10 Mile Diet

Tricia’s part of the bargain was to feed me. My part of the bargain, beyond not cheating, was to get my blood work done before and after the 10-mile diet experiment. So here’s the numbers.

• total cholesterol down 3
• hdl (good) up 7
• ldl (bad) down 9
• risk ratio from 4.2 (about average) to 3.7 (low range)

These are the kind of numbers in a month that the doc says “Whatever you are doing, keep doing it.”

I can’t tell you exactly what made the difference, especially since I ate “bad” fat (animal fat) in larger quantities than before. But no hard cheese. No beans. No grains. And I drank a bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (okay, so it took a month) which they say is really good for you.

And that’s that.

You’ll hear from me less frequently now. It’s time to get a life. Or get to the rest of my life.

I’m noticing that the heightened awareness and savory, sweet flavor of being on a 10 mile diet is fading as I expand my circle of food to nuts and cheeses and things that come in jars with labels and more than 5 ingredients.  I’m inclined to develop some “food rules” to remind me of the clarity that came through eating here – very here.

Rules, values, ethics, covenants, pledges – these all direct our wayward energy towards “the good, true and beautiful.” Ideally we’re just aware. Present. In blissful union with reality. I wish I were there all the time. But short of that – and we’re mostly far short of that – there are rules of the road to the good life.

I’m not alone in generating “food rules”.

Michael Pollan’s recent short set in his wonderful book, Food Rules, is:

1. Eat food.
2. Mostly plants
3. Not too much.

Another friend’s simple rule: Ï don’t eat anything with eyes.

I mentioned before a diet book that recommended:

1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Stop when you’re full.
3. Eat what your body wants.
4. Don’t eat standing up.

I’ve watched a clerk in a store I frequent melt away. Her rules:

1. No sugar
2. No eating after 6 PM
3. Lots of water.

Vegans have rules. Vegetarians have rules. Health nuts have rules. And locavores have rules. Even breatharians have food rules.

Here are my 10-mile derived truths – which have rules associated with them. Rules that I will surely break but that will be there for me from this day forward to re-orient.

1. All food comes from somewhere. I want to find out where so I can in a way thank those that feed me, reward good practices and protect the livelihood of small to mid-sized farmers (sounds funny, i mean the land not the people). This could be a daunting but fascinating task. Eating local solves that issue so…

Rule: I will purchase as much as possible direct from the producer.

2. Food is love. Producing it. Cooking it. Eating it so that your body may be nourished. Death as an animal or vegetable and rebirth as us, living one more day. Our own death, if we don’t rest and rot forever in stainless steel boxes, feeds life. This doesn’t imply we must slather it with unctuous sanctity , but that we can make a good faith effort to honor the life sacrificed that we may eat. In the community where I lived for 35 years we said grace before every meal. Rub dub thanks for the grub. Bless this food to our use and our  lives to your service. Thank you. Yay God. The pausing and holding hands bound us together at the end of busy dispersed days, slowed us down to the speed of savoring, appreciated the cooks, and began the happy ritual of sharing our days as we shared our food. Food is social. I will simply eat more with others, cook more for others, eat out with others. I will glory in my ability to feed people, to take from my stores and make a feast (if only fried rice) for friends.There is no such thing as “food” or a solitary “eater.” We live in community – of people and food and the living world.

Rule: I will say grace, eat slowly and savor-ing-ly, and with others as often as possible in my solo, willful and busy life. I will cook for others as much as possible. From scratch.

3. I am my food system, not apart from it picking and choosing but part of it, giving and receiving. This is a shift from food being out there like an automat where we select this over that. Once you see yourself as woven into a food system, not just a shopper in a market where the system is hidden from view, more than what goes into your mouth transforms.

Try this experiment. Since our eyes are on the front of our faces, we orient to a perceptually 2 dimensional picture that is “out there.” We reach into that picture and grab what we need. We drive into it to get somewhere. Now imagine you had eyes in the back of your head as well. Between your shoulder blades. In the small of your back. At the back of your knees – and your knee caps. Suddenly the stuff of life is around you, not just out there. That’s the shift from being a shopper to being in the center of a food system.

Apart from all the other learnings – the threshing wheat with an egg beater, the economics of paying my neighbors for food they raised – there is this startling shift of awareness that feeds my soul as well as my body.

Rule: I will allow my life as an eater to make me aware of the web of life that supports me, and all of us. I can use a phrase as simple as ‘food system’ to remember.

4. Food is political, there’s no way around it. From raw milk being illegal to politically distorted feedback systems that make packaged food cheaper than real food. From school lunches of pizza and purple milk to ever growing number of hungry in our midst.

