Eating Locally Away from Home

I just got back from a week and a half visiting family and friends in southern Vermont and upstate New York. I love seeing people I care about and I also enjoy exploring local foodways in places that aren't quite familiar to me.

I grew up in Brooklyn, but several of my family members are now based in Vermont so we often do Thanksgiving there. I was able to stay longer this year because my work schedule has been delightfully flexible, so I got to orchestrate most of the holiday dinner. I don't get to do that very often for my family of origin and it's different from catering for strangers, when I'm always trying to figure out the most cost effective way to do things. For this occasion it was more important for everything to be just right.

I bought most of my produce for the dinner at Walker Farm, between my mother's place in Dummerston and my sister's home in Putney. They have lots of organic produce that they've grown themselves (tomatoes in Vermont! In November!), and also plenty of other stuff, most of it local. We've got a spectacular food scene in Seattle, but we don't have anything like this. The agricultural and residential landscapes in Vermont are so well integrated that a place like this can work, while it wouldn't make sense for a farmer near Seattle to rent space in the city for a similar venture.

The other great local food find in Vermont was the Gilfeather Turnip, though I have to admit I didn't actually taste one. They were just too big, and by the time I discovered them I was already trying to figure out ways to use all of the Thanksgiving leftovers. But I kept going over to the basket of them at the Brattleboro Coop and checking out this magnificent vegetable. Some of them weighed as much as 5 pounds. I've been eating baby turnips the size of radishes. The Gilfeather turnip is a native of Vermont, and it's actually a rutabaga, not a turnip. It's also received the distinction of being inducted into the Slow Food Ark of Taste.