Local and Seasonal

If you’re into food at all, you’ve probably heard some buzz about eating local and seasonal. What’s this all about?

Well, there are a lot of good reasons we should be eating local:

- Food is fresher, therefore tastes better and is more nutritious.

- It eliminates the nasty green house gases caused by all the fuel required to transport it to our plates from whatever far off place it is grown. These days it’s quite common for our food to travel upwards of 1000 miles to reach our plates. The US uses more fuel to move our food than we do to fuel our personal vehicles.

- It supports your local economy and farmers in your community.

Here’s where the seasonality comes in, the more we eat out of season the more we rely on food grown in different climates that has to be transported to our local grocery stores.

How good are those strawberries in December anyway? Probably pretty tasteless. They have to be picked before they ripen so they won’t spoil during transport, plus the varieties sold are chosen for their ability to hold up to travel conditions and their attractiveness, not taste.

I’m kind of a food romanticist, I guess you could say. When you eat seasonally you get that anticipation leading up to the first fresh fruits and vegetables of a new season and it just heightens the enjoyment of them when the time finally comes. Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder, and you begin to really appreciate the seasons and what they bring. My mouth is already watering at the thought of fresh asparagus soon to come here in Oregon.

There are a bunch of great ways to get local food into you diet, but you’ll likely have to venture outside the grocery store. Small and locally owned stores offer better choices, but large chains usually only contract with large producers and distributors so finding local stuff can be tricky. Here are some great places to shop for your local goods:

- Food co-ops – these are member owned grocery stores set up, like all co-ops, to create a mutually beneficial relationship between suppliers, the co-op, and it’s members

- CSAs – short for Community Supported Agriculture, these are basically subscriptions to farms, you pay so much per year or season for a share of the harvest and at the stated intervals (weekly, biweekly, even monthly) you receive a collection of produce or other farm goodies (some include locally raised meat, eggs, etc., but most common is produce)

- Farmer’s Markets – we all pretty much known what farmers markets are, they vary in size and you can find them on just about all days of the week so if you work weekends, like I do, there’s a farmers market for you, too! Market season is just getting started, many open the first week of May. If you’re located in the Portland Metro area, this weeks issue of Food Day provided a listing of local markets, which they’ve made available on their website.

Local Harvest is a great website that allows you to find CSA’s, Co-ops, Farmer’s Markets, even restaurants specializing in local food. Go check it out!