Sunset's One Block Diet (Hardwear Sessions)

Last fall, when I first came across Sunset's One Block Diet blog, I dismissed the project as an albatross. The idea of a one-block diet seemed completely out of line with our contemporary lifestyles. In this age where tomatoes come from Mexico and peaches from Chile, how can we ever hope to eat food grown and processed within "one block" of our homes?

In her introduction to the One Block Diet, Sunset editor Margo True rhasphodized over the "pleasures" of local food. Margo then outlined the Sunset project: "We're using our garden expertise to grow, in a plot about the size of a large backyard, just about everything we'll need for a feast we'll cook at the end of summer. It's the ultimate made-from-scratch meal."

Margo means well. But she kind of turned me off.

Who has the time to grow their own food? Press their own olive oil? Make their own cheese? And who has the money to shop exclusively at the farmer's market, or search out all-organic produce? Plus, she sounded so bossy, and I don't deal well with authority.

I read a few blog entries, and then moved on. I dismissed the One Block Diet as another lark. Oh, the foibles of the wealthy, living high down in Menlo Park, with all those Silicon Valley multimillionaires. I grumbled to my friends that if I had retired at age 28, I, too, could grow all my own food and start my own organic olive farm. Instead, I spend 40 hours a week in the office, sharing my life with a computer screen. When am I supposed to tend my garden?

Something changed this spring.

I suspect it has something to do with the rising fuel costs. The prices at the grocery store are rising, not only on luxuries, like organic strawberries, but on basics, like bread and milk. I couldn't shake a general feeling that we're on the cusp of a change. Maybe all the "greenwashing" has taken hold of my mind.

In the middle of one of those moments, when I felt like I needed to take direct action, and implement real change in my life, I bought a few tomato plants from our local nursery and put in a whole bunch of herbs. (And then watched them languish through our last heat wave, the very same one that started all the fires and clouded the air with smoke). On the weekends, out in Sonora, I got up early and went to the farmer's market, where I met farmers and ranchers from Tuolomne County, and began to put faces with my food.

In the middle of all this "purposeful action," I started to read Sunset's One Block Diet blog again.

Sometimes the writing still feels a little sanctimonious and preachy. That's to be expected. After all, Sunset is in the business of dispensing advice. But I don't mind quite as much. Now that the Sunset folks are further along in their experiment, and sharing their missteps along with their successes, I see that they are human, just like me. They don't know things, either. I let my fraise des bois wilt in the summer heat. Ants attacked their beehives. They didn't know that potato plants set fruit. I didn't know that frost would kill my marjoram plant. I occasionally neglect my garden, pleading exhaustion. Surprise! So do the Sunset folks.

Now that I'm in this for the long haul, I'm not so impatient to succeed right now. And I'm happy that Margo and her crew are there, testing things out for me, so when I'm ready to move beyond herbs and tomatoes, and maybe tackle that fruit tree or chicken coop, I can look back on their mistakes - and learn.