To be precise, the diet would be defined as "overwhelmingly local, with some cheating allowed."

One day over coffee, I speculated on what sort of staples we could live off in this region. Sweet potatoes. Yikes. I have come to love this tuberous root, but ours has been a slow, "getting to know you" affair.

I had heard about the Lindley's organic mill near the Eli Whitney community, so I went out and bought 50 pounds of bulk flour. I figured "locally milled" was better than nothing, and for the longest time I assumed the organic wheat came from Kansas -- or some place far away. I was delighted to learn about Looking Back Farms down in Tyner. They are about 180 miles away, and they grow organic wheat that ships to Lindley Mills.

I found out about them through the Central Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, which is based in Pittsboro and is a handy authority on most of the sustainable farming in our region.

I felt like my staples were on the rise when I learned I could throw popcorn into the mix. We grow and dry our own popcorn most years, but I had always had it as a "special occasion" food. Moving it into the "staple" column was a great relief.

I was happily chipping away at this project, reducing "food miles" by discovering local vendors to replace far away foods, when a reader tuned me into the Carolina Rice Plantation on the South Carolina Border. After badgering Chatham Marketplace for half a year, it is now on the shelf of our local co-op grocery. Organic rice from 110 miles away. Beat that.

Ketchup has been replaced by Cackalacky out of Carrboro. We have every kind of local meat imaginable, several vendors of eggs on our road, and when we throw in Maple View Dairy products, we can easily eat locally without suffering at all.

Along the way, an entire movement has emerged. There's the Slow Food crowd, and the locavores and our farmer's markets are on the rise.

As an energy fanatic, I was drawn by the "food mile," which can measure how much energy went into that food's production. On the surface, a dramatic reduction in food miles should yield a dramatic reduction in energy consumed. But folks like to quibble over this one.

Take a head of Screech's lettuce. Pretend he harvests it in Pittsboro, drives it off to market, brings it home, drives it back to another market, brings it home, and sells it to me off the back of his truck. By the time we add in my mileage, that can be a lot of miles charged to a single head of lettuce.

If we distill it down to BTUs in vs. calories out -- it looks expensive. And number-crunchers will quickly point out that we might be better off with a thousand heads of lettuce from California.

Which leaves the "food mile" inadequate as a measure of things.

I still like it, however. What I try to include in each mile is freshness and flavor, and knowing the grower by name is important to me. To say nothing of how I like to leave my money in the local economy.

Last year, during the "tainted foodstuffs from China" affair, I listened to a program on the radio that assumed that no one was capable of knowing where the food came from. They were analyzing "food security" from the federal level, and it was causing considerable struggle.

Food security is not hard. It's knowing the name of your local lettuce purveyor.

From time to time, we evoke the "Marco Polo rule," which allows us to bring food home with us from travels afar. That keeps us in maple syrup from Canada and the odd bag of citrus from Florida, depending on the winter.

It turns out that eating locally is not much of a challenge in Chatham County. Our food shed is healthy.

As I was pondering the question, I stopped in at Carolina Confectionery Company for a load of local chocolates. They are tucked in behind Cole Park Plaza and were bracing themselves for their first Valentine's Day since opening.

A chocolate covered almond is more cheating that I normally allow, but we are headed into the high chocolate season, after all.