What would you serve for Thanksgiving dinner if you cooked only foods raised, grown or gathered within 100 miles of your home? Would you have to modify any of the dishes that are favorites in your family, or omit them altogether? Would you consider making such alterations to be a sacrifice, or an adventure?
The folks from 100MileDiet.org have issued a 100-mile Thanksgiving challenge, and I’m intrigued. We’ve been shifting towards eating more locally for several years now, and much of the produce that has gone into recent Thanksgiving dinners at our house has come from CSA boxes or farmers markets. By the time I participated in the Eat Local Challenge last May, I found it fairly easy to eat almost entirely locally for a month.
But we’re talking about Thanksgiving! For me, Thanksgiving dinner is the one meal of the year that is set, if not in stone, then in heavy clay. I’m sure that we can find a local turkey, but cranberries and sweet potatoes? What about cornmeal and flour for baking? Time for some research. Report to follow.
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My brother will be in Tokyo.
Nyssa will be in Texas.
With just my parents and I, we most likely will not make a Thanksgiving Dinner.
I don’t think it would be too hard to find turkey within 100 miles here. And we have the pumpkins from my patch for pie this year. Perhaps some of the canned items usually consumed would have to be eliminated.
What are you going to serve?
Since we are coming for Thanksgiving, perhaps we could extend “local” to include the Houston vicinity. That still would not solve the cranberry problem, but for me cranberries ARE set in stone, not just clay. Or maybe we could use cherries and add Texas local tangerines to make the relish? Barbie
They grow cranberries along the Oregon coast, I know. There may be some even closer. Coastal Oregon isn’t within 100 miles, but it is the same bioregion.