Your Questions on Eating Local Answered

Eating local helps the local economy and the environment by making soil richer, protecting water quality, and minimizing energy consumption. If you haven’t already, you should integrate local items into your meal planning. If you’re feeling a little hazy on how exactly you can start eating local, here are some FAQ answered.

Q: What’s the difference between organic and local food?

A: The organic seal basically assures that your food has been produced without using harmful pesticides, fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge, bioengineering or ionizing radiation. Unlike the term “organic,” “local” contains a broad, even nebulous definition. There is no certification with precise specifications for local food. “Local food” simply implies that the food has not been shipped thousands of miles to get to your kitchen.

Q: What if local food does not have an organic seal?

A: You may have noticed that some local food lacks an organic seal. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the food does not meet your countries standards of organic. Some local farmers cannot afford to acquire the time-consuming and costly organic certification. However, you can make sure that your local food meets organic standards by inquiring with famers (most accessible at a farmers’ market) about their farming practices. You can eat organic and local simultaneously.

If you are irked by the thought of eating food without an organic seal, you can simply buy local foods that are grown using lower levels of pesticides. Usually, these foods have a thicker peak, which naturally protects them better from pests. These include avocado, broccoli, corn, mango, watermelon, and pineapple. For a complete list, visit HelpGuide.org.

Q: Isn’t eating local extremely time-consuming and difficult?

A: Yes, eating local can be a challenge that some people don’t have the time to fully take on. However, there are some ways that you can eat local, even if you don’t rely solely on local food for your full diet (very few people do!):

Shop “in season” to minimize your food’s travel time. For example, if you are living in Texas, only buy peaches in the summer months. You can start shopping by season by making family rituals that work around these seasonal fruits and veggies. This way, you associate summer fruits, like peaches, with summery dishes, like peach cobbler, whereas in the winter you might make a pecan pie. There are many of sites, such as Smart Living, that lay out lists of foods that are in season in your area.

 Buy from a local food producer or artisan, like a butcher or baker.

Go local from home. Plant some herbs like basil and rosemary to use in pasta sauce or on a sandwich. If you have a green thumb, you could try your hand at planting some berries or vegetables too.

 Q: What if I need an exotic ingredient or one that is out of season?

A: If you can’t go local, think regionally, try to get as close to home as you can. Aim to avoid air freighted items where possible.

When looking for ingredients grown outside your home country, keep your eyes peeled for the Fair Trade or Rainforest Alliance certifications. “Fair trade” is a seal that guarantees that farmers receive a “fair” price for their products, work directly with buyers, and prioritize sustainable farming methods without harmful pesticides or child labor. The “Rainforest Alliance” assures that the food is grown with environmentally responsible management practices including integrated pest and disease management, soil and water conservation and that workers are fairly compensated.

While eating local can sometimes get complicated or even confusing, hopefully all your questions have been adequately answered. Now go out there and get eatin’!

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Will you be cool as a cucumber?

Fresh cucumbers are simple to add to salads. For an easy salad just toss diced cucumbers with sliced red onions, red tomatoes and your favourite vinaigrette. This can be a fast way to make a refreshing salad that reaps some great benefits of cucumber.

Not merely is the cucumber known for the capability to cool off the body, it has also been proven to assist with jaundice, diarrhoea, epilepsy, sore throat, conjunctivitis (redness of the eye) and swelling of extremities.

Some people find it best to deseed the cucumber as the body can have difficulty digesting the seeds. It is possible to deseed them yourself easily by cutting them in two and using a spoon to eliminate the seeds or if you wish to eliminate this step it is possible to buy cucumber chunks that are already seeded.

Anti-diabetic Benefits of Cucumber:

Beta cells within the pancreas produce the hormone insulin. Cucumber is found to have a hormone necessary for beta cells in the insulin production. Moreover, the Glycemic Index of cucumbers is found to be zero.

Why don’t Cucumbers have a glycemic index listed? Does this signify they do not raise blood sugar levels?

No! It means that under the “rules” for the concept of the glycemic index, it is too hard to get an accurate number. It is because you’ll need to eat a very big amount of the food to get 50 grams of carbohydrate at once in order to be tested. In general, the lower the quantity of carbohydrate in a vegetable and the more fibre it has, the less the increase in blood sugar levels will be.

The carbohydrates are primarily responsible of the raise of the glucose level. But the carbohydrates within the cucumber are easily digestible.

Just a few Quick Serving Ideas:

• Use half-inch thick cucumber slices as petite serving “dishes” for chopped vegetable salads.
• Mix diced cucumbers with sugar snap peas and mint leaves and toss with rice wine vinaigrette.
• For refreshing cold gazpacho soup that takes five minutes or less to make, simply purée cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers and onions, then add salt and pepper to taste.
• Add diced cucumber to tuna fish or chicken salad recipes.