Rule: I will inform myself about the food system, the regulations and laws and customs that give us both obesity and starvation. I will vote about it. I will write about it. I will donate.

5. Food is complex. The way we live is shaped around the food we eat even when eating is done in cars, in cities, far from source.

The spread of the human comes from our mastery of food production. Civilization itself has marched across the face of the earth – as Bonaparte said of armies – on its stomach. Feeding. Occupying now almost all niches where energy (food) is available for the picking or planting.

Agriculture, as we all know from our history and geography lessons, permitted human settlements which permitted stratification of societies, money, specialization, slavery – you name it, taming grains and animals gave it to you. The intoxicating aroma and effect of spices and drugs connected the known world, Asia to Europe to Africa, from millenia before the Common Era.

Breakthroughs in food technologies – the Green Revolution, Selective Breeding, Genetic Modification, Industrial Agriculture, even the Farm Bill – solve the problems of starvation while feeding the problems of diminishing productivity and a population that now is so large we can’t all be fed.

Food is complex because of this history and its unintended consequences. The food problem  is the overshoot problem which is the annual increase of births over deaths (aka population) problem, and if you want a hot potato try talking about that! I am dedicated to the work of “learning to live well together within the means of the earth.” No amount of “Eat your peas, think of the starving children in China/Korea/Bangaladesh/Pakistan/Africa” can solve our mal-nourishment and mal-distribution problems. They are systemic. Hunger, I fear, is going to creep into lives that thought they were secure. And when we are hungry we are cranky. I don’t know if I will live to see the consequences of our choices in my one short lifetime (when I was born there were 3 billion people on this planet).

Rule: I can nudge the system in the right direction with my choices and I intend to. I will support local sustainable agriculture everywhere.But I will work towards the ideal John Robbins talks about “May all be fed.”

5. Food is highly emotionally charged. People have pride and shame, fear and longing around weight, size, diet du jour, longevity, inability to feed the family, diet related illness. And I am people. I am a lifelong “diet-er” – and even if I were thin as a rail I’d still somehow have an eating disorder since I look at food as a threat or reward, as comfort or sport, as right and wrong – and myself as good or bad depending on which system I’m beating myself up with now.

Rule: I will ground myself in the presence of judgment – of myself, of others, of others of me – and just love the one I’m with. We are all such marvelous day-glo beings, full of color and life.

6. Food is great. Tasty, tangy, creamy, yummy, oily, colorful, salty, biting, sweet, juicy, spicy, crunchy, crisp, meaty, fishy, slithery, chewy, nutty, hot, refreshing, subtle. Lord strike me dumb at least (or dumber) if I don’t fully savor every bite of that miracle called food.

Rule: I will enjoy the sensual delicious act of eating.

7. Food is fun. It’s always there to select and cook and eat, to think about, to learn about, to write about and especially enjoy. It shouldn’t be stuck between “more important things”, like a gas station or pit stop for the body. My agent thinks this endless stream of words that have poured out of me in this last month may be a book. A good one even. Michael Pollan meets Barbara Kingsolver meet Irma Bombeck or Joan Rivers. As i said, “transforming our relationship with food”. 10 mile eating isn’t a new food system. A new set of imperatives. I have stumbled into a new relationship with food. \ I can offer others this way of engaging with food – which may result in more justice, health, appropriate weight, sustainability and fun. What do you think?

Rule: Continue to write about, think about, research, advocate for  – and eat – food. Bon Apetit.

OMG. I still have so much to tell you. About my new food rules. About a Mr. Potato-mouth (a guy eating only potatoes for 60 days). About what I just learned at a Green Energy Fair from local farmers about policies that help and those that hinder local food systems flourishing. About the skinny on phat (our food-system related love-hate relationship with our weight that rises and falls like the tides.) About our global eating dilemmas that are far more daunting than what’s for dinner. But one thing at a time.

It’s October 3. Brazil is electing its new leader (did I tell you I’m leading a trip there?). And I’m eating… tada! basically the same stuff with a few extras.

I decided for my “re-tox” to not have any new rules, just notice what I am choosing. Here’s the list so far:

• Balsamic Vinegar
• Almond Butter
• Toast
• Pumpkin Seeds (anyone know a local supplier? Where do all those seeds go after Halloween?)
• Avocado
• Walnuts
• Hard cheese
• An orange from the fridge and some broth from the freezer
• Some tasty dishes prepared by friends at a potluck on Friday. They celebrated at sundown the completion of my month by witnessing me biting into… a home made but non-local cracker.
• A see-through soup with plastic wrapped crackers at a conference I spoke at yesterday. Hunger hit. It was… well… food-ish.

