For several years now, I’ve been reading and talking with people about the advantages of becoming a locavore*, a person who eats only food grown, farmed, or produced locally. (* Note: The word “locavore” was coined by a group in San Francisco for the World Environment Day in 2005.)
I’ve learned a lot. I could go on at length about why eating locally is more sustainable, uses something like 94% (!) less petroleum than food that’s been transported the average distance of 1500 miles, and why it’s good for the earth and all living things in many other ways, but instead I’ll refer you to three books that got me interested in the first place. Continue Reading
Here’s a beef sausage recipe I created as a substitute for chorizo in a recipe for
This recipe is reprinted from 
Eating as a locavore (a person who eats only locally grown food, as much as possible) means looking ahead to prepare for the lean winter months when few fresh ingredients are available in our cool winter climate. Part of preparing for winter involves preserving and storing fall harvested foods by canning, fermenting, freezing, salting, smoking, drying, and root cellaring.However, a Pacific Northwest winter isn’t a total fresh food wasteland. Besides crops that can be stored fresh, such as potatoes, apples, and winter squash, there are also a few foods that reach their flavor apex during winter, especially root vegetables such as beets, parsnips, carrots, etc. 
Local hazelnuts, known to some as filberts, are a wonderful counterpoint to a lot of fruit and vegetable flavors. They also can add a crunchy texture to soft foods, and ground hazelnuts make a nice finishing touch as a topping for meat sauces, desserts, and casseroles.
Amazon.com now is offering the 
We’re so excited! The 
Holiday Dinner Menu Plans for 2012 have been created to help make it easier for you to serve local foods to your family and friends this year. Three five-course menus are available, one with a beef entree, one with salmon, and one vegetarian (lacto-ovo-vegetarian to be precise, since eggs and dairy are used).
I recently
This recipe is extremely flexible and makes a small quantity, so you can try it many times with various ingredients. Feel free to adjust to your own particular taste. 
In past articles, I’ve talked about how eating as a locavore (eating only locally grown foods as much as possible) means learning how to store and preserve summer harvested foods in order to have them available later in the winter. There are multitudes of ways to do that: root cellaring (even if you don’t have a root cellar), canning, freezing, smoking, dehydrating, salting, fermenting, etc.
Caramelized onions add a sweetness to savory dishes that is hard to beat. If you want to make people hungry, start sauteing some onions. Works every time!
