The Locavore

The view of the Nova Scotia highway from the rental-car window was bleak for me, a foodie on a road trip. The sky was grey, the road too, and the only possibilities for food in sight were gas station-procured chips and pop or meals from fast-food chains serving fries, burgers or, at best, factory-made soup and salad.

I was driving to New Brunswick while researching a book about the local food movement in Canada and didn’t want to eat processed food of any kind. I was interested only in homemade snacks and local meals made by the people serving me. But by lunchtime on Day 3, I was tired of apples and yogurt and apricots. I needed a real meal and couldn’t find it.

For foodies who travel the fast-food continent, this is a familiar predicament: Is it possible to eat well on the road, even with kids in the backseat?

“It’s terrible. You can’t find good food. If you are travelling in a car, you would have to go far off the beaten path to eat,” says Arlene Stein of the Toronto chapter of Slow Food, an organization that aims to preserve local food traditions and counter fast food. Stein travels long distances regularly with her husband and two daughters, and faced their worst-case scenario on a drive to Chicago: After leaving Windsor, nothing passed their lips until they arrived in the Windy City.

“You have to plan and be thoughtful,” she said. These days, Stein travels with snacks (celery, carrots, sandwiches and cookies from home) and a cooler (to fill up at farmers markets during harvest months on their way). When they need a meal, they take a detour and drive into town to search out a mom-and-pop diner. “Something that looks like it’s been there a long time, making things from scratch,” she said.

While leaving the highway may push back your ETA, it does have its perks.

Su Grimmer, a Nanaimo-based food and travel writer who frequently visits Pacific Northwest states, finds that searching for good food adds to her trips. “Eating is part of the cultural experience,” she said. Her tricks to finding good eats on the road include searching out markets, staying somewhere with cooking facilities so she can prepare what she buys and talking to strangers.

By asking a couple in a grocery store where to find good bread on a recent trip to visit friends in California, she discovered a place where a Mexican woman was turning masa harina into tortillas and stuffing them with pork raised on a local farm; her friends who live nearby hadn’t even heard of it.

Last summer, chef Anthony Rose of Toronto’s Drake Hotel drove around Southern Ontario with his wife and four-year-old son, eating only local food bought from farmers and small shops. The chain they visited, and only once, was Starbucks, he said. They stayed in bed and breakfasts and camped, which allowed them to prepare their own simple food. In the car, they packed a cooler with crackers, cheese and fresh fruit.

And his son didn’t complain about not eating fast food. While he has dined at McDonald’s with his grandparents – “He just loves it to death” – as long as they had fresh fruit, water and milk on hand, he was happy.

“It’s a great way to see the country,” Rose said. “It’s a huge adventure.”

As for my trip out east, I didn’t go hungry. I picked up locally made cheese, and ate simple meals made from scratch. When in doubt, I stuck to eggs and had them poached or fried. One of the best meals was from a restaurant in a tiny town north of Moncton, not too far from the coast. The soup was thick with chunks of potato and carrot and came with a homemade roll, warm from the oven. As I ate my meal, I faded into the lunch scene and got a taste of life different from my own. And it added only minutes to my trip.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Sarah Elton’s book Locavore: From Farmers’ Fields to Rooftop Gardens, How Canadians Are Changing the Way We Eat will be published this month.