Woohoo. Party down Vicki.

One lesson. Appropriate eating isn’t just hyper-local. It’s also eating what’s been lovingly prepared by friends. Eating to quash hunger when you are far from home. Eating what you have, even if it’s from your distant past as a promiscuous eater (eating around).

Another lesson: Cooking at home from scratch with real ingredients is waaaay different from eating “out and about” – dishes and products with many ingredients that come from unknown and diverse places, including altered cells of plants and labs. Does a nut grown in Brazil have any issues about coming to rest in a Clif bar with grain grown in the USA and dried fruit from Africa? Do I have any issues with this?

The big question isn’t which foods get added. The big questions are how “local” will be part of my “food rules” in the future, and what I will do not just as an eater but an activist – how what I’ve learn can help others live.

Here’s what I see for my future as a local eater.

Next year, all things conspiring for the good, I can grow a more intentional garden. I’ve been getting about a pound of food a day, often more, from my garden all month. Tomatos were lousy but beans and squash and lettuce and carrots and kale have been bounteous. Imagine doubling that with some careful stewardship of that plot. Imagine doubling that again if I grow winter squash, for beets, potatoes, rhutabagas and turnips for storage. I think the deer and bunnies are safe for the nonce. As people have become aware of my experiment this month, they’ve given me food as well. Tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, green beans. Hopefully next year I’ll have enough to return the favor.  Call that 5% of my food.

Eating 20% from Whidbey (call it a 50 mile diet)  should be a piece of cake (so to speak). I can get my meat and eggs and lots of veggies and milk locally. And that is a big part of my diet.

Another 20% from 100 miles would open up a lot more options, take me North to the border with Canada, south to Olympia, east to the foothills of the Cascades, and West into the rich fishing grounds of greater Puget Sound as well as to the Olympic Peninsula where I hear they now grow grain.

Another 10% within 200 miles would give me all the grain and apples I want from Yakima and Wenatchee and Bluebird Grain Farms in the Methow Valley. I’m blessed to live in Washington State.

For the rest I have 45% exotics. Spices, oil, nuts, prepared and packaged foods (like crackers or those TJ little tubs of yummies) or “local food” grown elsewhere (coffee, tea, chocolate!!!).  I have no idea if these are the right percentages. It’s some rules of thumb, concentric circles with me at the center of my very own food system.

I know me. I will forget. I will be in a hurry. I will want the convenience of packaged foods. I used to give myself a hard time about my infidelity to my rules, but now, being older, I know that rules are guidelines, not prisons. I could set a lifetime constraint as I have this month as a way to be excruciatingly aware, but I choose “moderation in all things”, balance, good cheer (the store and the spirit). If I want something, I won’t forbid it. I’ll just do it eyes wide open. And interested. Food and judgment don’t mix – they turn the stomach. I will be kind to myself and others as we stumble towards an ethical relationship with food.

I know you are waiting with baited breath to get the results of this month of 10 mile eating. The tally is below (scroll down), and here’s some exegesis on the text:

I lost 6 pounds. My average calories a day were ~ 1600 so that accounts for some of it. I’ll bet that without grains I lost water weight – no swelling in hands and feet.

I had a blood draw yesterday and results will be on monday. My LDL (bad ooo bad cholesterol) was 168 at the beginning of August. If that is down significantly we know something… if only that I don’t have to take the statins docs put so many of my peers on. Fingers crossed.

Fifty percent of the calories came from Tricia (supplemented by my garden and some extras from friends). That’s good news bad news.

Good news is wow that’s a lot of food grown by the one little industrious Tricia.

The bad news is that without the extra milk, meat, honey, oil and a little cheese, I’d have been definitely underfed if not undernourished.

Ahh, but the good news is, ALL the food except for the oil, salt, caffeine and 30 little limes came from my 10 miles. That is very very hopeful in terms of our ability to feed ourselves.

Ahh, but the bad news is that everyone who wants to eat this way would need to grow a big kitchen garden with plenty of squash and potatoes, and would need to at least be part of a chicken and goat/cow coop OR form a relationship with a grower who can provide this. Our current CSA and ag production couldn’t feed us all. Yet.

The good new is that just beyond my 10 miles up on the prairie people are growing grains and beans and if there were more demand for such, I’m sure more land would be put into those crops. We do not need to do without bread! Or beans in our winter soups.

The bad news is that demographically we are an aging population and if we don’t find a way to attract and retain young farmers we will not be able to feed ourselves into our dotage.

