100 Mile Diet Book Review

03/01/2013

Hello Again, two posts in one day. I'm on a role. Unfortunately during the move I lost some important papers, my notes on the book: 100 mile diet. I was hoping to find them to use in the review but it looks like I'm stuck with my memory.

The 100 mile diet was written by two Canadians who are lovers. They have been together for many years and the male decided to try to eat within the confines of 100 miles around them. What inspired this I can't recall however they learned SOO much during their journey.

The Canadians had a small apartment in the city, in addition to their apartment they own a cabin with a orchard out in a ghost town. For maybe three months they stayed in their cabin with no running water. Here they learned to can, preserve, and bake. Of the couple the man is the cook but not the baker so his girlfriend took on the baker role during their year long experiment.

In the ghost town the couple met up with a native American who traded them fish for jars for canning. Fish is free for him because he catches his own but jars are not, those you have to buy in the store. This guy is a total wilderness man not caught up in our rat race and dependent on the things that we are. In addition to talking to this guy and meeting him they also had another visitor: a bear. The man got a taste of nature bathing just upstream from the bear.

Coming back from the ghost town the couple had supplies from the orchard to last them for a while. They did have a hard time getting local wheat to make bread or pasta however. They found some eventually which was loaded with bugs. Then later down the road they found a farm which was in business with their neighbors who were bakers. Fresh bread that they didn't have to make themselves!

 The couple had several fights during this book and I wondered if they would even be together in the end. They made it and their book was enlightening. I had no idea that there were so many types of apples, oranges, bell peppers,etc. There used to be so many more varieties than there are today. The problem with industrialization is that it isn't giving us more its giving us less. Less choice for starters! It is really hard to find things locally! Especially if you don't know where to look.

One of the funniest things in this book was "smuggling". The couple went to a small town in Oregon? and found groceries soo much cheaper than anywhere near them. While one was nervous that the border patrol would catch them with smuggled produce they found a deal that they couldn't refuse. It was comical to me how serious bringing food across the border seems to be.

The female also journeyed to the United States to meet with people here who were doing their own local diet. These people were in an area that is considered more barren and that people had said it was impossible to do a local diet there, however they succeeded and ate staples that we would find odd with our current lifestyles. More impressive than that was these were college students and the women of that area that met with our female writer was the mother of a young child.

I will wrap this up by suggesting you read this book. My review should NOT be taken as a substitute, and I'm sorry for butchering it but my memory a month later is not as good as going off notes of key points that were in the book that I would love to share with all of you.

While I will not be attempting anything like the 100 mile diet I will be shopping at the local farmers markets and a local produce shop. Hopefully eventually I will be eating food that primarily comes from local areas.