Eat Local This Thanksgiving
I’ve decided to follow the advice of these cute little munchkins and pledge to Eat Local this Thanksgiving! The Eat Local campaign is sponsored by the Cascade Harvest Coalition and Puget Sound Fresh and it is designed to raise awareness of the foods available from local farms. We will certainly be buying bread, cheese, and meat at our farmers market, but I want to make sure that we have homegrown food on our table, too. Here are a few ideas for eating uber local this Thanksgiving:
* Reserve some homegrown potatoes, winter squash, and apples for your Thanksgiving meal. Store them in a cool (about 50 degrees F), dark, dry place until you’re ready to use them.
* Use fresh herbs from the garden, including sage for stuffing, rosemary for the turkey, and thyme for roasted vegetables. Or, cut herbs now and dry them.
* Keep root vegetables, including carrots, beets, turnips, and rutabegas, in the garden and harvest them for the meal. In cold climates you can protect the crops from freezing by mulching around them with four- to six-inches of straw.
* Don’t pull out hardy greens like kale, Swiss chard, and collards yet. Wait to harvest them for Thanksgiving
* Harvest the peppers now, roast, and then freeze them. Add the thawed peppers into a roasted root vegetable medley, or blend them with feta cheese and serve with crackers as an appetizer.
Do you have other ideas for eating from the garden—or from local markets—this holiday season? If so, please share. And don’t forget to take the pledge!
That is a great idea. Aside from our turkey (my boyfriend gets a butterball for free from work each year) I can get everything else at the farm market!
October 13th, 2009 at 9:48 amThose children are so cute! A lot of my family’s traditional Thanksgiving fair is from foods that are easy to store. Baked acorn squash is my favorite and I have some stored in my pantry for the day as well as pumpkin. I buy wheat berries from a local source and grind my own wheat so even my bread is mostly local. Almost everything else can come out of my pantry or freezer too. Since we are a little family we have a chicken rather then a turkey but I wouldn’t have a clue where to get a local free-range turkey…
October 13th, 2009 at 10:24 amIf you haven’t already, sign up with a local rancher to get a turkey or ham from them. And, if you’ve been preserving food from the garden, use that instead of buying fresh. Our family always has some kind of green bean dish. This year, we’ll pull ’09 beans out of the freezer for t-giving.
Pick up local grains or flours like the Emmer flours sold by Bluebird Grain farms (in the PacificNW). Use these to make your pie crusts and other baked goods. Find them here: http://shop.bluebirdgrainfarms.com/
And, check your farmer’s market for locally produced dairy. You may not need cheese on the table, but what about butter for that pie crust or yams? And, if you can get enough milk and cream from them, what about making some homemade ice cream to go with your pumpkin pie?
Need something to sweeten those yams? How about picking up locally produced honey instead of processed sugar?
I’m not a fan, but my grandfather and Dad love Oysters in their stuffing. In the PacNW, we have many farmer’s market vendors supplying fresh shellfish. Consider Taylor Shellfish here: http://www.taylorshellfishfarms.com/farmersmarkets/index.html. The men in my family would be all over it!
And, buy local beers, ciders, juices and wines to serve with dinner. My pick? Buy Cabernet or Riesling from http://www.domanicocellars.com in October to save for your special dinner. Buying in October will mean part of your purchase price is donated to help end breast cancer. A double-win!
And, of course, I can’t say it often enough. If you have extras, take time to donate food to your local food bank for those in need. Or, donate your time at a soup kitchen to serve those in need. Truly, doing this will help you find more things in your own life to be thankful for!
Thanks for posting. Now I’m hungry!
October 13th, 2009 at 10:50 amWe don’t have a cool enough place (that is also dry) to store our produce until Thanksgiving in Texas so I’m taking advantage of harvests now to do prep work. Pies can easily be assembled and frozen in advance, as well as cooked mashed squash. Herbs also freeze fairly well – you lose the texture but not the flavor.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:21 pmMegan–Good idea to make some stuff ahead of time. Not only will you be able to eat homegrown produce, but I imagine Thanksgiving Day is a little less hectic too!
GardenMentor–Wow! What a list of great resources. Thanks so much! I hadn’t heard of Blue Grains Farms, I’m totally going to check out their products.
Jaspenelle–Check out http://www.localharvest.org to find a local supplier of chickens and turkeys in your area.
Michelle–Glad to hear that you’re already thinking local for your Thanksgiving!
October 14th, 2009 at 4:55 pmI will definitely take the pledge. Thinking of writing a post about it as well… Happy Thanksgiving, Willi!
October 15th, 2009 at 9:51 pmMmmm Local!
October 16th, 2009 at 5:04 pmWe are going to California for Thanksgiving this year. Does it count as eating local if we bring a squash from here, or should we find local foods down there? We will probably do both.
October 17th, 2009 at 12:29 pm