Only a few miles outside the town of Mount Vernon, in Washington State’s Skagit Valley, the Diaz-Elliott family recently embarked on a bold experiment in local food sourcing. In hopes of reducing their carbon footprint by minimizing the distance that food must travel to reach their dinner table, this independent-minded clan has sworn to go no farther than their own refrigerator for the ingredients of their next year’s worth of meals…. But he takes a philosophical view: “The way I figure it,” he says, “if God had meant humans to eat wheat and other cereals, He would have given us teeth that are suited to grinding, like horses have…. Not all the Diaz-Elliotts’ neighbors are impressed with the family’s crusade; some suggest that their “locavoreanism” may be going too far…. In a notable example of this green-ward drift, the Ford Motor Company announced on Monday that it will offer, as optional equipment on its 2009 Excursion and Expedition SUVs, a small built-in refrigerator, to enable environmentally conscious owners to adhere to locavore principles no matter how far from home they wander.

Dairy cows were among the victims of Washington’s floods. Photo by Mike Kane for the Seattle P-I.

Washington and Oregon suffered disastrous rain and wind for days starting on December 1, and farms in southwest Washington were hit particularly hard. Some dairies dumped their milk when a 20-mile section of I-5 closed and the milk couldn’t […]

Delighted by her love of cheese, Anthony and his wife Kelli, who makes the cheese from the raw cow and goat milk produced on their farm, invited the Cheese Baby to the Estrella Family Creamery cave christening, held Saturday night…. Samuel OK’d our request after warning us not to let the buck pee on us. We limited our visit to the mama goats and their kids, which must be bottle fed, guessing by how enthusiastically they greeted us. We returned to the party and found Anthony among friends in the garden…. Kelli said a few words of thanks before the family’s pastor offered a blessing, and then Chef Roy Breimann of the Salish Lodge conducted the christening, opening the champagne with a saber and a blessing of his own, which he credited to Napoleon: “in good times you deserve it, and in bad you need it.”… These ceremonies were succeeded by a remarkable feast, including roast veal, spit-roasted baby goat, grilled salmon, mussels, heirloom potatoes, farro salad with root vegetables, and of course a selection of Estrella cheeses, the cheese table having been moved from the garden to the light-string- and candle-lit supper tents by tractor…. We thus finished our meal with two Estrella creamery products that we can’t buy at the farmers’ market: whipped cream, which isn’t available because the cream usually goes into the cheese, and butter, which isn’t available because it’s illegal to sell unpasteurized butter in the state of Washington.

The Butter Bitch and I have been on hiatus for the past few months, due to our day jobs and ongoing projects. The Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest Sunday Magazine devotes most of this week’s issue to an overview of Washington’s locavorean movement and the promotion of sustainability in the wine.
The Bounty Around Us looks at […]

Horizon Organic (the largest organic milk producer in the U.S.) today announced it had published a new set of guidelines governing “Standards of Care” on its company-owned farms.
Under fire from the Cornucopia Institute, a family farm watchdog group, and others for keeping cows in feedlots — and even going so far as to fake their […]

Cascadia Girl over at has a nice write-up of weekending in Methow Valley, including where to stay and what to do. Why the interest here? Methow is where the Butter Bitch and I source much of our beef, through a meat CSA, and lamb through direct purchase.  We knew that the Crown […]

Article most guaranteed to make you feel inadequate: A 16-year-old Canadian named Luke Hayes-Alexander is not only the dedicated, driven executive chef of his family’s restaurant in Kingston, but he makes his own charcuterie and smoked banana ice cream. If the poor kid weren’t painfully shy, we’d say he’s a TV show ripe for plucking. […]

Farm Bill 101: Tom Philpott plans to analyze the political economy of farming and suggest a socially and environmentally sustainable farm policy. (Someone has to do it, and we’re glad he’s volunteered.) The 2007 Farm Bill will affect everybody who cares about what they eat, and/or about the environment, so if you’re unsure how agricultural […]

Not to be outdone by a list of favorites from our old stomping grounds, we here in the Puget Sound region have our own list of fine foods to celebrate. With one exception, we had not encountered these treats before 2006.
1. Fish Brewing Company’s Winterfish: This seasonal, organic beer from Olympia - well […]

I’ve lost track of the post where the local mushroom CSA was discussed - oh, there it is, but I’ll give this topic a full post just the same.
Provisions Mushroom CSA is piggy-backing on Helsing Junction CSA Farm’s delivery system to provide mushrooms. Their information is not available on Helsing Junction’s web site, nor […]

L.A. Times Magazine: A gripping, epic story about Organic Pastures dairy, the E. coli cases linked to its raw milk, and the family history of owner Mark McAfee, which goes a long way to explaining his defiance in the face of officials. [DQ says: Although we don’t drink much milk, I’ve been shelling out the […]

Diner’s Journal/NYT blog: Ever take a walk on the wild side in restaurants? Dairy Queen likes to — which is why she’s shocked and embarrassed to learn from NY Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni that by law, the “wild” game served in U.S. restaurants is not exactly Bambi and Thumper, but more Old MacDonald. A […]

Seattle P-I: The EPA has launched a website that covers the ecosystems of Puget Sound and Canada’s Georgia Basin. The site includes a lot of information about air quality, water quality, wildlife health, human population health, and a bunch more! (MoLM discloses: I interned for a state air-quality agency and think this stuff is […]

Dave Reichert is Washington’s Congressional representative from the 8th District, which is safely protected from the wilds of Seattle by Lake Washington. He is in a tough election battle with Darcy Burner, and they happened to speak at a PAC forum in the building complex where I work. The 8th District race is […]

Sea Breeze Farm, on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, is a hive of activity that produces an impressive array of products, including cheese, cow milk, chicken eggs, chickens, duck eggs, lamb, and wine. We visited the farm as part of King County’s Harvest Celebration Tour.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Sea Breeze added honey to […]