Location: The best thing you've ever done for me is to help me take my life less seriously - it's only life after all
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For your local sweetener, how about just using local honey instead of syrup and sugar. And butter for olive oil.
I looked at the local section at Whole foods the other day. There's honey, BBQ sauce, blueberry salsa, rice, cowpeas, and cornmeal that I remember. I can't live on that! But I can certainly buy those products from that section. And, of course, I can do local produce, eggs, and I'm still waiting for a cowshare.
Here are my biggies: Wheat. Soybeans. Sucanat. Olive oil. Egg replacer. Lemons, limes, avocados (I'm with you there). Peanuts may not be in the local section at Whole Foods, but I'll be darned if I can't find them locally. I'm sure someone still grows peanuts in GA, even with Jimmy Carter retired from the biz. Ummm... and how about tofutti???
Location: firmly planted in the postmodern pastoral economy
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Sugar (but we try to use local maple syrup or honey as much as we can, I use sugar mostly for baking and to top J's enzyme mixture)
Avocados
Olive Oil
Bananas
Oranges
Lemons
Limes
Peanuts
Chocolate
Coffee (we buy locally roasted, but the beans are obviously not local-grown!)
Peanut butter (for J's enzymes)
Beans (we have local source for black beans if I can store 25 lb bags)
Rice
What about flour? Ours is semi-local (within 100 mi for sure) - King Arthur - but most people can't get locally-grown and -milled flour. I'm not sure where KA grows their wheat, either, and they're not organic. I'm looking for a more local, organic source right now.
Popcorn kernels
Tea
Spices
Rolled oats
I think that is most of what we buy that is not locally grown or raised.
Edited, I just found a source for local cornmeal! Kewl! Here's Vermont's localvore project, or one of them - I think it's pretty cool and it's a big part of why I fell in love with this place.
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Location: When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Posts: 9,525
I forgot chocolate and rice... *sigh*
I can grow most kinds of beans in my back yard. Even the ones for drying although for our pintos, black, and garbanzo beans that would be a ton of space each year. We get some local, but some we also get from the fred meyers and goodness knows those were shipped in. I have to think on how to up our local intake of foods like this.
Olive oil. That would be the worst. I don't care about sugar or lemons or oranges or coffee (not allowed to have it anyway) and I could even live w/o chocolate. But olive oil?
Stevia (could replace it w/honey but the calories would be hard to work around)
Apples
Tea
Spices
Everything else I eat grows locally. Wow. If I didn't hate this area so much I would probably look into living here permanently. Somehow I think AK and WA won't be so accomodating. I do eat a lot of salad and that grows everywhere.
For my kids:
rice
bananas
chocolate
peanuts
lemons
and all of the above that I listed.
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Location: When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Posts: 9,525
Stevia grows here... as do apples and most teas (green tea and chai don't grow here, but all sorts of mint, and lemonbalm, oatstraw, nettle, and catnip, etc). So you can cross those off your list if you move here.
Location: When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Posts: 9,525
I keep trying to find a local dried bean place. I think I may have to just stick with organic. It would take A LOT of space to grow the amt of beans this family uses every year. Perhaps when we have land. But probobly not. lol... There is room in this for sanity right? The idea isn't to go insane trying to save the planet, it is about doing everything you can and NOT go insane. lol... One year though, I want to try to produce enough of one kind of bean that we eat. Perhaps black beans.
Gawd, I love them. Hey, they have flour too. They also grow all the food their cows eat - even the winter food. Pretty incredible. (We buy their cream.)
For me, the things I can think of are the alternative flours for gluten free baking--
millet flour
sorghum flour
tapioca starch
Oh, and our food for life brown rice bread, and rice milk
I get local brown rice flour, local rice (Lundberg Farms). Local rice pasta most of the time (same place), but I do get pasta from TJ's, because it's cheaper.
Any snack foods I buy mostly aren't local, but I do try to limit those anyway.
Otherwise, I get all local fruits and vegetables. If it's not local, I don't get it. Oh, except bananas. We do buy bananas.
I could get local meat and fish, I suppose, but that's the next step on my list, I don't do that consistently yet. Oh, and dairy. I don't pay attention for cheese and yogurt.
beans? I'm not sure if they are local or not.
I can get local olive oil! I don't always, but I just got a new bottle for my birthday. I can get rice bran oil that's local, too.
Local chocolate--Scharffen Berger is my favorite. Though I'm not sure that their ingredients are all local, it's at least made locally.
Oooh, agave nectar. We buy local honey, but I really like agave nectar in a lot of baking, and that's not local.
There are plenty of things that I still need to work on buying locally, but I don't always do it.
We have been keeping track of what we are using that is not local after dinner each night - kind of a daily recap. Mostly:
-lemons, limes, oranges, bananas, etc.
-avocados
-vanilla (beans, extract)
-sugar (we use honey mostly, but do use turbinado sugar for certain things)
-vinegar
-flour/grains (oat, wheat, flax, rye, semolina)
-chocolate
-tea
-olive oil
-salt
-pepper
-nuts (peanuts, mostly)
-rice
-cinnamon
-some beans
-cereals (although we get local muesli/granola or make our own...but then with non-local oats, nuts, spices, etc)
-baking soda/baking powder
-coffee (we have a great local roaster that uses organic fair trade beans, but they come from elsewhere).
Hmmmmmm. Don't remember the rest right now (besides clothing/cotton/fabric, key cleaning supplies, etc.).
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Location: Failure is a joyless word. Without risk, there can be no gain. If you don't go out on a limb, you will never see the lovely view.
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Great list mama's.
We can get rice here in Arkansas as well as soy (I dont really use soy right now)
I dont know about grains tho.
I have seen local apples and berries. We harvest wild berries and grapes here in the Ozarks.
We too harvest wild herbs that are edible or tea. Soon I am after roses. They are blooming I see. want to make rose honey.
I think the olive oil, lemons and other citrus, peanuts, avocado are not local.
But if you live in florida, you can get those things but probably not rice.
Interesting how diverse our country is. (I love our country despite its political problems)
just wanted to say thanks for starting this thread. Glad to say that we finally made it through the csa waiting list and got our first basket burgeoning with local organic produce this week - and thanks to the eatwild.com site posted here I found a local bison rancher and hope to start buying from them next week.
Just wish I could find local lamb. Lamb, bison, eggs, chicken and I'd be so set!
My local bean source is *not* our garden. It is this place:
Hey, they have flour too. 
They also grow all the food their cows eat - even the winter food. Pretty incredible. (We buy their cream.)
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