But that plan went awry when I bumped into a problem of eating local. That would be the problem of fetching the goods. Right now Kilby homemade ice cream is sold mainly at the family's stores in Rising Sun and Chesapeake City. Phyllis Kilby told me that the family is working on a plan to sell it in grocery stores. She said the wine-flavored ice cream that had wowed me was still in the experimental stage.
On the second day of the challenge, I was toiling in my garden in Druid Hill Park. It was hot, and that wacky idea of hiring someone to water and weed suddenly seemed appealing. I picked some tomatoes, the first ripe ones from the garden, and had them for lunch. Grabbing goods from your garden was probably cheating, Bergmark told me later. She reminded me that the challenge was to buy local, not grow local. I never have been much for playing by the rules.
On the third day, I went to the Sunday morning farmers' market in downtown Baltimore and loaded up on local goods. That morning I ate juicy cantaloupe grown on Bob Knopp's Anne Arundel County farm. The next day, I started off with a breakfast of peaches and cream. The peaches, also purchased at the market, came from the Lewis family farm in Washington County.
On the fifth day, I ate Zephyr squash, a bicolor squash, grown in Anne Arundel County by Knopp. On the sixth day, I had Super Sweet corn, grown on the Eastern Shore and sold at the produce truck parked on the Ruxton Road overpass off Baltimore's Jones Falls Expressway.
On the seventh day, I had hamburgers made from Maryland-raised cattle, sold by Roseda Beef. I had a package of ground beef in my freezer, left over from a visit to the small shop Roseda operates at its Carroll Road farm in Monkton. (Roseda also sells beef products online.) For added local emphasis, not to mention flavor, I topped these burgers with slices of Mountain Top Blue, a blue cheese made by FireFly Farms in Garrett County. It is sold at Baltimore area cheese counters, including the one at the Wine Source in Hampden.
I did have to shop a little harder during this challenge than I normally do. But I got good stuff. And the prices - $3 for the cantaloupe, 50 cents an ear for fresh corn, for example - weren't bad.
The state Department of Agriculture has an online directory of farmers' markets that sell local produce, and its Maryland's Best site (marylandsbest.net) lists places that sell other Maryland fare, such as beef, dairy and seafood.
I made it through the entire week without even seeing okra. How some folks, including my wife, eat that stuff is beyond me.
So I guess that after a week of local eating, I can call myself a locavore. Being one in Maryland in midsummer is not much of a hardship. In fact, it tastes pretty good.
rob.kasper@baltsun.com
See Rob Kasper each Wednesday on ABC2/WMAR-TV's News at Noon.
