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

[liralen]

It made me homesick for the northwest, badly, badly homesick for the northwest.

There's a man and a woman who live together in Vancouver BC and they decide to eat only food that was grown or made within 100 miles of their home. It gets very interesting, and they learn far more about preserving their own food than I think most people know. I know *I* wouldn't want to can tomatoes or freeze corn the way they did. And no *bread* for nearly six months of their "diet". Plus, I'm now a lot more aware of the miles that my non-local foods travels, though some of the 'warnings' in the book felt more... overblown... than I liked. That part I didn't like about the book at all.

I got a lot more conscious of what I'm eating, though, and, amusingly enough, have been cooking more and been quite happy to buy and eat more local things. But then I have tried to do more of that anyway.

There's a lady near the corner of state highways 287 and 52 that sells eggs from chickens that she has running around her vegetable garden and fields. Every spring she has a real excess and we bought two dozen of them and the yolks are so orange that they turn pancakes golden, and they taste so astonishing just baked or scrambled or put into omelets that it amazes me over and over again.

My garden's spinach has gotten huge, to the point where for the last month we've been picking and eating just a single row. The plants are now big enough that a single plant feeds both John and I for salad. I used just four plants last night for a bowl of spinach salad that filled our half gallon mixing bowl. It was great and I had three people ask for the recipe and one carefully noted "garden grown spinach". *laughter* I loved that.

It's a fun book. John's devouring it now. I don't think we'll do exactly that. I'd be too homesick for wild caught salmon to be able to. But we did find and list everything in all our freezers, got a better handle on exactly what's in our fridge, and we're starting to ask which stores here carry things that are really local to our area. Plus I'm sure I'm now going to be doing even more shopping at our local farmer's market. That is all to the good, I think, for us and our world.

Comments

[kjc007.livejournal.com]

Have you seen NoImpactMan's blog?

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/

He has an lj feed, noimpactman and he considers Plenty one of his inspirations.

Food for thought, it is.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

It is!! Thank you!

[dunfalach.livejournal.com]

As regarding the eggs, I'm going to assume we're talking naturally fertilized by a rooster? If so, they're also a bit healthier than your average store-bought egg, as the store-bought eggs are usually non-fertilized, and therefore lack the lecithin (spelling?) that helps counteract the cholesterol content.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. *grin*

Jet would be rather upset if we were eating fertilized eggs, as he's gone through a whole class with raised chicks and all... but so it is...

[rephetibel.livejournal.com]

Buying locally makes sense. Not that I could do it for everything. Salt, pepper and cinnamon come immediately to mind as non local products I don't want to do without. I'm going to read that book. I made soup all winter long from the kale, celery, parsnips, Swiss chard and rutabagas I overwintered in my garden plus onions I'd grown last summer. Now I've begun making bread again. I buy my flour from the grocery store though and don't know where the wheat was grown.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Cocoa... chocolate. I'd have such a *hard* time with chocolate.

ooo... soup!! :-)

I have always admired how much you use out of your garden.