Friday, November 23, 2012

Good morning,

The first Thanksgiving in 1621 was when English settlers and their new Native American neighbors gathered to feast on the fruits of their first harvest in the New World.

Nearly 400 years later, Thanksgiving is a far cry from the days of farming, hunting and gathering in the New England wilderness. Today's feast is likely to have traveled an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 miles from farm to plate, 25 percent farther than in 1980.

While it is unrealistic (more likely impossible) to harvest and gather our food like the pilgrims did, do our meals really need to travel two thousand miles to our dinner tables?

Scroll down for some more ideas.

Thanks for reading,

Your Living Green editor

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While Thanksgiving was yesterday the lessons we can learn from the 100-mile-Thanksgiving can be applied to our daily diets; namely creating meals from local ingredients.

All those classic Thanksgiving favorites -- sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, apple or pumpkin pie, apple cider and a green vegetable -- are all available from farms within 100 miles of most cities.

And not only will you be saving the environment all of those miles transporting your meal, you will also be supporting your local economy and not sending your dollars to Florida, California or even South America (unless you live in Florida, California or South America).