Local Foods

You can always tell when I’ve been cooking with beets. My fingers are fuschia, my counter tops are stained purple, and my shirt, inevitably, has two or three damning pinhole spots of bright red.

This is the final installment in a series on ingredient sourcing for processed—sometimes called “value-added”—foods sold at farmers markets.Shoppers may seek out farmers markets for a variety of reasons: because they want more “natural” foods; because they want to know how the plant or animal they’re eating was raised; because they want to support local businesses. A few farmers markets require food vendors to acquire a certain percentage of their ingredients locally, but most do not.As the consumer, you have to decide for yourself what’s important.Will you pay more for humane or environmentally sustainable practices? Can you live with scant supplies of your favorites in the off-season? When forced to make an imperfect choice, do you prefer locally grown or certified organic/sustainably grown? Whatever your choice, vendors who share your priorities should be able to tell you—and show you—where they get their ingredients and why.A “Georgia Grown” label may not help you decide. The Georgia Grown website explains that agricultural food products must merely be processed in Georgia, “regardless of origin” of the ingredients, to qualify for participation in the labeling program. So a participating company need only buy, say, pickled okra packed in a Georgia factory to legitimately call it “Georgia Grown.” The okra may come from Georgia … or it may come from Florida, Mexico or the Honduras.What can you, a mere shopper in a little farmers market, do to ensure validity? Ask, ask, ask. Educate yourself. And then, demand.“Ask your vendor if they have open houses, if they have field days,” says Mark Stevens, founder of Capra Gia Cheese Co. And then go. “You can’t borrow a herd of goats and a milking parlor.”“I wish more consumers would know the seasons and know the harvest,” says Lori Bean, owner of Georgia Jams. Strawberries are first, then blueberries and peaches, then apples. “Within a few months that a fruit is out of season, you probably aren’t going to have any of that stock left unless you are a commercial operation.”If you run across a significant difference between the product description offered by the vendor in person and the description on the vendor’s website, point it out. Perhaps the vendor’s process has changed due to growth, and the website lags behind reality. A little consumer pressure may push a web redesign to a higher place on the company’s priority list.

If you spent any time in 2011 worrying about your food supply, then I encourage you to make 2012 your Year of the CSA. Now is the time to sign up.

The second annual Atlanta Food & Wine Festival takes place Thursday, May 10 through Sunday, May 13, in and near the Lowes Hotel Atlanta. The major themes for this year’s festival, according to co-founder Dominique Love, are sourcing, Southern heritage, seafood, cocktails, and "farm fresh."Love, co-founder Elizabeth Feichter, and their team are creating a dynamic program that includes more of the South’s premiere culinary talents, an exciting array of Southern cocktail experts, and expanded breadth of food and drink in the popular Tasting Tents. (Full disclosure: I will be moderating a panel at the festival entitled Soul Food, exploring expressions of comfort foods in different cultures.)I interviewed Love via email while she was attending the Charleston Wine & Food Festival a couple weekends ago.

To beloved local cocinero Eddie Hernandez of Taqueria del Sol, too many local restaurants contribute to a prevailing misconception of Mexican fare as greasy, mystery-meat-stuffed calorie bombs with a side of rice and beans—dishes that are nowhere to be found in Mexico. He has curated a few of his favorite recipes for the masses and given us a fresh take on Mexican cuisine. And guess what: All of it is healthy.