And simply news is that the overall cost for this diet was 30 percent more than my normal smart shopper pays, though none of it is local and much isn’t organic. A lot of that saving, I’ll wager, is because the food system permits my purchasing from far away, industrial ag and produced in conditions I probably wouldn’t approve of, if I could see it.

The overall news is that we are actually on our way to at least partial food self sufficiency on the island if we would eat what we can grow here and not insist on what cannot grow here. And if we commit to support our producers by buying from them, especially during the transition when they may not have the full hang of it. And we are wise about what we need from 100 miles and 300 miles and 1000 miles – we actually can map our food system against our food needs (more on that in a future post).

The below may be too much information for most of you, but for those with a real fascination, here it is. And even though the month is over, even though I had toast with almond butter this morning, the blog is not over – and perhaps the book is just begun.

I searched the web to see if anyone else out there in Google land was as crazy as I am. The answer is yes.

First, a tip of the spatula to Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon for their 100 mile diet experiment that launched a whole local eating movement. It’s a nigh on to impossible goal for most of us, and they set a high bar for courageous eaters to reach for, crawl under, jump over – or perhaps avoid, criticize and complain about.

From the book description on Amazon:

When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born.

The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep.

Sounds about like what I am learning.

In Richmond BC some people did a 10 mile diet for 10 days – for some it’s an annual affair, perhaps like our polar bear plunge on New Year’s Day. Read about it here. You’ll see they are learning some of the same lessons.

Then I discovered the Power River Eat Local campaign. The challenge: eat 50% of your food from within 50 miles of your home for 50 days.

If all this seems like a stunt, and not a very fun or useful one, consider this story.

There’s once was a man in a village with a complaining wife and several noisy children living in a small house. He was going nuts, so he went to the Rabbi to see what could be done. Maybe the Rabbi could talk to his wife. Or his kids. Get them to … well… quiet down and give him some peace. Instead the Rabbi strangely asked about his livestock.

“Three chickens, a rooster, 6 ducks, a donkey and a cow”

“Bring them all into the house and come back in a week.”

“But Rabbi, you don’t understand. My house is already too small and too noisy. With all those animals … “

“Do as I say and come back in a week.”

Being a devout man, he did as the Rabbi said – and returned in a week.”

“So?”

“So!!! What do you expect. We are ALL going crazy now. It smells. There is nowhere to sleep. It’s noisy from morning til night. Rabbi, this is pure hell.”

The Rabbi appeared to be thinking. Maybe he has remorse the man thought.

“Go home and put all the animals out of the house and come back in a week.”

“What!! Rabbi, why did you make me bring them in only to put them out again.”

“Do as I say and return in a week.”

The man muttered all the way home, though he was glad that the braying and the squawking and the crowing and the mooing would be over. He did as the Rabbi said and returned a week later.

“So?”

“Oh Rabbi, what joy! Our house is quiet. The children’s voices are music to my ears. My wife is such a good woman and well yes, she complains a little, but so do we all. I am a happy man.”

“Just as I thought,” the Rabbi replied.

The point in case I haven’t sharpened the pixels enough… after 10 miles, 50 seems downright luxurious. And only 50%. Well, piece of cake – which I think they can have if they have wheat in their fifty huge mile radius.

I was interested that they immediately saw with dismay on that the 3 c’s are missing – and missed. Coffee, citrus and chocolate. I chose to have two of them – caffeine and limes. You’ll love to read their blog after reading their description of their experiment - they have reflections, resources, recipes and heroic stories of hyper local eating. Clearly they’ve gone on the same adventure as I have. And write about it with the same delight as I am.

I love the spirit of discovery we all seem to stumble into. Oops. No wheat, no grain, no oil, no salt, and no caffeine, chocolate and citrus. Hyper local eating is like extreme sport. I know one of the world champs in running a kayak over high waterfalls and while I’m not as cocky, full of myself, daring (or young) as he is, but I do smell a bit of that pride at doing the difficult. Hyper local eating is like trekking. Like Lent. Like fasting. I one time did a 10-day meditation retreat in the manner of Goenka, the marine drill sergeant of Vipassana. No writing. No reading. No eating after noon. No talking. 10 hours a day of sitting or walking meditation. I broke out in hives. I had to do self therapy, consoling myself for how hard it was. I wrote a book and revised it… in my head. One day, desperate to capture my insights, I recalled like a junkie that I did have a lipstick pencil in my backpack and a receipt in a pocket and I huddled in the bathroom scribbling coded messages for my future self.

All such experiments in truth, undertaken in good cheer, send you to your Source for a check up. You enjoy the discovery, wince at the humbling view in the mirror and feel cleansed and enlightened. You return to “normal life” not quite as normal. I feel lucky to be in the clan of adventurers in a new way of eating. Well, new to us in this dawn of the 21st century.

