Since moving to Portland, ME earlier in the year, my family has become quite invested in the local community. Why? Well, we love it here for one. At the same time we have always felt strongly about supporting our local community first and foremost above anything else. We’ve had a chance to do that on a small scale in other communities that we’ve lived in, but Portland has allowed us to take things to a whole new level.
We couldn’t make it back to Pittsburgh, PA to be with family for Thanksgiving this year so we decided on doing the next best thing: having an all local Thanksgiving. Was it hard to pull off? Not at all. Many thanks go out to my wife Haley and her sister Nadine for getting everything together. They did all the behind the scenes work and the actual cooking. They also blog about their food adventures at this site so you should check that out. We ordered a lot of our goods through the Portland Food Co-op and picked up our orders the week before Thanksgiving.
So how was the food? AMAZING. We still got the “ohmylordIatetoomuch” feeling afterwards, but it wasn’t a disgusted processed turkey and frozen vegetables sort of thing. It was more like a “yesthatwasalotbutitwasgoodandspirituallyfulfilling” type of meal.
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| Thanksgiving 2010 |
Here’s the list of ingredients we used/foods we ate:
Carrots and Kale: Fishbowl Farm, Bowdoinham ME
Garlic: Summit Springs Farm, Poland ME
Onions: Freedom Farm, Freedom ME
Turkey: Snafu Farms, Monmouth ME
Cranberries and Apple Cider: Ricker Hill Farms, Turner ME
Brussel Sprouts: Dandelion Springs Farm, Washington ME
Eggs: Esch Dairy, Smyrna ME
Sea Salt: Maine Sea Salt Company, Marshfield ME
Organic Milk: MooMilk, Augusta ME
Parsley: Goranson Farm, Dresden ME
Organic Bread Flour: Aurora Mills, Linneus ME
Organic Yukon Gold Potatoes: Nature’s Circle Farm, Houlton ME
Butternut Squash: Levesque’s Organic Farm, Leeds ME
*all of the breads and rolls were made and cooked by Nadine Byers using local ingredients*
NON LOCAL, BUT STILL NEEDED/PRETTY DANG COOL SHIT:
Cleaning supplies: Graciously donated by Sun and Earth, King of Prussia PA. In a way, they sponsored our Thanksgiving, as they donated cleaning supplies to us. Instead of spending money on cleaning supplies, we used that to buy more local food. I’m not gonna hit you over the head pitching their product now, but I will say this: their stuff is GOOD. All of their products have an amazing citrus smell that made the house smell wonderful. It was nice to add that to the mix of all of the food being cooked. Thanks Sun and Earth!
Lima Beans: We couldn’t find anything local so we opted for store bought frozen Lima Beans.
(Yes, lame, I know, but…they’re a tradition for me and I couldn’t miss out on them)
Brownies: For dessert, we used a simple Trader Joe’s baking mix for brownies.
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All in all, Happy Holidays from all of us to you.
Here’s a video of Finn playing with his new kitchen (which was also made in Maine!)
