nment. And, maybe most importantly, how powerful one confident voice can be when combined with others to make a chorus for real change.I should offer you specifics. Look, for instance, at one little container of strawberries grown in Mexico and offered for sale at your local market. How did those strawberries come to be there? What path did they take to show up in your neighborhood? They were grown far away: do you know what pesticides are allowed or disallowed in the region in which they were grown? (Or is their growing region even something the vendor has shared?) They’re out of season: how were they grown? When were they harvested? How were they stored and handled so that they were able to come so far looking so perfect? How much fuel was used to get this tiny basket of berries into your hands? And when, finally, you bite into one, how much flavor is left to enjoy?
There are a lot of reasons to eat locally grown and raised foods. And, joyously, in this region of real bounty, there’s just no reason not to. That’s why I’m especially glad that my friend, HopeDance publisher Bob Banner, will be publishing Edible San Luis Obispo beginning summer 2009. As Bob tells us:
By eating locally, we help to sustain the small family farms which produce healthy foods with fullness of taste and provide for a safer food supply. The publication will follow our seasonal schedule: four times each year, you’ll be enticed with stories about farmers, chefs, and the local food industry. Gorgeous color photography featuring food and landscape will put life on pages full of culinary interest and events.I’m very much looking forward to the insights and wisdom Bob has been sharing for so many years in HopeDance, now applied to a very specific area of interest. In many ways, Edible San Luis Obispo seems like a natural progression of Bob’s work. We wish him luck in this new part of his journey and anticipate with delight the things he will share with us on the pages of his new publication.
