Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

The Top Five Ways to Make Thanksgiving Local

By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 11-20-07

As we head towards Turkey Thursday and get ready to give thanks, give up the remote for unending hours of football and doze off with the tryptophan, locavores will celebrate their addition to the Oxford English Dictionary this year, with locally grown food. For those who want to join them this Thanksgiving, and give up the long-distance vittels, here are the top five ways to go local.

5. Avoid Cranberries.
While Washington state is the closest producer of cranberries, most producers sell to the Massachusett’s based Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. So while you might think they are pretty local, they can actually end up in a rather long supply chain. But according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if you still can’t give them up, you can look for an “M” on the packing code (like “M400"), which indicates that they come from Washington.

4. Heirloom Potatoes.
The All Blue Potato, Yukon Gold and Cherry Red varieties do more than add color and flavor to a local dinner. Buying these heirlooms encourages growers to do more than grow the ever popular and monocultured Burbank and Russett and expands the gene pool. This may prove key to decreasing disease and pest problems. Those who plan ahead can buy potatoes from local farmers at the end of the growing season and store them. For the rest of us, some grocers carry local produce. If they don’t, this is the perfect season to ask. I was once told by a food expert that if two or three people request local food, a grocer is likely to start carrying the product because they figure that most of us want it but just don’t have the time or gumption to ask.

3. The No-spice Pumpkin Pie.
Cinnamon and nutmeg are spices that no one this side of the Rio Grande has found a way to produce. Native to Sri Lanka and South India, the quills of the Cinnamon bark are a mainstay of holiday taste. But according Alisa Smith, the long-distance spice problem can been solved with a no-spice pie. According to the chef, it won’t just taste like a spoonful of puréed pumpkin. 

2. Local Libations.
Look for local breweries and wineries, with special attention to the origin of grapes and hops. Some wineries must ship grapes from drier, warmer climates to make “local” wine in Montana to Idaho and New Mexico. For those of us who enjoy a pint with dinner, the number of microbreweries in the Rocky Mountain West has grown exponentially.  But unlike the Oregon based Caldera Brewing Company’s “Dry Hop Red” Beer, made with three local hop varieties, most breweries buy hops from the global market. This might become problematic in the coming year as New West’s David Nolt warns of a hop shortage.

1. And finally, the number one way to localize Thanksgiving: Buy that turkey from a local farmer.
Most turkeys in the U.S. are raised in Confined Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs. Efficiency and profit determine the conditions of a CAFO where animals are packed in as tightly as possible and some have over 55,000 turkeys. Because turkeys are given 2.5 square feet of living space, they would, if allowed, fight and kill each other to expand their limited range. To curb this, poults (baby turkeys) are de-spurred and de-beaked so they will not scratch each other. This says nothing of attendant environmental and health problems.

Rather than support this practice with our turkey purchases each Thanksgiving and Christmas, buy turkeys from local producers. Some can be found at Local Harvest or at Sustainable Table. Look for Heritage turkeys of the variety that originated in the Americas and are raised in fresh air with plenty of room to roam on pasture. From the Jersey Buff to the Narragansett, Slate and Standard Bronze you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the way a turkey really tastes.

Each week in Spade & Spoon, Kisha looks at how Westerners are living, working and eating in their foodshed. Read every Tuesday at www.newwest.net/spadeandspoon.

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