This brings up the topic of flour.  Here in Boulder, there is wheat flour grown by Farmer John, and even he admits it is a little difficult to bake with.  It apparently has to be soaked in some hot water ahead of time.  I am more likely to use it as sprouts, or to simmer it (2 hours) and dress it up with a little sauteed onion and some vegetables.  There is also flour at King Sooper or Whole Foods called Wheat Land Farms, which is whole wheat and fairly local ("Colorado").  My personal experience is that it also needed to be combined with white flour to make passable bread, but note that I am no expert bread baker.  I do manage to use it in most recipes, substituting it (or Farmer John's) for between 25% and 45% of the total amount of flour indicated in the recipe.

Finally, there is local organic flour at Rocky Mountain Milling.  They sell in 50 lbs bags, and offer 6 different types of flour.  Some are whole wheat, and some apparently not.  Some are high in gluten and may be well-suited for bread baking.  Note that most stores do not appear to carry organic bread flour, so you would be getting something uniquely healthy there.

A legitimate question is whether baking bread is time-consuming.  First let me say that the smell of baking bread is incredible.  It alone probably justifies the effort.  Ways to cut back on the amount of work include the bread machine (caveat: my beloved Zojirushi is evidently not maintaining proper temperature after just a few months of use, thus explaining the fact that my bread had been failing to rise properly in recent months...).  There is also a "no-knead" method one might be able to find (most recently in an issue of Cooks' Illustrated (November? December? 2007 or early 2008).  The "no-knead" method does rely on white flour or at most half whole-wheat. Finally, there is the Kitchen Aid mixer.  Here I need help.  I took advantage of a summer day when my house was at 90 degrees and still my bread did not rise properly.  I'm sure there are folks out there who use the Kitchen Aid to knead their bread with success, but alas, not I.

Finally, you may decide that your sandwich bread is too precious to leave to the whims of the yeast gods (or better still, to sourdough, which I really know nothing about).  You would need to call around and see which bakeries use flour from "not as far away".  In our case, Rustica bakes crackers and breads with Colorado flour, and the Great Harvest Bread Company uses Montana flour.  Other companies (Breadworks for example) use East Coast flour, and Udi's never answered my voice mail.

Since it is preserving season, sandwich eaters may want to freeze a few batches of cilantro pesto, parsley, or broccoli pesto along with the basil pesto.  There's also a host of chutneys and relishes out there.  Happy sandwiching!

Lest I forget, one of my biggest personal 'local food' challenges is turkey slices.  There is just no way I would get a hold of enough local turkey breasts to slice up into the two or three packages we go through in a week.  Also it would require freezing said breasts, which makes the meat tough and tasteless.  This will not be an easy conversion for us.  The kids will eat my imperfect 3/5 whole wheat bread with turkey slices, but they are no fans of cheese, or certainly any "weird" chicken salad type concoctions I might come up with.  There is no local cream cheese, although you could make "yogurt cheese", either from Windsor Dairy yogurt, or your own Organic Valley milk yogurt.  So in fact sandwiches are fairly limited for us, which in turn, has slowed the conversion away from school lunches.

So what is there for breakfast?  First question, why is it so difficult to think of anything beyond boxed breakfast cereals? Getting away from those at our house has been so hard I am starting to think of it as an addiction.  Right now, i buy two or three boxes per month.  Around mid-month, when the kids (and husband)  haven't seen a box in a few days, the requests begin, and then the whining, and the statements that "there is nothing to eat!:" - all signs of advanced physiological dependence...

The first consideration is that breakfast is an important meal.  It should have at least 30% of the calories you consume in a day, because that sets up the metabolism in a beneficial way.  Apparently a favorite Sumo wrestler trick is to eat nothing all day, then gorge for dinner, in the hopes of packing on extra pounds. That said, a good breakfast is a challenge to plan for because we rush to get to school or work on time.

