Announcing the 2008 One Book One Community selection ...
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The 100 Mile Diet
by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
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About the Book
“The 100 Mile Diet”
The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment.
When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born.
The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sun chokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep.
The 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, attracting media and grassroots interest that spanned the globe. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating tells the full story, from the insights to the kitchen disasters, as the authors transform from megamart shoppers to self-sufficient urban pioneers. The 100-Mile Diet is a pathway home for anybody, anywhere. – Random House Canada, http://www.randomhouse.ca/ .
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About the Authors
Alisa Smith, a Vancouver-based freelance writer who has been nominated for a National Magazine Award, has been published in Outside, Explore, Canadian Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Utne, and many other periodicals. The books Way Out There and Liberalized feature her work.
J.B. MacKinnon is the author of Dead Man in Paradise, which won the 2006 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction. His feature reportage on issues ranging from African prisons to anarchism in America has earned three National Magazine Awards.
For more information about Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s “100 Mile Diet” visit http://100milediet.org
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Reviews of “The 100 Mile Diet”
“Smith and MacKinnon revolt against the industrial model of food distribution and determine to spend a year eating nothing raised or cultivated beyond a 100-mile radius of their British Columbia home. They seek not just health benefits and fuel efficiencies but they also want to reconnect with small, local growers, millers, fishermen, and ranchers to create a community where the consumer knows both where the food comes from and who has produced it. British Columbia, with its Marine West Coast climate, its rivers full of salmon, and its proximity to the sea, offers unique opportunities to pursue this resolve. Along the way, the authors learn a lot about nutrition and uncommon varieties of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, and all the data is shared with the reader. Satisfying all their family's hungers proves daunting but scarcely impossible. Entries for each month conclude with a recipe reflecting use of seasonal ingredients.”
– Mark Knoblauch, Booklist
“Engaging, thoughtful…packed with natural, historical and personal detail.”
– Liesel Schillinger, The New York Times
“The Hundred Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating is nothing like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable or Miracle; Kingsolver is a rich writer living on a farm, Alisa and James are young starving writers living in a small apartment in Vancouver. They start their project, living for a year eating food from within a one hundred mile radius, with a blow-out meal of local fish, Salt Spring Island cheese and blueberries, but the bill comes to $128 and they realize that anyone can do this if you are rich. The challenge is to figure out how to do it if you are young, inexperienced and not Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow 1972. It is a struggle; no sugar, no olive oil, for much of it no wheat or bread. They work their way through, learning about the diversity of food that has been lost to supermarket monocultures, about the true cost in water and fuel in California lettuce. They did not really know what they were doing, starting the experiment at the beginning of spring, absolutely the worst time of year when nothing is yet growing and all there is to eat is last years remaining turnips.
Along the way, they became an internet phenomenon. They published an article on a local online magazine, the Tyee, and it went viral. (treehugger's first post here) Soon they are internet celebrities, and the concept is being picked up by everyone everywhere, a meme that has really gotten beyond their control, this year, local food is a phenomenon, among people who have never heard of Alisa and James. The book has a serious chance of being anticlimactic after such hype and exposure. It is not; Alisa and James know how to write, and it is informative, personal, charming and inspiring. In one chapter, no, almost on one page, we share the images of tasting pumpkin honey- "I has the sensation that a window had been opened, expanding the world" and the dubious task "and there I sat, separating mouse shit from wheat berries with a credit card."
One does not have to be a cook to worry about where your food comes from; Alisa made perhaps one meal during the course of this book, a chum soup. However, like Michael Pollan's The Onmivore's Dilemma, reading this book will change the way you look at your meal.”– Lloyd Alter, http://www.treehugger.com
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Want to Eat Locally?
Local Eating: http://www.localeating.ca/
Foodland Ontario: http://www.foodland.gov.on.ca/
Ontario Farm Fresh Marketing Association: http://www.ontariofarmfresh.com/
Your Kitchener Market: http://www.kitchenermarket.ca/
Food Link: Making the Food Connection: http://www.foodlink-waterlooregion.ca/
Green Ontario: http://www.greenontario.org/solutions/organic.html
Ontario Harvest: http://www.harvestontario.com
Slow Food London: http://www.slowfoodlondonontario.ca/index.html
Slow Food Toronto: http://www.toronto.slowfood.ca/index.php
Canadian Organic Growers – Perth Waterloo Wellington Chapter: http://www.cogwaterloo.ca/
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About the Program
One Book, One Community was created to promote reading by adults, and to build new connections in the community through the shared experience of reading. In 2002, when One Book, One Community was launched, organizers expected that 1% of the Region’s population would read Alistair McLeod’s “No Great Mischief”. Instead of the expected 4000 readers, more than 6800 readers were counted and an additional 3000 people attended author events. By tracking sales, library circulations, web hits and event attendance, the committee has recorded that more than 85,000 people in Waterloo Region have participated in the program. Interest in the reading program has continued over the past 6 years with selections continuing to generate interest in libraries, bookstores, workplaces and book club gatherings.
Organized by library staff, booksellers, city staff and volunteers, the program requires a year round commitment. After the book title is announced, individuals, book clubs, organizations, employers -–everyone – is invited to take up the challenge of the One Book, One Community initiative and organize their own way of “getting on the same page.”
Author events will take place around the region from September 16-18 with Smith and MacKinnon visiting at KPL on Thursday, September 18th. Watch the library’s web site (www.kpl.org) or The Record for notices of community events as they develop, or check out the One Book, One Community website at www.therecord.com/onebook. And don’t forget the OBOC Blog – check it out at http://obocwaterlooregion.blogspot.com
Readers and event participants will be counted again this year, so be sure to participate, and let the community know how you got involved.
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Previous Reading Selections:
2002 - Alistair Macleod’s No Great Mischief
2003 – Jane Urquhart’s The Stone Carvers
2004 – Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints
2005 – Robert J. Sawyer’s Hominids
2006 – Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road
2007 – Elizabeth Ruth’s Smoke
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