While I am, in principle, a big fan of the locavore, 100-mile diet movement, I really don’t think I’m ever going to manage to eat one hundred percent local. I’m very fond of olive oil, for instance. And mangoes. But it does give me a thrill when I realize that everything on my plate was produced within a fifty mile radius of my house. This was a recent dinner of grilled lamb chops, Japanese eggplant and asparagus, all purchased at the downtown farmer’s market.
The eggplants are greenhouse grown by Hedlin Farms over in LaConner, about ten miles away, and the asparagus was from Frog’s Song farm on Fir Island. And the lamb is from Linda Martiny, an enthusiastic raiser of Suffolk sheep from the upper Skagit Valley. She’s been selling cuts of young lamb at the farmer’s market this season, and it’s such wonderful quality that we’ve already ordered a half a lamb from this week’s processing. Can’t wait!
The wine, a Two Mountain red blend from Zillah, WA, is not precisely local – on the other hand, we bought it at the winery last year. The Perrier, of course, is as non-local as you can get. Pity, I was on a roll there. But the flowering branches on the table are from my own Japanese Snowbell tree!
From our own garden, we’ve also been eating our own fresh garlic scapes (shown above, grilled), parsley and tiny ripe strawberries. Now that’s local.
What local foods have you been eating this week?
Food on the Brain 
That’s funny. I’ve been eating lamb, eggplants and asparagus from the market; and garlic scapes, parsley and strawberries from our garden, too. What are the chances? 🙂
Excellent chances, I would think. Doofus. 🙂
Radishes… they are sweet and very spicy and are spreading out of control, threatening to impede and replace the blackberry scourge… not sure if that is good or bad…
Basil, broccoli, zucchini, sugar snap peas, spinach, lettuce, strawberries,tomato sauce, homemade sourdough bread. Drink of choice is northwest brewed IPA. You know I still can’t relate to eggplant in June unless it’s the caponata I pulled out of the freezer last week. It doesn’t seem right. Katherine and I were just talking about how we thought asparagus still has a seasonal attraction here for most people. And yes we’ll never be purists about the local diet either until the climate changes enough to grow olives.
Steve,
Eggplant in June may be weird but I’m not complaining – we may actually get to eat enough of it for once. Hedlin had beautiful cucumbers at the last market, too.