Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally Reviews

• 
  Ivy

  I chose to give this book the rarely (by me) proffered five stars, not because of the brilliance of the writing itself, but because this couple's story was a fine example of ethical frustration, of choosing mindful living while surrounded by overwhelming and seemingly unchangeable insanity. Because they put it out there to enlighten, inspire, and hopefully, make us pause as we contemplate their motivations and the notable efforts of others such as Michael Pollan, Jamie Oliver, Deborah Madison...just to name a few. But mostly, I was simply charmed by their informal and surprisingly emotionally honest tale.
• 
  Sarah

  I should begin by disclosing that I was, from minute one, hugely troubled by the use of the word "raucous" in the title. If it is, indeed, possible to eat in a raucous manner, I don't want to hear about it, much less a year's worth of it. Shudder. You can keep your rowdy, disorderly, strident eating to yourself. One is left to assume, then, that the authors, or a particularly misguided set of marketing people, use "raucous" as do (with great frequency) the college women I work with, who are otherwise charming, if Republican: to signify "extreme in a really fun way." I would object mildly to this, too, since it's non-standard without actually being cool, edgy, fresh, or descriptive.
  
  Instead, however, I'm forced to object strongly. In fact, that catastrophically mischosen adjective becomes a synecdoche for what's wrong with the book. Here's the thing: Ms. Smith and Mr. MacKinnon do not, in the entire course of the book, do anything rowdy, disorderly, or strident. Additionally, they are neither extreme nor really fun. They are both very capable, fluid writers, and they are earnest, honest, and genuine in their attempt to live off foods produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver apartment. But they're not fun or funny. They've written a semi-furious, ultra-serious manifesto (with, granted, a lot of interesting facts about carbon footprints and the history of agriculture) and are trying to sell it (with that word "raucous") as a light-hearted, harmonic memoir of the New Young Green, those wild and crazy guys. The tone is off, and so both authors end up coming across as stodgy, hidebound, kind of... unlikeable.
• 
  Jen

  This was similar in many ways to Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", in that it is a year-long experiment in eating only local foods. Kingsolver is a much better writer and I enjoyed reading her book more. "Plenty" did, however, supply what I thought was lacking in the other book: realism. "Plenty" documents the difficulties in trying to eat locally: struggling to live without wheat/flour, trying to store potatoes in an urban apartment, staying within a budget(their first dinner cost over $100), and the strain that foraging/preserving/canning placed on their relationship. (On the plus side, their hundred mile radius overlaps on mine, so should I choose to undertake this experiment, I've got some great resources to help me!)
  I think both books make the point that local eating is not very practical -- I mean, the authors really have to go out of their way and work for it, you know? They both feel strongly that it is worth the time and effort and they make sacrifices accordingly. Both books speak of being connected: to the environment, to the community, to one's own body and its needs, and even better connections to their families. I loved the "salty" ending, and how they found solutions to all of the major challenges they faced.
• 
  Esther Espeland

  Managed to be boring and offensive
• 
  Lucy

  "One man, one woman and a raucous year of eating locally" is the tagline for this book. I'm not sure if I'd describe it as raucous... tumultuous maybe, but raucous, no.
  
  The book follows Alisa & James as they try to eat within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver, Canada. Their endeavour sees them eat wheat complete with mouse droppings, stink their house out in an effort to make sauerkrat and nearly come to blows over canning of tomatoes.
  
  I enjoyed the book a lot and thought it gave a very realistic interpretation of life trying to eat sustainability; a picnic it is not. We have an emotional connection to our food and often this is reflected back into our daily lives. Despite the trials and tribulations of the adventure I think this is far more healthy than the emotional free existence we seem to strive for in modern society. Its hard to get upset, angry or passionate about a happy meal.
  
  I only gave the book 4 stars because I am becoming more and more dubious about these "boundary setting" regimes. At one point in the book a fellow "local" eater tells Alisa that they've set their limit to 250 miles to allow them to access certain favourite foods. I now am seeing these things as a money-making exploit by journalists, eager to tap into our inner concerns and exploit our hope for utopia by living out our dreams. Mostly they turn out to be unrealistic, unachievable and just a exercise in navel gazing. At one point James spends hours at the kitchen table seperating wheat from mouse poo. I mean seriously, who does that?
  
