James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, the co-writers of “Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet,” were surprised when they learned that they’d be giving a cooking demo after the Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market using goods bought from the local vendors.
But then again, after spending a year eating food that could only be raised within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver, B.C. apartment, cooking local produce in a kitchen only 100 feet away wasn’t too much of a problem.
“We thought we were just here for a reading,” MacKinnon said.
The two authors, who in turn began the wildly popular 100-Mile Diet movement, visited the Farmer’s Market on Sunday, July 20, as part of the Lake Forest Park READS program, offering advice, insight and experiences that arose from their year-long adventure to bring people closer to the foods they eat.
Though the diet promoted healthy eating and a generally healthier lifestyle, the idea of a 100-mile diet worked more with raising questions regarding energy consumption.
“It didn’t make sense to us to have apples shipped in to us from New Zealand when we can grow them just fine in our area,” Smith said.
Smith and MacKinnon started their challenge when they learned of goods in a supermarket could travel thousands of miles before ending up on supermarket shelves, which brought the question of how much could shipping costs total for just one meal.
“You put something in your system three times a day and you have no idea where it came from,” MacKinnon said. “That’s a really strange position to put yourself in; to just be so disconnected from the foods we eat. We had the idea of just eating locally, so we moved on from there.”
The result of their decision found them removing several common foods and products from their diet, including necessities such as salt, oil, flour and sugar. It also had them finding clever substitutions and production methods for some of what they’d commonly use, such as honey for sugar.
“We started making our own salt from boiling seawater,” Smith said during their cooking demonstration. “We weren’t exactly sure how clean the water was and the salt had some color, but it was fine.”
Along with Smith and MacKinnon’s demonstration on cooking a variation of one of the recipes in their book – steamed clams and potatoes in butter, garlic and wine – GreenGo Food owners Dylan and Heidi Stockman offered a cooking demonstration of their own, giving directions for caramelized carrots with red onion and candy cane beets, a torte of pan-fried zucchini and their famous grilled polenta cakes with berries and mint.
All of their ingredients, of course, were grown and bought locally, some even earlier that day while cooking in the market.
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