Eating locally?

Today I made a frittata that came 100% from my back yard (if you include the shiitake mushrooms that came from my next door neighbor’s back yard). It had favas, kale, potatoes, mushrooms, scallions, green garlic, tarragon and garlic chives.

I was thinking about the amount of time it took to produce this simple meal, in terms of planting, tending, and harvesting, even before prep in the kitchen:

On that score, the favas took longest to prepare–shelling and peeling. I started with about twice this many pods (I didn’t think to take a picture till I was about half-way through shucking them) became  a small bunch of beans with the shell, which I threw into boiling water for a minute and then ice water, then peeled to yield this many green succulent beans:

The other prep was baking and cooling the potatoes and chopping everything up. Then it all went into the frittata. It was all eaten before I thought to take a picture, but really, this was quite a project considering starting from seed. Not to mention that the oil and salt came from somewhere else.

How would you define eating locally? Your block, a 250 mile radius? Are you going to give up coffee and tea because they are from the tropics? And what about wheat?

In any case, eating relatively locally here means eating what the garden is producing while it’s ripe and fresh. At the moment, this is a lot of creative fava and potato dishes, like fish and a shallot with favas, corn and potatoes:

The corn came from Brentwood, the Cod and the scallop from somewhere not too far, and lemons from down the street.

But as for me, good food includes many things I don’t grow  and my neighbors don’t grow. I’m just glad to have access to the produce of the world. And don’t forget this wonderful fava quote from Silence of the Lambs, that my son sent me after my Favas and Fussell post.