"local eating" news and stories

Some of you may have participated in the One Local Summer program in past years. It's a project in which you sign up to cook at least one meal a week that uses only local foods (typically defined as those foods grown/raised/produced within 100 miles of your home) and then blog about it. In the past it was organized by Liz at Pocket Farm, but she's since gotten out of the blogging business.

However, Nicole at Farm to Philly has picked up the One Local Summer mantle, at least for the Mid-Atlantic states (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia), and is going to be signing people up and writing the weekly round-up of participating blogs. The challenge starts June 1st and runs until August 31st, so sign up and start planning your meals.

At this time, I don't know if anyone else is going to be running the One Local Summer for the rest of the country. If you know, please leave a comment so that we can get the word out.

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Interesting article in the New York Times this morning, about a subject we've all been hearing about a lot: the environmental effects of global food shipping. Not only are we eating food imported from far away places when it's unavailable or not in season here, but we're actually shipping lemons from Argentina to the citrus-rich south of Spain, sending Norwegian cod to China to be made into fillets and shipped back to Norway again. And we're starting to pay the cost in terms of global warming from the carbon emissions from all that shipping.

So maybe it's time to pay the financial cost as well, some economists say, in the form of taxes and carbon offsets for shippers and shoppers alike. While neither airplanes or ocean freighters are currently taxed for fuel used for international travel and transport of good, many people think it's time to end these tax breaks.

Well, that doesn't sound like a bad plan to me, but the question of imported foods and carbon emissions still present a conundrum for those of us who really love to eat (I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in any 100-mile diet that doesn't involve chocolate or coffee) and care about the environment. How do you green foodies out there deal with this issue?

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I am still working my way through Barbara Kingsolver's latest book (written along with her husband and older daughter) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It's about her family's year of eating only locally grown and produced foods, most of which they grew or raised themselves on their land in Virginia. They experienced both struggles and joys in the process and learned a great deal about their local food supply chain. Their approach isn't for everyone. They were more prepared than most folks to take on a year of local eating. They had the space, a friendly growing climate and the time to do a lot of the work themselves. But being that issues of food and the distance it travels to get to our plates are on on the minds of many right now, Kingsolver's book is helpful in exploring ways to reduce your own carbon food-print.

If you're interested in the book, but want to get a taste before committing yourself to reading it, you should check out the July 19th edition of "Speaking of Faith," a weekly radio show from American Public Media. Kingsolver spoke with host Krista Tippett about the Ethics of Eating, delving into her family's experience, the process of growing much of what she eats and how she sees this country taking many positives steps towards local eating.