Brianne W is a classmate who is currently in my radiology elective with me. She kindly offered to help me with my advanced competency and gave this really refreshing take on food sourcing and focusing on local farms. Part of my goal for this project was to see amongst my classmates what motivated them when it came to their relationships with food--culture, family, taste, friends, sustainability--it's all things that I've thought a lot about and it's been really amazing to know that my classmates are all thinking along these lines too!
Brianne looked at my standard questions and wrote this in response:
I recently read the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver (HIGHLY recommend) and it inspired me to critically think about the food I consume and how it impacts the community I live in. We are pretty fortunate living in Ohio because there are tons of smaller, family-run farms still functioning within this state so eating locally is actually a realistic goal. These small farms raise crops in a way that benefits the land, care for animals with dignity and compassion, and give so much to their respective communities. So, I wanted to find a way to buy most of my food from these sources. With this in mind, I discovered Yellowbird Food Shed, a Columbus-based CSA (community-supported agriculture) that provides its members with fresh produce, meat, cheese, eggs, etc all from local sources with ethical practices. The pics I attached are all from recent Yellowbird orders (so sorry this weirdly turned into a Yellowbird advertisement...I swear I'm not being paid to write this). Of note, some downsides I have struggled with are the increased expense of pursuing only local food and the difficulty of cooking filling meals during winter, when fresh crops are pretty limited. But, I think my choice to commit to this local food share says a lot about my overall relationship with food!
And lastly, here are some recipe links to things I've made purely from local food (and loved):
