Eat local

I'm so happy about the recent groundswell of interest in eating food that's been grown locally. It has a threefold impact on our lives: 1) the food you buy will be fresher because it's picked closer to actual ripeness and has to travel shorter distances to get to market, 2) because it travels a shorter distance there is less fuel expended to get the food to you, and 3) it helps support local farmers.

So here is a cool little tool to help you if you decide to jump on this bandwagon. A website called Local Harvest has an interactive map of the United States with local farms and farmer's markets (plus other food sources such as CSAs and online stores). There is a Search that lets you plug in an ingredient and then a zip code, city or state. When I plugged in Strawberries and Nevada, I got 14 matches.

Keep in mind that the map relies on the individual farmer's markets and other food vendors for the information in the map, so there may possibly be some inaccuracies. For example, it told me that I could buy artichokes at a farmer's market in New Jersey. My guess is that if they have them, they come from California, so not local. But who knows, maybe there is an enterprising farmer in New Jersey who has decided to grow artichokes. That would be cool.