<p>My ridiculously healthy and fit DH want to try this lifestyle. I am at my parent’s home in California recovering from surgery and I have lots of time to shop and cook. There are nearby farms which have great produce even in the dead of winter, there’s also local fish, meat and dairy. Has anyone tried this?</p>
<p>I did it while I was taking care of a sick parent in San Luis Obispo. I had time on my hands,plenty of disposable cash and a good weekly farmers market. There are plenty of Slow Foodies in S.L.O…Its a way of life that I had learned while living in Italy. But now, sigh, time and cash are rare.
Im sure you are already aware of this…<a href=“http://www.slowfood.com%5B/url%5D”>www.slowfood.com</a>
and <a href=“http://www.slowfoodnation.org%5B/url%5D”>www.slowfoodnation.org</a></p>
<p>Why would it be a problem? Food ALWAYS tastes better if it hasn’t spent days on a truck ;-)</p>
<p>My brother in NH used to get milk and veg from the local farm food co-op. They ate a lot of cabbage, carrots and potatoes in the winter. (You pay a set amount per month and get what they have.) They often get local meat and stick it in their basement freezer and they have free range chickens that provide them eggs. There are local farms that offer similar deals around here, but not nearly as convenient. I try to go to our farmer’s market, but the closest one is very dull, next town over though has a great one with all sorts of unusual vegetables and heirloom tomatoes. My other brother who lives in Gloucester MA has fish delivered to their doorstep. I’m so jealous!</p>
<p>I buy my meat from a local farm that butchers on-site (they raise cows and pigs, but they also get cows and lambs from 4-H kids.) It’s not organic, but the folks who run the farm don’t use antibiotics. It’s a small family-run business and customers can go inside and see how they butcher the meat. Usually there’s one person who’s doing the butchering and answering phones and waiting-on customers, so this isn’t like the supermarket where you’re in and out in a short time. When D1 was in middle school she had to get a sheep intestine for a biology project and that’s how I discovered the place.</p>
<p>This is a great cookbook: The Pleasures of Slow Food (by Corby Krummer)? The author, an editor at the Atlantic Monthly, is also a serious “foodie”.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of joining a CSA - you pay a set amount for a year, and a box of produce is delivered once a week during part of the year. I also go to our local farmer’s market sometimes and stock up on meat and chicken.</p>
<p>Fish delivered to the door - that would be heaven.</p>
<p>NYmom–we belonged to a CSA for many years. Haven’t recently because we have a bigger garden of our own and more access to farmer’s markets.</p>
<p>We loved picking up our local veggies every week, and learning about different ones we weren’t familiar with. Also liked being able to visit the place where our food came from. It was a wonderful experience.</p>
<p>Our other local source for food is harvesting/catching clams, oysters and fish. It doesn’t get much more local than the jetty a few blocks away, or the clam flats we can kayak to!</p>
<p>I love to cook from scratch (make broths, bread, etc) and wish I had time/energy to do so more often. That will be number one if I ever win the lottery (which I doubt I will since I don’t buy tickets…:))</p>
<p>It’s Corby Kummer, not Krummer. College classmate, great guy, wonderful writer.</p>
<p>JHS, I’m jealous. We saw Kummer when he moderated one of the keynote panel discussions at Slow Foods Nation last labor day weekend. He was switching back and forth between Italian (translating on the fly) and English, doing a great job of leading the discussion. He is one of the first things that I read in Atlantic Monthly, and several of his recipes are in heavy rotation on our menu. [Quinoa</a> Soup - The Atlantic (November 2002)](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200211/kummer]Quinoa”>Quinoa Soup - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>hmom5, we are big but imperfect fans of the locavore/slow foods/sustainable movement. Farmer’s markets, sustainable fish and meat, Michael Pollan Fan Club members ;)</p>
<p>Pollan fan club member too!</p>
<p>This AM I went to a farm and bought eggs, milk, avocados, lemons and other citrus. I got local strawberries, broccoli and cauliflower from a roadside stand. Then I went to a college where the kids raise the meat they sell and stocked up as this is at the outer limits (about 60 miles) of my food zone. Tomorrow I’ll drive to a local pier and buy fish. </p>
<p>At a farmer’s market this weekend I’ll buy local olive oil, vinegars and other fruits and veggies. I’ll get all our wines from local vintners.</p>
<p>Time consuming but fun!</p>
