Seasonal dinner

You can't read the news these days without hearing about local food, carbon footprint, and all that shit. While I'm happy to support local businesses and farms, I'm not convinced that eating "local" is necessarily the best way to live. For example, if you live in New England, does that mean you never eat citrus? What about olive oil, or wine? I suppose Westport Rivers makes great local wines, but wouldn't you want a bit more choice than that? Also, will a local tomato ever beat a canned san marzano tomato at its peak ripeness? If you live in Iowa, are you only allowed to eat corn? Seriously, where do you draw the line?
I don't think I can ever do the real locavore thing. I need ethnic food--Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Thai, French, everything. That's the best part about food!!! All the crazy ingredients from different cultures, mixing things together, learning about all the foods of the world. How sad to limit yourself to only what comes out of the ground immediately surrounding you! There's got to be some middle ground, right? Where you can support your local farmers, but not limit yourself to potatoes and kale in winter?

In any case, here's a dinner we made including some local ingredients:
Local corn, red peppers, shallots, shiitake, and maitake mushrooms sauteed with butter and olive oil, finished with scallions and basil. Sauteed pork chop with pan jus, and gooseberry sauce (finished with poire william liquor).


We also had a totally non-local cheese plate:
Speck, toscano, morbier, laguiole, roaring 40's blue, and olives


Finished with chunk monkey ice cream.