The Locals

Last week I had the opportunity to shake the hand of a man I consider to be, for lack of a better word, a hero.



That's Michael Pollan. He's an author, professor and as far as I can tell, a big ole nerd. And I love him. This is the first piece of his that I read and I was instantly intrigued. A friend had recommended a book of his to me which I then read... most of. He definitely made botany more interesting than any text book could, and yet he cited his sources and presented a lot of really obscure information about apples, tulips and... well that's as far as I got. Compared to that article, it was more of a dry read. Mostly because I think it lacked that deep down passion the 1st article I read had. He is now popular enough to have 250 show up to a packed book signing and lecture at Barnes and Noble in Edina. A farmer friend of ours down in Houston told us that they left their day jobs to become farmers after reading that book. Talk about starting a movement.






The use of the word "local" is now part of the vernacular. It's already on the track to becoming a word like organic, that automatically makes the general population think it's more expensive, and is probably healthy. I can't wait to see a "local" sticker put on high fructose filled fruit snacks being sold at Cub that were produced in a General Mills factory somewhere in Minnesota.

But that doesn't mean I'm not on the local train. Far from it. I want to man the caboose on the local train and I like to think we're doing our part. While we aren't doing a vegetable CSA this year, we buy produce at Mill City Farmers market every weekend now that it's open, and try to get over to the co-ops as often as we can. For the past two months any meat we've cooked at home has come from our Meat CSA and we are never looking back. Aside from the great price of $5/pound for everything from pork shoulder to pasture fed chickens which produce the occasional green egg.




“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.” (Steven L. Hopp)

WELL SHIT PEOPLE, we can do this! You don't have to change your entire life to make a difference. Buy a pack of Thousand Hills Cattle company ground beef, some faribault blue cheese, buns made at a local bakery and just like that you have yourself a local meal, and a delicious one at that.

Okay, I'll put my soapbox away.

We're being good locavores and have been tending to our vegetable (and fruit!) garden. In hopes of saving the world (and quite a few hard earned dollars) last Saturday we built our rain barrel which will keep our garden thriving all summer. If it ever rains.


For the record, I too did my fair share of sawing. Note to self, buy a Jigsaw.




We just need a flex downspout now and yes, I plan on weed wacking the dandelion farm you see to the left. And if you were slighly deceived, those ARE windows painted on our neighbors garage. Northeast has class.



That evening, if not mostly by circumstance, we ate an entirely local meal. We made a salad that won us a $100 gift card over at the Heavy Table and grilled up some incredibly tender, flavorful rib eyes from Sunshine Harvest farms.



Eating local is that easy.


For more haps on eating local in MN visit Lee's awesome site http://www.simplegoodandtasty.com/
and wander over to the The Heavy Table, and then make it your homepage.
http://heavytable.com/