Mailbag: Commitment in the Carolinas, and Northern Ontario
OCTOBER 18, 2007 - Another year-long experiment! Here’s Mike and Emily in Florence, South Carolina:
We decided a little over a week ago to only eat foods that have been grown or produced in the Carolinas. Our initial goal is one year. Check out our progress at http://thecarolinafoodproject.blogspot.com/. We have had some problems because we started so late in the growing season, but for the past week we have been frantically canning, pickling, and freezing all the produce we can find so that we are prepared for winter. Fortunately we have also found a supply of local dairy and eggs. South Carolina grows tea, so that has helped with the loss of coffee. And of course there is local honey, molasses, and cane syrup for sweeteners. As far as alcohol is concerned we are only drinking North Carolina wines, homebrew - and an occasional Tennessee bourbon.
Ah, life with caffeine…there could be a lot of local eaters suddenly looking for real estate in the Carolinas. Now a note from Nancy in Nipissing Village, Ontario:
We planned a local menu that was served at Chapman’s Landing Cooking Studio to over 200 visitors during the recent country roads studio tour. I am used to growing a lot of my own food for my family and also for catering jobs but this year I went further and gathered from the wild (e.g., sumach for tea), bought more organics and local farm produce and expanded my search for local flour, cheese and other hard-to-get items. We are in northern Ontario and cannot always source within 100 miles but did connect with many new suppliers and growers. The event was a fantastic success and will be repeated twice a year - at Mother’s Day and 3rd weekend in September. Very satisfying.
We’ll be looking forward to hearing about that Mom’s Day 100-mile meal…-JBM
