Thanksgiving Stories

Welcome to the frontlines of the 100-Mile Thanksgiving. See what people are planning -- and got up to last year -- for the big day, below. Just keeping tabs on this local-eating adventure? You're in the right place. (If your want to submit your own plans, click here).

Vermont’s Traditional New England Recipes

A “localvore” group in the Mad River Valley of Vermont planned the following Thanksgiving menu, and have provided the recipes online for those who want to try it for themselves.

New England Squash Soup
Wheat Berries Waldorf Salad
Roast Turkeywith Gravy
Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing
Casserole of Late Fall Greens
Creamy Mashed Potatoes
Maple Cranberry Sauce
Cranberry Sauce for Giving Thanks
Roasted Winter Vegetables with a Maple Glaze
Baking Powder Biscuits
Vermont Maple Apple Pie
Indian Pudding

A Colorado Feast, Including Wine

By Rebecca

When the New Oxford American dictionary recently announced that its 2007 word of the year is locavore, it got me thinking about local Colorado foods. I decided to host a “homegrown Colorado Thanksgiving”, sourcing all (or at least the vast majority) of the menu from local producers. I started with a quick inventory of my garden. A long Indian summer had left us with bunches of chard, carrots and sweet potatoes. We had basil, curry, cilantro, rosemary and parsley growing in a kitchen window and a handful of garden tomatoes, onions, peppers and eggplants in the refrigerator. In the basement we had pumpkins, acorn squash and dried garden herbs, including sage, oregano, marjoram, and lemon thyme. Not a complete feast, but I figured it was a reasonable start.

My next task was to find a turkey. A quick search of the internet led me to Tedach Ranch, a farm located in Bennett, Colorado. By visiting them, their website promised “not only will you get to see beautiful and rare poultry, but you’ll learn what a free-range poultry operation is all about and acquire a better appreciation for the American family farm.”

I immediately shot an email to the owner, Dallas Gilbert, asking if I could visit him and get a heritage turkey for Thanksgiving. He gently suggested that November was not the time to try to visit a turkey grower, because he was up to his elbows trying to get 400 birds rounded up, processed and delivered. He invited me to visit after the holidays, and then he directed me to Marczyk Fine Foods in Denver, where he said I could still order one of his heritage birds.

While Marczyk’s is a locally owned grocery store that offers specialty foods from around the world, they don’t forget about local produce - it’s conveniently identified with a Colorado flag. While I was there, I picked up the bird, as plump and unadulterated as a newborn baby. I also scored some local cheeses from the Haystack Mountain goat dairy (located just off of Niwot Road, northeast of Boulder) and the Mouco Cheese Company (located in Fort Collins); a couple of exotic squashes (kabocha and carnival acorn) from Grant Family Farms in Wellington; and a huge bag of Granny Smith apples from Ela Family Farms in Hotchkiss. Next door, I picked up two Colorado wines: a classic white viognier from Garfield Estates in Palisade and a full bodied syrah from Guy Drew Vineyards in Montezuma County.

Lo and behold, it was a feast!

Thousands Eat Local Turkey in New Jersey

From the North Jersey Record:

“Thousands of families across North Jersey will eat Thanksgiving dinner with a real local flavor — with fresh-killed turkeys from Wyckoff, rutabagas from an organic farm in Emerson and Jersey-grown cranberries and squash.

‘Thanksgiving is the perfect time for sharing locally grown foods with friends and family,’ says Carol Rice, a Ridgewood resident who has been trying to ‘eat local’ to support area farmers for about five years. ‘Isn’t that what the holiday has always been about?’

Thanksgiving dinner done local is a small helping of a national trend toward thinking regionally at mealtime . . . ”

To read the rest of this article, click here.

42 Gather in Palo Alto, California; Yahoo Does It Too

A soldout crowd of 42 diners gathered for a 100-mile Thanksgiving meal in Palo Alto that featured crostini with warm cannellini beans and wilted chard, whole wheat berry bread, persimmon and almond salad, rice pilaf and baked pears with plumped raisins. The second-annual community dinner benefits the new sustainability group Conexions.

“We sold out a few weeks in advance, so next year we’re going to look at how to make it bigger,” organizer Susan Stansbury told the Palo Alto Daily News.

