Kitchen Gardeners International: Two ways of looking at chicken parmesan

When most of us think of chicken parmesan, we picture something similar to the photo above. It's a simple and delicious dish: breaded chicken breasts, pasta, red sauce, with a sprinkling of zesty parmesan cheese.

But, as the bright young minds at Middlebury College in Vermont have recently learned, it's not as simple as most people think. Below is a screen capture of a Google Earth map that some students and faculty put together to show the complex route that chicken parmesan's ingredients take to go from farmers' fields to Middlebury students' forks. It should be noted that Middlebury is considered a leader in its efforts to move towards local sourcing for its cafeterias.

The point of the exercise (and - we'd say - the local foods movement in general) is not to say "no" to all foods that have traveled, but to become more aware of where our food comes from, who produced it, how it was produced, and the good local alternatives that exist. The more attention we give to these local options, the more of them there will be.

To learn more about Middlebury's food mapping work, please see: http://geography.middlebury.edu/applications/Food_Mapping/

Chicken parmesan photo credit: My Amii

Posted by KGI on December 18, 2007 5:21 PM to Kitchen Gardeners International
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