Spring Giveaway: Sacramento Specialties

Sometimes blogging is a bit anonymous, but today I am proud to pay tribute to Sacramento, the city where I was raised and where I still reside. As you can see above, it's a beautiful place to live. Nicknamed "the city of trees", we have a great river and these gorgeous puffy clouds that always seem to appear on calm blue-sky days.

In the past, our city has sometimes been ignored in favor of the ever trendy LA to the south, or our iconic Bay area neighbor city of San Francisco. I feel, however, like Sacramentans can hold their heads high, because we have so much to offer, including a rich agricultural tradition and plenty of local artisans who excel at what they produce.

So today, I want to announce my first blogging giveaway: Sacramento Specialties. I want to highlight three outstanding local food companies and some of their best products. Your local Sacramento package will include:

A 500 ml bottle of Bariani olive oil. I've been olive oil tasting and tried a number of brands, but I'm telling you - this stuff is GOOD. Martha Stewart happens to be a huge fan of Bariani olive oil as well. It is produced by a local Sacramento family who originally emigrated from Northern Italy and has gained fans worldwide.

Earth & Vine is located in Loomis, northeast of Sacramento. Their website boasts that they offer "more than 60 jams, sauces, beverage elixirs and dressings, some of which are International award winners". I am featuring their Meyer Lemon Pear Marmalade. Suggested uses? "Mix with yogurt and fill tart shells. Blend with cream cheese to frost cakes. Glaze baked chicken or grilled fish. Toss into cooked bow tie pasta, chopped chicken, apples and grapes." Yum!
Finally, there's the Lundberg family, who have been growing rice in the town of Richvale (north of Sacramento) since the 1930's. Their commitment to ecologically sound farming and high quality products have earned them wide praise and a place on the menus of some of the most prestigious restaurants. I'm proud to offer a 1 lb. package of their Wild Rice blend: "Colorful to the eye, delightful texture and full-bodied flavor and aroma all come together in this blend of long grain brown rice, sweet brown rice, Wehani^®, Black Japonica™ and select wild rice pieces."

Whoever wins the giveaway will win the package and I will ship these wonderful items to them. To enter, just leave a comment below before the giveaway ends next Friday, April 29th at midnight. I will choose a winner using random.org and announce the winner the following day. The winner will have 48 hours to e-mail me and claim their prize or I will choose another winner. One entry per person per day please. Thanks for participating everyone! And remember, Sacramento is not just a cow town!

Is It Worth It To Eat Local? The Debate You May Not Know Existed

Hedonistic: the self-indulgent pursuit of pleasure as a way of life.

I was aghast when I read an article in which one person used this word to describe the locavore movement, which has interested me since I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal Vegetable Miracle. How could this effort to reduce pollution and use of fossil fuels and rely more on our local resources possibly qualify as self-indulgent?

There are two sides to every issue, and part of being well-balanced includes becoming aware of them. An August 6, 2007 article in the New York Times gave one example of how eating locally grown food sometimes causes an increase, instead of a decrease, in the carbon footprint. Their case in point: Lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-rich pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton. On the other hand, British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton. This was in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In this example, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Perhaps this issues is less pertinent to my fellow residents of California, who enjoy rich local resources; but what of those in a less human-friendly environment - say, Las Vegas, which used to be desert?

The potential good of locavorism is minimized in one study done by two engineers at Carnegie Mellon University, which declared that only 4% of all the greenhouse gases emitted by the food industry comes from transporting the food from producers to retailers.

In a Forbes magazine opinion article published in August of 2009, writer James Williams shares his stance: that the real answer to reducing one’s carbon footprint is to go meatless, rather than local, as raising vegetable life is so much less energy-intensive than raising animal life. He points out, "The average American eats 273 pounds of meat a year. Give up red meat once a week and you'll save as much energy as if the only food miles in your diet were the distance to the nearest truck farmers."

Despite these adverse opinions, I still feel there is a lot to be said for the locavore effort. On Wikipedia, I learned that a study in the 2007 Dewey Health Review included 100 individuals ages 18–55 eating local food grown within an 80-mile radius. The study revealed that a locavore diet resulted in a 19% increase in sturdiness of bowel movement and an overall drop in sleep apnea and night terrors.

Besides health benefits, there is a certain level of social responsibility that weighs upon us as consumers as well. To paraphrase Kingsolver’s observation in Animal Vegetable Miracle, we would hate to have our posterity wonder why we used up the last of our fossil fuel resources so that we could eat pale, flavorless watermelon in January.

On Locavores, Or How Bananas May Be Destroying the Earth

A new catchphrase has arisen in the past decade, the result of books such as Michael Pollen’s "The Omnivore’s Dilemma" and Barbara Kingsolver’s "Animal Vegetable Miracle". The word is locavore, meaning someone who eats locally grown food, generally within a 100 mile radius of their home. The reasons for doing so are:

1) Superior taste. When it comes to most fruits, vegetables, eggs, and meats, the fresher the food, the better the taste. Asparagus tastes better freshly picked and eaten 2 days later than it does when flown in from Chile and eaten 10 days later by an American in Arizona.

2) Environmental conscientiousness. Food that is flown or shipped in from other countries has a negative effect on the environment. Take for example, bananas. I will venture to say that every grocery store in America that carries produce sells bananas, nearly all of which are flown here from Latin America. Think of all the fossil fuel used in shipping that many bananas to us, not to mention the gas emissions by the planes or boats that bring them.

3) It’s economically savvy. Buying locally grown food supports local farmers and the overall local economy. It may be cheaper as well, as the price you pay does not include the cost of shipping that product from another country.

Even with this knowledge, at times it’s hard to be a strict locavore when you’re standing in the grocery store in December (after the farmer’s markets have closed until the spring), so I think of it more as a stop light. If I see something was grown locally, it’s a green light - I try to build my meals around such foods. If it was grown in the US, it’s a yellow light - I buy it if I need it. If I see it was shipped here from New Zealand, it’s a red light - I only buy it if I really need to.

Eating locally may be particularly difficult in the winter, when the options tend to be less plentiful than during the summer. Barbara Kingsolver suggests that this is the purpose of canning and freezing the bountiful foods in the summer, to sustain one through the time of cold. It is also helpful to know what is available in the wintertime, so here is a list of foods that are seasonal in the month of December:

VEGETABLES
broccoli broccolini brussels sprouts butternut squash cauliflower celery root collards fennel leeks mache potatoes (maincrop) pumpkin rutabaga salsify sweet potatoes sunchoke turnips

FRUIT & NUTS
chestnuts cranberries kiwi fruit oranges persimmon pomegranate tamarillo tangerines

MEAT
duck goose partridge pheasant quail rabbit venison

FISH & SEAFOOD
clams crab mussels oysters scallops

Also check out the web site Eat the Seasons for monthly lists of seasonal food and recipes!
http://www.eattheseasons.com/