Support Local Food This Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is the time of year to celebrate family and friends and be thankful for each other and our lives together. The holiday is also a time to relish in the harvest from the earth with a nourishing home cooked meal. You can make this year’s Thanksgiving more rewarding by making your celebration more wholesome, environmentally friendly and authentic. With a little planning it’s easy to turn this holiday of self-indulgence into a Thanksgiving that honors the planet.
Consider planning your Thanksgiving menu around locally grown foods. Not only do locally grown foods cut down on transportation and support your local economy, but they taste fantastically fresh, because they are. So when it’s time to buy those fixings- potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, apples, pumpkins, squash, and more- go to your local farmer’s market instead of a chain grocery store where the majority of the foods have been shipped from thousands of miles away.
How about the centerpiece of your table being a naturally raised, free-range, local bird? A local, free-range turkey doesn’t travel as far to get to your kitchen table, plus it is raised more ethically than the more common factory-farmed birds. We offer through our store the ability to purchase this type of turkey, from Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm in Sterling Connecticut.
“At Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm in Sterling, which now raises about 2,000 turkeys, Rick Hermonot, the owner, said that as of early November orders were up 60 percent over last year. Three years ago Mr. Hermonot took local Thanksgiving food a step further, turning his own family’s tradition of having an entirely homegrown holiday dinner into a concept for a farm store. Ekonk is now a one-stop shop for Thanksgiving, with local breads, cheeses, meats, cider, honey, fall fruits and vegetables, homemade ice cream, pies and more.” (citation from article in NYT 11/08)
For the rest of that wonderful Thanksgiving dinner some foods to add to that menu that are typically in season in the New England area might include: Celery Root and Apple Soup, Chestnut Stuffing, Buttered Brussels Sprouts, Roasted Acorn Squash, Mashed Potatoes with Gravy, and Hard Apple Cider.
-Samantha Oldrid