Book of the Month: June

Another food book this month.  This time it is the The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon.  This is the story of their 2005 experiment to eat only foods that they could source from within a 100 miles.  This story is wonderfully woven with each author (they are also a couple) alternating chapters.  This is about food, history, the environment, and the challenges of eating "local."  I also enjoyed this read because I live in the area in which it takes place but that certainly shouldn't deter anyone not living in the Lower Mainland from reading it. 
This journey became bigger than both of the authors would have imagined when they began the experiment.  They have a great website and a reality t.v. show on the Food Network Canada and their movement has connected them to many like minds that have embarked on similar challenges. 

This is a story about how they ate locally and what they learned while doing it.   It makes you think of where your food comes from even more deeply.  Our food is no longer limited to our regional geography and every grocery store in North America demonstrates that.  We can eat bananas from Equador, kiwis from New Zealand, mandarins from China and nori from Japan.  But should we be eating all these things?   What would we eat from our own landscape if our food didn't travel an average of 1,500 miles before we consumed it?  As we enter the beginning of the abundant harvest of summer eating local often becomes more appealing with seemingly endless possibilities.  The challenge really starts in the late fall and winter when we enter the period of dormancy.

The journey of learning about food is a long road The 100-Mile Diet puts a personal perspective on food and will help anyone who wants to be more aware to grasp the concept one step at a time.