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

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Manufacturer: Harmony

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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.


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.56309711
EAN: 9780307347329
ISBN: 030734732X
Label: Harmony
Manufacturer: Harmony
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2007-04-24
Publisher: Harmony
Release Date: 2007-04-24
Studio: Harmony


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet
• Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Food
• No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
• Eat Where You Live: How to Find and Enjoy Fantastic Local and Sustainable Food No Matter Where You Live


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Anything But Raucous -
The title promised a raucous year, but my impression after reading the book was that the year was anything but raucous. It was a challenge that tested their resolve, blew up their daily routines, and altered their relationship to the world they inhabited. The words "difficult" or "challenging" seem more appropriate terms for the title.

The cause behind the book is an admirable one: buy only local food for one year, promote local farming and reduce your carbon footprint. Structured like a journal, with each author writing about alternating months. much space was given to their families' relationships to food, to local history and geography, and to facts about the industrial production of food versus the benefits of local farming. Some of these entries were a little long-winded, and I found myself skipping over or scanning them.I found it to be a little thin on substance and a little long on random information.

What I primarily took away from the book is the difficulty of the task they set for themselves, and how it seemed to overtake their lives.

Not ever having visited the Pacific Northwest, I imagined the Vancouver area to be rich in agriculture as well as in seafood I was expecting food to be abundant. What surprised me most was the difficulty they had obtaining certain foods, and the amount of time they dedicated to acquiring it, preparing it and storing it.

Their quest for wheat took months of searching the internet and countryside. The hours they spent picking through it for a loaf of bread would have discouraged even the most ardent bread addict. But they were starved for bread, and so was I after reading about their deprivations for so long.

Even more than acquiring it was the amount of time the authors spent preparing and storing food. They worked their plot in the community garden; they stuffed their closets with food for the winter; they pickled cabbage in their living room ...It felt exhausting.

Despite the difficulties, there were positive outcomes: the authors became more connected with their community, its history and geography. They promoted local agriculture and food production, and they reduced their carbon footprint.

As an inspirational story, it was so-so. Who but people in their same position can afford to dedicate so much time to food? Those of us who don't work from home, or who have children, can only spend so much time researching, tracking down, buying and preparing food. Yet, I must admit, they did raise my sensitivity to the importance and benefits of buying locally.

Wonderful love story -
Like so many other books coming out in the last couple of years ("The Year of Living Biblically," "Julie and Julia," and others), the authors make a pact to do one thing for an entire year and document it in journal form (just like "Julie and Julia," the genesis for "Plenty" was a blog). That their topic is local food spoke to me, since I have been trying to do this myself, albeit not to the extreme the co-authors manage. This is an inspiring story, with some very practical advice about finding local providers and growing and preserving your own foods. One of the strengths of the book is that the authors are accomplished journalists, and so some chapters read as self-standing feature stories, such as when they visit and interview a number of local food providers. These characters come in and out of the story with tales of how they learned through tradition and experimentation how to help nature do what it does best.

In the end, the book is also the story of this couple, who has been together for most of their adult lives, and has a charming but also very real relationship. The authors alternate chapters, and this serves both to keep the pacing interesting (especially if you, like me, find yourself preferring one of the authors to the other), and to slowly tell the story of their life together, not just as environmentalists and writers, but also as real people who sometimes get tired of each other and can be honest about it. Part nature book, part biography, part science report, and part adventure story, "Plenty" keeps you reading and puts a very personal spin on the local food movement.

Great idea, interesting story of a couple and living locally -
This is a great book for anyone who wants to reduce their carbon footprint, is in a long term relationship, or just wants some great recipes. The book is interspersed with recipes, relationship drama and advice, and a story of what you would need to go through to buy all of your food within 100 miles from home.

When you would kill for some wheat flour! -
In Plenty, authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon tell their story of living for a year eating only foods produced within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver. This book is also published as Plenty: Eating Locally On The 100 Mile Diet; and The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating.

I think they are all the same. Regardless, I read the "Plenty: Eating Locally On The 100 Mile Diet" version.

