OT - local food?

I'm just curious.  How much of what you eat is local to where you are?  You can define local however you want - I consider something local if I can drive to wherever it's grown and buy it myself. 

Is eating locally important to you?  I love the idea of eating locally and am really trying to eat a lot more local stuff right now.  I am also starting to can some local produce so I can eat it over the winter, because I want to be able to have fruit and tomatoes and stuff in the winter when it sure doesn't grow locally!  However, the more I pay attention to where my food comes from, the more complicated it seems to get.  I made some salsa yesterday with local tomatoes, onions and peppers, but the recipe calls for salt and ground cumin.  I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as local salt or cumin in mid-Ohio.

However, I do buy raw milk and free range eggs locally, and right now I'm eating local fruits and veggies.

I get most of my fruits and veggies from a local place during the summer, and we have a number of people at work who bring in extra veggies that come from their garden that exceed what their family can use, but that's about it.  I used to get eggs from a coworker but he changed jobs.

Lora

Prior to my dad's death I didn't just eat local I ate home grown.  Just about everything that went into my mouth was home grown.  Now that he is gone,  I have given up the farming and gardening and eat mainly store bought, we do not have a farmer's market but I do go to Virginia to theirs from time to time.  I also raise my own tomatoes in the summer and my peppers, too. I will freeze up what I can't eat so I can have them in the winter months but being I grown my tomatoes and peppers in a pot they don't usually produce more than I can eat or give my sisters.  Homegrown is the best.  

In the summer months almost everything I eat is local....from farmer's markets, my own backyard, etc.   I'm in the process of buying half a cow, to store local, antibiotic, grass fed beef for the year.   I can get chickens and pigs too.    Depending on how well my garden fares this year, I hope to do some canning so I can use them year round.    Salt and spices may not be local, but you can find local places that only sell organic versions, if that makes you feel better.  Averaging out Year round, I'd say 40-50% of what we eat is local.

I eat homegrown also. I can or freeze all of our fruits and veggies except summer squashes because I can't get it to cook with an agreeable texture. We have neighbors that raise pigs & chickens, so we eat fresh eggs and pork.

Even though I live in Miami we still have a back yard where we grow peppers, potatoes, boniatos, purple corn, tomatoes, cilantros, skinny avacodos and we also have chickens roaming around in the back yard also for eggs (and sometimes my husband slaughters the chickens but I can't bring myself to eat them even though I do eat meat).  Anything else we buy local from organic farmers markets.  

Do you live near the Amish in Ohio?  I used to buy a lot of yummy food from the Amish when I lived in Ohio.

Sonja

I wish I could have a few chickens for eggs.

I'm in Morrow County, Ohio, which has a lot of Amish and Mennonite farmers.  In fact, I have been buying a lot of produce this summer from a farm owned by a Mennonite family.  They also sell baked goods but so far I have resisted them.

Don't eat the Amish baked goods Kelly!  You'll cross over to the fat side and never come back!  I am from Stark County, Ohio and I go back home a couple of times a year but I plan on never going to any of the Amish restaurants again because I know it would be too difficult to face all those yummy homemade loaves of bread, pies, and cookies.  

Sonja

Oh, I've eaten them in the past.  Just not since my WLS.   Since I dump on too much sugar, it's not that hard to resist the  pies.  I do like homemade bread, though.

We have a CSA so all of our produce and eggs come from the farm down the road (as does our bread). & if it isn't their own produc it comes from other farms close by (& is labeled as such so consumer is aware). We also get our free range chicken from there but they get it fresh from an Amish farm in Lancaster, PA which is about 2 hours away. We use a fish market who gets their fish locally but I cant tell you how close exactly.

We use the actual grocery store much less frequently now. But we do use it for yogurt, almond milk, & my protein bars.