the shocking number of grossly obese children and adults who live on processed substances instead of real food.

When I first decided to try the local eating experiment, I immediately put coffee on my Exception List. That was back in the days of wide-eyed innocence, when I truly thought I was self-sufficient, when I was sure that my cupboard full of homegrown and preserved food would be more than enough, when I was still blissfully ignorant of the laws that govern us.

Because I wanted to be the perfect locavore, I was determined to have only that one thing – coffee- on my Exception List. Then I remembered that bread (I found the local wheat and got around the yeast issue by turning to sourdough) needs salt.

Add that to the Exception List and reluctantly give up coffee.

This sacrifice was not nearly as painful as I’d expected. I weaned myself slowly by having coffee only before noon for a month, then only for breakfast the next month. By May I was caffeine free, but filling in the blank with Lemon Zinger and Mandarin Orange Spice herb teas. Neither of which is locally produced.

For July, then, I needed a local source of herbs for making tea. Now I grow herbs — lavendar, thyme, oregano, basil, sage, cilantro, lemon balm. The trouble is that I don’t like herb tea. I tolerate it, but not so well that I’d enjoy a steaming cup of sage and cilantro tea for breakfast.

Uncle D pointed me to his wife, Aunt Rose, who loves and grows herbs. Rose suggested that I try simple peppermint tea, and that just might work. I’d intended to buy a peppermint plant from her when I ran into them at the Dickson County Farmers Market. Wouldn’t you know they’d be absent on the day I was there?

At the 11th hour, I discovered another herb source — a lady nearby who grows herbs and dries herbs. I contacted her immediately and asked if I could buy a few herb tea blends from here. (Note: whenever possible, I prefer to let someone else do the work.) The answer, however, is No. It’s illegal for her to sell herb tea blends because she doesn’t yet have a certified kitchen.

She can sell me the individual dried herbs, but she’d spend the rest of her life in prison, I suppose, if the FDA found out she’d actually mixed a couple of them together and sold them for consumption. If you thought I went on a rant about milk, just imagine my reaction to this piece of legislative nonsense!

In the end, I decided that tea was not worth the frustration, time, travel, and effort. I made up my own breakfast drink — a cup of hot water with a half teaspoon of blackstrap molasses stirred in.

This is why eating locally is such an eye-opener, folks. My breakfast drink is pretty good. Oh, it’s not Dancing Goat, but it works. Obviously I’d never have tried it if I hadn’t chosen to shake up my routine, but like so many other things (wait ’til I tell you about kohlrabi fries) my cuppa molasses is the result of breaking out of habits and opening up to bizarre possibilities.

That’s more than half the point of my 100 Mile Diet Challenge. Well worth the sacrifice of blessed coffee, at least for another month.

My haul from the farmers market

Because of an extraordinarily wet spring, many gardens got drowned or, at the very least, were planted late. The farmers market here in my own town hasn’t opened yet and no one is willing to assure me that it will open at all this year.There are a couple of roadside stands that appear now and then, but they aren’t there every day or even every week.

Knowing that my own garden won’t come in for a few more weeks, I made a trip to the next county over to stock up.I made it a point to purchase some sort of food at every booth that offered food (nix on the craft items, the wool yarn, and the blacksmith’s offerings, but there will be more about them later.)

Serena from New American Farms gives away free smiles

Since ‘free’ is my favorite price, I picked up a smile from Serena at the New American Farm booth; and since I wanted to support all the farmers present, I also purchased for a reasonable price some of her zucchini.

When I told Serena about my local eating experiment, she mentioned that she eats local food on Sundays. What a great idea! And it’s something many of you may want to try, as well.

New American Farm doesn’t have a website yet, but they’re working on it. (Just as writers are expected to spend half their lives marketing their books, farmers also have to waste devote precious hours to marketing their wares.)

Honestly, though, I can’t imagine a better form of advertisement than showing up at the market, giving away free smiles, and becoming acquainted with the customers. When’s the last time a superstore clerk smiled at you before you bought a single thing, listened to your story about why you were in the store, and graciously volunteered information about the available items, how to use them, and where to find items not available in that store?

New American Farm was only one of the vendors at the market that day, and I’ll be posting pics and stories about all the others before this month is finished. I want you to get to know these fine folks, too.

So let’s kick off this month with a simple recipe using local ingredients. I don’t think there’s a name for this, but it involves:

ZUCCHINI and OTHER STUFF

Slice zucchni, onions, yellow squash, garlic, bell pepper (or banana pepper or hot pepper). Put a dab of olive oil into an iron skillet and heat it. Then toss in the veggies and saute until they’re tender. Season with salt, basil, or whatever herb is locally grown and handy.

For 30 days in July, I’ll be eating only food that is grown within 100 miles of my home. This challenge was inspired by the book Plenty, the story of Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s year of eating local, and by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver’s diary of her family’s local eating experiment.

