As I chopped my veggies and meat for lunch, I thought we could call this 10 miles diet “relational eating”. I know everyone who raised this food. I even “know” so to speak the little sisters of the beef I’m eating. I’ve looked them in the eye and the family that raises them.
I cut the london broil in thin slices and sauted it in olive oil, garlic and basic. 16 ounces package weight ended up 12 ounces cooked, a pretty good yield, and I used the liquids that came from the beef for the stir fry. A bargain, really. I’ll buy from the Long Family again. And I swear the flavor is better than any meat I’ve eaten – unless of course we go back to my days in Northern Wisconsin and the steer (named Stu for what he would become) we butchered with Farmer Gray. More on that later.
If the Long’s meat were to upset my stomach (which it won’t) there isn’t a long chain of ownership with responsibility leached out every link on the supply chain. There’s the Long family who has the name of all their customers. All other buyers are neighbors as well and through telephones, email and gossip every buyer would know what happened in a day.
The veggies (snow peas, garlic, basil, onion, fine diced potato to add a bit of starch to the juices), of course, are mostly from Tricia, but I added in some green beans, a small carrot and curly purple kale (starts from Eric Conn, 5.5 miles) from my garden as well. If you are one of those recipe types and want it spelled out, here’s lunch on Day 2 of the 10mile diet:
4 oz of the Long Family beef, sliced thin and sauteed with large clove of Tricia’s garlic and fine chopped Tricia basil
cut Tricia snow peas diagonally eating a couple raw as you do
same for Vicki’s fresh killed green beans
slice Tricia’s onion
cut up Vicki’s carrot and half of one of her zukes
Stir fry in olive oil that comes from Trader Joe’s but beyond that who knows where?
toss in minced Tricia potato to see if the starch would thicken the sauce
salt from some current or ancient sea
add a bit of Langley water that is pumped right out of the ground a quarter mile from my house and steam.
And now the really good part: Eat