  Nevertheless when they were talking about the food they were passionate and it invoked some, recently more familiar, emotions of my own in relation to seasonal food. The book also contained some crazy recipes (which was a nice touch) and a few interesting facts and insights. For example seasonal eating allows us to vary our diets without really trying; we've all heard the stastic that we just rotate 10 meals which means we dont get the diversity and depth of nutrition our bodies require (at one point we learn that the average north american gets 50% of their vegetable intake from iceberg lettuce, canned tomatoes and potatoes... nutricious).
  
  A good read, just not quite as good as some of the other "foodie" books I've tackled lately.
• 
  Christine (Tina)

  #goals
  
  The amount of effort to live this way & be able to experiment life this way does not blind the reader into thinking this is an easy way to eat to live in the modern world. However, how I wish to try!
  
  Written together from each perspective, the act of eating so mindfully for a year probably changed more in the lives of Smith & MacKinnon than any of us know. I would love to have known their biomarkers before & after this year. They lost weight, yes, but I imagine their health, overall, vastly improved.
  
  Again, #goals
• 
  Ren

  Similar to other titles in that it follows the authors as they challenge themselves to eat locally for a year, this book sets itself apart by going deeper into the history of their area in regard to the foods that once sustained locals and the changes that have occurred to go from local food sources to our now reliance on global food sources. Definitely worth a read!
• 
  Quinten

  This book was good, but not as good as
  Barbara Kingsolver's
  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Life, which unfortunately for Smith I had read first.
  
  The book fails due to a compromise of two opposing styles; the epistolary style of the blog that precedes the book, and the cohesive narrative needed for a full-length book. Smith does not do a great job at this merger, and it's further hurt by the changing in perspective between her and her partner.
  
  Instead of a narrative, the book reads more like a series of vignettes about their clumsy experiments in local food. The approach that they took also appeared to be haphazard rather than organized, but they don't dwell on the challenges, which could have made the book much more interesting. We are left with a smattering of the two authors personal philosophies of food, a smattering of stories about their attempts to find local food, more about their relationship issues, a tiny bit about the monotony that they encountered in the winter months, and no sense of wonder at their experiment at all. The word "raucous" in the title is particularly misleading, as the two authors are singularly serious and stodgy. This book should have been a lot more fun.
  
  Given that they grew very little food themselves, and instead purchased it, I was expecting that they would spend more time delving in to the history of supermarkets and how we got to where we are today, or possibly something more comprehensive about local food systems around North America, or even more of a profile of the local sources they did find. The story was too internally focused. They could have used their journalism experience to give us something a little more complex. Instead, a few of the chapters are basically shopping expeditions.
  
  I think I may have gotten as much if I had just read a single essay, rather than the whole book, as the insight was relatively shallow.
• 
  Christy

  What I liked about this book: I feel like both of the authors, but particularly Alisa, were able to capture the sense of wonder that I have felt about discovering where food comes from and feeling so much closer to it when you know the source. I was never particularly interested in food or where it came from until my husband became a farmer, but now that I regularly (and for some meals exclusively) eat food came from a farm 20 miles away and was picked that very afternoon by Kurt's own hands, eating is a whole new experience. I loved that this book was able to put into words those feelings that I have had since we have been fortunate enough to start eating mostly locally.
  What I didn't like about this book: first of all, there was nothing "raucous" about it. That part of the subtitle is totally misleading. Parts of the book alternated between dry history lessons and scolding sessions about how we are wasting the earth's resources. Also, I don't think that the authors quite realize that for a lot of people, eating locally just isn't in the budget or they don't have access to it. It would certainly be nice if everyone could eat locally grown vegetables every day, but that just isn't an option for a lot of people. It made me curious how they - two writers - could afford to eat so well on their incomes.
• 
  Lisa

  I remember reading some negative reviews before I read the book but decided to give it a try anyway. I really enjoyed the book. The authors took turns telling their story about how they spent a year eating only the food that could be produced within a 100 miles from their home. I thought it was interesting when the author told little side bits and sometimes I would finding myself thinking - "Wait this is suppose to be about eating local, it's all very interesting but how does it tie in?" - and then they would tie the point in very nicely.
  
