No sacrifices here for the One Local Summer challenge: I just ate one of the best pizzas in the history of pizza-making. Unfortunately, the local-ness of it was less than perfect.
The crust was made with one-third white flour, which we can’t get locally. However, it is from King Arthur Flour, a local company, so it’s at least locally produced. The rest of the flour, two-thirds, was whole wheat flour from Butterworks Farm in Westfield. I also used baking yeast in the crust; who knows where that’s from?
For the pizza sauce, I used the last of my frozen tomatoes from last summer, scallions (since I had no local onions), and garlic scapes, with some oregano and basil.
Pizza toppings included fresh tomato slices, fresh spring garlic, mozzarella, and – the big no-no of the meal – pepperoni. Here’s the story: a few days ago, I found some Vermont pepperoni from Vermont Smoke & Cure in Barre and snatched it up with glee, a pizza forming in my mind. It wasn’t until the pepperoni was on the pizza and the pizza in the oven that I read the package more carefully and saw the words “Made in Vermont with beef and pork purchased from the USA and Canada”. My heart sank. I had even foresworn onions, my favorite food, to make the pizza as local as possible, only to find the the pepperoni was from all over the continent. Oh well; I vow to be a more careful label-reader in the future. But damn, it sure tasted great!
We also had steamed beets with beet greens, purchased this morning at the St. Johnsbury farmer’s market, and a beer from Trout River, a brewery twelve miles down the road. To be honest, I’m sure the beer ingredients aren’t local either – although Trout River does have hops growing outside the brewpub. For dessert: strawberries with whipped cream. What a splendid summer meal!
The local bounty:
- Cherry tomatoes from my garden
- Scallions from the East Burke Cooperative Farm Stand
- Garlic scapes from Mountain Foot Farm in Wheelock
- Whole wheat flour and heavy cream from Butterworks Farm in Westfield
- Mozzarella cheese from Cabot Creamery
- Tomato from Chandler Pond Farm in South Wheelock
- Garlic from Biz-z-Bee Farm in Lunenberg
- Pepperoni from Vermont Smoke & Cure in Barre
- Beets from Harvest Hill Farm in Walden
- Beer from Trout River Brewing in Lyndonville
- Strawberries from Too Little Farm in Barnet
Annika,
First, thanks for sharing your research and great recipes with others interested in eating as locally as possible! And I’m glad you enjoyed the taste our Smoked Pepperoni added to your pizza.
Next, stay tuned for our all-VT grown bacon, ham and sausages coming in September. We’re buying all of the bellies, hams and trim from the pigs of a grower who’s dramatically expanding his production to sell to us and Black River Produce (they take the rest of each pig, the loins etc). We’re crunching the numbers hard to make it work for each of us in this 3-way partnership. We see this as the start of creating a workable market for small-farm, whole carcass sale of pigs in VT.
Also –
Sales of our non-VT products help keep us in business year round and have allowed us to upgrade our equipment, so that we can be here to process meats for VT farmers. VT-grown meats are so seasonal in production and limited in volume that we can’t build a business around processing them.
And even though the numbers or a big-company business analyst might tell us to focus on producing our own branded products, we continue processing for local farmers, because “it is what we do” — our mission is to “keep VT farmers smokin’” and thus help them succeed.
Some day before long, we or someone else will make an all-VT pepperoni. Until then, though, we all need to keep in mind that supporting local processors that offer services to VT farmers is almost as important as buying strictly locally grown meats.
By all means, buy the locally grown item first; but if ‘locally grown’ isn’t available in that item, remember that without the processors, local bacons, hams and sausages don’t happen.
Thanks again!
Chris Bailey
Vermont Smoke and Cure
Hi Chris,
That’s great news about the new Vermont-grown line; I will be sure to look for it. And you make some excellent points about the necessity of buying from out of state in order to continue supporting Vermont farmers. I do make an effort to buy products produced in Vermont, even if the ingredients are not Vermont-grown. Your pepperoni was fantastic and we will surely be buying it again!
-Annika
It can be so tricky sometimes with the labeling. You really do a lot to support your local growers and producers.
I love love love scallions, even more than “regular” onions, both for raw and cooked purposes. Sometimes I’ll even snip them and use them as part of the pizza toppings
Great post…it is tough to be sure we are eating truly local, but at least getting food from local companies and processors is a step in the right direction. I mean, it has to cut down on food miles at some point, right? And I love Trout River beer, though at the moment my real favorite is Magic Hat Wacko! Oh yes, and VT Smoke meats are so good, it would be disappointing to give them up all together!