Quick Bites

Two quick items of note:

Eat Local Aug 8-15

Kanu Hawaii is encouraging everyone to eat local for a week, starting Aug 8th (today!). Their stated goals are to get people to think and develop new values, which in turn has led them to encourage more stringent guidelines than when I did my own locavore week last year.

Kanu Hawaii challenges you to eat strictly local: nothing produced outside Hawaii, including spices, oils, etc through August 15th. Try to it as an exercise, but be aware that it isn't practical for much longer than that for most of us. Even hundreds of years ago, when travel and economics made locavore eating the norm not the exception, there were roles for Chineses tea or Indian spices. Does that make them bad? Yes, when they crowd out local alternatives and force a fragile dependence on transpacific shipping. But there can be room for imported goods, in moderation.

Wrestle with eating local to find the balance that works for you. My own guiding values are to seek local alternatives when they exist, and weigh the decision more carefully when they do not. Regardless of what you decide, you'll see the supermarket through better eyes for having taken an "eat local" challenge.

Out of the Kitchen, On to Your Couch

Michael Pollan, of Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food fame, has a new article in the New York Times Magazine on the decline of cooking in America, Out of the Kitchen, On to Your Couch. Industrial manufacturing, the demands of dual-income modern life and even the spectator sport of Food Network all share culpability in the steady marginalization of the act of cooking our own meals. There's only one sensible response: cook more!