  I'm very interested in eating local foods but I have a hard time putting my money where my mouth is! An interesting note, however, about the several books I have read on this topic is that the husband was the one doing all the cooking. It was his idea to eat locally and sometimes he took his wife along kicking and screaming. Perhaps I would have an easier time doing this if I convinced my husband it was his idea and that he needed to do all the cooking. ;)
• 
  Joseph

  I suppose it's always easy to compare like-minded books to one another. Many of the reviews here are tasking Plenty with not being quite in the same league as Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. And it's not. This book is more of a memoir than Kingsolver's, although there are plenty of similarities. But Alisa and James are not farmers, but foragers of a kind, scouring an area of 100 miles in any direction for local food. This book is as much about their mental exercises, and the doubts and small joys, as about the food challenge itself.
  
  The two authors alternate chapters, although, to be fair, they both write a lot alike. It wouldn't be easy to tell who wrote what, if it weren't for use of first person singular. Nevertheless, we are given some insight into the broader issues of climate change, sustainability, and perhaps most importantly, that of memory in the collective struggle for retaining the old foodways. Never preachy, but definitely thought provoking.
  
  So, I'd recommend this book as a companion to AVM, not a competitor. Enjoy it on its own merits.
• 
  Allie Pope Burger

  I savored every moment of this book. I suppose I feel as though I might be friends with Alisa and J.B. if we crossed paths, so their ideas and insights resonated with me. I enjoyed that it was a project they took on as a couple, and that they went through a reflexive process about their relationship and where they were in their lives throughout the course of the narrative. This book stirred my imagination, as I am passionate about food. I have added going to British Columbia and staying in a cabin in an abandoned town that can only be reached by foot from a train station, and foraging while there, to my list of things I want to do before I die. And I never knew salt could be made simply by boiling sea water. I can see how this book may not be for everyone, but for those with a passion for local foods and who can relate to people who take things to the committed extreme, it's a great read.
• 
  De

  These two are pretty funny. They live in BC and decide that they're not going to eat anything that doesn't come from within 100 miles. Naturally along the way they learn to open their eyes and actually see the food that's growing right in front of them (literally) that they never would have noticed. Something we should all be doing. I continue to be amazed at people who will eat whatever greens a restaurant throws into a salad but if you point out the baby dandelion greens growing in their backyard they refuse to eat them and who somehow think that God made meat in the form of steaks and chops. Sigh.
• 
  Liz Smith

  Interesting book that makes a person think about how eating foods directly affects the world around us including our own health. I'm wondering if people were to eat food from their own area how many health problems might diminish? Seems like each area of the world provides the nutrients needed to live a very healthy life. Don't get me wrong, I am not yet able to give up bananas and avocado, but I have been making an effort to buy as much food as I can from local merchants.
• 
  Melissa (Way Behind Again!)

  Interesting memoir of a couple who eat only foods grown and produced within 100 miles of their British Columbia home for a year. Occasionally goes way off topic on tangents, but overall worthwhile.
• 
  Rachel Jacobs

  The book was wonderful. I loved following along with James and Alisa as they embarked on a year of eating within a 100 mile radius. I enjoyed the honesty and the raw emotions that this experiment brought forth.
  I think it is a great read for everyone but particularly those who think it doesn't matter where your food comes from or for those who are disconnected from their food sources.
  This book will make you want to seek out local options for your food sources and get to know the people you source it from.
• 
  Rossdavidh

  Subtitle: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.
  
  This is basically a book about an experiment. Smith and Mackinnon live in the Vancouver area, and they decided to attempt (in 2005) to subsist entirely on local food for a year. This is the sort of general statement which can mean a lot of things in practice. They decided, for example, that "local" meant 100 miles. They also decided that whatever was already in their cupboard was ok to keep. Meals served to them by friends or family during visits could be exempted. One could quibble with all of these as being arbitrary or vulnerable to exploitation as loopholes, but basically, one has to start somewhere.
  
  From the sound of it, even these rules were inconvenient enough.
  
  The first danger of a book of this sort, is that the authors will be tempted to say how wonderful it all was, in order to convince everyone to do it. The second danger is that they will be tempted to say how challenging it was, in order to make a good story or make themselves sound like heroes. I would say that Smith and Mackinnon managed to avoid both of these pitfalls, and tell an interesting story well.
  
