I have found canning to be a good option for local food.  Last summer I canned up 20 quarts of tomatoes when the local tomatoes were in plentiful supply and at their peak flavor.  Now I have a stash of the red beauties for special meals.  It was a hit last week.  It was my first attempt at canning.  Think I will do more in the future.

Your post raises several good points, but it is very difficult to get past...

"First, we focused on wine ... we blew half our budget on a bottle of 2004 Montesecondo, a biodynamic red wine imported from Tuscany."

I'm afraid I'll have to charge you with elitism. I realize you were planning a celebratory meal, but did you have to burn fossil fuel to ship your beverage -- in glass bottles no less -- from Italy to North Carolina? There are many fine wines produced in North America (or South America if you cannot bring yourself to consume U.S. wine).

Perhaps there are no organic wines produced in this hemisphere? But then I would suggest that the environmental impact of a locally produced non-organic wine would still be less than importing organic wine from abroad.

I believe you weakened your argument and did local wine producers a disservice by purchasing the 2004 Montesecondo.

The elite who can afford it -- especially those advocating a change in behavior -- must make a greater effort to purchase local products... even if the pack those people travel in perceive those products as substandard. (Please see discussion regarding "Righteousness" for additonal information.)

I shoulda bought a more local tipple. NC wine is problematic; a lot of it is composed of juice hauled in from California. And a lot of California wine is produced under awful environmental and labor conditions. To drink fwell rom my foodshed, I'd have done much better to choose from among many outstanding NC beers.

In my own area in the western part of the state, a lot of people are trying to introduce viticulture and are making wine, often from Cali juice. I salute their efforts, but I wonder how appropriate wine grapes are here. A better idea would seem to be hard cider. there are lots of apple orchards that produce fruit with fine flavor but with little pockmarks that turn off consumers used to Red Delicious.

Why not press those apples into delicious unpastuerized cider? all it would take is infrastructure.

While I'm prattling on about my drinkshed, my area of Western NC seems perfect for growing hops. In the lowlands around Chapel Hill, they can grow barley. Does anyone else see the possibility of happy, hoppy synergy, and a way to make our state's great beers even better and more sustainable?

kind of display the futility of spending too much effort on "buying local"? Wouldn't it be better if we focused on laws that priced resources correctly and then bought whatever we wanted from wherever?

Again, I'm a devotee of farmers markets but I think buying local gets a little extreme. Also, I want to support farmers in other parts of the world- how do you think they're going to improve their lot if no one buys their stuff? In many of these countries the domestic markets aren't yet big enough to support them.

I just don't get the locals only fetish- it annoys me at surf spots and environmental groups equally....

J.S.

Yeah, the wine did throw your argument, but moving past that...

What this shows to me, more than price, the issue is time.  Eating local on a budget in this place and time requires careful planning and often a lot less meat that most people are accustomed to.  People who have children and/or have to work more than one job have a real problem with the time and availability issue.  

I'm lucky to have an 8-5 M-F job and I can go to the farmer's market every Saturday with a list for the week ahead and find everything I need (maybe not WANT) locally.  Our local co-op carries some local meats, milk, cheese, and eggs.  By the way, I'm an hour away from Chapel Hill in Greensboro.

With careful planning and a small backyard garden, my husband and I eat locally and well on a small budget.  But I have the time and mental energy to work on it.

Finally, with the fast pace of development taking over our farmland in this part of our state, as in most growing areas, I don't see more local farms in our future unless the citizens see the problem and are willing to work to preserve even what we already have.

I believe that if you had stuck to a vegetarian dinner your personal costs and costs to the environment would be much less. I fail to understand why the borgeois environmental advocates refuse to see that eating meat is an excessive indulgence in misery for the animal and polution for the environment. You did nothing but prove that an elitist human can consume a dinner on a budget that was neither healthy, local or environmental. Isn't it obvious that environmentalism is only possible for the middle and upper classes? Only when we make environmental products affordable to the working class and a vegetarian diet available, will we get anywhere.

We cant ignore the core lifestyle parameters like giving time to food, sleep, exercise - else we dont stay healthy. But unfortunately the "job" & "celebration at night" takes over goaded on by materialism - so the choice is in our hands.

Another quick point about local produce is that it is limited by the climate, and there is much less variety in places outside the tropics. But I am sure one can still make do with just local (& yes seasonal).

...but the fresh meat case could be a lot better. Where's the local pork? Chicken? True, in its deli section, Weaver Street does sell some wonderful charcuterie made in Greensboro. Not sure why the sweet potatoes weren't labeled local; they probably could have been. Or where the cabbage came from...

On the other hand, Weaver Street sells top-notch milk products from nearby Maple Line dairy. And the cheese case has been stocking some delightful local raw-milk cheeses.

All in all, the Weaver Street is a worthy place to shop (though no one should miss the excellent Carrboro Farmers market on Wednesday and Saturday.)

Overall, i think there were some points about the column that weren't entirely clear. It wasn't that i was experimenting to see if I could make a great local meal for $30. Rather, I hastily threw together a celebratory meal on a budget -- the celebratory aspect giving me license, in my mind,  to choose a pricey wine from a distant shore -- and then got to thinking about where the path of least resistance had taken me. And how, with just a few changes, the path of least resistance could have led me to choices that built the local economy and tread relatively lightly on the earth -- all without sacrificing an iota of culinary pleasure.  

I meant no disrespect to NC wine or the Weaver Street Food Co-op.