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Food

Cook a meal from ingredients grown within ten miles

Halfway through the shop you realise the butter is out — the nearest dairy herd turns out to be forty miles off, not ten. What's left is a meal the colour of the field it came from: potatoes, onions, a marrow the size of a forearm, eggs from a hen you can see from the kitchen window. Salt and oil don't count, so you cook with the vegetables' own water and whatever fat a farmer at the market spares you. Ask any stallholder where something came from and they'll usually tell you to the field. By October you've eaten a meal that is basically a map of the district.

Practical

Cost
$20–50 for ingredients
Best time
Local harvest season, roughly August to October
Difficulty
Moderate
Time it takes
A day to source ingredients, an evening to cook
What people get wrong
People assume 'local' includes salt, oil, and spices, then find none of it grows within ten miles. They also underestimate how hard local meat and dairy are to find and end up with an accidentally vegetarian meal.
With
A group

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    The first cut surprises you: secateurs snip, not tear, and the stem should give without you tugging the vine.

    Best time:Late August in southern France through to October further north

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