A source for your freshest locally grown produce

 

8 Reasons To Eat Local

 

    Eating local foods is better for you, for the environment, and for your taste buds. Here are the top eight big, umbrella-style reasons you should eat more local foods.

 

1. Local Foods Are Fresher (and Taste Better)

     Local food is fresher and tastes better than food that been trucked or flown in from thousands of miles away. Think you can't taste the difference between lettuce picked yesterday and lettuce picked last week, factory-washed, and sealed in plastic? You can. And fresh food? It lasts longer too.

2. Local Foods Are Seasonal (and Taste Better)

    It must be said: Deprivation leads to greater appreciation. When does a cozy room feel best? When you've come in from out of the freezing cold. Fresh corn in season tastes best when you haven't eaten any in 9 or 10 months--long enough for its taste to be a slightly blurred memory that is suddenly awakened with that first bite of the season. Eating locally means eating seasonally, with all the deprivation and resulting pleasure that accompanies it.

3. Local Foods Usually Have Less Environmental Impact

    Those thousands of miles some food is shipped? That leads to a big carbon footprint for a little bunch of herbs. Look for farmers who follow organic and sustainable growing practices and energy use to minimize your food's environmental impact.

4. Local Foods Preserve Green Space & Farmland

    The environmental question of where you food comes from is bigger than its "carbon footprint." By buying foods grown and raised closer to where you live, you help maintain farmland and green space in your area.

5. Local Foods Promote Food Safety

    The fewer steps there are between your food's source and your table the less chance there is of contamination. Also, when you know where your food comes from and who grows it, you know a lot more about that food.

6. Local Foods Support Your Local Economy

     Money spent with local farmers, growers, and artisans and locally-owned purveyors and restaurants all stays close to home, working to build your local economy instead of being handed over to a corporation in another city, state, or country. Since the food moves through fewer hands, more of the money you spend tends to get to the people growing it. To make the biggest local economic impact with your food budget, seek out producers who pay their workers a fair wage and practice social justice in their business.

7. Local Foods Promote Variety

     Local foods create greater variety of foods available. Farmers who run community-supported agriculture programs (CSAs), sell at farmers' markets, and provide local restaurants have the demand and the support for raising more types of produce and livestock. Think Brandywines, Early Girls, and Lemon Boys instead of "tomatoes."

8. Local Foods Create Community

     Knowing where your food is from connects you to the people who raise and grow it. Instead of having a single relationship--to a big supermarket--you develop smaller connections to more food sources: vendors at the farmers' market, the local cheese shop, your favorite butcher, the co-op that sells local eggs, a local café that roasts coffee.

 

 

Eating locally?

It connects you to a larger world.

 

 

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Frankenmuth Farmers Market Visits

 

    Shopping at your Frankenmuth Farmers Markets is the easiest way to eat locally. You know where the food comes from. After all, your grower is right there and you can just ask them. It has occurred to me that perhaps more than one shopper, however, has gone home with bags of produce that went uneaten. And many others have left after a morning’s tour around the stalls only to go home with a bunch of carrots and a dazed expression. A bit of planning can keep weekly shopping for produce at a your farmers market fun and make cooking a snap all week long.

 

1. Know Your Seasons

    If you know a bit of what to expect when you get there, making decisions at each stall is much easier. Learn what grows in your area when and talk to the growers about what will be coming to market in upcoming weeks. An availability sheet for produce is at our information booth.  Pick one up this Saturday.

2. Go Early or Go Late

    For the best selection, go early. The best goods go first. Popular-but-limited items may even sell out before the day is done. It’s as simple as that.

3. Bring Big Bags and Small Change

    Some vendors offer bags, but they tend to be thin and flimsy plastic ones that groan under the pressure of any substantial produce purchase. Make sure everything gets home without crashing onto the sidewalk or spilling onto the floor of your car by bringing your own sturdy canvas or nylon bags. A backpack can make the hauling easier, especially for weighty or bulky items.

    Although vendors will make change, purchases will go easier and faster if you have exact (or close to exact) change.

4. Sketch Meals Ahead of Time

    Since you know what you’re likely to find at the market, you can do a bit of meal planning and shop accordingly. For example, if local asparagus has just come into season and you can’t get enough, you know you’ll want to eat some steamed, some cooked into a soup, and some sliced raw in a salad. So you’ll know both how many bunches of asparagus to buy and that you’ll also need some spring onions or herbs to add to the soup and some salad greens.

5. Plan For Spontaneity

    Yes, you’ll fair better if you plan your trip to the market. However, you need to leave a bit of wiggle room for those unique fruits and veggies you didn’t know would be at market so early.  Trying new things is part of the fun of going to farmers’ markets.

6. Work In Volume

    The best deals at the market are had when you buy in bulk. You’ll enjoy the best flavors and the best prices when you buy lots of whatever is at its harvest peak. How to use it all up? Try new recipes with favorite vegetables or learn the lost art of preserving food. Freezing, canning, and drying are just some of the ways you can save seasonal tastes for later in the year.

7. Think "Whole Foods"

    No, not that “Whole Foods.”  Think in terms of how food grows and comes to the markets without being processed first. Carrots come whole and unpeeled. Beets still have greens (and dirt) attached. Learning to handle just-harvested produce can take some getting used to, but the superior flavor is worth the adjustment.

8. Get Advice

    If you find a vegetable that’s new to you and want to give it a try, ask the farmer how to prepare it. For the best tips specifically ask how they like to eat it.

9. Invest in Wheels

    If you buy a lot every week, consider acquiring a wheeled cart or wagon (strollers make wonderful conveyances for fruits and vegetables) to get your haul in one trip. (But please, oh please, pay extra attention to fellow shoppers and the stalls as you push or pull your wheels through the market!)

10. Keep It Simple

    You’re buying ultra-fresh produce, let its natural flavor show when you cook it. Keep preparations simple. You’ll make cooking easier and you’ll be likely to try (and eat) even more local foods next week.