When Tricia and I tell you at the end of the month how much food I’ve eaten, you’ll wonder how I got all that into my mouth. Or should. Processing all this food is not quite like opening a box of Trader Joe’s soup and a bag of TJ nuts or maybe some TJ plastic wrapped already bite sized salad greens (do you ever wonder what keeps that bag puffy? I didn’t until now.) It’s not even like opening a frozen Boca Burger or a can of Organic Tomatoes – or organic TJ boxed soup.

Indeed, getting all that fresh local food into my mouth has taken a bunch of time – not to mention the time it’s taken to talk about it.

Tricia points out that my ability to do this diet may be that I work at home – and am single. What about working parents with kids. Is convenience simply a must? There is a whole way of life implied in the choice to eat so locally that nothing is prepared and packaged for you.

In fact, in the old days when I taught about Your Money or Your Life, I talked about the three C’s of unconscious consumption: comfort, control and convenience.

Comfort is never feeling pain. Having all your needs and desires easily and if possible invisibly met. Not having to get out of the car, up off the couch, down on your knees, around to anything. In the years I traveled in a motorhome we’d often meet people in campgrounds who would express envy of the freedom and adventure of our lives.

“You could do it.”

“No I can’t. I couldn’t live without a hot shower in the morning.”

Control is having things your way. With money we control our environment, control other people, control our futures. Or so we think. We buy locks for the doors. Insurance. Heaters and air conditioners.

Convenience is having everything right at hand. No inconvenient truths. No stairs-only elevators, no crank windows-only electric, no chopping-only Cuisinart. People will pay more to not have to unlock the car door. Not have to slither into a back seat. Not have to climb stairs. Every novelty becomes a necessity in short order. Thirty years ago there were no microwaves. We used pots back then. And stoves. But now nuking is necessary.

I’m seeing the same thing applies to food.

Comfort food (nuts, chips, chocolate, ice cream, mashed potatoes, meatloaf – i gotta stop talking about these… at least until next week).

Control food – access to the market (some people are shocked that our Langley market closes at 8 PM), stocked shelves, restaurants and mates and cooks who know just how you like things. Never being hungry.

Convenience food – well, we know what that is… everything from Odwalla juices to Granola bars to Pop Tarts to McDonalds to (do you remember) TV dinners and Dinty Moore.

So how have I processed all this fresh food? What are the tools of the food processing trade?

I don’t have a Cuisinart and don’t know how to use one, but I can see that if you were wanting fast local fresh food and had a family and a day job it could make this eating style more possible.

Here’s what I do use – simple tools that have been around for a hundred years:

A good chef’s knife with a super sharp blade thanks to a sharpening steel

A Zyliss Mandoline for slicing and grating (both food and knuckles)

A pressure canner (All American, one of the best, 30 years old!)

A simple apple corer thanks to Good Cheer

A Foley Food Mill thanks to Good Cheer

Two cast iron pans

Three pots, one with a steamer (a real essential)

A convection oven that can cook a whole chicken, bake a whole cake – and dehydrate hundreds of zackers.

And this:

A friend is in from out of town and I wanted to visit before she left.

“Let’s have breakfast.”

“No can-do on my 10 mile diet, why don’t you come to my house and I’ll make you breakfast?”

But the next moment I was wondering how I could feed someone on limited stores – and no store? Would there be enough? Would it be good enough?

Panic gave way to a sense of privilege and pleasure. To cook for another, to nourish another – that’s just about as human as it come.

Remember that word “cundir” – to make something last? Well I managed to stretch everything by adding potatoes and lots of garden kale to my now customary fritatta and doubling the eggs and we feasted. Actually, I feasted twice. The food and the happiness of feeding another.

I don’t know why I don’t do that anymore. I don’t invite people over for dinner. Am I afraid my food won’t be good enough? Meet some standard? Or that it won’t be enough to satisfy? Or that people expect cookbook recipes and restaurant presentation and I just can’t muster that? Or that my house isn’t perfectly clean? Have I forgotten how, even, having lived alone for half a decade now?

I used to live in a communal household where 8 people at the dinner table was the norm – with guests swelling that to 10 or 12 or even 15. Food just poured out of the kitchen. There was always enough. Yet our per person monthly grocery bill was half what mine is now. I wonder how this 10 mile diet will affect my habit of solo eating – if I will now broaden out again in relational eating to feeding others, to breaking bread. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Or out of me. Why I eat so often alone. This now seems part of the impersonal food system that permits us to buy and eat food without relating to another soul. I want more soul food.

