xo Sarah

But there’s something about living in the mountains that makes me want to be able to grow my own food. As I’m still not quite at that stage yet, a couple of books filled in the gaps nicely and got the ‘ol melon a turnin’.

In The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating a couple from Vancouver, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon decide to eat locally for an entire year. At first it sounded impossible to me; no avocados, mangoes, Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Coke and no potato chips. But they do much better than you would expect, or than I expected, anyhow, finding farmers around the Vancouver area who grow everything they need (from veggies to livestock). I think Chris and I might kill each other with a project such as this one, as I thought the authors might half-way through, too. Canning corn at midnight sounds like a recipe for disaster. But the fact that they make it all the way to the one year mark, happy, feeling healthy, and not desperately missing junk food was fascinating. It’s also caused me to start looking a little more closely at what I eat. Maybe not so far as to grow my own food yet, but to at least question buying blueberries from New Zealand and to enjoy Canadian fruits and vegetables when they are in season.

Doug Fine is a man in New Mexico with a similar mission: to not only eat locally, but to stop living off fossil fuels. He’s written about his successes and failures in his book Farewelll my Subaru and also on his website. I’m particularly interested to hear of his success with goat’s mik ice cream. mmmm

He’ll be speaking as part of the Mountain Culture series tomorrow night, which I am really disappointed to be missing. Hopefully the Banff Centre will have videos of the talk available online in the near future.

I think I’d like to simply get things done this year. Pure and simple. Turning 30 might also be to powering this list – I was supposed to be living in California and fluent in German by now. Mach schnell!

So, one obtainable goal I’d like to set I’m going to set for this year is to try to make breakfast at home more often. Instead of coffee and a croissant every day from the coffee shop at work, as much as I love them, I’ll whip something up at home. I found a flickr set not long ago that has the tastiest set of photos taken at breakfast every morning. This picture in particular kills me:

If I could stop hitting snooze so many times and hurry up and get out of bed, this is what I’d like to have for breakfast in the morning. I’d also love to be organized enough to make homemade scones, freeze them, and heat them up in the morning. But that seems to much to ask at this juncture.

Hmm… I’m still not sure this plan is feasible. Maybe I’ll hope for this Christmas miracle instead.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan’s excellent explanation of industrial and organic food production is a must read for anyone concerned about what they eat.  It’s more informative than preachy, and although it might not change your diet, it will make you more aware of what makes up the food that lines our supermarket shelves.There are a million tidbits I could quote from the book, many of which would scare or disgust the average consumer, but an example of a more reassuring practice is that of organic box salad makers requiring their employees to wear bright blue bandaids with metal filaments in them so that a metal detector can catch them if they fall off.  Nobody wants a bandaid in their salad and it is reassuring to see that the salad makers have taken this to heart.

A favourite quote in The Omnivore’s Dilemma comes from French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss who describes the work of civilization as “…the process of transforming the raw into the cooked…”  I have to admit that I loved that notion, a good book is nothing more than a well cooked idea.