  Some of my favorite parts were somewhat negative: coming home from the first farmer's market after they had started this diet, and realizing they had spent over $100 for a few days' food; the late-winter sniping from too many meals with potatoes; the realization that the precious local wheat which they had found was contaminated with mouse dung. Even if you are a big fan of globalization and cheap oil, eating local for a year would be a great way to illustrate how many things the System does for us.
  
  However, the biggest change as they went through the year was their accumulation of knowledge, both of how to eat what grew locally, and of how to find out more. The vast majority of the food which most Americans eat is from soy, corn, wheat, potatoes, pig, chicken, a very few species of fish, and cow. Less than ten species provides probably 99% of our food, by bulk. As the authors get accustomed to their new lifestyle, they do less scrounging for local supplies of their old standards, and more eying of everything around them to see what could be eaten (well, not everything, but you get the idea).
  
  They intersperse their own experiences with some background information. Not just the familiar litany of depressing statistics, but also samples from the (fairly exhaustive) documenting done by early settlers of the plant and animal life that they encountered when they reached the Vancouver area. It is clearly not only Smith and Mackinnon who responded to eating locally by asking about everything around them, "can it be eaten?"
  
  There is also what feels like a fairly honest narration of a modest crisis in their relationship midway through the process, brought on perhaps at least in part by the stress of getting through their first winter without any great amount of knowledge of how to find something to eat when there's not much growing.
  
  There's also a familiar (to me) sounding description of the generational differences in attitudes towards cooking. In some respects, it is like the difference between first, second, and third generation immigrants' attitudes towards the Old Country (with second generation being most eager to leave all that behind). The first post-WWII generation was also the first one with the option to not spend much time thinking about food, much less preparing it. When Smith and Mackinnon try to get back to eating local, it's almost like third generation immigrants trying to speak the language their grandparents never taught them, and their parents wanted to forget.
  
  In the end, of course, it all turns out fine, and by the end of the year they have full larders with a lot of variety (and no mouse turds). They open each chapter with a recipe, and I realized that I was skipping these for a reason much like why this sort of experiment is becoming easier lately. When I need a recipe, I ask Google, not a book (by Smith and Mackinnon or anyone else), a fact that might make them shudder. When we decided (not entirely coincidentally just after I finished this book) to start getting a basket of local produce delivered to us every week, we placed the order with Greenling's website. Post-WWII America turned away from eating local because it took too much time. Post-Y2K America may turn back to it, because it isn't so hard anymore. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, or (most probably) both, is the subject for another book.
  
  Now if you'll excuse me, I have a dinner of borscht to eat. It's something I never ate before this week, made from local beets, and it's quite yummy. If you want to know more, here's the
  wikipedia article.
• 
  Ciara

  lately i have been into reading books where people do weird personal experiments for a year & document them. good thing there is absolutely no shortage of such books, what with publishing companies basically just trawling the blogosphere & offering book deals to anyone who can be edited to appear functionally literate. almost none of these books are really all that great, but i guess i don't read them expecting great literature. i am just attracted to the idea of people subjecting themselves to bizarre obstacles. i do the same shit, except that i don't write books about it. in 2002, i read all 200+ "babysitters club" books (mysteries, super special, super mysteries, et al, included) in chronological order. i probably could have written a decent book about my journey, charting the course of pre-millennial american girlhood as ordained by YA serial lit...but i didn't.
  
  anyway. this book is about a vancouver couple who decided to eat locally for an entire year. they defined "locally" as "within 100 miles of our apartment". they had all the usual reasons for doing this that you are already familiar with if you have self-righteous locavore foodies in your life, as i do in mine. they were very concerned about food miles, the fossil fuels & ecological destruction involved in shipping exotic food across the country or across the world to satisfy the increasingly unseasoned palates of the western consumer. all very noble & good, etc etc. but i just wasn't wild about the book.
  