In the Lakota culture you host a Wopila when you’ve had good fortune. It is a thanking ceremony involving giving beautiful gifts to all the tribe and throwing a huge feast. According to Gilbert Walking Bull – a sweat lodge elder – you do a Wopila to tell the gods thanks for answering your prayers – if you don’t do it, they will hang around and keep giving you what you already have, making mischief in your life.

When my partner Joe died, distraught people came to our home with hot dishes.

When my friend’s son was trekking in Asia and hurt himself, he stumbled into a village where they fed and cared for him. But when he had a bit more strength he realized they themselves were starving. The duty to feed the wanderer was stronger than the need to feed oneself. Realizing this, her son stumbled on the next day so the villagers could eat.

In many cultures we feed the gods before we feed ourselves.

And what about those loaves and fishes. And that bread Jesus called “the body of Christ.” What about that, you solo eater you?

Buying and preparing more local food may be the lesser challenge, actually. Rearranging my life so I am sharing that food with others will take another kind of letting go and another kind of stepping up.

Jeesh, the lessons just keep coming. Awareness, once it starts, keeps scything down the weeds and revealing the deeper contours of one’s life. Humble pie. Daily fare. Now what? Would you like to come to dinner?

I went into our loaded-to-the-gills super market yesterday to buy a battery and was flooded with memories of just 4 weeks ago when I would walk in the door once a week after my improv class, grab a basket and make a quick light-hearted (not light fingered) swing through the sale aisle, the produce, the dairy, the meat (do you know the supermarket trick – for the sake of your pocketbook and much more, shop the perimeter, not the packaged food). I was feeding my eyes. Feeding my inner girl. Feeding my anticipation of future food. Feeding my freedom to have what I truly want. Feeding my pantry with sale foods to store. I had a twang of grief that I could do none of that two nights ago.

Since I am heading into the home stretch, though, I bought a couple of bulk “health” foods that I am out of and are prior staple: oat bran and flax seeds. Now I can appreciate to a small degree what went into that bin of oat bran. Not the details but the privilege of having these little flakes readily available here on Whidbey Island. I have no idea where they began their life. The long chain of exchanges that brought them to my plastic baggie labeled with a product number. Here’s a bit of data from the web:

In 2000, the rank of states in order of production was Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Iowa. Iowa acreage peaked at about 6.4 million acres in 1950 and slumped to 270,000 acres, of which only 180,000 acres were harvested, by 2000. The more profitable crop, soybean, has replaced the oat acreage.

The flax seeds, too, were now a great origin mystery.  I recalled the foot rice threshers in Northern Thailand, the days of pounding it took to bring rice to their tables. Surely these seeds, no chaff, perfectly silky, were harvested by machine, not by hand. Surely they were “threshed” by something other than an egg beater and winnowed by something other than a hair dryer, but what? So I looked it up.

There’s a chance those seeds came from North Dakota, Montana or possible South Dakota or Northern Michigan. That, of course, it’s a valued crop for not only seeds but the weaving (flax fabric). That the seeds share two destinies: food or Linseed Oil which is used in the production of linoleum. (Is that what people mean about eating off the floor. Could it be eating the floor. I prefer not to imagine that when grinding the seeds to put on my salad). So I have a little better idea who to thank. And how hard they work to grow my food.

Just that purchase opened a little window into how I might be in relationship with my food system – joyfully and responsibly – after next Friday.

Annie Leonard traveled for years giving a lecture with little cut outs of people and factories to explain the whole system that turns planet into products into trash. Finally she made the 8 minute Story of Stuff, which has now been viewed by millions of people worldwide.

I’m beginning to see that I am diving in to a story of food, knowing that awareness itself transforms our relationship with whatever substance flows through our lives – money, stuff, food, time and more. My 10 mile diet has given me an almost microscopic view of my food system, allowed me to see what it takes and who it takes to feed me. It’s made me humble, grateful and given me almost microscopic vision as I walk around the Goose and contemplate the thousands of products, each with their own story and their own connection to the great chain of being.

How can I not be grateful to this global food system? To treat it like it’s toxic and unjust (even when it is) would at least upset my stomach as well as being unfair to the millions of people who put food on their own tables by putting food on mine. That’s why I like to curious and conscious, rather than simply right and righteous. I’m not into black and white thinking. I’m not into even shades of gray. I’m into the technicolor unto day-glow intricate web of things and relationships that make up our world and tasting every morsel of it with gratitude.

Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City, does a better job than I in revealing the complexity of feeding us all – living as we do. We qualify as her city of the future called Sitopia – food place.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/carolyn_steel_how_food_shapes_our_cities.html

I woke after a late afternoon nap hungry and cold. When you live alone no one has been cooking dinner while you’ve been out (&) cold. You have to deal.

