For several years now, I’ve been reading and talking with people about the advantages of becoming a locavore*, a person who eats only  food grown, farmed, or produced locally. (* Note: The word “locavore” was coined by a group in San Francisco for the World Environment Day in 2005.)

I’ve learned a lot. I could go on at length about why eating locally is more sustainable, uses something like 94% (!) less petroleum than food that’s been transported the average distance of 1500 miles, and why it’s good for the earth and all living things in many other ways, but instead I’ll refer you to three books that got me interested in the first place.

First, to get a clear picture of current American food production methods, I’d suggest reading a wonderfully written book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Next, in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver describes her family’s year long experiment in local eating. Barbara’s sense of humor and deeply personal style make this a delightful read. Finally, Plenty by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon describes a closer-to-home effort. They tried eating only food produced within a 100-mile radius of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. (They have some nice things to say about Whatcom County, by the way.)

Beginning
Those books inspired me to start examining the origin of what I eat, and I decided I wanted to change to a locavore lifestyle. To a locavore, “local” usually means within 100 miles, but I wanted the boundaries to be simpler. For my purposes I defined  “local” as “produced within Whatcom County” in Washington state.

I quickly learned it takes a lot of time to research and locate local food sources. Changing all at once to locavore eating could easily be a full-time occupation initially.  I realized I needed to create a more gradual transition plan.

Barbara Kingsolver’s book cites this statistic:

If everyone in America ate one local meal each week, it would save an estimated 1.1 million barrels of oil–every week! (From Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and “The Oil We Eat,” by Richard Manning in Harper’s Magazine, Feb. 2004.)

Based on that information, here’s the plan I came up with.

• I’m creating one meal menu each week. That gives me time to wander through local groceries to see what’s available, make phone calls to search for missing ingredients, etc.
• I’m posting all the menus and recipes to this blog, and one recipe each week for the Tuesday Bellingham Herald food section.
• I’m also blogging notes about the problems, solutions, resources, and insights I discover along the way so others won’t have to start from scratch.

While this might sound like a slow process, I’m finding that the rate of change accelerates. For example, when I created the first menu in February of 2010 I was starting completely from scratch. I didn’t know what was available at that time of the year and I had  almost no locally produced ingredients on hand except garlic. Now I have a pretty good idea what foods I can expect to find, so creating a menu is getting faster. Also, as each menu is completed,  locally produced ingredients are left over for use in other meals during the rest of the week. As I run out of things, I’m replacing them as much as possible with local products. In this way, I expect it will only take about a year to become a full-fledged Whatcom locavore.

What I didn’t expect is how much fun I’d be having!  Searching out local ingredients is like a treasure hunt. I also enjoy meeting and contributing support to people working hard to offer nutritious and flavorful food using methods that are increasingly sustainable. And then, of course, there’s the pure pleasure of creating, eating and sharing wonderful meals with family and friends–and you! I hope you enjoy the results, too.

You Can Help
If you are trying to make the locavore transition, too, please share your ideas and tips. If you know of Whatcom County food producers who sell through local markets or are willing to sell direct to customers, please email me. While I’m no purist, I’m especially interested in food that is produced organically, sustainably, free range, pesticide/hormone/antibiotic free, minimal or recyclable packaging, etc.–you know the drill. If you have any favorite stories, resources, recipes, tools, seed varieties, or so on, also please let me know.

We’re all in this together!

* Note: The word “locavore” was coined by a group in San Francisco for the World Environment Day in 2005.