I don’t know of any studies comparing frozen with fresh/non-local fresh food, so have no advice to offer on that score. Personally, I wouldn’t sweat it. Just go with as much local food as you can the rest of the year and keep imports to a minimum.

One option for the future is to build yourself a root cellar. That would enable you to store local potatoes, onions, carrots, winter squash, apples and other items grown or bought in fall for use in winter. You might not be able to meet all your needs this way, but at least some of them. According to this article in the New York Times, it’s an old idea gaining popularity again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/garden/06root.html

Sheryl

Eating locally is a wonderful concept. However, as I dig out from more than a foot of snow, I remember that there is nothing growing locally. In fact, in this season, there is no farmer’s market in operation offering Michigan produce. To deal with this lack, I choose more frozen fruits and vegetables when the local isn’t available. Is this a viable choice?

Small Footprints –
Thanks, I hope you enjoyed the recipe and article.

To the gumbo traditionalist –
Granted, this recipe isn’t what most people think of when they think of gumbo. But you probably know where to go for that kind of thing. This is something different — a vegetarian dish made with seasonal ingredients that takes its inspiration from gumbo. Give it a try! A few dashes of hot sauce at the end make it sing. Also, take a look at this oral history:

http://www.southerngumbotrail.com/boutte.shtml

especially the part at the end about what exactly gumbo is.

Illinois –
There are lots of fresh foods available from nearby states. See if you can get your hands on them. At the farmer’s markets in New York, for instance, we get produce and animal products from Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well as our home state.

Karen –

I’m happy to credit Barbara Kingsolver for writing what is reputed to be a very good book (I haven’t read it) and helping to popularize the idea of local food, but if I were to credit someone, I think it would be Alice Waters, who introduced the idea to America decades ago. Of course, she didn’t originate it either. It’s the traditional way of cooking in every place with a native cuisine and can still be experienced around the world. Go to Sicily in August, for example, and you’ll eat eggplant practically every night.

By the way, my first column on the subject dates back in 2004. It was a piece called Eating in the Neighborhood and can still be read at http://nrdc.org/thisgreenlife/0407.asp.

Where’s the meat or seafood? Need either shrimp and crabs from coastal Louisiana or chicken and sausage. If sausage, it will come either from the abitroir or be made within 100 miles of God’s Contry in Eunice, or Ville Platte, or Mamou, or Church Point. And the gumbo should be cooked by someone whose last name ends in eaux.

T8 (15/64ths LA Coonass; 32/64ths upstate NY yankee)

Take Care!

Small Footprints
http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com