Food for thought

It's time for me to choose a book for May book club (always a challenge, since I still haven't read the last 180 pages of last month's book!), and I've got food on the mind. "Garlic and Sapphires" looks like fun - the third book by former NY Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, who went to great lengths to disguise herself ; her photo was reputed to hang in the kitchens of the city's finest restaurants. Not surprisingly, she got better service when she was dressed to the nines and became a high-society wife, versus "becoming" a mousy housewife.

The other possibility showed up in the office last week - "Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally," by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. The authors resolved to eat only food produced within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver home. Wow. That's the kind of commitment I could have only by quitting my day job and devoting myself fully to finding local foods. Yes, it's easy enough to find some local produce (though maybe not as much this year after the early freeze), but everything? No Cheerios? Where does Eckerlin's beef come from? Even if I don't pick this one for book club, I'm interested in reading about their experience. Makes me want to seek out more local foods.