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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Get used to this new word. Slightly different than localvore, used by  
some. Eating food from close to home. I am delighted to see that the  
practice has become a fad among urban types and further delighted to  
see The New York Times providing primo publicity. This is not their  
first article on eating locally-grown foods; I remember reading  
another recently about a couple who are doing it for a year as, um,  
fodder for a book he is writing.

This is the first of two pages:

Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally

By MARIAN BURROS
Published: April 25, 2007

JESSICA ABEL may have gone to extremes when she collected seawater  
from Long Island Sound and boiled it down to make two cups of salt.  
But people who are determined to eat only food made within 100 miles,  
give or take, sometimes find themselves reaching for creative solutions.
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Hank Daniel

PIONEERS Barbara Kingsolver, in the blue shirt, wrote about her farm.
Related
Recipe: Roast Rabbit with Green Garlic Sauce (April 25, 2007)

Ms. Abel and her husband, Matt Madden, cartoonists who work at home  
in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, have given three strictly enforced local- 
only dinner parties over the past year. A fourth scheduled for next  
month will feature fiddleheads, ramps, new fresh cheese and baby lamb.

“Last summer it was goat stew with peaches and onions, and in the  
middle of winter it was an all-butter, all-the-time meal,” she said.  
“We all missed white flour and sugar.”

Ms. Abel and Mr. Madden are dabblers in a small but increasingly  
popular effort to return to a time before the average food item  
traveled 1,500 miles from farm to table. In that sense, the only  
thing new about the phenomenon is its name, locavore, which was  
coined two years ago in California. But the appearance of the word  
seems to have given shape to a growing subculture. Weeklong locavore  
challenges have been popping up all over the country, even in places  
like Minnesota and Vermont, where it would seem to be pretty hard to  
eat local foods in the dead of winter.

Many drawn to the movement say they have been eating that way for  
years and had never thought about the implications beyond the flavor.  
“Initially it was the taste thing for me,” said Robin McDermott, who  
lives in Waitsfield, Vt., where locavores call themselves localvores.  
“But now when I think about what it takes to get lettuce across the  
country so I can eat it in the middle of winter, between the fuel  
costs and the contribution all the transportation is making to global  
warming and climate change, I just can’t do it. It’s not sustainable  
and I don’t want to contribute to it.”

Those who think this is another harebrained scheme of the food fringe  
may be surprised to learn that locavores are poised to move into the  
mainstream. Barbara Kingsolver, the best-selling novelist, has  
written one of three books out this spring about eating locally.

“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” (HarperCollins) recounts her family’s  
adventures during the year they spent eating food raised in their  
corner of southwest Virginia. Her book and others are successors to  
several earlier books including “Coming Home to Eat” by Gary Paul  
Nabhan and “Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection” by  
Jessica Prentice, who coined the word locavore and founded the Web  
site locavores.com.

Ms. Prentice’s group claims to have started the grass-roots locavore  
challenges that sprang up in California in 2005. Participants  
exchange recipes and advice.

Some locavores follow the 100 Mile Diet, created by Alisa Smith and  
J.B. MacKinnon, authors of the just-released “Plenty” (Harmony). They  
spent a year in British Columbia eating only food grown within a 100- 
mile radius.

It wasn’t easy. Faced with potatoes, once again, for lunch, Ms. Smith  
recounts her feeling that “I’d kill for a sandwich.” When Mr.  
MacKinnon said he would make her one, she couldn’t imagine what he  
had in mind because they had no local flour for bread. But soon  
enough he produced greenhouse-grown red peppers and fried mushrooms  
with goat cheese between two golden brown slices of something.  
Something turned out to be turnips.

The authors held so strictly to their plan that when they eventually  
found locally grown wheat they took it even though it was filled with  
mouse droppings. Mr. MacKinnon painstakingly separated the droppings  
from the wheat with the edge of a credit card.

The plan outlined in Ms. Kingsolver’s book is much less strict than  
the one in “Plenty.” The author said that in her attitude toward food  
she is something between a Puritan (“I’m going to be holy right now”)  
and a toddler (“I want absolutely everything every minute and the  
idea of not having fresh peaches in January is sort of horrifying”).

Each member of her family was allowed one luxury item that came from  
far away. Her husband chose coffee, her children hot chocolate and  
dried fruit. Spices were Ms. Kingsolver’s indulgence.

“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” gives no sense of privation or even  
boredom. Ms. Kingsolver spent a fair amount of time putting foods by  
when they were in season so that the larder was stocked.

But most readers would have trouble following her program, which  
included raising much of what the family ate on their farm, including  
chickens and turkeys.

“We undertook this project because it brings together so many  
compelling issues of the moment: carbon footprint, global warming,  
the local economy, the nutritional crisis and community,” said Ms.  
Kingsolver. “Community is very important to me and every book I’ve  
ever written is on this subject: what is the debt of the individual  
to the community?”

“We wanted to see if we could show that it’s possible and even a lot  
of fun, not just an experiment in sacrifice,” she said. “It was so  
much more fun than we expected it to be.”

Most locavores are not strict constructionists. They tend to make  
exceptions for coffee, pasta, spices, salt and flour.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/dining/25loca.html?_r=1&oref=slogin