Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa SmithMy review
rating: 4 of 5 starsInteresting story, written by 2 freelance writers, interspersed with great essays on the history of food. Some favorite quotes:
A study in the UK showed that the amount of time people now spend driving to the supermarket, looking for parking, and wandering the lengthy aisles in search of a frozen pizza or pre-mixed salad is nearly equal to that spent preparing food from scratch 20 years ago.
Despite eating more than ever before, our culture may be the only one in human history to value food to little. From the African scrublands to the Australian deserts, nomads who collected food daily and never stored it considered sharing food to be the ultimate form of wealth. Among traditional Northwest people, a “poor” person was someone who never troubled to catch his own salmon, but was instead content to eat food produced b others. 158-62
Today is it more efficient for the UK to maintain the $330 million trade from New Zealand for apples, onions, dairy and sheep rather than to produce it in the UK. 221
I had expected the 100- mile experiment to be a platform to think about many things, among them a long list of bummers from climate change to the failure of whole generations to learn how to recognize edible mushrooms. What I could see around the table now was a less tangible consideration: a sense of adventure…. We need to find new ways to live into the future. We can start anytime; we can live them here and now. 222
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1 comment:
Sally-This subject fascinates me and scares me at the same time. I am, personally, afraid to commit myself to a year of eating only locally grown and produced foods, even though we probably do it more so, just as a matter of course, because of the dairy. Especially, for city dwellers. But on the other hand, I don't want to be penned in, or relegated to only consuming foods found and or produced, locally. What about citrus, for starters, and ocean fish, like tuna or sockeye salmon. Or shrimp. I guess if it came down to it, I could do it, but it would be a challenge and a learning curve.
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