Locavore dinner

[flea]

Smoked polish (pork) sausage - Fickle Creek Farm (excellent!)
Mashed potatoes (Kroger) and turnips (SEEDS)
Butter Lettuce (Maple Creek Farm) with dressing (Paul Newman)
Bread (Whole foods) and butter (Kroger)

I could have bought potatoes at the Farmer's Market, but we already had some that needed to be used.

Also bought: early strawberries (surely greenhouse, right?), spinach, white sweet potato (only one, it is immense), kale seedlings, pork chops.

We should do a locavore dinner every weekend; aside from vegetables and berries in season (alas no tree fruits), there are pork, chickens, eggs, goat, cheese, and beef available. Interestingly, not milk or butter.

Comments

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Probably the lack of milk/butter is related to pasteurizing, right? I am to understand there's a thriving market for raw milk and milk products, but it's all under the table. (I don't know how difficult/expensive pasteurizing would be, for the small operation; that might be a factor too.)

It weirds me out how other parts of the country have so much in the way of animal products available -- they are vanishingly rare at the farmer's markets I attend. Usually at one market there will be a single vendor, selling organic eggs and cheeses on hand, or a small amount of frozen meat to order. I know our markets are comparatively smaller than the one in your city, but it seems like a big niche that's not being filled, you know?

[smonsterbite.livejournal.com]

I can get local milk & butter not 20 miles away, though not at the farmer's market.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

The regulations are pretty fearsome for small producers. For example, around here one can only sell frozen meats at the farmer's market. Nobody seems to sell eggs at the market, but a lot of people sell them private sale (and, of course, since chickens are legal here in town, there are a lot of us with coops). I know of someone from whom I can get raw milk, but I'd rather have the pasteurized stuff from the local dairy.

I think a lot of the regulations are, in practice, avoidable once you get to know someone who knows someone, but not if you just go to the market. There is a big market, but right now it's a gray market because of the USDA. *grin* As I am wont to say, write your congressthing about the current Farm Bill....

[mightyurchin.livejournal.com]

For milk, I'm pretty sure pasteurization is the issue; you can't sell raw milk though you can produce it for household consumption. A person I know who was studying the history of the dairy industry said that one way people who want raw milk get around this is to buy shares in a cow so that each co-owner can legally partake of the unpasteurized milk.