My personal favorite breakfast is fruit with cheese.  Apples, melons, pears, peaches, grapes all seem to go well with sharp cheese, maybe an ounce or so.  It has a low glycemic index, which is convenient in that I don't get too hungry later in the day.  It doesn't meet the 30% guideline, however.

For the kids, we have the following favorites:

- yogurt with granola +/- fruit (note granola is processed food - you have to put together the ingredients and cook it - it has lot of sweetener and oil or butter)

- oatmeal - we always make it with milk at our house, because our kids don't drink that much the rest of the day

- stewed fruit (from the stuff you have been dehydraing, for example)

- fruit smoothies with milk or mint tea.  You can use frozen, canned or rehydrated fruit in winter.  Some people can juice.

- baked goods (I put together the ingredients for quick breads the night before (without mixing dry and wet), mix and bake in the morning).  Another possibility is reheating frozen muffins, zucchini bread or waffles.

- bread with jam, or butter

- eggs, either previously hard-boiled, or any way you like them

- why not category: unconventional items like popcorn, salad, any leftovers, salsa and chips - why don't we like savory tastes for breakfast and what is it you would enjoy?

More ideas please comment below!

So this is how I did it:

1. The first step was to make a decision that I would try to cover 30 weeks, or roughly 7 months form November through May.  I calculated that I would store food for roughly 5 days out of 7.  The rest will come from leftovers, eating out, and winter share, which will have some things that appeal to our kids (potatoes, carrots, greens). Guests will cause us to use stores faster.

2. The second step was to make a list of what produce I think I can get at least some of the kids to eat: tomato sauce, corn, broccoli, peas, pesto, tomato soup.  I also included some items I could not resist having for myself, such as edamame. roasted eggplant dip and a few prepared summer dishes (ratatouille, moussaka).

3. Then I made a guess as to how much of each of these we might eat each time we defrost some, and how often I think we would want to have that item.  I figured a quart of tomato sauce per week (between pasta sauce, pizza sauce, and some to enhance the flavor of soups or other dishes).  If I'm wrong, tomato season only begins in late July anyway, so Ill have sauce left over for early summer.  I figured we might eat a quart of corn kernels every other week, a half-pint jar of pesto, one tomato or other summer soup, a serving of broccoli, or a pint of either peas, carrots or bell peppers.  Finally, once a month, a pint of snap peas or green beans, a half-pint of eggplant dip, a pint of edamame, a prepared dish.

4. The fruit I have been stockpiling whenever I come across a surplus of it.  We will likely end up with a half-pint of jam for each week, and 15 quarts of frozen fruit, at best, as well as 8 quarts of canned peaches and apricots.  We also have 5 quarts of peach puree, which will make popsicles in June when they are extremely popular, as hot weather is a novelty, and an as yet unknown quantity of applesauce, as it looks like a bumper crop year for Boulder apples.

5. I have not planned for breakfasts, beyond the frozen fruit.  Snacks will likely be either popcorn, or bread with butter and jam, yogurt with granola, apples with peanut butter.  The kids get most lunches at school, still, and I might need a whole grocery store of well-traveled food options to slowly change that.  My husband just began getting lunch from home, so this may cause me to run out of food sooner.

6. I have a dozen or so frozen egg whites, but have not planned seriously for having farm-raised eggs all winter.  I'll just deal with the Longmont "free range" eggs and maybe keep track so I know what I need next year.  Defrosting eggs will be another component of the learning curve.

So in order, the questions to answer are:

- How many "dark day" weeks do you have where you live?

- Which seasonal foods do you want access to in the "dark day" weeks?

- How much of each food would you eat at one time (freeze or can in those quantities)?

- How many times per month would you enjoy eating that food?

That gives  you a certain number of "family portions" of each food that you can now target.  Keep track of what you finally end up with on Day 1 or "dark days".  Cross off each time you have an item, and mark the date you had it.  This should help with planning the following year.  Families with kids of course add a certain percentage to account for the kids getting older and needing more food (and no longer turning up their nose at your favorite vegetable - will you  need to freeze okra? Brussels sprouts?),

Good luck!