Okay, let’s see. To get some hot food on a 10 mile diet there’s nothing I can nuke. No box or can to open. No carton of Chinese take-out in the back, flaps popped, drying out, ready to heat.

I’m now skilled enough in this way of life to know that I can turn some tubers and shoots into a great soup. I wash 3 dirty potatoes and 3 imaginatively shaped carrots, cube them, chop in some leeks and run a mashed clove of garlic through a garlic press, boil in the bit of leftover stock, add 3 of my “exotic” spices (pepper, salt, curry), blender with a bit of creamy milk and voila, just 20 minutes later have a steaming bowl of soup. As a treat, I opened the package of real bacon – like the woman who sold it to me raised the pig – fried up 3 pieces and cut them up in the soup. (i’ll save the grease as I used to in the old days). Definite yum. And if I’d put on a sprig of parsley and taken a picture I could have submitted the recipe to gourmet magazine.

Through skill and knowledge I actually fed myself faster than if I’d wrapped myself in a coat and driven down to McDonalds. Definitely faster as the nearest McDonalds is 40 miles north in Oak Harbor. But not faster than nuking. Or making popcorn. Or eating nuts.

Tricia had stopped by earlier to drop off some mint, sage and rosemary just because she wanted to and we wondered together about those food habits or addictions or whatever that lead us to fast and furious eating. She’d been in the garden all day and she could have eaten non stop – beans, greens, tomatos, cukes. She nibbled, but it wasn’t until she got in her truck that the urge to splurge overtook her. A candy bar was on the seat beside her and before she knew it she’d torn off the paper and inhaled it.

I’d just come from a group of women of a certain age talking about weight gain and loss. One big trick of the weight loss trade is to not eat at night. Some say after 6. Some inch that up to after 9. I lost weight one time just by making that rule and cutting out cheese.

It occurs to me, though, that our food habits and addictions are all part of a food system that is far too fast, making it far too easy to eat too much, too often, and especially when we are not hungry. I read another diet book one time that had these 4 rules:

• eat when you are hungry
• stop when you are full
• eat sitting down (that doesn’t mean your car)
• pay attention to eating while you are eating.

God that should be easy, no? Crazy that we live in a time when food comes at us so fast, so furiously, and in such volume that we need rules like those?

Did I want to make a soup from scratch when I rolled off the couch? No. Did I make quick work of it? yes. Was it good? yes. Did I have any chance to overeat -  like noshing crackers or cookies while cooking? Not really. There were a few zackers nearby and I could have put some of the butter I churned last night by shaking a jar for 15 minutes, but even a zacker with butter was a lot of work for little reward.

I’m a little like an alcoholic who has dried out at Betty Ford’s place. I wonder if I’ll go back to “it all” when I’m out and everyone is involved in social eating and sport eating and popcorn in the movies eating and candy bar in the car eating. Do I lock the nut and Trader Joe soup cupboard like people lock the liquor cabinet?

Aristotle said, “Moderation in all things.” Slow and local food just about requires that. Whether it’s respect for the animal or the grower or one’s own time cooking, it’s harder to go unconscious. But I am a lifelong expert in that so I suspect the old habits are out there, circling, waiting for me to be done with this nonsense. And they are eating candy bars. I can hear the paper crackle.

I’m left wondering what the healthy natural instincts are for sweet and salty and creamy and chocolate-y foods are that are necessary for survival but distorted by how our commercial food system is designed to create profits, not health.  Ooo.  I feel another blog post coming on. Yum.

Have you ever wondered in these last weeks how Tricia came to imagine a “Super Veggie Me” experiment and I came to say yes? A dozen other people had rejected her offer out of hand. “I can’t let go of ______ (fill in the blank). No. Absolutely no.” And then she asked me and I said yes. Here’s how that moment came to be.

John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.’

And so it is with this story but for the sake of brevity, I’ll start in 2006 when I attended the Third US Conference on Peak Oil in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I heard Richard Heinberg, already a hero of mine, on the current data on Peak Oil and our prospects from an energy rich future (nigh on to impossible). I heard Julian Darley about Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal and Peak Uranium. In other words, the old idea of substituting a plentiful resource for a dwindling one  is going the way of leaches – an idea rendered quaint by evolving knowledge. If we don’t get it, it will all wind down. As in the current energy intensive way of life. When you put Climate Change on top of that, you see that not only have we used half the global supply of oil, we can’t burn the other half without burning ourselves up (see other post about burning Russian wheat crop).

