Q&A with Lisa Rose Starner, homesteader and herbalist.

You've been labeled as a foodie, food blogger, herbalist and Urban Ranch owner. How do you describe yourself?

Homesteader and herbalist. I'm an urban homesteader, I've got more than 100 plants at my house that we use for food, and then I dry for herbal remedies and turn them into syrups and concoctions.

Do you consider yourself a foodie?
Being a foodie falls short of what it means to me. It's not about who has the best food.

So you're not offended by SPAM eaters?
(Laughs) I was brought up on casseroles with canned tuna and canned cream of mushroom soup and white bread - and that's OK with me. I look at the food culture and it's gotten so wrapped up in itself. We kind of forget that not everybody has access to high-end foods, not everybody has space in their garden to grow food. Am I offended by SPAM? God, no. Am I horrified by SPAM? Absolutely! I'm much less of a food snob than somebody would guess me for. Sometimes, you just want the bologna sandwich. I may horrify people by saying that. I did have a bologna sandwich a year ago - I just had one.

The Urban Ranch, your live and work space, has been in your husband's family since 1951. What came first, food or love?
We met 10 years ago at a founding meeting of the Grand Rapids Food Systems Council, so food came first. He sat next to me and I asked to borrow a pen. We drove out to New Holland for beers with the group and then we had a date walking around the farmers markets.

When did you start becoming conscious about what you eat?
Food has been a main component of my life since I was an undergraduate at Grand Valley.

What was it that struck up your interest in food?
I studied in Nice as part of my undergraduate work. And that was probably the first time I learned what it meant to spend hours at a table. The Europeans experience food in a very different way that Americans experience food.

When did you start cooking?
I'm self-taught and I really started cooking in college. Certainly when I went abroad, that opened up my learning. One of my first Asian infusions - much to my amusement - was adding bull kelp seaweed to macaroni and cheese. It was awful!

So you learned by trial and error?
Lots of trial and error. Finally, I learned to seek out people who really knew what they were doing. From that point on, I've always been surrounded by people who know how to cook or know how to grow things.

What do you listen to while you cook?
Miles Davis.

How local is your diet?
50 to 75 percent - it's not all local. I like my coffee. Certainly, there are times when I'm at Meijer and they don't have local shredded cheese, and that's all I have the capacity for. I try to stay away from Kraft, but there's some non-local and non-organic stuff that ends up in my cart. It's exhausting to feel like you have to achieve this sense of perfection. Is it possible? Yes, humans would not have survived up to this point. Plus, we were more mobile. Now were sedentary and we have grocery stores.

Is it possible to completely eat local?
Once upon a time, people ate only local food. The question really is, how much do we want to eat local? How much do we want to invest in terms of infrastructure in storage and time for food preservation? And that depends on the person, really.

Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Lindsay Patton-Carson. Photo: Adam Bird