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Also in Palo Alto, Yahoo’s Sunnyvale campus restaurant, run by Bon Appetit Management Co., had a 150-mile Thanksgiving meal, in keeping with the restaurant’s local-ingredients philosophy. The holiday menu featured Sonora turkey roulade, honeyed yams and organic green beans.

“For us living in Northern California, it’s relatively easy,” executive chef Bob Hart told the Palo Alto Daily News. “Within 150 miles north and south, we really have a bounty.”

Northampton, New Hampshire Even Found Flour

John Pepi and Melinda Nielsen of Northampton were inspired to have a 100-Mile Thanksgiving when they heard an old friend, Suzanne Rataj, had been eating the 100-Mile Diet all summer.

So here’s their dinner as reported in the Daily Hampshire Gazette: turkey and butter, Diemand Farms, 34.1 miles. Sweet potatoes, Red Fire Farm in Granby. Onions and celery, Northampton Farmers Market. Pumpkins for homemade pie, from Mountain View Farms in Easthampton.

Mapleline Farm in Hadley supplied the milk, another Wendell farm the eggs, and Alia Starkweather’s cranberry sauce was made mostly from cranberries grown in Williamsburg, and sweetened with maple syrup from Zawalicks’ in Florence.

Best of all, there was local whole wheat flour from Upengill Farm in Gill (37 miles).

“I’m old enough to remember a time when you didn’t get anything out of season,” Alia Starkweather, 71, who attended another 100-Mile Thanksgiving in Shutesbury, told the Gazette. “We knew we got corn in August. Our apples didn’t come from New Zealand.”

Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire (and national “Dark Days” challenge)

Kim on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, in central New Hampshire, shared her locally focussed Thanksgiving menu on her blog Yankee Food:

Turkey (of course!) ; bacon, onion, sage dressing; gingered cranberry sauce; mashed potatoes; mashed squash; roasted brussels sprouts and turnips; homemade rolls; pumpkin pie; and mincemeat pie.

Kim is a member of the “Dark Days Challenge”, monitored through Laura’s Washington State blog Urban Hennery, and with 32 participants across America. They raid freezers, pantries, and ground-breaking (literally!) winter farms for four seasons of local eating.

2007: As Close to Home as Possible in PA

PENNSYLVANIA - My own philosophy is: Grow it Yourself or Buy it from Your Neighbor. Here’s how I used this philosophy for our Thanksgiving Dinner.

Menu:

Stuffed Pork Chop
Mashed Potatoes

Bean Casserole with Homemade Onion Rings
Baked Butternut Squash

Applesauce (sugar free)

Butternut Squash Pudding

Butternut Squash, Onions, Sage, Parsley, and Thyme were organic items from our own garden.

Green and Yellow Beans were from my parents’ garden.

Milk was from Evans City, PA.

Apples were from Connoquennessing, PA.

Pork Chops, Potatoes, and Organic Eggs were from Prospect, PA.

Thanks,

Margie

Going Local, Klondike-Style (Recipe Included)

NOVEMBER 20, 2007 - Across the United States, locavores are making their final preparations for 100-Mile Thanksgiving feasts. It isn’t always easy, so here’s a bit of inspiration: imagine going local at 60 degrees north (about the same latitude as the southern tip of Greenland). I spent the past four days in Whitehorse, the capital city of the Yukon Territory, where I met local eaters and farmers and also managed to stay up one night until 5 a.m. wearing kilts with two of my three brothers, their partners, and my fresh-out-of-diapers nephew Keir (okay, so not everyone made it to 5 a.m.).

Nighttime lows were dipping to -15 degrees Celsius (5 F), which had locals talking about the steady pace of climate change in the North. From what I heard in Whitehorse, though, the greatest challenge for food (wild or farmed) harvesters in the Yukon is a loss of faith: many northerners simply do not believe that their local environment can sustain them, so they are not on the lookout for Yukon food.

It’s not true, of course. According to the scholar Ken Coates in his 2003 book Best Left As Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territories, 1840-1973, the region’s indigenous peoples likely numbered about 7,000 to 9,000 before contact with European diseases and settlers. All of those people would have consumed an overwhelmingly local diet. The current total population of the Yukon is about 32,000, which raises two questions. The first is whether advances in agriculture can feed so many in such a place; if not, the second question is whether we might need to rethink northern development. Either way, one fact is clear: Yukoners could be eating a lot more local food. Instead, most rely on an industrial food system in which almost every product has travelled eye-popping distances - I spotted a bag of Vancouver potatoes while I was in Whitehorse, and while Vancouver is a lot closer to Whitehorse than, say, New Zealand or California, those potatoes still had to travel 2,562 km (1,592 miles) by road from farm to plate.

