Buying Local--- Slightly Easier

If I want to go out for fast food,  it's pretty simple to find a place to quench a craving for French fries, or a milkshake.  Living in Philadelphia,  there is either a pizza shop, corner store,  the famous WaWa, or a McDonald's within a five minute walk.   But, if I want to eat something healthy or even not so healthy that is sourced locally,  that is a whole other story.  Luckily, over the past ten years ( when I first heard of "buying local"), I've gone from needing a treasure map to find locally sourced goodies, to now being able to find locally sourced around the city,  even in grocery stores.

Right now, my favorite locally sourced product comes from Toy Cow Creamery, a grass fed dairy up in Williamsport, PA ( think  Little League World Series).  I first tried this delectable dairy at the Green Line Cafe, a West Philly fair trade coffee shop, and it was love at first taste.  I've also found it around town at DiBruno's Brothers, Mug Shots Cafe in Fairmont, and the  Fair Food Farm stand in Reading Terminal Market.  I like telling people that I have a favorite creamery, and more so, I like knowing that ever calorie I'm consuming comes from cows treated well, and that minimal petrol was used to get the food to me. Yet, it still requires effort on my part to seek out the locally produced foods.

However,  I happened up a city where it's a little bit easier to buy local, and  I feel compelled to write about my new crush, Portland, Oregon, and their obsession with sourcing food locally.  I had  a meeting in Portland, Oregon this past week, and from the moment the plane landed at PDX,  I was awash in local foods.   I've never seen a community take local foods so seriously before- from the brewery at the airport bragging about local beer made from  Oregon hops, to the coffee shop selling strawberry rhubarb pie from local ingredients, I didn't even have a block in the different neighborhoods to find my full of local foods.  At a cafe in the North Mississippi neighborhood, I picked up Edible, the quartly magazine promoting Oregon's local foods, found even more guides to  living locally.  If only all places were this focused on local foods, but because of Portland, I am more inspired to createa daily plan for eating local as much as possible.

Check back tomorrow and Sunday as I share more about incorporating local eating your daily life.  Until then, I am going to enjoy eating food from my favorite creamery!