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MAY 22, 2007--In Sonoma, California, James and I met a lady who told us she was going to cook at 100-mile meal for 50 people, and we were awestruck. Here's the report Eris just sent us from her blog. Bon appetit. -ADS Inspired by the San Francisco Locavores, the Eat Local Challenge, and especially Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon's 100-Mile Diet, I have been striving to eat only foods grown within 100 miles of my home in Cotati, California. Given the abundance of food grown here, it makes no sense to purchase products from thousands of miles away. I have been eating wonderfully well, connecting with farmers at the local markets, and eliminating tropical and processed foods from my diet. I have not felt deprived by phasing out chocolate, bananas, mangoes etc. because I am so delighted by things like fresh strawberries, picked the same day at the peak of ripeness. Earlier this week, I shared this experience with 50 of my friends and neighbors by cooking them dinner. Before you gasp in awe at the concept of cooking dinner for 50 people, let me fill you in on some things. I regularly cook for 50. I live in FrogSong, a cohousing community of 30 households who live closely and share regular meals together. We all take turns cooking dinner once a month, for a total of four community meals per week. I've been sharing my thoughts and experiences with eating locally with other Froggies, during our dinners, walks together, watching the kids on the swings, etc. Many have expressed great interest, and my copy of Plenty (the U.S. title of Alisa and James' book) is making the rounds. So what else could I do, but cook a 100-mile dinner for the whole gang? I found a recipe for Spring Vegetable Cobbler with Cheddar Biscuits in a vegetarian cookbook published by the California Culinary Academy and deemed it worthy. A simple salad, and strawberries for dessert. Off I went to two different farmers markets, the locally owned grocery, and the strawberry stand. (Yes, eating this way requires more shopping! But it is MUCH more fun to stroll the farmers market than the aisles of a supermarket, I have found.) I stashed a cooler in the trunk of my car to keep it all fresh as I made my rounds. I asked all the vendors about the location of their farms; if they mentioned a town that I'd never heard of, I consulted the small map I keep in my wallet, with a 100-mile circle drawn on it. The Thursday market in San Rafael is the closest place to purchase flour from Full Belly Farm, the only source of wheat within my 100-mile radius. (As a great lover and daily consumer of bread, I could not even begin to think about this culinary challenge without getting a flour source lined up.) Between this market and the Saturday market in Santa Rosa I found a plethora of beautiful vegetables: squash, onions, garlic, lettuce, radishes, beets, tomatoes, carrots. I mail-ordered some heirloom beans from Rancho Gordo in Napa, the closest source I've found for beans so far (and unfortunately quite expensive). Clover-Stornetta dairy products are in every local store, and I pass by the happy California cows every day. Ben and Victor were my sous chefs, cheerfully chopping this huge pile into bite-sized pieces while I stirred bechamel sauce, grated cheese, and rolled out biscuit dough. Neighbors dropped by all afternoon to check on the proceedings, their curiosity having been piqued by my earlier announcement about the 100-mile plan. As it turned out, all of the dinner ingredients were grown within 50 miles of our home. I spent WAY too much time on the computer one day, plotting all the farms from whence they came on a scanned AAA roadmap. I posted this on one of the many community bulletin boards, and it apparently became quite a topic of conversation throughout the week. The other question concerned cost. All that local organic stuff is expensive, right? Well, yes, some of it is . . . but the final total was a whopping $2.87 per person. Finally, the bubbling cobblers were out of the oven, the strawberries sliced, the salad on the table. It all looked beautiful. But how would it taste? (Despite the usual advice to the contrary, FrogSong cooks often prepare community dinners using recipes they've never tried before.) For grace, I shared the Vietnamese proverb quoted in Plenty: "When eating fruit, remember who planted the tree; when drinking clear water, remember who dug the well." It's hard to remember who planted the tree when your food travels thousands of miles from farm to your plate! I acknowledged each of the farms from whence our meal came; and everybody dug in. Smiles, grins, happiness all around. "They like me, they really like me!" Despite very minimal seasoning, the cobbler was bursting with flavor, the biscuit topping providing a nice sturdy background. The salad cool and crunchy, sweet juicy tomatoes, orgasmically sweet strawberries. I overheard many conversations - parents explaining the 100-mile concept to children, people wondering whether their favorite food might be available locally, thoughts about how to encourage diversity in local agriculture. Folks lingered over local wine; and, well, non-local coffee too. I see many more 100-mile dinners in our future.

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