Good food, good feedback

[Randal Smathers]

Those of you who haven’t called, written or stopped me or my staff on the street to talk about this project should step right up. Both of you; everybody else has.

The response to this column from readers has been amazing. When Carol Tashie first suggested I try the Localvore Challenge, I wanted to get readers involved, somehow. But coordinating a group — starting with finding willing subjects — to do the challenge together turned into a logistical snarl, and I figured we could always do that another time. So after talking it over with my wife, we embarked on the challenge as a family.

I only decided to write about it last Friday; typically I would rather see articles about what the community is doing rather than the newsroom, but I thought it might be of interest to at least a few people. More like all but a few people.

Most of the response has come from readers wanting to share tips on favorite local foods, recipes, or places to shop. I am in the process of pulling those together and will be posting them at http://vtlocalvore.ning.com/, hopefully by the time you read this. It’s a social networking site, so anybody is welcome who wants to can link their farm, group, or strawberry cake recipe (thank you Helen, we’ll be trying it on Sunday). I’ll also post the columns as a reference point, so readers can refer back for specific names of suppliers if they wish. And localvores or the localcurious can show up and chat, post photos … whatever.

The second-most-common response is familiar to everyone who has ever been on a diet, anywhere:

"Hey, buddy, have a doughnut. You know you want one."

People who have been nagging me for months about my snack machine habit (yeah, yeah I know, the first step in breaking an addiction is admitting you have a problem; tell it to the hand, pal, the head is eating a Milky Way bar) are teasing me about how bad I must want a Boston cream pie about now, or french fries. Boston … french … not local … get it? Sigh.

Brussels sprouts aside, I’m an omnivore. At a previous paper I was the restaurant critic, where I considered it my duty to try the really odd things on menus so the reader wouldn’t have to. FYI: Beer floats — dark stout and vanilla ice cream — are OK until you run out of ice cream. Rare goose liver in blackberry sauce, headcheese, goat cheese, broccolini, pepperoncini, canned bear, curried goat, horse steak au poivre, steak tartare, tuna tartare, half-smoked sausage, heck, even pizza with anchovies. It all turned out to all be edible, down to the peach-flavored beer, even if wasn’t all to my taste (especially the peach-flavored beer). "I eat anything," is my standard response to queries from a host before a dinner party.

So I’m not used to being the one who won’t/can’t eat something. As a first experience outside the food mainstream, it hasn’t been too bad, but we are invited to some friends’ for a cookout on Saturday night. For the first time, I truly understand the hesitation in a vegan’s voice when I’ve invited them to a barbeque. Do I say sorry I can’t come? Ask if I can bring my own? Tell them what the restrictions are and hope they’ll provide something? Go but don’t eat?

Somebody else said they wanted to see before and after pictures of me, as if I am fading away. The easiest foods to find are eggs and dairy, including cheese and cream. No sympathy is in order, thanks, we’re getting our calories.

The snack cravings are really the only entirely negative part of the whole experience, the only part that feels like a diet or deprivation at all. Exchanging a soda for water is an irritant, but that’s at work while I’m busy. Mercifully, Rutland tap water tastes good. But I’m in the habit of having a glass of wine and a few handfuls of nacho chips or nuts when I get home from work, and in the silent kitchen at night, I can almost hear the California almonds whispering, "Hey, buddy … you know you want one."

I have allowed myself the wine as one of my three mulligans. My physician says it’s good for my cholesterol, and with all this cheese, I need it.

And I know snacks have to be a difficult subject for my wife with Callum, our oldest. Thank goodness for strawberries. I’m not sure if there’s a point at which 3-year-olds don’t want fresh strawberries, but I do know we’re not there yet, given who ate three of the four berries on my breakfast plate.

Besides, today the company that makes one of the "healthy" but not localvore snacks in our cupboard recalled the product. Veggie Booty, a corn, soy and rice puff with spinach and kale added was recalled because at some point it became contaminated with salmonella.

There are enormous swaths of the United States where a diet of locally grown foods would be mundane at best, unhealthy at worst. Most of those areas grow corn and soy for industrial processing into food or, increasingly, fuel for vehicles.

By contrast, eating locally grown foods in Vermont is a pleasure, not a hardship. We are blessed with an abundance of fresh foods, some seasonal, some year-round. While I have tried to show both the benefits and restrictions of a strict localvore diet, I know of no bad side to eating mostly local. With a minimum of planning, it can be easy, quick and cheap.

In a world of packaged foods, it’s often hard to tell what’s truly healthy. Words like light, natural and fresh are losing their meaning. Who really believes we need a freshness date on a soda? What does "natural lite" mean on a container of hydrogenated palm-oil margarine?

There will be no column Sunday, but we’ll be celebrating our week’s adventure by having a few friends over for a localvore feast on Sunday night, and for Monday’s paper, there will be a column wrapping up the challenge.

Challenge update:

Breakfast:

Omelette with sharp Grafton cheddar and chives from our garden (be it ever so humble, we do plant a few things), homemade toast with butter and honey, and fresh strawberries. Well, strawberry, for me. Coffee.

Lunch:

Leftover chili (even better the next day) and the last of the maple scones.

Dinner:

Pizza. I’m not sure what’s going to be on it, at this point, but I know what some of the options are: Chicken, basil, tomatoes, garlic scapes, mushrooms from a grower in Pittsfield, whatever veggies Katya finds at the market, and an array of cheese choices that would humble Monty Python. Salad on the side, finished off the maple ice cream with a homemade biscotti. If I’m not careful, I’ll need to go look for a made-in-Vermont antacid.

[Barbara Kelley, Sophia Eggleston-Kelley, Liam Joresz-Kelley and Harry Vedrani]

A really lovely drink is lemonade, apple juice, chamomile tea and lime seltzer if you like bubbles w/ a sprig of mint or lemon balm (even rosemary or lavender would be lovely). We drink it all summer long. Lemon zinger tea w/ cranberry raspberry juice and seltzer is AB FAB, too!

[Patricia McGovern]

You wrote that "The snack cravings are really the only entirely negative part of the whole experience, the only part that feels like a diet or deprivation at all. Exchanging a soda for water is an irritant"

Have you discovered Vermont Sweetwater's Maple Seltzer? It's carbonated maple sap, low in calories and very refreshing. Another summertime treat is frozen maple yogurt. You can use one of those popsicle forms with reusable sticks. ( I use Butterworks Maple yogurt but you could add your own maple syrup to plain yogurt.) You can make popsicles with apple cider too - i'm guessing your son would love this Localvore treat!