Weekend wrap-up: When choosing local, a little goes a long way

With out of town guests here for an overnight, my focus was off food and on to the people who were eating it. We shared a meal of pasta and Birkert Family Farm sweet Italian sausage. We talked about the Eat Local Challenge as we munched on the sausages’ unfamiliar texture. We surmised it was due to a lower fat content, a conclusion that made the difference an asset.

My guests brought a bottle of Andretti merlot, which generally isn’t too far out of my idea of local, but this particular bottle had traveled from California, to Seattle and then back south to my table. We carry things around so casually these days.

It seems clear that an early step to sustainability is to cut down the number of miles our food travels to get to us, and everyone at the table agreed we could become accustomed to local and regional cuisine again. That segued into a discussion of heritage recipes which seemed an entirely appropriate entrée to attendance at "Our Town" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Values are a central topic of all Thornton Wilder’s work, and the lessons of "Our Town," which is about relationships and how we take their precious nature for granted, can certainly be applied to our relationship to food and the earth that produces it.

Another meal worth mentioning was an Amy’s frozen rice crust pizza, which was likely manufactured here in the Valley, providing local employment, but I know nothing about its food sources. I miss the gloriously chewy texture that wheat gluten imparts to pizza crust that are missing from my substitute. Generous heaps of my basil walnut pesto help.

A deceptively old-fashioned European label hides the Southern Oregon origins of Giradet cabernet sauvignon, 2002. I shared a bottle with my friend Mark, and its flavor was distinctly improved when I paired it with pepper brie from New York. It was out of range, but also almost out of time, so we ate and were glad.

Organizers mentioned the eat local challenge at Lynn Howe’s Grilla Bites fundraiser Sunday night. This was at the Medford location, where she’s running for Oregon State Representative. Grilla Bites had made a special effort to serve local food and wine. I had a Willamette Valley Vineyard pinot noir, which had a lovely, bright taste with a touch of cherry. It’s one to seek out.

Even though I didn’t source all my food choices in a tight circle around Medford, I’m happy about my effort in the Eat Local Challenge and recommend the experiment to everyone. Here’s why. Trade is part of the history of humanity; we aren’t going to stop it. But we don’t have to buy everything local to make a difference. Even a subtle change in our collective purchasing could create a substantial change in the local economy and landscape. Just by putting “local” higher on our food priority list, we would make a difference for the land. Gradually, we would inspire more variety in our locally grown and produced foods.

Maybe then we would start to care about the federal farm bill and subsidies given to corn and soy, which force unhealthy ecological practices, encourage agribusiness and create food dilemmas at the supermarket. The farm bill is where the cheap soft drink that rots our teeth, demineralizes our bones and makes us fat gets its start. Quoting Charlie Brown, “Arghh.”

I think the lessons I learned will stick with me: patronizing the local farmers markets and stores that carry local, buying domestic, instead of the import, considering local as important as organic. Even little shifts, like inflated tires, can shrink our ecological footprint. In life-changing actions, I really like it when little goes a long way.