Pizza

This weekends pizza made from local flour, mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, and herbs.

Foray to find local flour

I put up a Craigslist ad yesterday looking for locally produced flour, thinking it would be kinda hard to find. Boy was I wrong. When I woke up this morning I had half a dozen emails from people that had local flour, organic local flour, conventional local flour, heirloom local flour, and so on and so forth.

So, after talking to a few people, I settled on buying a 50lbs bag of whole wheat flour from Hunton Farms. After a phone call and a few emails, I learned that this particular farm has been producing flour for quite a while using another company to do the milling. This mill has been in operation for over a hundred years, is water powered, and sound awesome. However, it turns out the cost of transporting tons of wheat a hundred or so miles, paying for the crush and separation just wasn't economically good--so they are building the first flour mill I'm aware of in Eugene Oregon.

This mill is a 25 horse power, stone ground mill. The grain goes in the top, and the top rotating stone crushes the grain. The crush then goes out the chutes to rotating screens, separating the flour from the bran depending on the type of flour.

It was really fascinating to see an actual flour mill. I was expecting it to be much, much bigger (and in fact the guy there agreed with me on that), but it was compact and efficient looking.

So, the bag of flour I picked up wasn't ground with this machine, but it certainly it cool looking. The whole wheat flour is made from hard red spring wheat, with a protein content of 14.3%. So I still want to find some local pastry flour (which these guys may make at some point I hope).

Lastly, after picking up the flour I went down to one of our farms, Detering Orchards and picked up some cucumbers, beets, and carrots for pickling. The vingar, sugar, and salt I used were conventional, but the vegetables and dill were grown right around here. Even after one day, the dill pickles taste so much better than store bought.

Dill Pickles

• 8 lbs small pickling cucumbers
• 20 black peppercorns
• 4 red dried chile peppers
• 14 dill heads
• 5 1/2 cups vinegar
• 6 cups water
• 1/2 cup pickling salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 6 grape leaves

1. Combine all the ingredients except the dill, cucumbers, and grape leaves, and bring to a boil.
2. Gently scrub the cucumbers, remove any blossoms and stems, and stuff them along with the dill and grape leaves in two gallon jars.
3. When the brine begins to boil, cut the heat and pour equally over the two jars. Top off with 50/50 water and vinegar if there is too little.
4. Let cool, and store in a cold, dark place (i.e. your fridge).
5. Make sure to immediately start eating them, because they are irresistible.

Difficult food to find locally

Some things are pretty easy to get locally in most of the U.S., i.e. fresh eggs, local dairy, fresh fruit and vegetables during the season, and so on. But there are some things that are deceptively difficult to find, especially if you are on a restrictive (vegetarian, vegan, allergies, religious beliefs, etc.). So, we've been compiling information on how to work through some of these trickier ingredients.

Salt

Salt is a big deal. Even if you don't eat much salt, it is an essential electrolyte that your body must have. Not only that, it's pretty critical in bringing out flavors for most people, even when used in tiny amounts. So, some options for a local diet are:

Iodized Table Salt
Industrial salt production isn't local for many people, but the environmental impact on production and transportation is likely quite low.

Home Processed Sea Salt
While much of the country can certainly go to the ocean, collect some clean sea water, and boil it down to crystals, the use of energy to get there and back and to process the sea water is likely less efficient than table salt.

Artisnal Sea Salt
Unless you live in France, or happen to live near naturally occurring salt deposits (or own some shallow salt water wetlands), most artisnal salts are probably neither local nor all that great for the environment (transportation, shipping, etc.).

So, most sources of salt will have some amount of trade offs if you choose to use it. That is something I personally am comfortable with.

Flour

Local Whole Wheat Flour
Many urban locations in the U.S. are still closely located to fields growing wheat. By exploiting Craigslist it is usually pretty easy to find local producers of flour. In the Eugene Oregon area there are a couple tiny producers of whole wheat flour, it just takes a little looking.

Sugar

Just about every sugar available to consumers in the U.S. has been transported quite a ways. But due to efficiencies in production of sugar from sugar cane, the overall impact compared to other kinds of sugar probably aren't that terrible.

White/Brown/Raw Sugar
Unless you live near a place growing sugar cane or sugar beets, refined sugar just isn't going to be local.

Fruit Purees
Obviously you can sweeten things up with fresh, ripe fruit. The drawbacks are pretty obvious though--I won't be adding strawberries to my morning coffee any time soon :)

Caffeinated Beverages

Coffee, tea, soda pop, and other beverages are staples in many peoples daily routine. They certainly are part of mine, and we've yet to come up with a suitable substitution that can be sourced locally.

Oils, Mayonnaise, Dressings

Except for butter fat, sourcing locally produced oils are a challenge. Many people love olive oil, grapeseed oil, and others, but most of the extraction of oil has been fairly centralized in the U.S.

Concluding Thoughts

Nothing we can't overcome, but there are still going to be challenges. A single week on this kind of diet shouldn't be too hard, but what about a deeper commitment? That would be difficult, but I think it's something we can do--or at least learn a few things during the journey.

How we classify 'Local' food

There are two metrics used to classify food--first, how local is it, and second what is the environmental impact. For example, a food could be quite local, but due to the amount of processing and energy use it may not be great on the environment.

So, for example when talking about the tomatoes grown in my own garden, they could be described as:

Brandywine Tomatoes
Locally grown, organic tomatoes grown in the garden. A wonderful tomato for canning or fresh eating.

Ninkasi IPA
A wonderful IPA from the Ninkasi brewery in Eugene Oregon. Made in Eugene, but the hops and grain are probably from Washington.

California Peaches
Peaches trucked up to Oregon from California.

Here is a complete list of the different designations that a food can have. The environmental impact badge is completely subjective, and could change and evolve over time. However, it should give at least a sense as to how much impact a particular food has.

Food Origin

	Locally Grown, Locally Processed
	Grown around a hundred miles, processed farther away
	Processed around a hundred miles, possibly grown farther
	Grown and processed several hundred miles away

Environmental Impact

	Excellent, very little environmental impact
	Moderate environmental impact
	Undesirable environmental impact

Welcome to 100 Mile Food!

We are a group of friends that decided to try out eating as local as we can. Hopefully you will find this journey as fascinating as we do, and if you'd like to join send me a message, email, or a comment.

We are located around the Springfield/Eugene Oregon area which has an abundance of farms, farmers markets, and wonderful resources. Where are you from?


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As the blog matures there will be lots of pictures, opinion, commentary, and maybe a few recipes. Let us know if there is anything you want to see!