Go Local! Challenge | Kitchen Stewardship | A Baby Steps Approach to Balanced Nutrition

Entries Tagged as 'Go Local! Challenge'

Why You Should Really, REALLY Get to Know Your Farmer (Even if Your Friends Already Have)

October 20th, 2010 · 105 Comments · Food for Thought, Science of Nutrition

Our family has been buying grass-fed beef and chicken at a premium from Grassfield’s Farm in Coopersville, MI for about 18 months now. When we began, I didn’t ask a zillion questions, simply because I knew enough trusted real foodies who went there and I knew they had good quality, organic, grassfed products. Last Saturday [...]

POP! The Best Sound Ever Heard in a Kitchen

September 8th, 2010 · 29 Comments · Do It Yourself, Organic Gardening, Recipes

If you’ve ever canned anything, you know exactly what I’m talking about. After all the prepping food, filling jars, carefully lowering into the water and trying not to get burned getting the jars out, while they’re sitting on the counter, you start to hear: “Pop!” “Pop!” “POP!” It’s the sound of something done right, of [...]

Revealing the Local Grand Rapids Area Real Food Resource Page

July 2nd, 2010 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized

I’ve been a local foods consumer for about five years now, ever since I discovered the joys of the Farmer’s Market and the summer fruit U-pick possibilities in our area. I’ve been asking even more questions of farmers lately, and I’ve compiled all my favorites (and some other recommendations from friends) into a Local Grand [...]

10 Questions to Ask Your Farmer

July 1st, 2010 · 15 Comments · Uncategorized

Joel Salatin’s said it. Michael Pollan has probably said it. Countless bloggers, locavores, and whole foods enthusiasts have said it. Get to know your farmer. Well. If the instructions were, “Pay your farmer what he’s worth,” or “Read the manual for your new car,” or “Follow the recipe exactly,” it would be easy to follow [...]

How do You Get Your Garlic Fix?

June 29th, 2010 · 33 Comments · Recipes

One of my many favorite produce items to “Buy local” is garlic. I even planted some in the garden last fall, and it came up like clockwork in the spring (anyone know how to tell when to harvest it?). Fresh garlic, straight from the soil, is so pungent and healing in its bite. I was [...]

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Tags: garlic·Go Local! Challenge

Michael Pollan on “Can Grassfed Feed the World?”

June 11th, 2010 · 58 Comments · Food for Thought

Michael Pollan came on stage carrying bags of processed foods. He proceeded to pull out “edible food products” and do a little stand up comedy about all the corny ingredients in them, and how creative the food manufacturing industry is getting to keep coming up with new products that we then think we need to [...]

Real Gardening vs. American Lawncare

June 9th, 2010 · 78 Comments · Uncategorized

Two weeks ago, I was watching my neighbor meticulously patch his lawn after spending a half hour edging the sidewalk. I thought, “If he spent that much time and care on a vegetable garden, he could feed his family all summer long.” Then last week on my son’s preschool field trip, the instructor showed the [...]