Finding community

From: Renee, Eat Carolina Food Challenger,  Matthews, NC

The past couple days I’ve been reading Plenty, the story of a Canadian couple who decided to eat foods sourced within an one hundred mile radius of their house.  It’s gearing me up for the challenge, inspiring food combinations, and uncovering sources I’d never dreamed existed.  I have a veggie patch in the back yard, gardening is a lifestyle as much as a hobby, and have been along-time fan of “organic” and all the other eco-popular buzz words swarming the food industry right now.  I agree whole heartedly with what Sandy said in the last post, that’s just the way it’s supposed to be, it’s just the natural way.

I’d been researching local foods prior to signing up for the challenge.  Looking for local cow and goat milk to further practice my rudimentary cheese making skills. Seeking outlets that surely must sell the local wheat I see thickly growing by the North Carolina roads. Ready to know the season by the foliage in gardens around town. My husband and I have been practicing car-free weekends to localize on the most literal level.  Though it was finding out about this challenge that was the boot-to-my-behind to dive in and eat the way I believe I should be eating.  Not just food, I expect the Eat Carolina Challenge will help me find my own roots the local community, connect me to others and to the earth.  I feel pretty certain those connections will last a whole lot longer than seven days, too.

Eat Carolina Food Challenge

From: Kelly, Eat Carolina Food Challenge participant, Morrisville 

I feel lucky to have grown up in a family that had a garden. My grandparents always had a small garden in the backyard, they would grown cucumbers and green beans just for me (my favorites). My grandma grew special variety of green beans that I have never seen in any store, my grandma called them Kelly Beans. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the real name, but I have been on the hunt for those green beans ever since my grandparents past away.  As an adult I never thought to much about local foods, I ate healthy and thought that was enough. It wasn’t until I went back to school to get my Masters in Nutrition that I started thinking about local foods.  At Bastyr University in Seattle a holistic and environmental aspect is ingrained in every subject taught. My favorite class quickly became environmental nutrition. We learned all about factory farms  and their impacts on the environment and our health.   I was amazed, shocked even. Since that class I have slowly been trying to incorporate more and more local foods into my diet.  I have read numerous books about environmental nutrition, and continue to be amazed.  The last book I read came with perfect timing for this challenge, Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  The book is basically a journal about a family’s challenge to grow all their food for one year.  Now I don’t have a garden, but I do have access to some great Farmers Markets and stores that sell local foods. Next year I plan to join a CSA, and one day I hope to have my own garden full of Kelly Beans.  But for now I will attempt to eat for one week on only the foods the North Carolina can provide. 

Eating Carolina

From: Sandy, Eat Carolina Food Challenger 

I wonder what my grandmother would say if she knew I was using the internet to research locally grown food so I could eat it for a week. She would no doubt laugh at my “none-sense” and send me out to the garden to pick tomatoes or squash or okra or, God-forbid, butterbeans. (Anyone who has ever picked a few hundred yards of butterbeans knows what I mean.) Growing and picking and eating local was just what we did when I was growing up. Vegetables from the garden, chickens from the yard, maybe sausage from the neighbor’s hog, cornmeal from a local grain mill, blackberries and muscadines harvested from the edge of the woods. Nothing like walking down to the strawberry patch to gather strawberries for a cobbler my grandmother would make for supper.

Somewhere along the line I “got sivilized” as Huck Finn might say. I went off to college and discovered (among other things) year-round grocery store tomatoes, February strawberries, and pizza delivery. I forgot about taste for the next 15 or 20 years. Oh, I got a little nostalgic when I discovered that Jimmy Dean was making a sausage with sage. I pretended it was almost as good as what our neighbors Lola and Vernon made and I plopped it on a canned biscuit and chowed down. Fed that stuff to my family. Never thought twice about where it came from. Other than a few sad attempts to grow a tomato I spent a couple of decades like that.

