It's time again for One Local Summer! This will be my second year of participation, but to me it feels like I'm starting from scratch, because not only have we been out of the shopping/cooking groove for months (and eating sustainably was somewhere near the very bottom of our to-do list while traveling in Asia), but because we are also adapting to a new city. That's because we're spending the summer, and hopefully longer, in New York City. The great thing about this is that finding local foods in New York couldn't be easier, so hopefully our adaptation will be quick.

For anyone out there who hasn't heard of One Local Summer, the premise is that you cook one meal a week from local ingredients, and then post about it. Then Farm to Philly posts a weekly round-up of local eats. Not only is this a fun way to watch the seasons unfolding with produce around the world, but it has proven to be a thought-provoking exercise.

For me, the idea of locovorism is really a shorthand for something much larger. That's because "eating local" is not the answer to improving the agricultural industry - it's not scalable and it doesn't address the roots of the problem. Transportation of food accounts for a small percentage of the environmental damage done by agriculture, and I am pretty sure that we're not going to convince the majority of people (including myself) to give up bananas and pineapples anyway. Cutting back on the most egregious of food transportation excesses (like foods that travel by airplane), is an excellent, and not overly difficult, practice, and, of course, organic home gardening* is probably always going to be the most environmentally-friendly agriculture — but if we are comparing conventional or big organic produce grown just miles from my house to that shipped from across the country, there may be a slight savings in energy, but not a significant one.

So I'm not a locovore. I am a sustainavore. Or maybe a workingtowardssutainabilityavore. Ok, I can see that that label is not going to stick. But the true reason to "eat local," other than to gain an understanding of your physical environment and develop a relationship with your areas' culinary heritage, is to support the small farms that are seriously considering the issues of sustainability on the ground. Now, I can't just point at a farmers market and say that everything in it is better for the environment than anything you can get at a grocery store. But I can talk with the people running the farms about their methods, I can read about their practices, and I can return their glass containers for reuse. Those are the kinds of things that build the movement for sustainability, and that are eventually going to develop the scalable practices that will allow larger farms to reduce their environmental influence as well. Just like the organic movement, the local food movement is not an ultimate answer, but a step along the way.

Ok, so, on to the actual meal! I made pan-fried fresh trout, sauteed nettles and ramp greens, and mashed sunchokes with a fried ramp topping. I splashed some Milk Thistle Farm milk in the sunchokes and cooked the ramps in my homemade lard. All of the fresh ingredients came from New York state, but since I stopped by the Union Square Greenmarket on a whim, and I was without my camera, I have no idea which farms they all came from. I promise to become more familiar with the markets and do better next time!

*By the way, here is a free business idea for anyone with a green thumb living in a major city: a roof-garden service. The service provides the containers, drip irrigation, seedlings, dirt, and sends someone by to check up on the garden periodically and harvest produce. Building owners can either take a share of profits for produce sold at local farmers markets or take the produce itself, or some combination. The building owner also gets the benefits of reduced cooling costs. There would be some numbers to crunch to see if this were financially viable, but I just can't help thinking, when I see the bare, sunny roofs across the city, that there are plenty of people who would love to have the convenient fresh produce at a reasonable cost, but don't feel like hassling with the actual gardening side of it.