Think gobble, eat local

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In terms of sustainability, the first Thanksgiving was, by all accounts, exemplary.

For starters, the veggies were all harvested in the fields of Plymouth – and the four wild turkeys of lore were obviously free range. Though the colonists’ wheat and barley crops didn’t fare so well, according to the folks at Pilgrim Hall museum, the corn was exceptional because Squanto (aka Tisquantum) taught them to sow the seeds in hills and fertilize them with fish.

It wasn’t certified organic, but you get the picture.

It would appear the only imported thing at the feast were the Pilgrims. And they used wind power to get here.

Fast-forward four centuries. Today, you can buy turkey and carrots from California for your Thanksgiving dinner. The corn could come from a handful of states. And guests fly in from all over the place.

But in Maine and nationally, there’s a movement to bring the holiday back to its roots – agriculturally, anyway. It’s called the 100-mile Thanksgiving, and it’s based on the premise that most if not all ingredients for the meal are grown, raised or produced within a 100-mile radius of the host’s home.

“For all the dinners you could do, Thanksgiving would probably be the easiest,” said Farahad Dastoor, who will celebrate a modified 100-mile Thanksgiving with his wife, Jean MacRae, and friends in Orono. “[At your farmers market you can find] root vegetables and turkey. You can get salt from Maine. Instead of sugar you could use maple syrup or honey.”

The beverages will come from afar, however, as Dastoor and his friends prefer Italian and French wines to locally produced fruit-based varieties.

“Wine is definitely not an option for us,” he said, waving his hands and laughing.

Things weren’t always this way. Dastoor grew up in Montreal, and his wife hails from Ottawa, and though their mothers both cooked from scratch, they weren’t adamant about eating locally. When the couple met, they discovered they both liked to cook and found that going to the supermarket wasn’t as much fun as socializing at the farmers market.

“When we moved to Orono we got to know the chicken lady and the beef lady,” Dastoor said. “Now we know them as friends.”

They attended a 100-mile dinner recently at Havana in Bar Harbor, and they were intrigued by the concept. It took months of preparation – the chefs milled their own corn, for example – and there wasn’t any pepper or coffee in the house.

Though he’s not willing to give up coffee, tea or certain spices, Dastoor said it’s easier and more pleasurable to eat locally now than ever before -even if you’re not a farmers market shopper. Supermarket chains such as Hannaford and Shaw’s also offer a variety of locally grown, raised and produced foods.

“I think it was always good, but because the market is growing, the variety of things you can get locally is growing,” Dastoor said.

That’s part of the beauty of the movement, according to Roger Doiron of Scarborough. He’s an advocate for Maine-raised foods who recently was named a food and society policy fellow by the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute.

The 100-mile diet took hold in 2005, when Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon of British Columbia committed to eat locally for a year.

They followed their progress in a blog and later wrote a book about it, “Plenty.” In the time that has passed, the idea of eating locally has gained popularity, in part because of recent food-safety scares and nationwide recalls of meats and produce and in part because there are more diverse options than ever.

“It’s taken off to a certain degree and turned into an idea that people can get their head around,” Doiron said. “For a lot of people, this somehow resonates, and people are approaching it in different ways. Some are adhering to it quite religiously, while others are taking a looser approach.”

Doiron grows anywhere from a third to half the vegetables he and his family consume and he’s a fan of Maine-made cheeses and locally raised meats. But he draws the line at coffee and chocolate.

“You have to make compromises along the way,” he said. “I still want to eat well. I don’t want to live off rutabaga for five months. I want to eat my root vegetables and squash through the winter, but I also want to use my olive oil and have my coffee and chocolate.”

That’s the approach Dastoor, MacRae and their friends John and Shelley Jemison, who will host this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, favor. They’re all members of the local Slow Food group, an international organization that was founded in 1989 to “counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”

They’re interested in reducing their carbon footprint – according to the 100-mile diet Web site, the average grocery-store ingredient travels 1,500 miles from farm to fork. With current oil and gas prices, they foresee locally raised options becoming if not less expensive, then at least on par with market food prices in the not-so-distant future.

But they’re equally interested in building relationships with farmers, knowing where their food comes from and supporting the local economy.

“In the Slow Food language we try to talk about thinking of ourselves not as consumers, but as co-producers,” John Jemison said. “When you start to think of yourself as a co-producer, you think that if you don’t show up at the farmers market or farm stand for these farmers, you know the farmers aren’t going to do as well. Once that connection gets made, you start to think about how we can all be in this together.”

The Jemisons don’t buy all of their food at their local farmers’ market. They still go to the grocery store. And they like imported wine. But they’re making conscious decisions about what they buy – in the words of Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini, they’re trying to embrace the idea of food that is “good, clean and just.” And on turkey day and throughout the year, that’s a reason to give thanks.

“By keeping your food within 100 miles or trying to have a lot of locally raised foods, you can bank on the fact that it’ll be good,” Jemison said. “You know it was produced using quality methods, clean methods. Yes, it may cost a little bit more buying free-range than a turkey at the supermarket, but you’re keeping the money in the state. You’re supporting farmers who are working hard. The more of that we can do, the better we can help Maine agriculture.”

On the Web

It may be too late to order a turkey, but you can still source some of your side dishes locally. The following Web sites have information about local farmers and the 100-mile diet.

www.eatmainefoods.com

www.mofga.org

www.kitchengardeners.org

www.100milediet.com