Maybe it was a midlife crisis or delayed homesickness a few years ago that led me on a search for the tastes of my childhood. With no one but myself to cook for (read no one but myself to complain about the failures) I made fig preserves from that fig tree in the yard and I re-learned how to make biscuits. I bought a big box of tomatoes from Mr. Charpia and put up a few quarts of stewed tomatoes. I bought chicken from Keegan Fillion Farms and remembered what chicken really tastes like. Ahhh, and I found a source for Brandywine tomato seeds (www.seedsavers.org) and got serious about a backyard veggie plot. Brandywines, by the way,  are the tomatoes of legend, the tomatoes that country songs are written about (yes, really!) My mother remembers the year my grandfather went to the seed store for Brandywines and came back with a new hybrid, because the seed companies had stopped producing Brandywines in favor of Big Boy or Better Boy or Even Better Bigger Boys. One of many casualties in our nation’s food production system.

I’ll stay off my soapbox for now about big business, but I will say I was shocked when I started researching our food supply in this country. I was also shocked when I planted carrots with my students this year and one of them, a 17 year old, was greatly distressed to learn that we eat “the wrong part” of the carrot. Check www.givhansfarms.blogspot.com for that story. So my quest for the tastes of my childhood has led me to the internet and now I use words like organic, sustainable, local, pasture raised and hormone-free to describe my food. My grandmother died before Al Gore invented the internet, but she wouldn’t see anything special about the pasture raised chicken in my refrigerator because that’s the way chicken is supposed to be raised. She wouldn’t think my local veggies are any big deal, either. My friend Chuck gives me potatoes and I give him fig preserves, and if you have to buy vegetables, you go buy them from the guy that grows them. Thats the way its supposed to be. She would, however, be tickled about those Brandywine tomatoes that I started from seed back in January. Because that’s the way its supposed to be.

Eat Carolina Food Challenge

From: Kurt, Eat Carolina Food Challenger, Wilmington, NC 

I was excited when I heard about CFSA’s Eat Carolina Challenge.  Basically, the challenge is to eat only food that is grown or produced in North or South Carolina for one week.  I have read about similar quests, sometimes for much longer time periods and closer to home (within 100 miles).  I appreciate the exploration of these resources for several reasons; reduction of gas use obviously, supporting our local growers, food artisans, and fishermen, potential for fresher, healthier, and better tasting food, and especially the thrill of discovering a new country ham, farmer, or fish monger that I didn’t know about. 

In that vein, I have put together a list of Carolina sources that I know about for everything from produce to grass fed beef.  If you know of someone else, please let me know. 

Oaklyn Plantation         http://www.freerangechicken.com/

Free range chicken, beef, and some pet food products as well

Caw Caw Creek          http://cawcawcreek.com/

Wonderful pork products from Emile, a talented and passionate producer

Local Harvest               http://www.localharvest.org/

Searchable data base of growers, producers, artisans, and restaurants

Myrtle Beach Restaurant News http://myrtlebeachrestaurantnews.com/

Has a page with local farmer’s phone numbers and addresses

Carolina Plantation Rice            http://www.carolinaplantationrice.com/

Wonderful rice!

Adluh Flour      http://www.adluh.com/index.php

Stone ground grits, flours, and other local products

Indigo Farms    http://www.ncagr.com/NCproducts/ShowSite.asp?ID=1909

Great local farm stand direct marketer, just over the border in NC

Carolina Seafood Shops           http://agriculture.sc.gov/content.aspx?ContentID=734

Myrtle Market              http://www.cityofmyrtlebeach.com/market.html

Every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday here in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Carolina Harvest           http://www.carolinaharvest.com/carolinaharvest/ch_products.cfm

Just found this one, sells my favorite country ham from Foothills Country Ham and Fresh Meats.

Lots of farm stands too.  Just a tip, though, I always ask if the product was Carolina grown before buying. 

Take care, stay cool, and Eat Carolina!