A Sustainable Christmas Dinner

This year, I had the idea that we would try to make Christmas dinner a local, organic affair. Nobel, but not entirely doable. The vegetables were taken care of, thanks to our local CSA (Be Wise Ranch), but meat, the pièce de résistance, ended up being the cog in the wheel. Sure, you can get local pork, if you want the whole 250 lb. pig; and you can get chicken, if you sign up for 6 months of CSA chicken- that wasn't going to work in a hurry; and then there's fish...we are, after all, on the sea shore here. But Charlie didn't want fish for Christmas dinner and then there's the question of where exactly they were caught- how can you be so sure they didn't just swim all the way in from Baja or something! Not to mention the dicey decision of which type of fish is sustainably harvested and not over fished or endangered. (the Monterey Bay Aquarium offers a printable pocket-sized guide that identifies your best seafood choices, good alternatives and ones to avoid- very handy! Bring it to the store with you, because you will be confounded with all the choices.) Anyway, fish was out- too complicated and not enough enthusiasm from the person I most enjoy cooking for. CAFO beef was simply not an option. Charlie chimed in with the helpful, but gulp, kind of yucky idea of ostrich. ("...you know when we went to the wild animal park that day- we passed an ostrich farm...") This time, it was me who said no. No ostrich for Christmas, my dear.


The idea was for us to eat food harvested within a 100 mile radius of our Carlsbad home. I decided that we would just do the best we could, and that meant a pork crown roast from Tip Top Meats (a Carlsbad institution), some local wine, lots of fresh organic veggies from our CSA, and a few aberrant foodstuffs that are not local, not organic, not fair trade, and certainly not low fat.

This is the menu:

Hors d'oeuvres:
~Smoked Salmon and Toasted Pumpernickel Canapes
~Tapenade
~Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Herb Bread. (bruschetta)
~Wine: Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc

Main:
~Crown Roast of Pork with Bread Stuffing
~Applesauce
~Braised Swiss Chard
~Braised Red Cabbage with wine
~Roasted Carrots and Potatoes
~Green Salad
~Wine: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot

Desert:
~ Peppermint Ice Cream
~Assorted Chocolate Truffles
~Coffee /Tea

I know, I could have planned (and still can) something more wholesome for desert. But Charlie's the baker in the family and he's not feeling well (sick with a cold). He makes a mean Rhubarb pie. We'll see how we go.

So, here's how the food shopping has turned out so far (mind you, it's only Wednesday- all kinds of last-minute shopping could occur between now and Tuesday) :

Local & Organic

• Braised Swiss Chard. The chard will be organic and local.
  
• Braised Red Cabbage with Wine. I found the cabbage at the farmer's market and it was a beautiful purple color.
  
• Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Herb Bread. A sort of roasted bruschetta. Our CSA excels at small, sweet tomatoes...we've been getting them since September with no end in site (it's Southern California!)


• Applesauce. This will be the real deal, minus the sugar which is not local (I can get organic though)


• Roasted Carrots and Potatoes. We got our first potatoes this week. I'm saving them and hoping for more next week(pick-up on 12/24). The carrots are beautiful with their petite frame and long green tops.
  
• Green Salad. This will be a 'spring mix' of miniature varieties. It is another signature item from our CSA that we continue to get in late December.

Local

• 2005 Merlot from Orfila Vineyards in Escondido. I really should go out there and buy some of their estate wines, which means they grew the grapes on-site, whereas the Merlot probably contains grapes purchased further up the coast.


• Some Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay bottles that are probably so-so from a Fallbrook Winery and from Temecula.


• Black Olives for the Tapenade. They are estate grown in Santa Barbara (at approx. 180 miles away, they kind of break the 100-mile radius rule, but close enough). The anchovies definitely break the rule, being imported from Italy. I *might* be able to get local olive oil. At least, I know I can get California olive oil.
  
• Bread (maybe organic too)

Organic

• Garlic
• Onions
• Sauvignon Blanc from Mendocino.
• Chocolate Truffles
• Coffee
• Tea
  

Neither Local nor Organic

• Crown Roast of Pork. (This is, by the way, one of the most scary cuts of meat for vegetarians: the rib portions of the loins are joined to form a circle, and the bones stick up in the air. Only the whole roasting pig on the spit is worse for vegetarians...we did that one for our wedding.)


• Smoked Salmon and Toasted Pumpernickel Canapes. There's nothing sustainable about these little bombs. The salmon is from the US, but farmed. Jeeze! Why did I do that. Maybe I still had my mind on trout, which you do want farmed (I was originally going to do smoked trout). And the pumpernickel! Oh boy- I bought imported Westphalian pumpernickel- full of petroleum, flying all the way in from Germany. And the capers are from Denmark. I haven't bought the cream cheese yet.
  
• Peppermint Ice Cream

This list represents one Carlsbad woman's attempt to put healthy, sustainable, and festive food on the table for her family at Christmas. I had to do a bit more (investigating, researching) than most people do, and that's why I think it's a fair experiment. I wanted to see if it was easy enough for anyone to do. Ideally, it would be convenient to buy local, organic food- I mean, this is C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A. If I lived in San Diego proper, I probably would have had an easier time of it, but there's no point in scrambling down the freeway for 60 miles in order to get my local organics- that doesn't make sense. The experience taught me a lot. I can use this post as a baseline for next year, wherein I hope to have many more selections of sustainable food. Maybe next year I'll be able to write about how sustainable our entire Christmas was, including gift purchases, travel and all the associated entrapments of the holidays. I don't dare this year.

Many thanks, by the way, to Livin' La Vida Local blog. A smart, creative person must be behind that one. The "eat local directory to san diego" was the inspiration for my Christmas dinner experiment.