<p>[1] California! I remember the vegetable garden we planted next to our rent-a-shack. You could actually sit there and watch the stuff grow.</p>
<p>It was 19 degrees this morning, and a hard pack of icy snow on the ground. No local olive oil for us!</p>
sigh ↩︎
<p>I envy you Hmom-- I joined a great CSA this year and I’m really looking forward to getting local produce, but that’s not going to happen for a long time. We had 16 inches of snow early this week.</p>
<p>My son heard Michael Pollan lecture at Cal and immediately purchased all his books.</p>
<p>We raise our own beef and fish and grow most of the fruit, vegetables and nuts that we consume. There is a lot of trading in our community and we often find produce left on our back porch. We still go to the supermarket for chicken, eggs and rice/pasta/bread. DH and I are just about ready to try our hands at making wine (we grow wine grapes)…</p>
<p>I’ve lived in the NYC urban jungle for 25 years so this is an amazing treat for me. You don’t appreciate this as a child, but I pinch myself waking up day after day to 75 degree weather and sunshine (OK, there’s been a little rain) and reminding myself it’s March.</p>
<p>FresnoMom, wow! I’m contemplating doing something similar so I’ll be asking you for advice when I make my permanent move.</p>
<p>Also, be sure to read Barbara Kingsolver’s book about living the locavore life for a year. She a wonderful writer, and turning her craft to this subject resulted in a truly inspiring book. No, I haven’t become a convert, but I’ve made some serious changes to my shopping and cooking habits.</p>
<p>Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Barbara Kingsolver</p>
<p>Book jacket quote:</p>
<p>“Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that’s better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.”</p>
<p>Hey hmom, I just posted a recipe for that savory bread pudding to the “favorite dinners” thread. It’s from a terrific book, Local Flavors, by Deborah Madison. It’s all about cooking with farmer’s market produce. I’ve been drooling over all the incredible photos, wishing I were out in Cali instead of the cold, grey, northeast. Our farmer’s market here still has turnips and potatoes from last fall.</p>
<p>Thanks Bela, it’s what’s for dinner tomorrow when DH gets home from restaurant eating all week. It sounds amazing! I got 4 types of mushrooms from the farmer’s market and I have a few dried Porcini’s soaking to add some deep flavor. I love those things!</p>
<p>I’m starting to get back into the self-sufficiency/locavore/slowfood/off-the-grid lifestyle, too. My dh and I did it for some years in the 80s. He was from Italy, and everyone there does something like it. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m a widow now, still have the big house and acre, and 2 teenage daughters. I am now buying whole grains in bulk, grinding my own flours, making soymilk, baking bread, composting, canning/freezing/putting up food, etc. Youngest dd recently became a vegetarian, which took me back to my vegan years in the late 80s. </p>
<p>We are planning a big communal organic vege garden this year–tough in suburbia due to so many deer and critters–but I already bought a 4 person stake in a local organic CSA farm for this summer, since I expect the animals to get most of the garden. I am going to raise laying chickens for the eggs, and my neighbor is planning to rig up a clandestine electricity generator thingy to the run-off creek that runs through his property. He’s into the off-the-grid technology. The chicken thing I guess is the next big ‘thing’ in suburbia, lol. But no roosters!! You do what you can do, even if you don’t live in the perfect climate!</p>
<p>This is all great, but I still have to come up with hard cold cash for mortgage, medical insurance, gas, sewage, cable, cell phones, etc. </p>
<p>I might look into doing some bartering for services. </p>
<p>If I could only have a little Jersey cow in the back yard for milk and friendship…</p>
<p>I was thinking I’d barter for some of that flour! What don’t you have? We’ll be putting in a green house when we move for year round tomatoes!!</p>
<p>Hmom how long will you be in California? Even though it’s a tourist thing now, be sure to check out Ferry Plaza Market if your in the area. And “Ubuntu” ( <a href=“http://www.ubuntunapa.com/[/url]”>À quelle fréquence changer son programme de musculation - ubuntunapa.com) in Napa. I’m taking D during her spring break this week.I have been in a CSA (Farm Fresh to You, which a local chowhound says doesn’t really meet criteria for local anymore) for many years, and my local farmers market will resume in a few weeks. There are some that are year round. There is also an egg farm with “pastured chickens” ( Soul Food Farms) I have begun to patronize.I will have to check out that book in the other thread.</p>