  both people in this couple are writers, & so they traded off chapters, counting down their year of eating locally. they are both perfectly competent writers, but their styles didn't complement each other, in my opinion. the dude seemed unnecessarily brash, almost abrasive, & he could really get self-righteous when writing about the politics behind the local eating experiment. plus he was all, "i'm such a great cook! i have been cooking since i was ten years old! i'm the man!" i liked the woman's writing better, although, compared with her boyfriend, she seemed needlessly introspective & navel-gazing. i mean, there were times when the local eating thing seemed to plunge her into clinical depression, which wasn't really exciting to read about (because it was never explored thoroughly) & certainly didn't motivate me to run right out & start eating locally myself. i did like a lot of what she wrote about why she never really learned how to cook, & how cooking is such a gendered discipline that she ran away from it as a feminist act, etc etc. that is pretty much why i'm not really a master chef myself (although, like this woman, my boyfriend is a great cook).
  
  honestly, i read this entire book in a couple of hours. it seems hefty, but the font is large & the page layout doesn't really pack that many words on to a page. i am reading barbara kingsolver's animal, vegetable, miracle right now, which is a far superior local food memoir. her husband & daughter serve as co-author's, & their additions meld better with the rest of the book, & kingsolver never gets preachy & judge-7 (her husband, on the other hand...). her book inspires you to make changes in where your food dollars go. this book, comparatively, just seems like a lark. they spend the entire book foregoing bread, pasta, crackers, et al, because they can't find a local miller in vancouver. they finally track one down toward the end of the book & go nuts making stuff with flour in it & i thought the whole thing just smacked of needless deprivation to prove some larger point that was actually completely pointless. i guess if their goal was to write a fluffy little locavore tome sure to blow the minds of the dimmest bulbs perusing the bookshelves & challenge themselves to take on a bizarre experiment...mission accomplished. *shrug*
• 
  Amber

  This book was the same topic as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It was a bit of a different perspective though and I enjoyed that. AMV is about a family that lives on a plot of land and they grow most of their own food. Plenty is about a couple (instead of family) that live in an apartment in the middle of the city (instead of the country with land). They have a small community garden plot that they use to supplement their diet when able to. They take you through their story of trying to find what is edible in their area (in their case 100 miles around where they live). They have to find wheat, fruits and vegetables, fish, eggs, milk, salt (which they never find until the year is over) and so forth. They go to u-pick places and preserve strawberries, blackberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, corn etc. They find nut farms, beans, cheese, honey (no sugar, honey only).
  
  It also talks about what this goal/quest/change does to their relationship. It's interesting to see them face adversity together, grow apart, and then in the end realize that they've been happier than ever before.
  
  It begs the thought of "what would I do if I couldn't buy from a grocery store, where would I get my food, do I know where the farms are and what they have to offer, how would I find them".
  
  The couple are Canadians so there where some things/language that I had to decipher but it's worth the read.
  
  This is just one more book that makes me want to grow a garden and buy local foods. I'll try and chronicle our success/failure of doing just that this year.
• 
  Sally

  Interesting story, written by 2 freelance writers, interspersed with great essays on the history of food. Some favorite quotes:
  
  A study in the UK showed that the amount of time people now spend driving to the supermarket, looking for parking, and wandering the lengthy aisles in search of a frozen pizza or pre-mixed salad is nearly equal to that spent preparing food from scratch 20 years ago.
  
  Despite eating more than ever before, our culture may be the only one in human history to value food to little. From the African scrublands to the Australian deserts, nomads who collected food daily and never stored it considered sharing food to be the ultimate form of wealth. Among traditional Northwest people, a “poor” person was someone who never troubled to catch his own salmon, but was instead content to eat food produced b others. 158-62
  
  Today is it more efficient for the UK to maintain the $330 million trade from New Zealand for apples, onions, dairy and sheep rather than to produce it in the UK. 221
  
  I had expected the 100- mile experiment to be a platform to think about many things, among them a long list of bummers from climate change to the failure of whole generations to learn how to recognize edible mushrooms. What I could see around the table now was a less tangible consideration: a sense of adventure…. We need to find new ways to live into the future. We can start anytime; we can live them here and now. 222
  
• 
  Kelly

  Admittedly, I am plowing through books centered on concientious eating so my opinion is highly relative. "Plenty" isn't the worst of them, but it wouldn't be high on my recommended reading list.
  
  The negative: In general I found the writing styles of both authors bland. Never once did I really care about the personal elements of their one-year journey eating local foods. At times their eating philosophy seems extreme just for the sake of being extreme. They go most of the year without wheat, but have no problem using salt from outside the 100-mile restriction. They pose ridiculous questions about how far they should go with their 100-mile restriction: how local is a fish? if a chicken eats grass that is grown from grain shipped from Vermont, is the chicken local? Essentially, these questions get away from the purpose of the project and dilute the importance of their message.
  