There are no rules, other than the ones that Challengees set for themselves. Unless you live in that tiny sweet spot where all foods are available 365 days a year, you’ll probably want to have an Exception List — that is, a few foods that are not grown locally but that you cannot or will not do without.

My Exception List:

• salt
• vinegar
• olive oil
• (semi-exception)butter and cheddar cheese that my son gave me. These are both all natural and made within 500 miles of my home

Update: Found local butter!

I have other items on hand — canned and frozen veggies and fruit, local honey and sorghum, pecans, and eggs from my little cluckers. And of course, I’ll be looking to local small farmers for more food as it becomes available.

While the rest of the family chowed down on grilled burgers and dogs to celebrate the 4th of July (which we actually did on the 2nd of July), I enjoyed a plate of purple hull peas, mixed veggies sauteed in olive oil, and homemade sourdough bread made from flour I picked up at Readyville Mill.

Dessert was a monstrous yellow watermelon. I was going to share a pic of that, neatly sliced into crescents, but it slipped out of my hands as I was bringing it up the back steps. Still tasted delicious, but there was nothing neat about its appearance.

When we’d eaten all we could fit into our bellies, I pureed the remaining watermelon and turned it into watermelon pops.

Watermelon pops!

As the month goes along, I’ll post more about my 100 Mile Diet, the challenges and rewards, and any enlightenment I gain from this. I hope you’ll consider trying a local diet of your own, in one form or another.

If you have questions or comments, please contact me. If you’ve got recipes, please please please share!

I’m adding this post to the Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday list.

Maybe some of you reading this blog are thinking it would be fun, but you just don’t know where to start. You may want to read an article posted recently at Food Freedom – Four Tips to Eating Local  by  James Kim.

While you’re reading that, I’ll be continuing my search for local foods. My regular reports on the adventure will begin in early July.

‘Think Globally, Act Locally.’ Everyone has seen this on a bumper sticker at least once in the past 10 years. But what does it really mean?

In order to think globally and act locally, a person would have to assume that they need to buy things that are within a reasonable distance from their home. As I write this, I am within walking distance from a handful of corporately owned, retail chain stores. While my shopping at these places may be considered acting locally with respect to my physical location, it’s not ‘acting locally’.

 People disregard how much of an impact their presence has on the world. Consider the impact you have just because you need to eat. A lot of work and effort goes into the food you purchase from the supermarket. Not just the actual preparation of the food, but the availability as well.

On a given day, we all eat at least three meals a day. For breakfast today, I had an apple, a slice of toast with butter, and a cup of coffee. Lunch was baked chicken, yellow pepper slices, and water.

Each component of those two meals came from the United States.

Granted both of my meals were a bit on the light side compared to most people’s standards, there is still an extraordinary amount of work that went into the products getting from their place of origin to my table. Consider the chain of events: while this food was growing, some farmer, or perhaps a group of farmers were employed to raise the animals, grow the food and process the raw materials that made my breakfast and lunch.

This food initially passes many hands and has to travel many miles just to be purchased. It also has to pass an additional squadron of hands just to make it out of the grocery stock room.

            As with any industry, there are both positive and negative impacts. One of the more obvious benefits of such a global market is the creation of jobs. As you can see, there has to be at least a small group of people employed through various companies just so I could have had the apple that I had this morning for breakfast. An added and often overlooked benefit is that people aren’t suffering from long forgotten about ailments such as Scurvy and Rickets.

Two negative impacts of a global market are pollution and a degradation of the quality of the food that you eat. While having a global economy as well as a global market may mean jobs to some people, to others, it means that the food that you are eating from your local grocery store isn’t as good as it should be and we are sacrificing the planet as a result of it.

As a result of this degradation, there is a growing movement of people who are challenging themselves to eat locally. ‘Locavores’, as they have dubbed themselves, are a group of people who are eating food that is grown within 100 miles of where they live. The benefits of eating locally are an increased quality of food, a lack of pollution (with respect to transporting as well as manufacturing the foods that you would get from a ‘normal supermarket), as well as an increase in the local economy since people would be eating seasonally, year round.

This begs the question, if the benefits of eating locally are higher than the benefits of eating food from a supermarket, why aren’t more people doing it?

There could be any number of reasons. It seems to me that the main reason is that it is simply easier to go to the local supermarket chain than it is to find locally grown food. Speaking for myself, as a working father of three, I would love to eat locally.

While it may help deter the amount of pollution that we put into the air on a daily basis as well as our bodies, in order to ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’, we as a human race need to decide where our priorities lie. Is it more of a priority to indulge in our modern conveniences of having a grocery store within driving distance? Or is it more of a priority to ignore the modern conveniences that we have made, in order to search for locally grown food that lies somewhere within a 100 mile radius?

In order for the idea of eating locally to become viral, our entire society needs to take a step back and look at what our modern conveniences are really doing to the Earth in the long run. I’m up for the challenge. How about you?

Matthew MacDonald is a freelance writer based out of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He can be contacted directly at mr.matthewmacdonald@gmail.com For more information go to therankspoon.com