The hundred mile diet: tales of avid local eating.

"Everything I need is here ... except the coffee!" So says Nancyjo Riekse of Aubura, California, quoted on the www.locavores.com website. Riekse is one of scores of people nationwide who have tried some form of a Local Food Challenge. Challengers choose an area--say 100 miles from home--and eat only food from within that circle. It's not enough for these "locavores" that the food is cooked, baked, mixed, or sold locally--each ingredient in each bite must have been grown or raised locally.

Location, Location, Location--Of course, Nancyjo Riekse has it relatively easy--her "foodshed," just east of Sacramento, has the kind of varied climate where anything grows (except coffee). In fact, part of her stated goal in eating only local food is to educate those around her about what varied foods are grown, raised, and found there, so that farmers are supported by eager local food-seeking consumers, and farmland is preserved for future generations.

Gary Paul Nabhan, cofounder of the innovative and important company Native Seeds, are local for a year in the Sonoran Desert of southwest Arizona, where there's a lot less to choose from. His story, recorded in the book Coming Home to Eat, tells of baked giant lizards, mesquite tortillas, toasted caterpillar skins, and other culinary adventures. This kind of eating might seem weird. But by letting the reader follow along as he visits various native Indian groups in the region, Nabhan's narrative reminds us that this is exactly how people are for thousands of years. Wherever we live, there were generations of people before us who lived long, happy, food-filled lives without the benefit of huge agribusiness companies filling our supermarket shelves with a year-round bounty of asparagus and mangoes arid an endless variety of convenience foods.

Here in western North Carolina, we don't have quite the abundance of the Sacramento Valley. But winter here is shorter (and the growing season longer) than it is, for example, in Minnesota, where several staff members of the White Earth Land Recovery Project are currently several months into their Local Food Challenge.

What Grows--Let's look at a few key food groups, and see how a hundred-mile diet might work out for a typical resident of our southern Appalachian foodshed:

Fruit--Very seasonal here. In a warm spring our season starts in May, when (if spring was warm) you'll find tailgate market vendors such as Fairview's Flying Cloud Farm selling strawberries. Raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries come and go through summer and early fall. You can find these at market, at stores, or at pick-your-own locations. From Queens Berry Farm in Pisgah Forest, to Qualla Berry Farm out west in Hayesville, to The Happy Berry down in Six Mile, SC, we've got u-pick berries all around. Thinking ahead? Pick all day and then freeze your fruit--come winter on this diet, you'll be glad you did.

Melons are a little tricky in the mountains, but in '05, local food-oriented retailers like Earth Fare and Greenlife Grocery featured cascading displays of locally-grown cantaloupe. Fall is apple season, and Henderson County, being the nation's seventh-most prolific apple producer, is the place to be. Craving some local tree-fresh flavor in February? Ingles sells cider pressed by Edneyville-based Apple Wedge Packers, using only our local Henderson County apples, and some varieties stay fresh through spring.

Vegetables--You're in luck. A wealth of seasonal vegetables is available at area farmers' tailgate markets. Subscribing to a CSA (community supported agriculture) program, in which you'll receive a basket of fresh produce every week throughout the season, is a great way to develop a relationship with a local farm and always be guaranteed plenty of whatever is fresh. Grocers and restaurants are increasingly interested in serving the growing demand for local food. Watch for the Appalachian Grown logo to help you identify foods raised in our Southern Appalachian region.

Fresh vegetable season starts here in about April and ends around November. With greenhouse production increasing, you can even find local produce in February if you search hard enough. Look for the Mountain Fresh Living brand of hydroponic lettuce at Ingles--it's from Whittier-based grower William Shelton.

Grain--That box of spaghetti for a quick meal is out of the question. And you'd better like combread and grits. If not, this is where things get tough, and you'll wish your Local Food Challenge was based in Kansas. British Columbia-based couple Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon began the hundred-mile diet in spring, and quickly found that the only starch available to them was potatoes. They each lost fifteen pounds within six weeks.

"James' jeans hung down his butt like a skater boy," writes Alisa. "He told me I had no butt left at all." Smith and MacKinnon's very entertaining and well-written article series on their year-long hundred-mile diet is updated each month at www.thetyee.ca.

You can find locally-milled flour here, but chances are that the mill is trucking in grain from elsewhere. We are blessed with several gristmills that grind local com. Some are complete with the picturesque stream and a gurgling waterwheel turning the stones. If you don't know where one is, ask your neighbors, or check our Local Food Guide at www.appalachiangrown.org.

Milk--A major food group for some, local milk is hard to come by due to restrictive laws regarding processing. Eat lots of local yogurt (from Fullam Creamery) and cheese instead.

Meat--Farms like Carolina Bison and Springhouse Meats do a great job making locally-raised animal protein available to the masses. And don't forget fish--western NC is a top aquaculture area in the nation. Farms like Sunburst Trout in Haywood County and Otter Creek Trout Farm in Topton rise above fish farming standards to raise trout in a way that preserves the environment and produces a pure, healthy product.

Oil, Spices--On a diet like this, it's the little things that can become tricky and frustrating. In our foodshed you'll have to either learn to press your own oil (not easy), or cook with lots of local butter and lard (yum!). You'll find basil and many other herbs everywhere, but other staples, like black pepper, just don't grow here.

Goodies--Life without chocolate? Coffee? White sugar? Where's the fun in that? Local honey and sorghum producers are plentiful here, so your sweet tooth can get some satisfaction. You can find a completely-local wine, but a beer with all-local ingredients is unlikely unless you grow and brew it yourself.

The Rules--Some set the rules tougher than others. The Locavores website asks participants to list what they call "exemptions." Some hundred-mile dieters go all-out and list no exemptions. Some allow practical items like salt, wheat flour, and cooking oil. Others make exemptions for chocolate, coffee, tea, mangoes, and other non-essential cravings.

Alisa Smith and J.B. McKinnon, the hundred-mile dieters from British Columbia, make an exception for food offered in hospitality at the homes of friends and family. When I met Minnesota-based Local Food Challenger Sarah Alexander at a conference in Atlanta, she was breaking her diet in order to travel. After all, it's pretty hard to eat close to home when you're not there.

Start Simple--As an "everything in moderation" kind of guy, I find the strict year-long Hundred-Mile Diet fascinating but obsessive and intimidating. The truth is, most of us are too busy and have too much on our minds to worry that much about the food we're eating.

If the idea of a Local Food Challenge appeals to you, start simple. Try it for a month--and make it an easy one, like July. Try it for a day. Heck, try it for a single meal, and make it a party. A Local Food Potluck, in which all attendees are asked to bring a dish composed solely of ingredients from within 100 miles, will challenge you and your friends to think about how their food buying can better support our farms, our local economy, and healthy eating for our children.

Try the gradual approach: each month, replace one common food in your diet that's provided by a big company far away with a similar locally-grown food. No matter where our diets sit now, we can all take small steps toward eating more food that's local and in season. The more we're all out there seeking local, the more our grocery stores, restaurants, and schools will find it worthwhile to make local food available and convenient for everybody.

Peter Marks works for the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project in Asheville. If you try a Local Food Challenge, however big or small, he encourages you to tell him about it at [e-mail].