Food glorious food

The 100-mile diet, organics, slow and gm(genetically modified) food - I've had articles published about them all in recent months. I've also talked on Radio National's Bush Telegraph about urban farmers and street farming. And next month I'll be reporting for The Big Issue on the inaugural Growers and Eaters forum - an entire day set aside for spades and blades to talk to each other.
Although cooking for people I love and eating have always been amongst my favourite activities, I never imagined I'd find myself writing about food. But when I heard that the ingredients in a typical North American meal travel on average at least 1,500 miles from spade to plate I couldn't resist. I believe we need to totally reassess the impact of what we're putting into our mouths three times a day (if we're lucky) on the planet.
These days I'm likely to consult the food miles before the price of produce at the wonderful Ceres farmers market, where I shop. And although I'm a big city girl through and through - fifty kilometres beyond the CBD and I get breathless - I'm also spending more and more time planting heirloom vegetables, Indigenous edibles and anything else I can rescue from the possums and the snails in my small inner-city garden. Think the '70s British sit com 'The Good Life': Barbara Good - that's who I'm turning into.