  The positive: This book offers plenty of shocking facts about the food culture in America. There is no catastrophic set up to really drive the point home. The authors very successfully let the facts speak for themsleves. Applause. Unfortunately, they don't cite their facts well and don't provide a true bibliography. Boo!
• 
  Courtney

  Some parts of this book were great: learning about the agriculture of the Northwest and the people who are devoted to keeping it going strong as well as the great (and not so great) meals that this couple came up with because they were forced to think differently.
  
  Other parts languished, perhaps because it seems like I've heard it all a million times before: eat locally, food travels 1500 miles or more to get to your plate, we're running out of resources, etc. Somehow it seemed a little trite coming from this couple who decided to eat like this for one year on a whim.
  
  I must applaud them for trying to show that even urbanites (and suburbanites) can eat locally or more consciously without growing everything themselves. They showed how our society has become so distant from each other that it takes an internet search to track down a farmer or fisherman only 10 miles from your house.
  
  It was a quick read, and mildly entertaining, but a better book of this type would be Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle".
  
  
  
• 
  Angela

  I have been wanting to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver but it wasn't available at the library yet. This one was. Its the same basic idea, the authors, residents of Vancouver, decide that for one year they will attempt to only eat food grown within a one hundred mile radius of their home. A wonderful idea in theory because the reality is each ingredient we eat travels an average of 1500 miles which is absolutely ridiculous.
  
  It is probably not realistic for most of us to go cold turkey and only shop local. I think I would get so frustrated I would probably give up pretty quickly. But we can and probably should try to make more of an effort. I know there are local farms and farmers markets available to me. Rather than go the convenience route I am going to try and be more proactive about where my food comes from. I am also going to try to start a garden this year and keep it alive this time!
  
  
• 
  Chessa

  Quick read about a couple from Vancouver, B.C. who decide to conduct a one-year experiment in local eating. They draw their boundaries with a 100-mile radius of Vancouver and there their adventures begin.
  
  Similar in themes to Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, this book is neither so broad in scope (in terms of increasing the reader's knowledge of industrial food systems) nor narrow in menus - they didn't talk toooo much about what they ate on a daily basis, which I for one missed. I really would have liked to have heard more about their day-to-day diets. Instead you get a look into how the experiment affected their lives as a couple - kind of interesting tangentially, but not what I was really after as a whole.
  
  Great read though! I love memoirs, and this one combined that with my zest for local-ism, so I am inspired all over again to eat out of my big back yard.
• 
  Marion

  The 2008 Lake Forest Park Reads book. A memoir of a couple, two writers, who challenges themselves to only buy food grown within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, BC, and their up north lean-to cabin in the middle of nowwhere. They rotate writing chapters. They get real emotional over potatoes, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, more potatoes, onions, etc and have a funny, icky quest for wheat or anything that can be ground for flour. Data is shared from govt agencies, historians, and whole foods groups. The reality of the time it takes to find locally produced food year-round sounds like quite a challenge; I am going to try to do it more, after reading this book.
• 
  Carolyn

  A quick, interesting read about a couple in Vancouver, BC that decide to spend a year eating only foods from within a 100 mile of their home. The average food item travels 1500 miles from where it's grown to where it's eaten. Besides the obvious wastefulness of this system they also discover a community of farms, a connection to the seasons and a far more varied diet than most of us enjoy. It's not preachy or holier than though. The reader learns along with them. It's definitely food for thought. forgive the weak pun
• 
  Bethany

  After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Omnivore's Dilemma, this book felt a little preachy at times.
  
  I really enjoyed hearing about Alisa and J.B.'s personal challenge and how they met the challenge. I think this book would have been amazing if they just wrote about how they came up with their challenge, and their experience with it.
  
  I loved their cabin, and the time they ate locally there. I also enjoyed reading about the different farmers and what they grew.
• 
  Toby

  What sounded like a really interesting book took a turn for a narcissistic melodrama about two people with SAD who ate a lot of weird local food. I really wanted to like it, but my overall feeling at the end: meh.