Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon

Published 2007

262 pages

First, imagine having to work with the life partner you cohabitate with.

Then, imaging doing it without chocolate.

If you've survived both of those fever dreams, this book is will be fun for you!

Writers Alisa and J.B. took on the daunting (much more so, in 2005) task to commit to eat only food grown and raised within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver for an entire year - and then coauthor a book about it. The Pacific Northwest is an area of great abundance, but even at that, it isn't a climate for much of the western diet that is heavily dependent on flour and sugar. And that PNW staple, coffee? Not even close.

But for local foodies like me, that's where the fun begins. Just how many recipes can you get out of root vegetables to get you through a northern winter before you go crazy? Less than you'd like, surely, but how much better does that first asparagus stalk taste in spring after months of dreaming about it? And when you've gorged yourself on a summer of tomatoes, are the fall apples some how crisper?

For anyone who has enjoyed the luxury of eating something with in days or hours of it being harvested, you know the answer to those questions are yes. And let's not fool ourselves - even now, with locavore culture bigger than ever, that is still a luxury. Just shy of 20% of the American population lives in food deserts, where eating fresh anything is laughable. Even for the other 80%, most people, often unknowingly, buy food that has traveled 1,500 to 2,500 miles from where it was grown.

Alisa is lucky that her partner J.B. is a bit of a whiz in the kitchen, but this year put their relationship to the test and they don't shy away from writing about it. m The way they hand off narration from chapter to chapter can be a bit confusing until a couple of pages in, but their writing styles are suprisingly consistent. There aren't many books that marry two minds, so I say enjoy the ride!

Perhaps my favorite thing about Plenty is not just its recipes, the relationship, or even the local ingredients - it's the wonderfully quirky, committed, passionate people along the way. From university gardens to fishing boats to blueberry farms, they encounter all the amazing people who bring real food to real plates. These are special people, and I love meeting them on the page and in life for the same reason I get a thrill cooking a dinner for friends from my own garden. Food hits differently when it's personal, not processed.

The Bookshelf Rating: MIDDLE SHELF

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