A conversation in the halls with Julian make that vividly clear. Peak Oil is about the gas going into our tanks. Climate Change is about the co2 pollution coming out of our tailpipes. Between is an engine that can either run itself dry, choke itself to death or figure out a way of life that doesn’t involve so much driving.

We’re toast. An apt word, no?

I could barely breathe. I came home fairly panicked. In the two years I’d taken for simply healing from cancer, the conditions of the world had shifted, for the worse.

For the next year I looked for a way to address that by helping Whidbey Island become more resilient. The term I learned in Yellow Springs was “relocalize”. I studied models, from Local 2020 in Port Townsend to  Willits Economic Localization in CA to a budding project in the UK called Transition Towns. Nine months later a woman from Totnes showed up in my dance class. And miracle of miracles, Kathryn Trenshaw was part of that very Transition Towns project. She spoke to a group of my friends- 22 in all, and we started Transition Whidbey that night.

A month later we hosted a big gathering to introduce the community to this model. 100+ people showed up and for part of the evening got into small interest groups.

Enter Tricia Beckner into my story. She was there and wandered over to the food interest group, met Pam Mitchell (an amazing market gardener on the island) and a big dream got sparked. Could she and her husband Kent convert part of the 5 acres they had just bought into a Pam Mitchell type CSA? Their land had belonged to a family with children at the level of an old woman and the shoe, and had been tended lovingly to raise cows for milk and meat plus a kitchen garden. Tricia and Kent felt themselves to be stewards of the property, not owners.

Lots of digging later she had something like 2 dozen perfectly formed beds and she, Pam and Laurie (a lawyer looking for some honest work) were selling veggies in the farmer’s market. After a season, this set up evolved into a partnership with just Pam and now she and Pam share the beds and each has a very large hoop house too.

Perhaps another Transition Whidbey event also influenced Tricia. It sure got my attention. In August of 2008 we started our Transition Whidbey Potlucks with a Purpose. I’d heard Pam talk about her back of the envelope calculations about what it would take to actually feed Whidbey Island from Whidbey Island.

The truth is, I deal with my fear by getting busy. Hope is a verb. It is action in the direction of your values. Yes, it is also faith. It is also trust that somehow the Uni-verse is all one poem and beautiful. Yes it is also paradoxically surrender — rather than trying to push the world around allowing one’s ego to soften and heart melt. But day to day, it’s patiently mending locally what’s getting broken globally. So I wanted Pam to give our community both hope and a boot in the butt about our ability to feed ourselves.

I don’t know who else got her conclusions that night, but I did. She said we had enough at the moment to feed ourselves … for a month… in August.

Back in Yellow Springs Richard Heinberg calmly told those assembled that less than 2% of Americans are farmers, compared to 41% in 1900. We’ll need to get back up to 20% farmers, he said, like round about yesterday. All that was “gotcha by the throat” statistics to me though. Pam’s talk brought it closer to home. And now I am home, eating within a 10 mile radius of home, and it’s clear to me viscerally the pickle we are collectively in. Make that millions of pickles and maybe we could eat.

So all this data has been eating at me ever since.

On a parallel track, speaking of eating, I’ve been on my lifelong hunt for a way to fit back into my wedding dress (well, I don’t have it anymore, but fitting back into anything from my 20′s). I’ve been a “diet-er”. “On a diet” or “breaking my diet” or “blowing off my diet I don’t care after menopause we all look this way.” My relationship with food was love-hate. Desire and fear. Craving and aversion. Well, doctor, it was complex – but whose isn’t?

Then a year ago I was introduced to a diet that actually did turn back the clock. I watched friend after friend just sort of melt back into “wedding dress” size. I watched and watched and they didn’t seem to gain back the weight they lost. So I decided to give it a try after all those years in Dante’s Weight Inferno (Abandon all hope ye who enter here). I was so happy – it worked

Cut back to Tricia and Kent watching a Netflix crazy documentary about a guy who’d taken Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me experiment to dopey ends. He smoked dope every day for a month.

“Well,” Tricia said to Kent, “I wonder if someone would do “Super Veggie Me” – eat only from her garden for a month.”

“Why don’t you do it?” Kent asked.

“No, I can’t. I can’t give up ________ (fill in the blank).”

But I could. I was just finishing up the strict protocol with very limited food when I bumped into Tricia at the 4th of July Maxwelton Beach potluck and parade. Would I “limit myself” to eating tons of good veggies and eggs and maybe a chicken from her garden? “Limiting food,” I thought, “sweetheart, you don’t know from limiting food.” Saying yes at that moment was simple as pie. So I went back and got some more and Tricia and I began our journey together to this moment.