Now here's a diet that has bigger things than your waistline in mind. The 100 Mile Diet is one for the environment. It's all about reducing the number of food miles (distance our food travels from ground to plate) by consuming only locally grown food. That is, food which has been grown within 100 miles (160km) of your home - your house not your city!

Canadian couple, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, conceived the idea to reduce food mileage and take advantage of the power of their consumer choice. On their website, 100 Mile Diet, they tell tales of the challenges they have faced finding certain foods, particularly local organic food in woollier regions of the world like their hometown on the west coast of Canada.

They advise people to start slowly - try to plan one meal first and gradually learn about the local food system from there. It's easy to get discouraged on day one when there's not a single grain farmer listed in the yellow pages! It seems patience and persistence are two vital virtues when on this diet. It took Smith and MacKinnon nine months to find a local wheat farmer, at which point they spent the next three scoffing their favourite breaky pancakes (all good and well if you live in maple syrup country!).

If you're a coffee drinker or have a highly processed food like crème filled biscuits you favour, this diet might be a little hard. The good news for those of us in the UK is that 70% of organic food is now grown onshore. Also, the National Farmers' Retail & Markets Association (FARMA) in the UK effectively does the work for you as the farmers' must be within 30 miles (or 100 miles for London farmer's markets) to sell at the local market.

The best bit about this diet is you know exactly where everything on your dinner plate has come from. Plus direct contact with growers and producers means you can ask them all sorts of interesting questions, like the one I've been looking for an appropriate answer to for a very long time... why did that chicken ever cross the road?

If there's no local farmers' market nearby or you are struggling to justify the higher food prices of organic produce flown from the other side of the world, then the idea of a fresh organic bundle of food delivered to your door every week is probably quite appealing. Most box schemes value seasonal, local produce. Some allow you to be picky and offer different box sizes, which obviously influence the price. Be wary of the big supermarket chains - even if produce is selected from local resources it's likely food has travelled to a packing and distribution point and back to the local area.

Some of the organic box schemes we like are:

Rivernene, Riverford and Riverford Norton also pride themselves on zero air miles and organic certification by the Soil Association. These three companies are linked but primarily use produce from their respective farms: Home Farm, Wash Farm and Upper Norton Farm. You can order from throughout most of the UK. They sell meat, dairy, soups, herbs, wine, juice, tofu, cereals and neat BBQ packs. Fruit and veg boxes are sold separately. A medium box of organic vegetable costs £13.65 and includes a selection of ten different types of vegetables.

Abel and Cole have the zero air miles stamp of approval and are certified organic by the Soil Association. They Best Organic Home Delivery Service at the 2008 Natural and Organic Awards. Beyond fruit and veg you can also buy meat, fish and poultry, herbs and spices, oil, bread, cereals, honey and other spreads, soup, sweet treats, even baby food. They even deliver Fairtrade bananas, chocolate and coffee - none of which are air freighted. You can buy a mixed medium organic fruit and veg box for £15.95 which includes six types of easy-to-cook vegetables, three types of organic fruit, plus potatoes.

The Organic Delivery Company the name of the farm where each specific piece of fruit and vegetable is grown, for example the celery is grown by Pam in Strawberry Field, Norfolk and the leeks are grown by Langridge Organic in Devon. Beyond fresh food you can also buy vitamin supplements, pet food, even a kitchen waste composter. A medium organic fruit and veg box costs £14.95 and includes eight types of vegetable and four types of fruit.

Towards the back end of the school holidays kids tend to get a bit itchy for new things to do. Getting them involved in the kitchen during mealtime can be a little testing so why not put them on snack duty. It will keep them busy (and fed), for a few milli-moments at the very least. Healthy, tasty, easy snacks are what it's all about. Homemade organic houmous is rich in fibre and protein. Guacamole is also an easy one and the avocadoes are a great source of Vitamin E. The kids can toast bread and break it up into chunks to dip or, with a bit of help for the younger ones, slice up red peppers, carrots and cucumber into colourful soldiers.

Wraps are always fun and easy to make. Giving kids the freedom to add whatever they want stimulates their creative minds - so long as it's edible of course and you have a fridge stocked with fresh veg rather than processed foods.

It's up to us to encourage children and involve them in the kitchen from a young age to establish healthy food habits and attitudes later in life. If you are an enthusiastic cook you're less likely to opt for the takeaway Chinese and instead whip up a quick stir fry... in theory at least.

 

This recipe comes from the Delia Bible, the Complete Illustrated Cookery Course by Delia Smith. Yes she can be a bit annoying and sometimes her portion sizes are a bit mean, but I love Delia anyway. Her recipes always work!

 

Ingredients:

• 1 lb (450g) Ripe Blackberries


• 6 fl oz (175ml) Water


• 1 lb (450g) Granulated Sugar


• Juice of 1 Lemon


• A large nylon sieve and a piece of chemists gauze about 14 inches (35cm) square.

What to do:

• Wash the blackberries and place in a thick based saucepan with the water.


• Then stew them very gently with a lid on for about 20-25 minutes.


• Now and then give them a good mash to reduce them to a pulp and squeeze as much juice out of them as possible.


• After that add the sugar and lemon juice to the pan and allow the sugar to dissolve completely with the heat still low.


• There must not be any whole granules of sugar left. This takes about 10-15 minutes.


• Now turn the heat right up and boil fairly rapidly for 8 minutes, stirring now and then to prevent sticking.


• Meanwhile, warm a large bowl and a 1lb (450g) jam jar* in the oven and get them nice and hot.
  And then place the sieve, lined with the gauze over the bowl and pour the blackberry mixture into the lined sieve.*


• Then, using a wooden spoon, get all the liquid through as quickly as possible, squeezing the remaining pulp as much as you can - but do be quick as the jelly sets if you take too long.


• Now pour the jelly into the warmed jar, cover with a waxed disc*, cool and tie down.
  If it begins to set before you've had a chance to pour it into the jar, just reheat it gently.

*Note:

• I actually used 2 smaller jars when I made this.


• Also my sieve was stainless steel not nylon and when I tried to use the gauze I couldn't get the mixture through it so end up just pushing the mixture through the sieve minus the gauze. It worked fine so I won't bother with the gauze at all next time.


• Preserve recipes always recommend the use of waxed discs but I always just use the jar's original lid. If you've washed it thoroughly and then the put it to dry out in the oven with the jar it seems to be fine. I've never had a problem with my jam or chutney going mouldy... and I've kept some for a very long time!

Sweet corn is at is best in September, if the weather is nice enough for a few final barbecues, you could include some sweet corn with chilli butter, although this fine cooked indoors on the grill too, you don't get quite such a smoky flavour.

Damsons and other English plums are in season this month too. I feel very nostalgic abut damsons, since my family has a couple of trees that have been supplying us with them every year since my Dad was young! If you don't have them in your garden, try your local farmer's market or occasionally very good local green grocers stock them, but you're not likely to find them in a supermarket.

There's a really easy recipe for Damson Cobbler in this month's Olive magazine which I'm looking forward to trying but they're great in crumble or Jam too. If you've no time just gently stew them with some sugar and them bag and freeze for ready made pie or crumble filling all winter. I even made damson gin one year when I wanted to make sloe gin and couldn't find any sloes!

Parsley and Tomatoes are plentiful now and other vegetables include beetroot and garlic, as well as horseradish which I've only ever seen at the farmers' market.

Other fruit in season just now include English apples, pears, figs, raspberries and the first damsons

Seasonal meat and fish are Duck, Grouse, Pigeon, Venison, Brown Trout and Red Mullet,