Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Eating Locally
Dateline: Anywhere within 100 miles of home
Last year we felt smug about eating organic. Not anymore. This year, if you want to be truly green you eat locally — foods grown close to where you live. That was the road taken by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, authors of Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.
It wasn’t easy to live on foods grown within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver, British Columbia. Where do you get coffee? How about tea? Is there even such a thing as locally grown olive oil, rice, sugar, and chocolate in this part of Canada? Hardest of all, where do you turn for wheat and, by extension, bread, sandwiches, cookies, pasta, and pizza?
In the year the couple spent on what they called “The 100-Mile Diet,” Smith and MacKinnon got to know nearby farmers, cheese-makers, and fishermen. They rediscovered the intense flavors of fresh, seasonal foods. And they learned to pickle sauerkraut, can tomatoes, and even make their own cheese. We talked to them just before the book came out.
Epicurious: What made you decide to eat locally?
Smith: It began to feel odd to go to the supermarket and see apples from New Zealand when we knew apples were grown right here in British Columbia. We’re the kind of people who try to bike and walk to do our chores, and were shocked to find that most produce travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate.
But what decided it for us was being at our remote cabin on a lake with no stores nearby. Friends arrived on a day when we were totally out of supplies. We panicked: How could we feed them? We caught fish; dug up some of the potatoes we had planted; foraged for mushrooms and berries, and had the freshest, best-tasting meal I could remember. We wanted to hold on to that feeling, so James hit on the idea of eating locally for a year.
Epi: Is it true that you lost 15 pounds between you?
Smith: Only at first. We’re both fairly trim, and suddenly we were on this accidental Atkins diet because we couldn’t find any locally grown wheat. Once the farmers’ markets opened there was an abundance of food and we went back to our normal weights. But if someone was on a fast-food and processed-food diet, he would definitely lose weight by eating as we did.
Epi: How did it change your cooking?
MacKinnon: When we ate globally I’d open a cookbook, look at the ingredients, and then go out to buy them. Suddenly I had to do it differently. We’d go out to see what was in season and available and then figure out a way to cook it. We ate a lot of borscht until the farmers’ markets opened because all we had were storage vegetables.
That first season showed us we’d better stock up when local food was available, and we learned to make sauerkraut, put up apples and tomatoes in jars, freeze corn and salmon, and dry mushrooms.
Epi: Your recipes are a bit odd: Homemade capers? Braised dandelion greens with morels?
MacKinnon: Some of the things we ate were odd. Before we found wheat, we had “sandwiches” of red peppers, mushrooms, and goat cheese on slices of turnips.
Epi: Was it all deprivation?
MacKinnon: Not at all. We had wine and oysters, fresh fish, butter and cheese, tomatoes and berries. And we made good friends. Other guys have a barber and a mechanic: I have a fisherman and a beekeeper.
Epi: I’d like to try it. How do I start?
MacKinnon: Start small. Share a meal with friends and make it potluck, so you’re all involved. Or just pick one or two products and say “From now on when I eat potatoes they’ll be local” or “Instead of orange juice in the morning, I’ll drink local apple juice.” Local eating is important enough that you should make it fun and easy while you pick up skills and develop new patterns. You can find out more about this on our Web site (www.100milediet.org).
Epi: What are you eating now?
MacKinnon: We’ve loosened up, but we still eat 85 percent locally and don’t think we’ll go much lower. The quality of the food is so outstanding that we never considered going back.
— Irene Sax
More from Epicurious: See the recent Epi-Log that talks about No Impact Man, who’s trying to reduce his carbon footprint. Plus, check out the blog entry Five Ways to Make Your Diet Healthier (for the Planet) on our sister site www.NutritionData.com.
