For the last twenty-eight of the thirty years of the Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, chef Annie Somerville has championed and celebrated all that sustainable, vegetarian cuisine can represent: local, seasonal, fresh, nutritious, healthy, tasty – and, especially, direct from the farm.

Since opening in 1979 in the rehabilitated warehouse at the Fort Mason Center, the Greens Restaurant has prospered by featuring the finest, local, seasonal organic ingredients, lovingly prepared by chef Somerville and her talented culinary artists to entice your palate and satisfy your hunger to make the world a better place.  By how the Greens Restaurant operates, focusing on vegetarian cuisine from local, sustainable, organic farms and businesses featuring artisan foods, they’ve also been leaders in helping mitigate human impacts climate change.

My family and I sat down with Chef Somerville after a delicious meal of grilled polenta with roasted wild mushrooms, shallots and herb cream, followed by farro spaghetti with winter squash and greens as well as mesquite grilled brochettes, mushrooms, yellow finn potatoes, peppers, red onions, yams, fennel and Hodo Soy tofu with charmoula and almond cherry quinoa.  Why wait for a taste of heaven?  That practically all the ingredients for our vegetarian meal came fewer than a hundred miles away, all the better.

“It’s been a groundswell,” admits the personable and relaxed Somerville, this despite a rapidly filling restaurant on a Friday night. No sign of a downturn in business here in spite of the faltering economy, something shared in common among other ecopreneurial enterprises.  “Our patrons savor our delicious food because they appreciate just how fresh it is.  Because of this, I focus on simple preparations, drawing from the abundance of produce found at the local farmers’ market as well as direct from the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in the Marin Headlands and Bolinas’ Star Route Farms.”  Her approach to simple vegetarian cuisine is celebrated in her two cookbooks, most recently Everyday Greens, and her earlier cookbook, Fields of Greens.

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Editor’s note: We’re pleased to welcome Sarah Lozanova to the Green Options writing team. A native of Chicago, Sarah holds an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio School of Management, and also writes for Worldchanging Chicago. Along with fellow Windy City resident Jason Phillip, she’ll be covering green issues in Chicago, as well as the broader Midwest.

The average bite of food on our dinner plates tonight has traveled more than 1500 miles from where it was cultivated. This was not true, however, from September 10-16 for participants of the Chicago-based Localvore Challenge, who only ate foods grown in their region. The event sponsor, the Green City Market, created a list of restaurants that serve meals that are localvore-friendly and a blog site for support from fellow localvores. In addition to reducing their carbon footprint, many participants likely gained awareness of where their food comes from. Such a challenge did limit the food choices that were available to them, as they were not able to snack on mangos and sip on Chilean wine.

The United States imports food from more than 130 countries. The quantity of food has been increasing annually by about 15% since 1991, according to the FDA. Even though Illinois is covered largely by farms, it is estimated that the state imports more than 90% of its food. Corn and soybeans are the most widely grown crops in the state, but the majority of these harvests are not consumed by humans. For example, more than 80% of the corn grown in this country is used for cattle feed, while 1/6 of Illinois corn is utilized for ethanol production. Roughly 80% of the corn and soybeans grown in Illinois are genetically modified. Illinois is built on fertile farmland that is among the richest in the world thanks to glaciers, yet this natural resource is increasingly being developed and covered by concrete. Unfortunately, the rich Illinois soils rarely benefit the inhabitants of Illinois directly, as little of their food is cultivated here.

The demand for local foods in Illinois has grown considerably, and some are saying it is greater than the supply. As the price of fossil fuels increase, this trend may shift. In the meantime, some are voluntarily taking on the challenge of eating local foods. This is a concrete way to influence land use and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, while strengthening the local economy.