Ironmom's Locavore Breakfast and the Dark Days Challenge

Locavore: yet another internet word that has popped up in the last few years. The dictionary manufacturers couldn't even keep up if they ran their presses night and day. Then again, who buys dictionaries anymore when you have Wikipedia at your fingertips? If some terrorist plot took out the entire internet, schoolchildren would fall to their knees in despair at not being able to look up words. I admit, I'm one of those moms who actually makes their kids look things up in books from time to time, just for kicks and grins. If they still kept the Dewey Decimal cards in those little wooden drawers somewhere in the library, I'd probably torture them by making them look up books that way from time to time as well.

But locavore is a good word, a word that wouldn't have a reason to exist a century or two ago, kind of like the fact that there's no word for faith in the Lakotah dialect. If everyone has something, there's no need to name it.  But now locavorism (is that a word?) is a great first step toward food security, environmental stewardship, fostering community, and most important to this Ironmom, eating healthier. Food that comes from local sources is naturally higher in important stuff like Omega-3s, vitamins, and minerals than food that is processed and shipped from far away.

For instance, eggs from chickens who free-range have 20 times more Omega-3 fatty acids than conventional eggs. They also have 10% less fat and 34% less cholesterol, they produce HDL or "good cholesterol" and help lower bad cholesterol. This helps to explain why despite eating eggs for breakfast almost every single day, my cholesterol numbers are far lower than when I was a vegetarian and even a vegan.

So here's what went into my locavore omelette today:

Eggs from our lovely lady chickens. As you can see, we treat them very well! This one, my son's chicken "Voodoo" had a foot problem, so she's getting a spa treatment.  No, I'm not kidding! We treat our chickies very well and as a results they have very few health problem. We let them out to free range around the yard and they take care of our ants and garden grubs, among other things.

Milk from a local goat farmer. We buy this on a weekly basis in 7 big glass jars. This photo is my daughter actually hand-milking one of their goats. She's pretty good at it! We have had a relationship with these folks for many years now, not only just purchasing milk but going out to their house when their goats had babies or their dog had puppies. This is not the same at all as picking up a gallon of milk in a plastic jug at the store. Building relationships within your community strengthens not just your physical health, but emotional and mental health.

Spinach and tomatoes from the garden. I wasn't much of a green thumb when I started vegetable gardening (my house plants tend to even look anemic and wilty) but I've found it's not as difficult as one might think. Even just growing a few of the things we love to eat provides a big wallop of nutritional benefit over produce picked green and shipped long distances.


There's also local pork sausage in my omelette. I don't have a photo of the pig, but we bought part of it (a third to be exact) from the contractor who helped us with our sunroom last year. He just so happened to mention he was about to slaughter his pig (doesn't that come up in everyday conversation around your house?) and we filled our freezer with  a bunch of pork chops and sausage.

The last ingredient is some chantrelle mushrooms. These grow all around the woods in our part of Oregon, and local folks harvest them and sell them by the side of the road or at farmer's markets. Luckily, these are very easy mushrooms to harvest, with no poisonous relatives that your local mushroom gatherer could get confused. They make a very tasty addition to my morning eggs and give a seasonal flair to any meal you add them to, since they're only available right now and not at other times of the year. There are very few things you can say that about any more, with produce shipped from all over the globe, so I look forward to my little seasonal treats. Some year I want to go out in the woods and actually pick some.

Last year I participated in the Dark Days Challenge, which is to cook four meals each month (1 per week) focused on SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients with only local foods. I'll be doing it again this year, and if anyone wants to join me, I'll post some updates here with links to your posts about eating local!

The Ironmom Extra Mile:   Jason from Life of an Aspiring Triathlete asks "Where are those goat farmers here in Dallas?" In answer, the website RealMilk.com is a terrific resource for connecting with local farmers wherever you live. In their "Where Can I Find Real Milk" page, I found that there is a goat dairy in the Dallas/Fort Worth area that sells goat's milk by the gallon. The dairy's page is: www.lattedadairy.com. There is also a dairy in that area that sells raw cow's milk. Additionally, this website has dozens if not hundreds of listing for raw milk (cow, goat, and sheep) for all over the U.S. and for other places in the world. It's a terrific resource. So if you want real milk with real nutrients (pastured, raw, and not full of antibiotics and other nasty crud), check out this site.