Valentine's Day Dinner for Locavores:
Food, Glorious Food!
One of my passions is, “Food, Glorious Food!”(click on the
words to hear the song.) This quote from the musical Oliver says it all. When we can, my family and I
try to make healthy, fabulous meals from locally-grown food and people who do
this are called locavores (click on the word to
get the definition). This week I found I was able to make a tasty, locally-sourced dinner even for
Valentine’s Day in February, when it takes a certain diligence to find local
foods. Translation: if you want to try this at home, there are some tricks
involved!
 | |
|
I made a test dinner this week and family members, disguised
as professional taste-testers, ate it up “locavoraciously.”
You can’t click on this word, because I
just made up to mean they ate the local food ravenously and they may even
have licked their plates. It’s still a vocabulary word, though, and it’ll be on
the quiz on Monday (jk). The taste
testers might have eaten this way because the food was really really good or because
they had to wait a long time until after I had finished photographing it before they could eat it.
Read on to find out how you can make this meal, or one like it, for the
hungry locavores on your Valentine’s Day list!
"Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are." (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin)
Brillat-Savarin was a lawyer and French epicure (think “foodie”) who in 1825 wrote, “Tell
me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are.” This means what you eat tells a lot about you, including
your income level, your level of health consciousness and even how much you
love your chocolate, which for me, is quite a lot!
A locavore is aiming to eat healthy, good-tasting food that can be locally
grown with a negligible environmental impact for now and for generations to
come. If you’re a locavore, then the quote from Brillat-Savarin means you are what you eat and even where you eat.
 |
| I live in the Michigan “mitten,” at the base of the thumb. (I modified this from Mastering ArcGIS, Tutorial Data 6e (2013) [DVD-Rom], McGraw-Hill Higher Ed: Dubuque, IA.) |
Where I eat is with my family at the dinner table in Ann
Arbor, MI, about 42 degrees North of the equator and 84 degrees West of the
prime meridian. We have a deep freezer that’s full of fruits and vegetables and
main courses we industriously squirreled away last autumn. Even though there’s a glacier of white-blue
snow layered 18 inches up the cherry tree in the back yard, we’re eating fabulous,
local, out-of-season items like asparagus, blueberries and pumpkin muffins because
they come from our deep freezer. I
therefore decided I had to leave my house to discover what other locavores without our “frozen assets” were eating in Ann Arbor in February!
I
was in for a big surprise, though, because what they’re not eating is local
root vegetables! I went to several stores in town and spoke with the produce
managers. The definition of “local foods”
varies from “about 100 miles” at People’s Food Co-op to “about 200 miles or
adjoining states” at Whole Foods. I had fully expected that all the root
vegetables like carrots, potatoes, rutabagas and turnips that I see in the Ann
Arbor stores were local. Instead, I learned that Ann Arbor stores run out of root
vegetables by February and they are shipped over 2,000 miles from California to
Ann Arbor. Holy guacamole! When you buy vegetables in February, they’re
probably better traveled than you are!
After the food and produce managers at People’s Food Co-op showed me what was locally available for 42N, 84W during
the food desert known as February, I can recommend the following Valentine’s
Day dinner. For appetizers, my lucky Valentines
and I (and I’ll make dinner for the whole family) will nibble on Colby cheese cubes
(Farm Country Cheese House) deviled eggs (Harnois Farms), salsa (Esch Road) and
chips (Ann Arbor Tortilla Factory).
