Food and Health Guild
From Sustainable Ballard
Contents |
Conserve Water...and the city will pay for it!
SPU's Rainwise Program will pay for installing 'raingardens' and cisterns at Ballard area homes. Put your downspout water into a plantbed or a cistern to allow it to infiltrate rather than overwhelm the sewer plant.
Learn about it: Natural Yard Care and
RainWise: Managing Stormwater at Home
COMMUNITY KITCHEN
Community Kitchen
The SB Food Guild is now hosting a monthly community kitchen at the Ballard Community Center. As a group, we'll make several dishes and everyone will take home the meals to freeze or eat during the week. Each month will have a different theme. Local and seasonal vegetarian dishes will be the focus.
When: Third Tuesday, 6-9pm
Where: Ballard Community Center, 28th Ave NW at NW 60th
Cost: $25 per session, scholarships available
Register in advance:
call 684-4093 or
in person at any Community Center or
online www.seattle.gov/parks by clicking SPARC/lifelong learning/cooking
Next Kitchen: August 17, 2010
Menu: Summer Tomato Celebration!
Savory tomato cake, the freshest tomato stew, canned bruschetta topping - the taste of summer in the middle of winter
Join us and be inspired...
Bring 2-3 large and small jars and some containers to take your share home with you.
Menu for September: Back-to-school lunch box treats
September 21, 2010
Questions? Contact Guild Leader: Jennifer Mundee (email Jennifer).
Sign up for the Food & Health Mailing List
Stop. Think. Buy Local.
The Food + Health Guild takes to heart the connection between what we eat and how we feel. Sharing information about local food and local farms - where to buy, how to prepare, why it's important - is the primary focus of this guild.
Participate.
Join us as we spread the word at the monthly Community Kitchen, Seattle Tilth Edible Plant Sale May 1-2, Edible Garden Tour June 26, and upcoming partnering with the Ballard Foodbank. Fall 2009 canning classes were a great success: over fifty people took part in our hands-on canning workshops and are now putting up their harvest.
Why it's important.
Supporting local farmers through your food purchases helps keep farmers farming, keeps land in production, and keeps our local economy moving. Local food is proven to have more nutritional value, better taste, and as we're all learning, uses fewer "food miles." Eating more locally produced food also helps ensure we have safer food - and more food available in case of a crisis. See our "10 Reasons" below for more information.
10 Reasons to Eat Local*
1. Locally grown food tastes better
Food grown in the Northwest was harvested within the last day or two and is fresh, delicious, and loaded with flavor. Produce flown or trucked in from California, Mexico, or New Zealand was probably picked before it was ripe and lacks the vibrant flavor of locally grown food.
2. Local produce is better for you
Fresh produce loses nutrients quickly. Buying local ensures you get the best in both flavor and nutrition. Our bodies naturally crave seasonal crops, requiring more hearty potatoes and cabbages when weather turns colder, and lighter salad greens and cucumbers when it is warmer. Shopping locally tunes you in with the seasons.
3. Local food preserves a diverse food supply
The modern industrial food system – food found in most grocery stores – favors varieties with thick skins that can survive packing and shipping, leaving few varietal options. Family farmers place value on different things, like choosing varieties that are uniquely suited to the Puget Sound region, often favoring heirloom varieties that have been passed down from generation to generation.
4. Local food is free of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)
Genetically modified foods have been banned in Europe and are considered by many to be unsafe. Currently, only large commercial growers can and do use fruits and vegetable seeds and starts that are genetically modified, which means that local farmers are GMO-free.
5. Local food supports local farming families
A typical farmer gets paid just 10 cents of the retail food dollar, but buying directly from the producer or conscientious retailer keeps more $ in their pocket and their family on the land.
6. Local food builds community
Chat with vendors at your farmers market - knowing farmers gives you insight into the seasons, the weather, and the accessible miracle of raising food.
7. Local food preserves open space
Farmers need farmland to grow food, and when we spend our food dollars locally, it’s more likely that farmland will stay in production and not become the next shopping center or condo complex.
8. Local food benefits wildlife
The habitat of a farm - the patchwork of fields, meadows, woods, ponds and buildings - is the perfect environment for many beloved species of wildlife.
9. Local food supports a clean environment
A family farm is a place where resources like fertile soil and clean water are valued. According to some estimates, farmers who practice conservation tillage can sequester 12-14 % of the carbon emitted by vehicles and industry.
10. Local food is about the future
By supporting regional farmers today, you help ensure a safe and healthy food supply for future generations.
Modified from www.eatlocalnow.org
Food, Inc. a new film about our industrial food system
This is now going to be appearing in local theaters. Check out this review in the Seattle Times [1]
Hospitals see the benefit of fresh, local foods
See this April 2009 LA Times article: Hospitals adding fresh, local food to the menu
Young Farmers are a growing trend
recent article in USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-07-13-young-farmers_N.htm?csp=34
EAT LOCAL CHALLENGE - Letter from Vancouver
Dear Eat Local Challengers,
So you are about to become locavores. Did the people at Sustainable Ballard put you up to this? I know them--real troublemakers. But now that you've signed up, let me give you some idea of what to expect. I've been at this for three years now, so I guess I count as a grizzled old veteran.
Expect to be truly challenged. It's true that the local foods movement is revolutionizing the way people eat, but for now, the simple act of eating foods produced by our neighbors on the landscapes we live in can still be surprising hard to do. As a society, we spent most of the last century tearing down our local foods systems; building them up again is going to take some effort. You are now a part of that effort.
Expect an adventure. You will eat new foods, try new flavors. You will have moments of triumph and tragedy in the kitchen. You will find yourself asking questions: Which is more important, organic or local? Who really benefits from the global food trade? Can I handle knowing where my meat comes from? You are on a journey to a strange place called "home."
Expect to eat good food. Eating and drinking is one of the great pleasures in life. Somewhere along the line we forgot that it can be that way at every meal. It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive. What chef can do better than butter and salt on corn-on-the-cob, or fresh crab, or a double-handful of perfect blackberries?
Expect to be changed. Eating locally is about thinking just as much as it is about eating. You may see your community with new eyes, or the natural world around you. Maybe you'll question the way you use your time, or spend your money. Even if it's in the smallest ways, you will not be the same person at the end of your challenge that you were at the beginning.
Expect to become a part of the story of your food. This one I can't explain. But read this line when the challenge is all over and I believe, I truly believe, that it will make a beautiful kind of sense.
Happy eating!
J.B. MacKinnon
Co-author (with Alisa Smith)
Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet