Countdown to a 100-Mile Thanksgiving
Our 100 Mile Radius
Yes, it’s October and Thanksgiving is still five weeks away. So why talk about it now when my husband and I are firmly entrenched in our annual Halloween candy debate over the merits of Take Five (my favorite candy bar) versus 100 Grand Bars (his favorite)? Because this year, my husband and I have committed to hosting a 100-mile Thanksgiving, which means that we will make every attempt to source our meal from within a hundred mile radius of our home on Chicago’s north side.
For most of the year we are obstinate local food enthusiasts, growing what we can on our city lot and supplementing with the help of local farmers’ markets. However, each year as Thanksgiving approaches, the challenges of preparing a festive meal for 16-20 guests distract us from our locavore convictions. We buy local, free-range turkeys from Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks, but make only half-hearted attempts to source the remaining ingredients locally. On a recent road trip my husband and I were evaluating our commitment to environmental stewardship. (It was a very long ride.) ”What more can we do?” we asked ourselves as we cruised along Interstate 90. Before we crossed the border from Pennsylvania into Ohio we had an answer. This Thanksgiving would be different. This year would be our inaugural 100-mile Thanksgiving. Not only would we source the ingredients locally, but we would ask our family, who contribute side dishes and desserts to the celebration, to do so as well.
Somewhere in the middle of Ohio we made our plan:
- Confirm the menu.
- Review the recipes and ingredient lists.
- Modify the menu and recipes as necessary to eliminate impossible ingredients.
- Make a list of the ingredients we optimistically planned to acquire locally.
- Research local ingredient sources.
- Determine what would be available as late as the week preceding Thanksgiving and what had to be purchased in advance and stored/frozen/preserved.
- Get the entire family on board at some point between steps 1 and 6.
First we finalized the menu, an easy first step given that culinary experimentation is largely discouraged in our house at Thanksgiving in favor of tradition.
- Turkey with stuffing
- Mashed potatoes with rosemary and garlic
- Roasted Brussels sprouts
- Sweet potato souffle
- Kristy’s Roasted winter squash with Gorgonzola
- Mom’s Broccoli and cheese casserole
- Cranberry sauce
- Pumpkin pie
- Mom’s apple slices
Then it was time to review and modify the ingredient lists and further refine our locavore parameters. We knew spices, including salt and pepper would be on the impossible list, but we agreed to use them without consternation, focusing our efforts on the produce, grains, herbs, and meats. We’d forgo the Pillsbury crescent rolls, the orange zest and gelatin in the cranberry sauce, and the pancetta that we liked to sprinkle over the Brussels sprouts. We would happily make tradeoffs, using our own urban honey in place of sugars and maple syrup. We’d urge my sister-in-law Kristy to use Wisconsin blue cheese in lieu of the Italian Gorgonzola for her much-loved squash dish. Finally, we agreed to step outside our 100 mile circle for organic Wisconsin cranberries. Although Sandhill Cranberry, Inc. is located more than 200 miles away in Vesper, WI, Dan Wandler, owner of Sandhill, assured me that of the one million pounds of organic cranberries that he was in the midst of harvesting, plenty would make their way to Chicago locations of Whole Foods and Trader Joes. Given that most produce travels 1300-2000 miles from farm to consumer, and that Wisconsin is the only state in the Midwest that commercially produces cranberries, we were going to consider Dan’s Sandhill cranberries local fare for our Thanksgiving dinner.
Saturday we visited the Green City Market. Our mission was two-fold: to learn what produce would be available as late as Thanksgiving and to find out which vendors would continue servicing the market when it moved to its indoor location on November 6. It was good news all around. Our potatoes, garlic, onions, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, eggs, broccoli, apples and pumpkins would all be available between now and Thanksgiving. Despite the assurance from the farmers we spoke to, I regarded a Thanksgiving without Brussels sprouts an event more horrifying than a Thanksgiving without a turkey, so I took home several stalks and froze them.
Sunday we stopped by the Logan Square Farmers’ Market to visit with Nate Robinson of Jake’s Country Meats, Cassopolis, Michigan. The Logan Square Sunday market ends on October 31st, so we decided to stock up on Nate’s breakfast sausage with sage, an essential ingredient in our stuffing. Nate told us that Logan Square’s store-front food co-op, the Dill Pickle, carries many of his products now, including the sausage. With plenty of room in my freezer and a love for stuffing only rivaled by Brussels sprouts, we took home two pounds of sausage. We also bought several butternut squashes for Kristy, having only recently learned the importance of curing winter squash, especially butternuts.
Only dairy, grains and herbs were left on our ingredient planning list. So far this whole 100-mile Thanksgiving was looking like a breeze. Why had we waited so long? The Dill Pickle and Chicago Whole Foods locations carry a broad selection of local dairy products. And Kilgus Farmstead, which produces local dairy products as well as beef, would remain a regular at the Green City Market. For flour we would turn to Ted’s Organic Grains who also sell their products at the Green City Market through Heritage Prairie Market. Our herbs would be the most local ingredients of all – they would come from our garden. Chicago weather being what it is, I plan to harvest some rosemary, parsely, sage, and thyme before the first frost and dry them in our dehydrator.
Only one step remains of the plan we crafted on our road trip: 7. get the entire family on board. Stay tuned!
More resources to help you keep it local for Thanksgiving this year:
- National Center for Home Food Preservation
- Making the Most of the Seasonal Bounty (The Local Beet, Chicago)
- Why Eat Local?
- Local Harvest for farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area.
Lifestyle, Local Food, Urban Agriculture
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100 mile diet, Dill Pickle Food Co-op, Green City Market, Irv and Shelly's Fresh Picks, Jake's Country Meats, Kilgus Farmstead, Local Food, Logan Square, recipes, Sandhill Cranberry, Ted's Organic Grains, Thanksgiving
Themocracy
Great work, Bobbi! Excellent post.
Thank you Richard! Nice to ‘see’ you here.
[...] full of surprises. And it was hard work – harder than we’d imagined when we devised our plan in October. We learned a lot about our local foods, and even more about our family and ourselves. [...]
[...] more than 20 people–my relatives. I passed, or rather, the meal passed–our first-ever 100-mile Thanksgiving was a [...]