Juicy June Kansas Peaches
This year I have pledged to prepare and eat local food for Independence Day. When the glorious 4th gets here I’ll be visiting a local Kansas City farmers market, slaving over a hot bread machine to make bread buns from scratch, and out cooking up delicious, delectable, locally sourced hot dogs over glowing barbecue coals.
I’m taking part in Savor Your Independence, organized by Kitchen Gardeners International. I’m really interested in eating local food and I try to do so as regularly as possible. Still, I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to come up with a menu of locally sourced foods for my July 4th menu. The good news is, so far it’s been surprisingly easy. Here is how my Kansas local food menu looks:
- Hot dogs from Fritz Superior Sausage Company – they use locally sourced meat and their factory store is 3 miles from my home.
- Baked from scratch bread buns using Hudson Cream flour from Stafford County Flour Mills. Stafford County Flour Mills is a Kansas mill and one of the last remaining independent flour mills in the USA. I can pick up a bag of Hudson Cream at a Price Chopper supermarket less than 3 miles from my home.
- Crunchy, yummy Li’L Guy tortilla chips. Li’L guy is a locally owned, family company in Kansas City. I’ll be honest here, I’ve not called them to ask where they get their corn from. Is this cheating? I can pick up Li’L Guy chips at Hyvee – less than 1 mile from my home.
- Salad from the Kansas City Organics farmers market. Kansas City Organics hold their famers market on Saturday mornings at Minor Park, in Kansas City, MO, 3.8 miles from my home. I’ll have to get there early on Saturday to get a good selection.
- Last but not least, Peach Cobbler. The peaches I am using are the ones pictured here. Kansas peaches are available now, through August, from the orchard at Pome on the Range. I picked some up last weekend. Cream and butter for making the cobbler will come from the Shatto Milk Company and can be picked up at Hyvee. The flour will be Hudson Cream and I will use locally produced honey for sweetness.
Doing new things can be both tiring and fun. I wonder if the Kansas first family have heard yet of Food Independence Day? I’m going to write to them and ask. I’ll ask them to e-mail me with their answer.
What about you? Does your July 4th menu contain any locally sourced foods? You can find more menu inspiration at Mother Nature Network.
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Thanks for the shout out to Mother Nature Network. Very much appreciated!
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This is a great sounding menu! (and did not know that peaches grow in Kansas.)
Hi Robin and Hope, thanks for visiting and reading. Kansas is such a wonderful place to grow all kinds of foods. It really should be easy for us to have food independence, though preserving food for storage would be a necessity of course!
Right now Kansas grows plenty wheat and beef for independence, but not nearly enough fruit and vegetables.
I am so sad I can’t seem to access the food independence organization! Just a probably a problem with too much traffic
With all the rain in Idaho lately our garden is way behind. Lots of lettuce, radishes, fresh cilantro, lemon balm but the peas only have a couple of blossoms so far…. so much for new peas and potatoes to add to our menu for the 4th.
So I guess that would leave green salad, grilled steaks, lots of potatoes, milk, homemade ice cream using beet sugar, cream, and eggs, just have to leave out the vanilla.
Vickie, you are right, I can’t get the food independence site to load properly either. It looks like it is very resource intensive, with a map of all the people who’ve pledged. Is it a victim of it’s own success?
Here is the Kitchen Gardeners International site where you can read more narrative about savoring your independence, but not access the map: http://www.foodindependenceday.org/
Thanks for visiting
Your menu sounds delicious! Hope it was a hit. I’m a little jealous of all the locallly sourced foods available so close to you … I have to make more myself or travel a little further to get some of that stuff!
Hi Nancy, thanks for asking. Yes, everything turned out well. Interestingly one person said the hot dogs were their favorite, one liked the greens the best, and the others loved the peach cobbler.
There’s really no excuse for me not to eat locally grown and produced foods is there? Kansas farms produce an abundant harvest!