 |
| The appetizers for the Valentine's Dinner for Locavores, with the ingredients. |
For dinner, we’ll have browned Vietnamese recipe chicken
sausages (available in the freezer aisle, from Corridor Sausage Co.) simmered in white wine with purple onions (Tantre Farms) and
sauerkraut (The Brinery), steamed purple potatoes (Tantre Farms) with butter
and a German-style salad with shredded carrots (Seeley Farm), pea shoots (GardenWorks) and dried Montmorency cherries (Busch’s) and a dressing of mayonnaise,
olive oil and lemon juice. We’ll finish
off dinner with a peach and raspberry crisp (frozen fruits from Locavorious and
honey from Anne &Paul Elder/Bantle) and chocolate (Grocer’s Daughter and Michigan Mints.). For our family members who are
vegetarian, I’ll make a second dish with non-local smoked apple sage
vegetarian sausage (Field Roast, Seattle, WA), local onion and local sauerkraut. Dinner for three will set you back about $55, not including wine or beer,
What will you do if you live somewhere else? Why visit your local farmer’s market, co-op
or food store, find out what’s local and cook it! Joke alert! If you get water from your watershed
and food from your foodshed, then where
did the locavores eat their Valentine’s day dinner? In their local foodshed, of course!
Below are the recipes and pictures for the main course and
dessert.
The recipe for Sausages,
Onions and Sauerkraut was adapted from this recipe from Epicurious. For two locavores:
1 medium onion, sliced
2-4 sausages of your choice (we had Vietnamese style chicken
sausages, defrosted, with pork casing
removed) cut in 3 inch lengths
1 lb of sauerkraut, rinsed and drained
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup chicken stock and water, if needed
 |
| Sausages, Onions and Sauerkraut, potatoes and salad, Valentine's Dinner for Locavores |
On the stovetop, heat a smaller frying pan over medium-high
heat. Add olive oil and sauté the onion
until tender but not brown, and remove to a plate. Add the sausages and brown on both sides. Squeeze out liquid from the rinsed and
drained sauerkraut and add to the frying pan, along with the sausages and
onions. Add the wine, chicken stock and
water if necessary to mostly cover the sausages. When the liquid begins to simmer, cover, turn down the heat to low and
let cook at least 45 minutes, turning the sausages once or twice to make sure
they are fully cooked. Serves 2-3.
The recipe for Peach
and Raspberry Crisp is adapted from a family cookbook and was
previously published in the Blueberry Hill Cookbook by Elsie Masterton (Down
East Books, 1982). I made a half recipe
but here is the full recipe:
1 cup flour
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 Tablespoons brown sugar (or 1 Tablespoon honey in 1
tablespoon water)
1/3 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon-sugar
2 cups frozen raspberries, defrosted
3 cups frozen peaches, defrosted, peeled and chopped
 |
| Peach and Raspberry Crisp and Chocolates, Valentine's Dinner for Locavores |
With a fork, mix until crumbly the flour, sugar, baking
powder, salt and unbeaten egg. Use a
chopping motion to make lots of little lumps.
Put the fruits into a buttered casserole dish. Sprinkle with the brown sugar or honey
mix. Put the flour mix as evenly as you
can over the fruit (it will not look uniform).
Dribble melted butter over the topping.
Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
Bake at 375 F for 30 minutes then turn off the oven and let it cook in
the warm oven another 20 minutes (until lightly brown). Serves 6 to 8.
"I cook with wine and sometimes I even add it to food." (W.C. Fields)
For readers who are at least 21 and drink alcohol, you like
wine or beer with your meal, but you worry about the environmental costs of transporting
it, right? What’s a locavore to do?
A conversation with Mary Campbell, owner of Everyday Wines in Ann Arbor, revealed her thinking on this issue. She says that we have many fine wines made in
the state of Michigan and one of them would probably work very well from our locavore
standpoint. When she buys wine from out of state, Mary considers quality of the
wine, the environmental stewardship of the vineyards and the carbon footprint
of the shipping. I was bowled over to
learn that Mary often prefers buying from Europe over California because shipping freight
by water from Europe to N.J. and then
by truck to Ann Arbor has less of an environmental impact than shipping by truck all the way from
California to Ann Arbor.
I got the beer and wine recommendations from the wine
steward, aka my husband, and my extensive research on this subject involved going
to see what he had down in the cellar. I
can make the romantic recommendation of the Bell’s Brewery
“Venus” beer and the pinot gris white wine from
Chateau Fontaine. I kind of misled you on the beer recommendation, though,
because I don’t think you can buy it anymore.