On the other hand, my brother David and his partner Tanis have a winter stock of homegrown red, blue, and white potatoes, and I also met farmers Garret Gillespie and Heidi Marion, who were good enough to share with me a delicious potato-based stew. (Yukon Gold potatoes - popular mashers - are not actually a Yukon-born variety, incidentally, but they do grow well there.) Garret and Heidi, who are currently taking a year off from farming, are helping to pioneer Community Supported Agriculture and organics in the area and certainly widened my own awareness of what can and can’t be done in the North. They’ve grown over 40 field vegetables and herbs, and Garret told me he’s planning a shift to fossil-fuel-free agriculture. More than any other reason, he said, he just likes the quiet and calm of low-tech farming.

I could certainly appreciate that as we took off down a country road in crackling air with a horse, two dogs, and three kids being pulled on a mini dogsled. The snow softened every noise, and the long low northern light lit every hilltop around us. There is good living to be had in the Yukon - all the more with every step deeper into a sense of the place and its possibilities.

Some 70 people kicked off their snowboots to sit down for my talk on the 100-mile diet experiment, but by then I was already feeling humbled by what the Yukon’s local eaters have already achieved in the face of so many voices telling them “it’s not possible.” As with everywhere we’ve been, the real variety of flavour and nutrition that we heard about was not down at the supermarket, but in foods that spoke strongly of the landscape: caribou, moose and elk meat; “Uncle Berwyn’s” birch syrup (they sold out at the weekend craft market); lingonberries and cloudberries; smoked arctic char; mossberry wine; hedgehog mushrooms; wild rosehip tea . . . not to mention surprises like rye-triticale flour and hand-milked, organic halloumi goat cheese. (For a seasonal Yukon recipe that you can try anywhere, see below.)

It all brings to mind something the legendary Maine organic farmer Eliot Coleman recently said to me: “‘Impossible’ is usually a failure of imagination.” Not a bad thought to keep in mind for 100-Mile Thanksgiving in the United States, or for that matter, anywhere and anytime.-JBM

Here’s a winter recipe from Celebrate Yukon Food: Seasonal Recipes, produced by the Fireweed Community Market Society. For an all-local version where Alisa and I live, we’ll substitute butter for olive oil, sage for nutmeg, and red pepper flakes for black pepper.

Turnip and Pear Soup
by Sheila Alexandrovich

Another way to enjoy the root cellar. This recipe has Finnish roots - no pun intended!

1 onion
3 large rutabagas or turnips
1 tbsp olive oil
3 pears
1 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 cups apple juice
black pepper
fresh parsley, whipped cream, or daikon radish

Finely chop the onion and cube the rutabagas or turnips. Sauté in olive oil for about 10 minutes. Peel, core and cube the pears. Add to the turnip with the thyme, nutmeg and salt. Sauté another 3 minutes. Add the vegetable stock and apple juice. Add black pepper to taste. Simmer until the roots are tender. Purée in a blender and garnish with freshly cut parsley, unsweetened whipped cream, or shredded daikon radish.

A Year of Local Eating in Colorado

NOVEMBER 17, 2007 - Starting November 1, Lynnet Bannion of Loveland, Colorado, pledged to do the 100-Mile Diet for a full year. Lynnet works in accounting and lives on an acreage outside of town, and she volunteers for a local farm’s CSA (community supported agriculture) program. She will be blogging about her experiences - and of course this includes a local Thanksgiving. Congratulations and good luck.

In Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Frapalicious has posted resources for a 100-Mile Thanksgiving in her neck of the woods.The Peachtree Road Farmers Market is hosting their first-annual holiday market (”a lot like things used to be” they say).

In other news, as of next week our friend Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, will be done his year of not only local eating in New York City, but reducing every environmental impact he could think of - no lights, electricity, garbage, car rides, toilet paper, nothing. Kudos to Colin and we look forward to his book about the experience, to be published in 2009. He’ll have a documentary, too - you might even see us in it.

