The Search for Local/Fresh Food

While we absolutely love living in the mountains and being somewhat remote from a big city, there are definitely things we miss about city life.  The biggest thing we miss by far is access to farmers markets year round with fresh, local food. When we lived in Oakland, our neighborhood had a weekly farmers market on Sundays. It was awesome to be able to walk down to the market and pick up lots of fresh fruits, veggies, and even locally produced honey, grass-fed organic meat, and fresh seafood.  We also signed up for Farm Fresh to You and received an incredible box of produce each month. Finally, when we weren't able to find everything we needed at the market, we had Whole Foods just a few blocks away.  While Whole Foods is definitely pricey, the quality and selection of organic food is pretty amazing.

One of our CSA deliveries from Farm Fresh to You

When we moved to Tahoe, we didn't really think about access to fresh food. While there are a few farmers markets in the summer, unfortunately they don't feature a great selection or even businesses that are truly local. This wouldn't be the end of the world if we had a better selection and quality available at a grocery store, but the closets Whole Foods is an hour away, and Trader Joes is 30mins away. So those are fine if I'm able to plan in advance -- which, less face it, can be a bit difficult. We also weren't able to continue our membership with Farm Fresh to You because they sadly don't deliver up to the lake.

So up until now, we've settled for our local Safeway. While I've complained about the poor quality and selection, I've continued to just suck it up and buy at Safeway because it's convenient and easy. That all changed the other night.  I sent Dave out to the store for a bell pepper and some tomatoes. The red bell peppers had literally just arrived in stock (they'd been out for most of the week), so I assumed they'd be at least fairly fresh. To my dismay and disgust, I cut into this bright red bell pepper only to find mold and a grub crawling inside! This was my wake up call to really start investing time and effort into searching for local, fresh food and taking more of a proactive approach to knowing where our food is coming from.


I've found a handful of resources to check out and will keep you posted on our search!

Slow Food Lake Tahoe

While this organization is primarily based in north lake, they have an excellent resource list for local farms, farmers markets, and local producers.  Will definitely be investing more time in looking through their resources.

Tahoe Food Hub

While the Tahoe Food Hub primarily is set up to help businesses such as restaurants, schools, hospitals, etc, I think they will definitely have some useful resources and links to check out.

How do you source your food?