By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Now that "locavore" has been named a New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year and a flood of magazine and newspaper articles (and several fine books) have been written about eating local with more appearing every day is there anything left to say on the subject?

Well, sure there is.

Why We're Getting Hungrier for Local Food

For one thing, our appetite for knowing how to find good food nearby isn't disappearing, it's growing. We are starting to understand that when we buy locally, we've helped conserve the fossil fuel that's required to ship food long distance (and which adds to the price we pay, too). Buying locally also means the money goes into our own communities, making them stronger.

We're realizing too that local food from small farms is often safer: If E. coli or salmonella bacteria do contaminate a crop, the outbreak can be traced to the source and controlled much more quickly. Eating local also sidesteps the worries we have about the safety of imported food, which gets only glancing inspections from an underfunded FDA. It's comforting to know where your food comes from and how it was raised—and that's a lot easier to do when the food is local.

These are all admirable reasons for eating close to home, but they can make you feel a little bit like you’re doing jury duty, or giving blood. They’re born of animpulse to do the right thing. But what about pleasure? What about strawberries so sweet and fragile they just about bruise if you look at them, or corn so juicy the kernels pop under your teeth?

So: Let's consider that for a minute—the pure pleasure of eating local food. The truth is, it usually tastes better, because it's fresher. Chances are good that you're getting fruits and vegetables at peak ripeness, when they're most flavorful and nutrient-filled. You also find delicate varieties that could never withstand the impact of long-haul transportation. If you shop at a farmer's market, you can chat up the person who grew it, if you're so inclined, and learn something about how it was grown or how to cook it. And if you grow it yourself, you'll have the deep, wordless pleasure of gardening—something a lot of us urbanites have never known.

Sunset's Way to Go Local

In the spring of '07, after an especially rich crop of writings about 100-mile and 150-mile and even 50-mile diets, we ambled around Sunset property, which occupies a full city block. We noticed, among other things, lemons, oranges, kumquats, and figs. Our test garden was bursting with tomatoes, cucumbers, and chiles. We counted 21 majestic olive trees. And so we thought, Why don't we just cut to the chase and try a One-Block Diet? You can't get much more local than your own back yard, after all. Plus, if you do it right, raising your own food can be cheaper than buying it, and who isn't trying to save money these days?

So that is exactly what we did. We used our garden expertise to grow, in a plot about the size of a large backyard, just about everything we needed for an end-of-summer feast—the ultimate made-from-scratch meal.

Our article about this project, in the August 2008 issue, tells the story of how the crops were chosen, grown, cooked, and devoured.

It's also a kind of "starter kit" for anyone who's interested in bringing their food closer to home: a step-by-step guide to growing and cooking your own food, as only Sunset with its long history of giving expert advice on gardening and cooking in the West—can do.

What you'll find:
--a planting timeline (for our northern California location; timelines for the four other regions we cover will be on this website)
--A list of the crops grown, and why we chose them (with online tips on growing each)
--The recipes from the feast (and many more online)

Dip in or Dive Deep

It's the kind of story you can dip or dive into whatever suits your circumstances and interests. Buy tomatoes from the farmer's market and make our salad, for instance; or maybe you'll want to plant the tomatoes yourself; or maybe you'll plant the whole backyard's worth of crops and invite friends over for the entire feast.

And then there are some satellite projects if you really want to stretch. Our olive trees got us thinking, Why don't we press our own olive oil? So we're doing that too. Our need for protein in this very vegetarian dinner prompted us to set up a chicken coop (although we won't be harvesting our chickens, we will be using their eggs). We have a couple of grape vines, and that led us to make wine, and then vinegar. All of these extra projects (and more) are unfolding in real time: just click on each (see the list under Categories, above right) to see how we're doing.

We're actually amazed by how well things have turned out, despite the mishaps along the way (see our blogs for details). Raising your own food is a lot of fun. It's gratifying. It's enlightening. And it's delicious. Why not try it?