The 100-Foot Diet

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/24/74/

I started preparing a large pot of potato leek soup this morning. If all goes according to plan, the soup should be done simmering by late September.

No, there’s no problem with my stovetop or my cooking skills. The problem, if there is one, is with my admittedly extreme definition of local ingredients.

Unless you managed to lock yourself in your kitchen pantry for the past year, you will have heard that road-weary foods are out and fresh, local ones are in. Yet, different people have different ways of defining local. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has said that local foods are those sourced within a 200 mile radius of a store. Nutritionist and author Joan Dye Gussow has defined local more poetically as “within a day’s leisurely drive of our homes”.

In my case, local foods are those coming from my own backyard, literally. In order to have backyard-grown leeks by September, I’m planting seeds indoors now which will grow into pencil-necked seedlings that I’ll move outdoors in May when Maine’s winter officially ends and summer begins (for those who haven’t been to Maine before, spring comes the second week of May, except for those years when it skips us completely). Once the seedlings are in the ground, they’ll need a hundred days before they’re ready for the soup pot.

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The rest of the year is a little tougher, however. The St. Paul farmer's market only allows food produced within 100 miles of St. Paul, so I guess that could be part of a low-mileage diet for me.

It's great for self-disciplinea nd promoting food security, plus the flavour is so much better. A local farmer's market that we use all summer is really serious about their definition of "local." Another nearby market claims to be local, but in reality if a farmer has a residence nearby they're allowed to sell all all the Chilean grapes they can import...

We've turned about half our little urban lawn into vegetable gardens, and we even have a couple of maple trees near the street that have sap buckets hanging on them right now.

My motto:

H(umanize)
E(conomize)
L(ocalize)
P(roduce)

HELP is the key.

modified it to the "California Diet". If I can't get it from somewhere in CA (and the closer in CA the better) then I buy organic, and from as close in the US as possible. Imprted foods are going to be a RARE treat from now on.

We have a great Sunday AM farmer's market. I have some nice leeks. Thanks for the reminder about potato leek soup!!

We're getting GREAT local citrus now - lots of specialty citrus that didn't get frozen.....cara cara oranges, oroblanco grapefruit, tangelos.....and my lenoms in the front yard are about ready.