"Cooking and Eating Locally" will be the focus of the next One Book-One Community session of 2008 on Tuesday, March 11 at 7 p.m. in the Hoover-Price Campus Center at Mount Union College.

The session will feature cooking demonstrations and food preservation techniques using local foods and will include food samples for the audience. Presentations will be made by representatives from AVI FoodSystems, the food service provider for Mount Union College, noted for its use of local, seasonal food. Michelle Rozich of Locust Hill Fine Foods will discuss and demonstrate various techniques for food preservation.

This session is being held on the heels of Wednesday's presentation on the possibility of a farmers market in Alliance. "It is interesting how our book Plenty has spurred members of the community to think about local growing, cooking and consuming," Harry Paidas, chair of One Book One Community, said. "The authors, who are from Vancouver, British Columbia, have prompted us to start thinking here in Alliance about the origin of our food, and many of our readers want to do something about it."

Audience participation is encouraged and the session, like all One Book-One Community events, is free and open to the public. Paidas added that there should be ample parking in the campus center lot since Mount Union students are on spring break.

One Book One Community is a community-wide reading program that encourages citizens within the same community to read the same book, followed by discussions of the issues that emerge from the book. This year's book is Plenty by Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon.

The program is co-sponsored by the Friends of Rodman Public Library, Mount Union College, the Greater Alliance Foundation and The Review.

Authors Smith and MacKinnon will visit Alliance on Wednesday, April 2 at 7 p.m. in the Mount Union Theatre. "Backyard Gardening" – Real Life Experiences will wrap things up on Wednesday, April 16 at Feed My Sheep Ministries, 114 E. Main St.

For more information, visit www.rodmanlibrary.com/onebook or call 330- 823-6063.