A Book in Review: The Locavore's Handbook

The Locavore's Handbook The Busy Person's Guide to Eating Local on a Budget By: Leda Meredith
Non-fiction, food, environment 185 pages
Book Count: 45

First this book is badly named. It should be something like "The Locavore's Guide to New York City" as about 80% of the parts on actually eating locally are about her own experiences and resources for people living in New York or the surrounding area. There is some information for people living else where, mainly in web sites or other books, but the book is very much a NY book. For example, in all the recipes she uses honey instead of sugar, because there "is no local sugar" which is true for where she lives, but in MI just about every grocery store has sugar grown in the state. Also, like most books of this type it is very preachy. Although, it does talk about how you can save money on eating locally by growing or finding food, joining a CSA (community supported agriculture), and shopping the farmer's market at the right time most of its talk on budget eating is rants about how big business working with the government is artificially lowering the cost of bad foods. (Not saying that it isn't true, just budgeting advice shouldn't be, "You should pay more.")