And while we can’t read Danish, we know they’re up to some serious local eating when some citizen “lokaaleters” recently linked to us. We welcome any English-language news on this experiment. We don’t know if they celebrate Thanksgiving in Denmark but we see a listing for the Diwali holiday. So, hats off to the 100-Mile Hindu Danes! -ADS

Virginia Adds a “Glocal” Edge to 100-Mile Thanksgiving

NOVEMBER 16, 2007 - Last year professor Tim Beatley of the University of Virginia invited his students to share a 100-Mile Thanksgiving - he even made bread out of acorn flour for the occasion. This year, he has decided to add a “glocal” component to the festivities. Here’s what the author of Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age has to say about his choice:

By Tim Beatley

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA - Last fall, students and faculty at the University of Virginia met for an unusual Thanksgiving meal. We had taken to heart the challenge of Alisa Smith, a Canadian author and passionate foodie, who was appalled that most ingredients in North American diets traveled an average of 1,500 miles to reach our tables. Instead, we planned a Thanksgiving meal using only ingredients found within a 100-mile radius of our homes in Charlottesville.

After I allayed some of the students’ initial concerns, such as whether pumpkin pie spices were off limits (they weren’t), students and faculty in the School of Architecture’s Department of Urban and Environmental Planning embraced the idea of a 100-Mile Thanksgiving.

Everyone took the challenge seriously and we all learned much about our community and region. By developing personal connections with farmers and producers, students learned about the local growing environment and the often-difficult circumstances faced by local farmers. Some of our newly arrived graduate students joined a local CSA — Community Supported Agriculture, a kind of subscription farming in which residents buy a seasonal share in a local farm in exchange for a weekly box of fresh produce. Many others began frequenting our vibrant farmers’ market. These experiences led them to view themselves as members of a community, with duties and commitments, rather than as temporary visitors.

We also learned to think more about seasonality. There was a collective gulp when we realized that many products would not be available locally by the time Thanksgiving arrived. And some traditional food items were not available locally at all. Still, there were wonderful discoveries. Within our 100-mile radius we discovered Wade’s Mill, which sells flour and cornmeal from locally grown grains. We discovered local artisan cheeses, and local jams, jellies, and honey. We realized that many good things are happening, but difficulty sourcing some items highlighted to us that there was still much to be done in re-establishing local food systems.

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EACH STUDENT in my Sustainable Communities class researched a local food and contributed a Thanksgiving recipe utilizing locally grown ingredients. At our dinner, there were locally grown potatoes and greens, and turkeys from local farmer Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm (now somewhat famous as a result of Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma). And there was full geographic disclosure — all the dishes were accompanied by cards indicating the percentage of ingredients derived from within 100 miles.

The meal and the class were a huge success, not only in terms of what they taught us about the food available in Central Virginia, but also about the interconnected nature of communities, illuminated by the study of sustainable food. And the food was delicious!

Food provides an entree to every aspect of community sustainability: land-use practices, energy use and fossil-fuel dependence, public health and the obesity crisis, and levels of consumption. And it allows students to explore lifestyles that need not be sacrificial, but can be inherently richer, fuller, healthier. Sufficiency and sustainability look pretty appealing in the form of a rhubarb confit or a blueberry pie.

But what about our commitment to the global food community?

We live in a global community, a rich and wonderful array of environments, cultures, and traditions. The idea of “glocalism” recognizes that we have an obligation as ecological citizens and consumers to care, not only about our local communities, but also about the larger world. Our choices of food and other products provide us with opportunities to make connections with people around the world, to help improve their living conditions and life prospects, and to help solve the problems that our consumption helps create. What we take from the global commons, we should give back, measure for measure.

How can we do this?

1. By selecting ingredients that leave a small ecological footprint and require only low levels of energy and carbon in their production and transportation.
2. By thinking about our food choices in ways that highlight serious global problems and point the way to possible solutions.
3. By seeking recipes that connect us to our family heritage and help connect us to people in other countries and cultures.

By choosing products that allow us to attach a face to food. Can we select foods with “stories” that build awareness of our common humanity?Food offers us a way to look inward, to reconnect with our families and our heritage, as well as a way to look outward to our local and global communities and gain a powerful understanding of our interconnections. Last year, the students and faculty at the University of Virginia who participated in the 100-Mile Thanksgiving challenge found it a transformational experience. Many of us plan to accept the challenge again this year. Won’t you join us?

- Reprinted from the Richmond Times-Dispatch with permission of the author.