Thursday, July 5, 2007

Local Foods

I need to take the current book I am reading back to the library tomorrow (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver). I am not finished, but I want to make a few comments now. I have also read the following books: Plenty by Alisa Smith and JB Mackinnon, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meal by Michael Pollan, Food Politics by Marion Nestle, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, and Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé.

All these books have a common theme, although all come at it from a different perspective: what we choose to eat makes a difference, in essence, we are voting on many issues at once each time we use our fork. Whether we choose to spend out time gardening or seeking out our locally produced foods, cooking, putting up (canning, freezing, drying) foods to be used as our own healthy convenience foods at a later time (or during the winter months) versus choosing the conspicuous consumption of food that has already been processed using a multitude of the cheapest ingredients possible and transported over 1000 miles, we are making decisions several times each day that are affecting the health of our planet, economies, and all people.

I'll be talking much more about all of this in my future blogging. Right now, I'll just say that I am very excited because I have a good lead for a truly local source of humanely and organically raised chickens, turkeys, and eggs. I'll add that I'll be checking out Animal, Vegetable, and Miracles by Barbara Kingsolver from the library again (long waiting list) and I'll bet that I ultimately purchase this book. In the meantime, you can visit www.animalvegetablemiracle.com for recipes from the book and information and inspiration for "going local". (Again, sorry that you'll need to cut and paste this url until I figure out how to make the link active - I guess I'd rather spend time weeding that being a computer geek!)

Signing off to get a load of books ready to ship to Amazon and then out to the garden!

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

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