TreeHugger 100-Mile Thanksgiving Challenge
by Sean Fisher, Cincinnati, Ohio 
on 10.20.06
Here in the States, most of us are looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday in just over a month, where we will gather with family and friends around the dinner table to celebrate the bounty of the earth. And, although we celebrate with the first Thanksgiving in mind, where the feast was (and had to be) entirely local, much of our Thanksgiving meal comes to us from places far from our homes. So, here's our challenge for you: make your Thanksgiving meal local. We want you to make a meal using only ingredients found within 100 miles of your home. This doesn't have to be a "traditional" Thanksgiving meal (although it can be), but it should be a feast that many of your family and friends would enjoy.
We want you to send us your 100-Mile Thanksgiving menu. Along with the food and ingredients you used, you should also let us know where you obtained your food - both in terms of location and who the food came from, let us know the name of the farm or farmer where you bought your food. You can submit your entry to: contest [at] treehugger [dot] com. We will judge entries both on the food presented and on the eco-footprint of the meal you created. We are looking for creative and tasty meals, so feel free to unleash your inner chef. We will accept entries until Tuesday, November 14, so you have just under four weeks to get your menu together. The best meals will be featured on the site, and TreeHugger readers will get to vote on the best 100-Mile feast the week of Thanksgiving.
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Are we automatically rejected from the contest if we fly to have Thanksgiving with our family?
I'm not going to enter because it would be no contest for me. I live in the heart of PA Dutch country, so finding organic local food is just as easy for me as finding the regular stuff.
A real challenge? The 25 mile diet.
There have been several great posts on TH about the 100 Mile Diet. Check out their website at http://100milediet.org/
They also have a cool google map that finds the 100 mile radius around your home. Read their columns for inspiration.
I buy local food and produce as much as I can, whatever is actually available locally.
However the local, 100 mile diet terms completely neglets to look at the total environmental cost and impact of which food choices they buy.
Just because a turkey or cow grew up in your neighborhood or was slaughtered in your neighborhood, how far away did their FEED come from that was fed to them every single day for the few years it was allowed to live?
It's like when you have sex with someone you are having sex with everyone they've had sex with before you.
Same thing with eating animals. You are eating everything that animal ate it's entire life before you ate it. Where did that food come from? How much of it had to travel far to get to the animal? How many GALLONS AND GALLONS of water did it take to raise that animal? Both to giving it water directly and the water it took to produce all of the food it ate for everyday of it's life until it was killed? A LOT! So just making sure it was contained within your neighborhood does hardly a DENT in it's environmental impact on this planet!
Now, organic produce obtained locally is a good choice, especially from small farms. Very little resources, waste and energy went into getting that apple for you to eat as opposed to that animal. It's like the difference between driving a hummer on petroleum and driving a solar powered moterbike.
I also seriously doubt that most people would be able to obtain every ingredient from local farms. What about the oils, vinegars, salts, flavorings, flour and other condiments?
Something to consider....
http://www.veg.ca/issues/enintro.html
"I'm not going to enter because it would be no contest for me. I live in the heart of PA Dutch country, so finding organic local food is just as easy for me as finding the regular stuff.
A real challenge? The 25 mile diet."
Well la dee da!!!
I'm really interested in this 100 mile meal for the holiday's. Luckily my hubby got a wild turkey when he went bow hunting, so you can't get more organic than that. Since we live in NE PA, we have several Amish farms & other farms around it would be very easy to get the staples, like potatoes, yams, apples, vegetables, etc. But I agree with the other poster; it will be kinda difficult to find organic flour, herbs, spices, marshmallows (for my sweet pot's
casserole), I make homemade cranberry chutney but the kids will only eat the stuff in the can.
So as you can see it's basically a GREAT IDEA, with a few exceptions. Will these exceptions exclude you from the competition?
Could anyone address these issues???
Good luck all
P.S. I'm making homemade goodies for halloween this way I control the sugar and I know everything is all natural.... :-)
Need help finding local resources for your Thanksgiving feast? I intern for the Eat Well Guide, a free, online guide to finding local/sustainable/organic food in the US and Canada. Did you know that Eat Well has teamed up with the Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, to issue a Local, Organic Thanksgiving Challenge? We're inviting people to take a spin on the Eat Well Guide to find local food and cook at least one local (preferably organic) dish for Thanksgiving, and share recipes at the CU site. Read more about it at the Green Fork. [http://blog.eatwellguide.org/2008/11/take-the-local-organic-thanksgiving-challenge/]