Cool Cucumber Salad

Serves 8

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Marinating time: 1 hour

• 3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/4-inch slices
• 1 carrot, peeled and shredded
• 1/2 red onion, sliced paper-thin
• 1/3 cup roughly chopped coriander

Dressing:

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce (preferably low salt)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• Pinch dried red pepper flakes

1. Combine the cucumbers, carrots, red onion, and coriander in a large bowl.
2. Combine the dressing ingredients. Pour the dressing over cucumbers, cover, and refrigerate for one hour before serving.

Nutritional Values per Meal: 1/2 cup portion

• Calories: 25
• Calories From Fat: 10
• Total Fat: 1 gram
• Saturated Fat: 0.1 grams
• Cholesterol: trace
• Sodium: 50 milligrams (without added salt)
• Total Carbohydrate: 5 grams
• Dietary Fibre: 1 gram
• Sugars: 3 grams
• Protein: 1g

About the writer:

Suzanne Ault shares knowledge for the diabetic diet recipes blog, her personal hobby internet site centred on cooking suggestions to stop diabetic issues.

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Christmas in New Zealand and Australia sees the beginning of six weeks or more of summer holidays for school children and a lot of peoples annual holidays, so instead of curled up all toasty in front of a fire we are off toasting in the sun.

Traditions here are similar to the Northern Hemisphere, well, they did mostly all come from there with the early settlers to both countries, but new immigrants have also brought their traditions with them which we have taken on board as our own, so Christmas Day could be anything from the traditional hot roast turkey and all the trimmings cooked on a 30C plus day, to cold meats and salads in a camping ground by the beach or seafood cooked on the barbie by the pool.

All this, regardless of the food chosen, is washed down with copious amounts of beer and champagne, followed by a game of backyard or beach cricket.

Christmas Eve most places will have a Carols by Candlelight, or more recently, Carols by Glowstick!, service at a church or park, followed by Midnight Mass , then home to put the pillowcases by your bed, a beer or glass of milk and fruitcake or mince pie out for Santa and carrots on the grass for the reindeer, which are always gone by morning!

How the rest of the day passes changes from house to house, family to family, but like everywhere , involves far too much food,and good cheer, and Christmas Carols about snow and chestnuts on roaring fires while trying to find room in an already overcrowded fridge!

Turkey, hot or cold ham and pork, hot vegetables or salads, prawns, oysters,lobsters or even just a chop and a sausage can be found on our Christmas tables, followed by fruits salads, trifles and pavlovas. A few still stick to hot puddings.Christmas crackers and the wearing of silly hats is of course not negotiable!

Boxing Day sees all the leftovers brought to life again for a repeat performance and also the grueling Sydney to Hobart Yacht race and the Boxing Day Cricket Tests .
Most places are closed Christmas Day, garages and small corner stores can remain open, buy Boxing Day is the start of the sales and once again the merry jingle of cash registers is heard.

So, perhaps, our Christmas traditions are not set in stone, but changeable and moldable from one year to the next , as families needs change and grow. Some are kept for a lifetime, some are discarded , but all are special.

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In the Netherlands, Christmas is very much a family get-together, that isn’t traditionally centred around food. It’s a time of meeting relatives, playing board-games and of course, on Boxing day, a trip to the nearest furniture mall.

In the old days, if you were posh enough, you would eat goose or game for Christmas. If you didn’t have the money, it would usually be chicken. Nowadays, British and American traditions have settled here too, so a lot of turkey is served.

People do try to make something of the meal, either by serving a three course dinner, or by ‘gourmetting’. For gourmetting we have a special apparatus, that is a little non-stick top, and tiny little saucepans below. In between a coil heats all of it. The fun is, the whole family can cook and will spend more time around the table than usual. Typical gourmet-food is pancake, egg, tiny sausages, chicken and other meat. It’s quite meat based. All of this is served with numerous sauces, so you don’t actually taste if the meat isn’t done entirely to your liking.

The culinary expertise of the Dutch is much more prominent for New Years Eve. Every part of the Netherlands has their own typical New Years Eve wafer or waffle. In the North they are shine-through thin, in the South more like a fat little biscuit. Some of them are rolled up, so you can put cream in them.

Another very typical New Years Eve treat is oil-balls. A yeast-based, sweet batter is scooped into hot fat. The batter will form balls, that are dusted with icing sugar and eaten warm. Though hard to imagine, these really are a treat-if eaten once a year. You can either make them plain, or add sultana’s to the batter. Another variation is peeling and coring an apple, slicing it and put a slice in the batter (which then becomes a bit lighter), and deep-frying that.

Both images courtesy of Google Images

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