Changing the menu, one dinner at a time

By Kate Hayden | khayden@charlescitypress.com

It’s hard not to feel relaxed with the view I had on Sunday evening.

The river was flowing peacefully as diners arrived at Victory Park, enjoying wine and appetizers as they checked in. I stayed around the edges of the group, catching photos of neighbors and coworkers greeting each other. I nearly forgot that most of this land would have been underwater a week ago during flooding.

Diners at the first Floyd County Farm to Fork Dinner were treated to a really special experience on Sunday. Sitting down on the Pedestrian Bridge, we enjoyed four courses of local goods, prepared by local chefs and served by Charles City High School students attending more than 70 people. The wind was light, the people were friendly and the food was hard to beat.

“Shopping local” has been a lifestyle for many Iowans, even as online retailing and delivery took hold nationally. In the last 10 years, it’s enjoyed a growing, glossy rebranding as web startups set their roots, hoping to replicate a hometown community through a net of coding and a tap of the touchscreen.

That rebranding has built some accountability, at least in my life. In November, I’ve moved just about all of my shopping from Black Friday to Small Business Saturday. When I can’t buy items locally, either here in northern Iowa or on my home turf in Indianola and Des Moines, I try to buy small or reused — from Etsy shops and Instagram artists, to a myriad of other small apps and networks I keep track of on my phone.

That can cover gifts, clothes and homegoods through a year, but it doesn’t account for my most basic daily purchases — the food in my kitchen. Those who followed Amie Johansen and I this summer in our series may have guessed that I’m not an experienced cook. Maybe it’s a problem with patience, a lack of interest or simply poor planning by the time dinner rolls around, but I’ve never put the same type of thought into my most present living expense. This has been a good summer to challenge those habits of mine — the last-minute grocery shopping, the most basic list and a very general goal not to spend much more than I did last week.

That background leads up to me, sitting down at the table on Sunday, looking over a menu card of courses I never would have otherwise enjoyed. The chefs did wonderful work, but it’s the back side of the card that still interests me. The Farm to Fork committee compiled a list of nine Floyd County producers and six producers from Butler, Chickasaw, Franklin and Mitchell counties where the committee sourced ingredients. It ranges from lamb, beef and pork, to poultry, diverse vegetables, apples, nuts and grains. I might not touch lamb with my own kitchen knife, but I can certainly handle chicken or vegetables on an average Tuesday. I can make it a habit to be more intentional about dinner planning.

Those of us who don’t live among the agriculture industry can choose how removed we want to be in our dinner’s background. What the Farm to Fork committee successfully did was remind us of our own choices — and offer the phone numbers to another way.

-20161004-