Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

The creators of the 100-Mile Diet, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, have come out with their memoir of eating locally for one year. The book Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally can be purchased on links through their website. The February chapter of the book highlights Alisa’s stay with me, and visit with others participating in the Local Food Challenge, in Minnesota. It was wonderful to share stories with Alisa, and to feel the comradarie of a fellow local foodie.

It’s always interesting to see yourself through the lens of another. Being that I have the opportunity to clarify a few things though, I will take it. The very first quote is something that I never said. I didn’t butcher the roosters in the fall….and I certainly would never derive pleasure from killing an animal. My Dad was not of the beatnik generation, and it was the flower petals of the wild rose I said could be made into jelly, not the hips. And all this crap about Mayan prophesies was a conversation piece…not a centerpiece of my, or my friends and colleagues, lives. My vibe is not about preparing for the end of the world, but rather to actively participate in birthing a world-wide transformation to deep ecology. This is a non-fiction book, but our lives are stories and those stories are open to the imaginations of the storytellers. Those few things aside, I am so very grateful to Alisa and James for their work. They have, and continue, to open their lives…exposing ever larger numbers of people to the impacts of their food choices.

Here’s an excerpt from that February chapter: “These were the kind of people who could survive in the wilderness with just the clothes on their backs and a knife; Steve even made his own knife. What I learned from these folks wouldn’t necessarily translate into my urban life – to begin with, packing a blade in the city sends a totally different message. The lessons of Minnesota, however, might just turn the “impossible” into the thoroughly real.”