The way I see it right now, it is better to do as much something as possible than to throw in the towel because you can't stay away from oranges, for example. It is kind of like dieting - so OK, you had ice cream today, but you don't give up on your diet entirely! You dust yourself off and pick up again tomorrow where you left off.

The difference between a 100-mile diet and a weight-loss diet is that unless you sustain your weight loss choices daily and for many weeks, the pounds won't come off. In contrast, each 100-mile choice you make, such as reaching for local potatoes at Whole Foods, for exammple, instead of the cheaper Idaho potatoes, has several repercussions: you vote for the item that has emitted less carbon, you support the local economy, you influence the buying patterns of Whole Foods, and you may even get a fresher product with more nutrition.

We don't know, at this time, what level of carbon emission would save the Earth. It is probably less than we think. We do all have to do more than we are doing. And we have to talk to each other about it, because there is nothing worse than that sense of futility that comes from depriving yourself for nothing.

So which exceptions should you choose?

I have a sense that (just as for health or weight loss) making stepwise changes in the right direction that you can sustain "forever" is the right way to go. Sure you could eat 100% local for a week. You'd get hungry, you'd think "this is for the birds!", you'd eat too much beef, and if you picked your month right, you wouldn't really miss anything crucial.

But if you make changes this month, such as eating only market vegetables, then keep it up next month because it was fun and delicious, and the month after that because you know the farmers depend on you, etc... then eventually the food system will change. And if then next month, you find a source of local oats, barley, millet and buckwheat, and cut back on rice by 80%, again you have changed Big Agriculture, and you have impacted the forces that would have us all eat genetically modified corn and soy in three hundred different forms.

This is what I am doing: I am using as exceptions the foods that allow me to drastically cut down on processed foods, out-of-season foods, and non-local foods. For example, peanut butter is how my picky 6 year old deals with the fact that he can't/won't fill up on asparagus, or quiche, or onion tart... The California-fruit-of-the-month (strawberries in May, cherries in June) is how we deal with the fact that I have cut back on boxed breakfast cereals drastically (75% or so). Then there are a host of non-local products I still buy because I don't have my act together (cooking oil, bread, sliced turkey, California leeks, yogurt, popsicles...). These are things I could learn to do without, get better at baking myself, spend more time cooking and slicing, grow myself, and make myself - it makes me dizzy just to think about it! Nevertheless, it is happening little by little.

But most importantly is what I do - each summer week, I give $50 to Cure Farm in vegetable and fruit shares, plus eggs, and another $50 to market vendors on Saturdays. That's easily the majority of our food dollars spent in Boulder County. This is so powerful that if everyone in Boulder made the same decision, we would simply run out of food. Hah! If that doesn't preserve farmland and help the local economy, I don't know what would!

Another trick is to take some vacation one day per week - if you work outside the home - or otherwise planning to spend a good part of one day each week preserving food for the winter. The main advantage of this, other than preserving the tastes and memories of summer, and keeping your food local, is that you do "cook ahead", in a sense, canning or freezing foods in a way that will simplify your life in winter - pesto, tomato sauce, and in some cases whole dinners.

One disadvantage of spending time in the kitchen in August and September is that it gets really hot in there... I have heard of folks canning using an outdoor setup, and also people using a solar food dehydrator. I'm afraid this is a topic where I am getting ahead of myself, because I really haven't tried it. I still find it daunting, trying to get dinner on the table and actually trying to fit in food preservation simultaneously. However, I can see that it would get easier with practice - for example, I could can a small batch aa I am sauteing vegetables for dinner - it's just that canning is so new it requires my full attention at thie time. Meanwhile, the strawberry-rhubarb jam I did make sits in the refrigerator where it withstands daily assaults from the kids.

