Mapping Out Meals

Finding locally grown and produced food within a 100-mile radius can be a challenge, but this culinary adventurer found more than enough to fill her plate

As he walks between rows of green-pepper plants, Randy Hampshire looks every bit the organic farmer he is. Tall, wiry, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a cell phone strapped to his belt and sporting a John Deere cap, he plucks a ripe pepper and hands it to me. “Bite the red part,” he says, “It’s sweet.” I dust off the pepper and take a bite. He’s right. It’s sweet and crunchy — dessert in vegetable form.
I’ve come to Hampshire Organic Farms in Kingston, Mich., at the end of a month of eating locally to see where my food comes from. I’ve embraced the experiment because eating local foods is supposed to be good for the economy, the environment, and my health. Starting in August, I set about eating foods grown within 100 miles of my house, allowing exceptions for social invitations and coffee, so long as it’s roasted locally.
On the map, 100 miles extends to Saginaw, Toledo, Lansing, and London, Ontario. I should be able to sustain myself, I think, considering the farmland and lakes within range.
On the first Sunday, I buy vegetables, apples, locally roasted coffee, and bread at the Birmingham Farmers Market. The next day, at The Good Food Company in Troy, I inquire about local products and am directed to tofu made in Royal Oak. 
Next is Whole Foods, where the produce section is plastered with Michigan-grown mitten-state signs. I fill a basket with Michigan fruit and vegetables, then approach the meat counter.
“Do you have any locally produced meat?” I ask. The woman blinks, processing my query. “No,” she says, “sorry.”
Wandering the aisles, I feel as though I’m shopping for the very first time. I read every label, and am rewarded with Good Rich Honey from Metamora (29 miles) and wine from Lone Oak Vineyard in Grass Lake (77 miles). I find what I expected; in the average grocery store, with as many as 45,000 items, only a few fit my new criteria.
After a week of produce-heavy meals, I find that homegrown eating is like any other diet. You want to eat local, but the global foods in your pantry (cereal, cookies, popcorn) are all so tempting. Just one foreign food, you think, then it’s back to local. After a few days, I call for reinforcements.
That includes Melinda Curtis, founder of Slow Food Detroit. “Eating local is a challenge,” she says. Michigan is now a net importer of food, so, by definition, most of the food I find won’t be local. Still, she assures me, I can survive by combining farmers market, grocery store, and on-the-farm shopping.
North American food is well-traveled. According to the nonprofit Sustainable Table, a typical carrot travels 1,828 miles from farm to plate — and that’s just one ingredient. In any given metro Detroit grocery store, tomatoes may come from California, asparagus from China, beef from South America, though all these products are also grown and raised within driving distance. On the other hand, Michigan products are shipped around the globe and agriculture is Michigan’s second-largest industry, bringing in $60 billion a year.
“If we all spent $10 a week on Michigan products,” says Frank Turner, chef with Matt Prentice Restaurant Group, “we could put $36 million every week back into the state’s economy.”
There is a demand to eat local, says Turner; the challenge is getting local food from farm to store, and local foods have a reputation for being expensive. In my 100-mile-diet, some things, such as bakery-fresh bread, can cost more, while in-season farmers market produce is reasonable, even cheaper than traditional grocery stores. But the gasoline burned by driving to multiple retailers, markets, and farms quickly eats up any savings. Still, “if we can cut out the cost of transporting food [by developing] a local distribution structure,” says Turner, “we can reduce [its] cost.”
Two weeks after beginning my experiment, I am dining comfortably. Jiffy Mix from Chelsea (68 miles) uses locally grown winter white wheat. Farmers markets supply produce and eggs. Papa Joe’s Gourmet Marketplace carries milk from Calder Dairy in Lincoln Park (37 miles). And Kroger sells Big Chief sugar from Bay City (92 miles). Still, I haven’t found 100-mile meat.
In mid-August, at Eastern Market’s Wigley’s Famous Meats, I inquire about plump chicken breasts resting on beds of ice. “Where is the chicken from?” I ask.
Up north in Michigan?” I ask.
“Yeah,” the woman says, “they get them from Indiana and then process them up north.”
That night, I bake potatoes with garlic, chives, and onions, and sauté Royal Oak tofu. I cut a head of romaine lettuce into salad. I fill a baking pan with Michigan blueberries and sugar, then add a Jiffy Mix topping for a berry cobbler. I pop the cork on a bottle of Lone Oak wine and toast a 100-mile meal.
By late August, the farmers markets are overflowing with tomato, eggplant, and apple varieties. This is the fun part — eating with the harvest. It’s all about “the joys of having a truly fresh local strawberry,” says Patty Cantrell, Michigan Land Use Institute program director, “rather than having a strawberry any time of year.”
Heirloom foods, locally grown varieties that are passed down through generations, need to be preserved, says Nick Seccia, executive chef for The Henry Ford in Dearborn. Industrial agriculture focuses on growing one perfect food, leaving other, less ideal varieties behind. According to biologist Edward Wilson, 7,000 species of plants have been eaten throughout history. Today, 20 species provide 90 percent of the world’s food.
“You don’t realize how fragile our food system is,” says Hampshire, the organic farmer. In an emergency, having fewer plant varieties increases the devastating impact of an attack or natural disaster.
Behind the small white house at Hampshire’s farm in Kingston (66 miles from metro Detroit) are an aging barn, bright red carriage-house-turned-bakery, chicken coop, and an undulating landscape abundant with sunflowers, wheat, and corn. In the pasture, four cows graze near the silos. On a hill, chickens peck and scratch. In the family’s large vegetable garden, despite the dry summer, eggplants weigh branches to the ground, bees pollinate okra blooms, and orange tomatoes rest in the shade. The bucolic scene is more than idyllic — it’s healthy.
 “When produce is left in the ground longer,” says chef Turner of the Prentice Group, “its mineral content is higher, which is more important to the body than vitamins. [And] its flavor profile is much higher.” Scratch-fed chickens are healthier, with 21 percent less fat and 28 percent fewer calories than factory-farmed chickens.
Shopping for my last 100-mile dinner, I find Hampshire Farms chickens for sale at the Royal Oak Farmers Market. And I finally locate bacon and cheese from Randy’s Sausage Shop in Detroit. That night, I sauté painted eggplant with basil and garlic, and add purple and yellow peppers to a salad. I bake chicken with more basil and garlic. Dessert is a fresh apple cobbler.
After a month of local eating, I’ve discovered new foods. And I haven’t missed bananas, paprika, and raisins. I’ve baked and cooked more (there are no 100-mile frozen dinners), and I’ve actually seen the farm where my vegetables were harvested and the oven that baked my bread. I even toured the factory that processed my flour. After a month of local eating, I’m looking forward to regaining some shopping convenience, but I will miss the adventure of discovering what’s for dinner.
How to Have a Michigan Thanksgiving
• John Hornoif raises Narragansett turkeys near
Ann Arbor; 734-645-0300.
• Michigan has 250 acres of cranberries;
centennialcranberry.com.
• Buy locally grown seasonal vegetables, including
pie pumpkins and potatoes for mashing, at area farmers markets.
• Get chestnuts for roasting from Chestnut Growers
Inc., Lansing; chestnutgrowersinc.com.
• Travel the Pioneer Wine Trail in southeast
Michigan for holiday spirits; pioneerwinetrail.com.
• Westview Orchards in Romeo (as well as other orchards and cider mills)  has cider, apples, and
baked goods; westvieworchards.com.

This article appears in the November 2007 of Hour Detroit.
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