July 10th, 2006 - How to eat locally in WI
I’ve been feeling a little guilty about making things at home without using WI ingredients. So I decided to try to find some WI grains/flours. My search isn’t going well, as I’m getting a lot of agriculture reports. But, I have found some books about eating in WI: Taste of Wisconsin books and publications. The very first one, Hometown Flavor is at another UW campus and I’ve already requested. (Odd page–that’s not the name they list the book under, but they show the book cover with the correct title.)
The candy “Cow Pie” is a WI product. We passed the factory store on the way to the House on the Rock on Thursday. I so wish we’d turned around and stopped in! (Although we were already an hour later than expected….)
Another book on the list reminds me that WI is home of the ice cream sundae (invented in Two Rivers–and I’ve had a sundae there!). Does that mean I can eat a sundae and count it? LOL (Now that would be a fun challenge–find foods/dishes invented in your state/area. I think I could also have a hamburger, IIRC!)
By the way, I’ve decided to go with state-wide as my “local.” The directions were a 200-mile radius. But I don’t know WI well enough to know whether or not a particular town is that close to me. 200 would also include parts of MI and IL, which I know even less well. (Hmmm….if you go by the crow flies, I wonder if E Lansing and Kalamazoo would be within 200?) Anyway, I’m just going with the whole state–some of it, like Superior is over 200 miles (more like 350), but IL and MI are about 100 miles away, so I figure it balances out.