Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

published	2007 by Harmony
binding	Hardcover
isbn	030734732X (isbn13: 9780307347329)
pages	272
description	Like many great adventures, the 100-mile diet began with a memorable feast. Stranded in their off-the-grid summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness w...more [close] Like many great adventures, the 100-mile diet began with a memorable feast. Stranded in their off-the-grid summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness with unexpected guests, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon turned to the land around them. They caught a trout, picked mushrooms, and mulled apples from an abandoned orchard with rose hips in wine. The meal was truly satisfying; every ingredient had a story, a direct line they could trace from the soil to their forks. The experience raised a question: Was it possible to eat this way in their everyday lives? Back in the city, they began to research the origins of the items that stocked the shelves of their local supermarket. They were shocked to discover that a typical ingredient in a North American meal travels roughly the distance between Boulder, Colorado, and New York City before it reaches the plate. Like so many people, Smith and MacKinnon were trying to live more lightly on the planet; meanwhile, their "SUV diet" was producing greenhouse gases and smog at an unparalleled rate. So they decided on an experiment: For one year they would eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home. It wouldn't be easy. Stepping outside the industrial food system, Smith and MacKinnon found themselves relying on World War II-era cookbooks and maverick farmers who refused to play by the rules of a global economy. What began as a struggle slowly transformed into one of the deepest pleasures of their lives. For the first time they felt connected to the people and the places that sustain them. For Smith and MacKinnon, the 100-mile diet became a journey whose destination was, simply, home. From the satisfaction of pulling their own crop of garlic out of the earth to pitched battles over canning tomatoes, Plenty is about eating locally and thinking globally. The authors' food-focused experiment questions globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and the tattering threads of community. Thought-provoking and inspiring, Plenty offers more than a way of eating. In the end, it's a new way of looking at the world.
date added	03-22-07 edit book

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Margaret marked it as to-read

07/25/07

bookshelves: to-read

Excerpted without permission from Flavorpill's "Boldtype" newsletter. I like books about food!

Review
Sometimes couples do strange things — start dressing alike, say, or take up bowling. Alisa Smith and her partner James MacKinnon, both professional writers, decided to mini-size their diet. After realizing some of their food traveled 3,000 miles to their table, they decided they wanted to reduce their carbon footprint — so they committed to only eating food grown within 100 mil...more Excerpted without permission from Flavorpill's "Boldtype" newsletter. I like books about food!

Review
Sometimes couples do strange things — start dressing alike, say, or take up bowling. Alisa Smith and her partner James MacKinnon, both professional writers, decided to mini-size their diet. After realizing some of their food traveled 3,000 miles to their table, they decided they wanted to reduce their carbon footprint — so they committed to only eating food grown within 100 miles of their Vancouver apartment, for a year. To celebrate their decision, they had a glorious meal full of local, organic delicacies. When that set them back about $128, they quickly remembered that they were two young freelancers who were already pinching pennies. It's this realism that keeps Plenty, their co-authored memoir, from being a self-congratulatory romp.

Surprisingly, this project founded in ascetic determination turns into a year of discovery and flexibility. With many of the bare necessities off-limits (salt, cooking oil, even beer) or simply hard to get (wheat), the couple find themselves exploring their little corner of the world, getting to know fisherman and farmers. Along the way, they're schooled by an unlikely set of teachers, including intractable farmers, a Native American fisherman, and an old cookbook from the '40s. Their provocative reflections illustrate how quixotic it is to eat against the grain these days.

Trading off his-and-hers chapters, the two offer complimentary but distinct stories. Occasionally, both MacKinnon and Smith digress to the point of losing the reader, but they usually salvage the story by bringing it back to the dinner plate. James is the cook — excitable, stubborn, and given to rapturous bursts of natural history. Alisa is equally passionate, but also practical, more of a social historian than her partner. She's candid about the impact their diet is having on their lives, as they suck it up through weevil scares, tedious bouts of canning, and the inevitable intrusions of real-world troubles. The cumulative strain comes very close to breaking them up for good, but the saving grace of Plenty is that it doesn't try to hide the wear and tear. That makes all the pluck, humor, and plain-old good eating all the more savory.
- Toby Warner...less

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Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

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