Food and Health Guild
From Sustainable Ballard
SAVE THE DATE
5th Annual Ballard Edible Garden Tour
Who: Sustainable Ballard invites you to a self-guided walking / biking tour of food gardens in the central area of Ballard.
What: Be inspired! Check out your neighbors’ gardens. This walking or biking tour provides examples of creative uses of parking strips, containers, raised beds, chicken coops, fruit trees, berries, bees and more! Meet the gardeners and ask questions. The tour includes a dozen gardens to explore within walking distance of Trinity United Methodist Church and Salmon Bay School.
Be entered into a Raffle of gardening books, supplies & Fiskars tools.
Get your gardening questions answered by local NW gardening authors.
When: Saturday June 29, 2013, 10am - 3pm.
Where: Buy your ticket/map at the parking lot west of Trinity United Methodist Church, 6512 23rd Ave NW, on the day of the tour.
Cost: $10 (kids are free) supports Sustainable Ballard's community projects.
More info: Visit www.sustainableballard.org
GLEANING FARMER'S MARKET PRODUCE FOR THE FOOD BANK
In 2011, Food Guild members collected thousands of pounds of food donated by farmers at the Ballard and Interbay Farmers Markets and transported the food to the Ballard Food Bank. We are in the process of calculating how much the generous farmers have donated in the last year.
Ballard Farmers Market - Sundays
If you are interested in helping with the gleaning project, Contact Guild Leader: Jennifer Mundee (email Jennifer)
COMMUNITY KITCHEN
Community Kitchen -- Cooking Classes with a Twist of Community Building
We are taking a summer break but will be back soon with a new bunch of ideas for some tasty and fun dishes to mix up!
The SB Food Guild hosts 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, 6-8pm
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: TBD
Menu: In the works
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
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
10 Ingredients for a healthy food economy
A group of Vancouver BC chefs, farmers and foodies developed this list. We Washingtonians can learn from and copy their efforts!
1. Create a task force to coordinate the local food market
2. Pool resources to achieve economies of scale
3. Build food hubs throughout the region, and connect them by rail
4. Engage and educate the public
5. Bring ethnic restaurants, retailers and farmers into the local food movement
6. Bridge the gap between organic and non-organic
7. Leverage the power of public sector procurement
8. Protect farmland
9. Rebuild the social safety net
10. Build pride in our local food system -- and hold politicians accountable to it
http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/10/18/TenIngredients/
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