Introductory Three-Course Menu to Local Food Literature

If you are not yet aware of the local food movement that is slowly but steadily gaining the mass and speed of a locomotive, then here are the three books you must get your hands on and devour as soon as possible. This menu of printed culinary delights will create awareness in you of the supreme importance and power of your personal food dollar. However, I must warn you: It may also make it very difficult for you to ever eat and enjoy certain processed foods again. If you choose to follow, I can set you on the path to mindful mealtimes filled with delectable platefuls of wholesome pleasure, flavored with effective yet subtle activism. So, if you are sure you are ready, grab a seat at the table and peruse the menu.

As an eloquent appetizer, begin by accompanying the Kingsolver family on their Virginia farm as they take up the local food challenge to nourish their bodies and feed our souls. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver is the story of Barbara's determination to connect with the food she feeds her family by raising or growing it herself or buying directly from the person who raised or grew it for one full growing year. In her gorgeously delicious prose, she passionately shares with us everything from the trials of locally satiating her daughters' desires for fresh fruit in early spring simultaneously paired with the delight of the plentiful asparagus harvest, through the exasperation of promiscuously overabundant vegetables and sexually under-experienced turkeys, until we finally reach the delicate late winter rationing of a proudly and carefully preserved autumn yield. Within this deeply personal experience, she and her co-authors, her husband and daughter, also manage to gracefully interweave a gentle, yet bracingly honest evaluation of the American dietary status quo and simple, yet powerful steps we can indulge ourselves with in our own homes.

After the flavors of your appetizer have tantalizingly dissolved into your brain, sink your teeth into a rich, meaty, boldly flavored main course. Order up The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan and feed your burgeoning local food craving. After gobbling up every educational and dangerously enlightening morsel of Michael's trek through the world of industrial food production, you cannot possibly look at the angularly prepackaged, brightly colored grocery store aisles brimming with the illusion of variety the same way again. Struggling to recover our faith in food, he then leads us to the cool, green healing balm of the Salatin family sanctuary, Polyface, Inc., a locally based agribusiness that could possibly change the world in a confidently subversive way. I am delighted to have been one of Joel Salatin's quietly revolutionary customers for years and yes, he does produce food that tastes that good. Michael's final meal journey is a delightfully impractical journey into extreme local foodie-ism, quite literally hunting and gathering every scrap of food to assemble what he describes as the "Perfect Meal," a meal he is completely connected to in a way few modern human beings will ever experience, a way that I can only describe as both ridiculously and divinely holy.

If you have room left for one last indulgence, emulate the Kingsolver clan by dipping into a visually scrumptious tour of the variety of culinary extravagance, easily available to you by shopping at America's farmers' markets and using Deborah Madison's best work, Local Flavors, as your guide. In my little corner of the country this autumn, I am currently delighting in the downright sinful opulence of her Steamed Persimmon Pudding with Brandied Whipped Cream and Persimmon Puree and you better believe I placed my food dollar directly into the same hand that harvested the cheerfully soft orange globes flavoring this deep, sweet lusciousness melting on my tongue as I type. Hungry? Beginning to crave a little something local? What are you waiting for? Dig in!