The beer was limited edition from the brewery’s “Planets” series. You can always buy the beer your sweetie
likes, though, and make a “Venus” label and glue it on. Or you can hope the brewery makes the
“Jupiter” beer, slated to come out in February, 2015, in time for Valentine’s
Day and you can make a corny joke, like, “I love you, by Jove.” Hopefully, your
valentine will laugh, either because they think you’re nuts and they’re
humoring you or because they get that Jove and Jupiter are two names for the same god.
“Love is all you need but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt." (Charles Shultz)
Chocolate is a problem for locavores in my area. On the one
hand, what would Valentine’s Day Dinner be without chocolate? On the other hand, can a locavore buy
chocolate when it’s locally produced but not locally grown?
In her book, Animal, Vegetable,Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver describes a year of “locivery” (as
the habit of eating locally must be called; btw I just made this up and it will
be on the quiz) and how her family allowed each family member one exemption to
the rule to eat locally. I’d probably choose chocolate as my “get out of jail
free” card and then being a locavore wouldn’t be so very very hard. Do get your hands on a copy of this book to
learn more about being a locavore and make sure to read the last few chapters as
they are quite a hoot!
The types of chocolate local to my area that I chose for Valentines
Day gifts this year include some chocolate bars from Grocer’s Daughter and Michigan Mints from Hanover, Inc. To get some Grocer’s Daughter chocolate, you might want to visit the store in Empire, MI
and maybe go to the fabled Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore as a side trip! I’m only kind of kidding.
"If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one." (Mother Theresa; click on the underlined words to go to the site)
This Valentine’s Day, consider helping the hungry in your
area with a food or monetary donation. Food insecurity is occasional lack of enough food for a healthy, active life while hunger is chronic lack of enough food for a healthy, active life. One in seven people in Washtenaw County where I live have food insecurity
or hunger with a whopping 92% of families with children having this problem. Parents say they skip meals or eat smaller
portions to make food last.
 |
| US food insecurity rates, Source: Feeding America |
My students in Environmental Science 101 at Washtenaw
Community College did a survey to try to measure food insecurity and hunger at the
college in the fall of 2014 as part of the college’s “Year of Sustainable Food”
theme. They found that 30% of the 125 respondents had had food insecurity or
hunger at some time in their lives. This adds to published data that food insecurity for Michigan right now is 17.9% and for
the U.S. is 16.4%, according to Food Gatherers.
That a lot of hungry people in my community college, state and country!
If you need help getting food in the U.S, you probably need
to apply for food stamps, now administered by a program called SNAP. If you are a qualifying pregnant or
breast-feeding woman and have infants or children up to age 5 who meet certain
qualifications, you might also be eligible for WIC
benefits. If you need immediate food assistance, you can try food pantries, by state and food banks, by zip code.
If you need help getting food in Michigan, there are
additional places to look besides the ones, above. If you're eligible, you can get the Michigan Bridge Card for food and housing subsidies. If you have a bridge card in Michigan, you at can then use Double Up FoodBucks to get more (extra) fruits and
vegetables when you use your Bridge Card in certain months of the year at
participating farmers markets and CSAs. For additional help in Michigan, try the Food Gatherers website for food pantries,
free meals, and more.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone, eat local and Bon Appetite!
Resources (click on the link to go to the site):
1) Informal interviews with managers Angie, Katie and Ben at People’s Food Co-Op on 2/8/2015.
2) Informal interviews with managers at Whole Foods and the Produce Station and a visit to Buschs on 2/8/2015.
3) Informal interview with Mary Campbell, owner of Everyday Wines on 2/7/2015.
4) Unpublished survey results from: Survey to Assess Hunger
and Food Insecurity at Washtenaw Community College, ENV101 Fall 2014, by Emily
Thompson, Ph.D. and Students.
This blogpost was written for the benefit of students at
Washtenaw Community College and the community as part of my sabbatical activities for winter 2015. I am solely responsible for the content and hold the copyright for the
work. Feel free to use the information in this blog; just credit me with a link back to my blog! -Emily Thompson, Ph.D.
