Book recommendation

Over the weekend, I finished reading The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon. The couple embarks on a year of eating only food within 100 miles from their urban apartment in Vancouver. And unlike many of those books where the real-life experiment sounds intriguing, this one is actually well written.

They give you the facts behind their decisions, like the popularly cited study from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, which reports the food we eat typically travels 1,500 to 3,000 miles from farm to plate. They also delve further into the facts -- that study is only including fresh produce: imagine how many miles all the various chemicals and ingredients thrown into our processed foods travels combined! It's incredibly baffling to read about how cheap oil has revolutionized the food industry to the point where you may have corn farmed in Iowa shipped to China to be canned, only to be shipped back to, say, New York to be put on a grocery store shelf.

The authors are really honest about their experiences, too, including the transition from convenience to planning for food (winter in Canada, anyone?) as well as their own personal evolutions. They emphasize food as a connection to place and community, something perhaps longed for yet often not fully realized on an individual level.

I highly recommend reading this book if you haven't yet. I've had it on my to-read list for nearly two years, and I'm so glad I finally did read it. It's the type of book that could change your actions, it's that inspiring. And now I really can't wait for the farmers markets to start up! Only three more weeks here in Boston!

Potterized

Yes, I admit it: I'm reading the Harry Potter books and enjoying them. It has taken me how many years to catch up with the times in this category (in the other categories, I'm still in the 90s).

A coworker (I almost wrote "a coworker at work") is obsessed and I thought it was about time for me to read the series before I groan about those crazy fans. I have noticed an abundance of criticizers who have never read the book and I don't think that's fair. So I read. And now, a few short days later, I'm almost through with book two. I'm finding it to have an imaginative plot, likable although stereotyped characters, and with some neat twists. It's certainly not the best writing I've ever read, but it's a fun one.

I guess that was my book review, a decade-ish late.