So two vegetarian writer/journalists get the bug to eat locally. Gone is olive oil from Italy, sea salt from Hawaii, wine from Australia, or grapes from Chile. Unfortunately, living in the Vancouver, British Columbia area, this also means that wheat is in short supply, salmon is abundant, and most fruits and vegetables are very seasonal.

Here are some tidbits, and comments:

- "We were living on a SUV diet" (p. 5 in Plenty). The 100 mile diet was born.

- "We had a single ironclad rule: that every ingredient in every product we bought had to come from within 100 miles" (p. 10). They did have a "social life amendment" which allowed them to break these rules in social situations.

- As they looked in the grocery stores, they noted "Yet here we were in the modern horn of plenty, and almost nothing came from the people or the landscape that surrounded us. How had our food system come to this" (p. 13).

- "There is a term for the experience of tugging your little red wagon through a strawberry field, and that term is 'traceability'. It's a measure of how close or distant one is from one's food" (p. 54).

- "We never will accept the idea that animals can be treated like machines that produce meat, milk, and eggs" (p. 70). Unfortunately, there are both well cared for machines, and poorly cared for machines. Smith and MacKinnon consume plenty of eggs and dairy products, shellfish, fish, birds, and, eventually, small quantities of beef.

- "If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe" (p. 107). I just liked this quote from Carl Sagan!

- "That even Hebda was unaware that [California] condors were reported in the Fraser Valley into the twentieth century illustrates a ket fact about our past. We forget. The effect has been described as a double disappearance. We lose a species, or the abundance of a species, and then forget what it is we have lost" (p. 143). This is also called the "shifting baseline syndrome."

- When they learned they had to freeze their corn immediately, Smith wrote "It sounded, at best, like a Mormon's idea of a good-time Saturday night..." (p. 151). I thought this was a bit rude.

- Smith wrote, "I'm thirty-three years old, always broke, and merely 'existing' in what, without having been sealed by formal wedding vows, had become a traditional marriage. ...My only drama was in my daydreams" (p. 164). Throughout this book, I was continuously reminded that Smith and MacKinnon seemed to have no other life than to look for, prepare, store, and eat food. Their drama seemed to revolve around food, with a few references to being challenged by a bear and some family-related adventures. Few people can devote the time necessary for this type of experiment.

- "The mark of an empire, it seems, is to eat its length and breadth" (p. 198). Interesting idea.

- The differences between locally grown and imported (less fresh) foods? "'There will be nutritional differences, but they'll be marginal,' said [New York University professor Marion] Nestle. 'I mean, that's not really the issue. It feels like it's the issue - obviously fresher foods that are grown on better soils are going to have more nutrients. But people are not nutrient-deprived. We're just not nutrient-deprived'" (p. 229). This is a key point of the book. If it is not nutrients or food quality we are after, then the theme is that a local diet affects... what? Carbon in the atmosphere and its impact on global and local climate change? Self-sufficiency in case of disaster? Open space? Variety? One-upmanship? Supporting local businesses? Bragging rights? What? For example, the authors write "When at last we were together again, it was in Merida, the cultural capitol of the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico. Minnesota, Malawi, Mexico" (p. 244). The energy consumed and CO2 released from this travel... how can you say no to winter grapes from Chile?

Remember "We're just not nutrient-deprived"? We are deprived of knowledge of where food comes from. We are deprived of the color of local farmers' markets. Many, many people are deprived of their health from ill-advised food choices (locally produced foods can also be part of a poor diet plan).

So... interesting book. Not THE book. Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants") will probably give you a better idea of your position in the global and local food chain.

Best Memoir I've Read -
I thought "Plenty" was a fantastic book. I had downloaded and read their journal from online before the book came out and loved it. The book was frosting on the cake with its primary data and documentation which support their (and our) efforts to relocalize our eating. Alisa and James' search for local food echos our own in an efforts to personally relocalize in a town that doesn't have much insight into what's happening in the world. Ya done good, kids! You go!

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