How green is my diet? At home or dining out, we can all do better

You'd be hard-pressed to call me environmentally conscious. Instead, I married into it: Before I moved in with my husband, I had no idea he was the Puget Sound poster boy for recycling.

"Trust me," I said, flagrantly running the dish water in the sink as he clipped a plastic ring from a soda six-pack into itty-bitty pieces (lest it end up on the leg of a landfill-lubbing sea gull). "I am not going to scrub my soup cans with Palmolive, soak off the labels, take off the lower lid and play groom-at-a-Jewish-wedding, smashing them to smithereens before sending them off to the Big Green Container like you always do."

"No problem, I'll do it," he said, carrying an empty cereal box out to the garage and tying it up so precisely (with the rest of our cardboard detritus), that the guy who drives the recycling truck gives him a tip at Christmas.

Twelve years later, I'm toting a PCC cloth shopping bag to the supermarket where I scan the produce aisles for the words "locally grown," tote a straw basket to farmers markets all over town, and (never say never) give my Campbell's Tomato Soup cans -- and the rest of my kitchen recyclables -- the poster-boy treatment.

It's getting harder and harder to ignore the realities of personal responsibility when you live in an area as green as ours -- and I mean that both literally and figuratively.

And if, like me, you devour food-related news and are horrified by stories of melamine-laced foodstuffs and our ever-broadening "carbon footprints," you've probably gained a greater understanding of the so-called "locavore" movement: the one where the "Think Globally, Act Locally" slogan gets turned into a culinary lifestyle.

I've read (and loved) several books on the subject, including "Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally" by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon. And "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life," by Barbara Kingsolver, whose novels have long lined my bookshelves.

I recommend you read them, too. If only so you can say "In my spare time!" while armchair traveling to a land where you forage for berries and nettles, blanch and freeze summer corn and are on a first-name basis with the guy who kills your goats, the gal who churns your butter, the chicken who lays your eggs and the bees who make your honey.

Chances are you're a lot more like me, though, than like them: With a weed-filled slug-trap of a garden sprouting volunteer potatoes. And a kitchen cupboard bulging with such local products as Oh Boy! Oberto beef jerky, Snoqualmie Falls Lodge pancake mix and a giant-economy-size Grey Poupon from that homegrown sensation Costco.

But, if what I've been reading is true -- and I'm certain it is -- when it comes to doing better at eating closer to home, every little bit helps. You can do that by growing herbs on the windowsill, making pasta from eggs and flour, and buying franks from Hempler's instead of Oscar Mayer.

Covering the restaurant beat has given me ample opportunity to see how local foodstuffs translate to the kind of dishes I adore while dining out and can easily re-create at home.

On Wednesdays, Julie Andres, chef/owner of La Medusa, strolls over to the Columbia City Farmers Market to find inspiration for her three-course Farmers Market suppers. Last week's dinner included Stony Plains farm's romanesko (a crunchy brassica used in a salad), spaghetti con zucca (with zucchini squash from Alvarez Farms and cherry tomatoes from farmer Billy Allstot), and finished with a peach tart whose fruit was grown by the Tonnemaker family.

On summer Sundays, Peter Birk, the executive chef at Ray's Boathouse, hits the Sunday Ballard Farmers Market early to forage for ingredients for a special three-course dinner served there.

Ask me to list the number of area restaurants that make it their mission to go local, sustainable and organic, growing/gathering/raising their own -- or getting it directly from someone who does -- and that list would be as long as the fishing line on the Seattle-based tuna boat St. Jude.

Bruce Naftaly has been doing it at Le Gourmand in Ballard (where he grows poppies for their seed and cans his own tomatoes) for more than 20 years. Matt Dillon landed on this month's cover of Food & Wine for doing it at his tiny Eastlake cafe Sitka & Spruce (where foraged mushrooms and farm-fresh eggs are de rigueur).

Even Pagliacci -- whose compostable pizza boxes can be put in your yard-waste containers -- has gotten in on the act, baking pizzas with Salumi's pepperoni, Mama Lil's Peppers and (for a limited time only!) smoked salmon from the Loki Fish Co., whose boats dock at Fisherman's Terminal.

When I'm not busy dining out, writing about food and reading about it, I do a lot of careful thinking about cooking and eating. My hope for the future is that you might spend a bit more time doing the same.

So, what's for dinner tonight? I can't say for sure, but I know what I want for dessert: a Montmorency cherry pie. Those sour cherries were grown, picked, pitted and baked at home by my husband. He uses Pillsbury pie crusts -- and recycles the box, which is one of the many reasons why I love the guy.

Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com.

More columns are available at seattletimes.com/nancyleson.

Information in this article, originally published July 18, 2007, was corrected July 18, 2007. A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Oscar Mayer.