The Bon Appetit website does give some guidelines as to what to avoid in terms of carbon impact:
- food flown in
- food grown in a (local or not) heated greenhouse
- processed food
- packaged food

The answer may be to have a list of possible strategies:
- is there an acceptable substitute?
- does it exist in dried form?
- is there something I can do to atone for this moment? (just kididng!!)

And then:
- How do I plan for this in the future?

According to the authors of "Putting Food By", you can safely preserve peaches, for example, without sugar in the syrup. You can use plain water, or juice, in whatever ratio you like. The fruit may taste better in light syrup, but the sweetener is not needed for preserving. There are still detailed steps to follow, including for keeping the fruit from turning unappetizing colors, but the process seems do-able, and apparently, many of the fruits keep better that way than frozen.

If you enjoy beans, they can be a staple in your diet. They can be inexpensive, high-quality food, enhancing salads, soups, used as a dip or spread, or mixed with vegetables as chili. I unfortunately do not have that much experience with beans, but it appears they are best cooked a very long time. Following the average recipe for an hour or two of cooking time will often produce a dish that causes gas. Some sites claim that older beans will cause more gas. Here is a website that promises success with beans while minimizing gas - adding certain herbs also supposedly helps. Dried epazote (mentioned in the article) is available in Boulder from Jay Hill Farm. Dried beans are most plentiful at the Abbondanza Farmer's Market stand.

Local nuts and seeds can be hard to find. It is easy enough to grow your own sunflowers, though not all of course are suitable for seed production, and you will have to fight the birds for it. Coastalfields farm does sell sunflower seeds. Pumpkin seeds are also delicious and nutritious, and a pain in the neck to prepare... but they could be used as a snack for kids, for example. Just the fact that it is so hard to get them out will slow you down from eating too many! Almonds do grow in Colorado, and walnuts too, though I have not found a local producer.

Tomatoes can well in a hot water bath because they are acidic. It is rather easy to find a recipe on the web. Barbara Kingsolver has one on the animalvegetablemiracle.com website. You can also can tomato chutney. A good trick would be to find something to do with all the green tomatoes you rescue from the first September frost (out here in Colorado). There is a green tomato chutney, and I'm sure other recipes as well. I've also been interested in making my own ketchup. My first attempt was not very successful with the kids, who are, after all, the major ketchup consumers. I am trying to make it thick, not too exotic, and to spare the salt (!!), oh, and also, I am trying to hide other vegies in it...

Tomatoes also dry well, though you would ideally pick the right kind, such as "Principe Borghese".

You can freeze tomato juice and tomato sauce, but there is no point in freezing whole tomatoes, unless you mean to can them, or make sauce with them.

You will have a hard time finding sauce made locally from local tomatoes. Perhaps in California, but for example, one Denver company I called said they got their tomatoes from California, and their glass jars from China.

But where to find local oats or barley? One place to start is localharvest.org, and see what farms local to you list as their crops. In the Denver area, Coastalfields farm appears to be the only one to offer barley, buckwheat and quinoa. Most of the quinoa grown in the continental US is apparently grown in Colorado's San Luis valley, which is "local" to very few people...

Another method may be to ask at the farmer's market who has heard of another farm growing amaranth, or buckwheat. At the Boulder Farmer's Market, one woman was selling corn for grinding into cornmeal. Another was selling corn for posole, yet another was selling corn for popping, and of course, later in the summer, we'll have sweet corn.

Lynnet at LoveLandLocal has experimented at length with millet, and reports several successful recipes here. Just scroll down until you find her entry on millet.

Oatmeal, by the way, is simply oats rolled using a heavy rolling pin, or so I am told. There is a type of oat called "hulless", which you can roll without hulling, which apparently is otherwise a laborious process.

Whole wheat berries can be cooked like rice or barley, or sprouted and added to salads or bread. Some nutritional authors (see Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions" recommend avoiding regular wheat, and focusing instead on sprouted wheat. Wheat sprouts are surprisingly sweet and fun to add to salads.