Promoting the 100-mile Diet

Instead of blogging yesterday, I was promoting my 100-mile diet on the air and in my home.

First, I was a guest on a radio show talking about sustainability. A friend of mine -- who knew about my experiemnt -- produces a morning talk show for the NPR-affiliated radio station in Cleveland. When she invited me to be on the show, I quickly refered her to Cheryl Nechaman, who spearheads the 100-mile diet challenge here in Albany. She contacted Cheryl, but still wanted me to appear, as the average Jill who'd accepted the challenge. That sounded somewhat better than representing the 100-mile diet as some kind of expert.

The hour-long show was live in Cleveland, but now can be heard on WCPN's website. Cheryl and I can be heard in the last ten minutes of the show.

Later that afternoon, I spent a couple hours in the kitchen preparing nibbling food for my book group that night. I had a bounty of eggplants from one of the book group members who grew them in her communal garden, so I made baba ganoush. I looked to the Moosewood cookbook for guidelines, but kept it simple and all New York -- eggplant, garlic, onion -- except for fresh-squeezed lemon juice. I had a variety of cheeses, but nothing to put them on so I made herb foccacia flavored with sage from my garden. I used a recipe from The Good Stuff Cookbook. It didn't rise as much as it should have, but somehow with foccacia -- also known as flat bread -- it doesn't matter so much.

In addition to the sage foccacia and baba ganoush, my coffee table spread included a dipping sauce of olive oil (flavored with garlic, lavender, and pepper), sliced vegetables (carrots and red bell pepper), sliced cheese (mild farmer's cheese and more pungent Couronne), and a tub of honey-sweetened fromage blanc with crackers. The crackers were for convention's sake, but weren't local in any way. For drinks, I served wine -- a red from Pindar Vineyards on Long Island and a white from Chateau LaFayatte Reneau in the Finger Lakes. Beer came from the Saranac Brewery in New York, although I'm sticking to my pledge not to drink beer because the ingredients aren't local. (An easy pledge when wine is available!)

And dessert? Cherry pie! Once a lapse, a guilty pleasure, a true confession (see previous post) -- now a tasty exception.