Eat Local!

Eat local: food and sustainability challenge roundup

Eat Local — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 16:27:33 +0000

After one week filled with delicious recipes, hot gardening tips and helpful biking notes, our first Eat Local: food and sustainability challenge is over.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the challenge and contributed on babble, our Facebook groups, twitter, instagram and of course at home. We feel the challenge was a great success much in part to both the participants and all those people and organizations who contributed informative content to rabble.

For those who happened to miss some great posts or want to extend the challenge beyond this week, please find below our roundup of all the exciting Eat Local content!

Eat local, find community: Ottawa's urban food projects bring neighbours together

Eat Local — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 15:38:15 +0000

The first day of rabble's Eat Local! food and sustainability challenge found me on my back step with a hammer, clumsily smashing open black walnuts collected last fall from a tree in Ottawa's Dominion arboretum and then forgotten in my freezer.

It's a shame I didn't have a nutcracker, and even more of a shame that I was working on this task alone, because I believe that the best part of this last decade's upsurge of interest in local food is its potential break us out of individualist mode and bring us together with our neighbours. A turn towards local food can re-connect us not only to the seasons, soils and plants of our home region, but also to each other.

Hamilton, Ontario: A farmers' market paradise for the locals

Eat Local — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 15:26:18 +0000

Our small one-bedroom apartment has a lot of character on the inside, but outside, it’s little more than a large brick rectangle on a tiny piece of land. With the exception of a few stray daffodils that poke through the soil every spring, our garden space is nil.

Student food budget? There's a container garden for that!

Eat Local — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 14:16:16 +0000

The student (and those of us on a student budget) diet is famously known for the staples of Kraft Dinner, ramen noodles and bags of frozen perogies that only cost a few bucks.

But imagine your mac and cheese spiced up with some fresh hot pepper or a nice kale salad to complement your ramen. Heck, how about just some nice herbs to liven up your frozen food? It’s entirely easy and possible to grow these fresh foods no matter how little space you have.

A summer of the Westside Mobile Food Market

Eat Local — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 20:48:46 +0000

As you have probably gathered by now, eating local is a fabulous way to practice sustainable and nutritious solutions to the epidemic of corporate and industrialized food systems. Highly processed and transported foods, owned by giant multinational corporations, come at the expense of our bodies, labour, human rights, the air we breathe, and so much more. How could anyone living in this beautiful Coast Salish Territory not include local foods with their every meal?

DIY projects: How to start a community garden

Eat Local — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 15:49:13 +0000

Last week our How To lesson was about canning, and this week we've also posted some rad reviews of food-related books: Digging the City: An Urban Agriculture Manifesto and Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution.

Biking is too dangerous! Barriers to biking and debunking the myths

Eat Local — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 15:11:58 +0000

Cycling is a great way to get around. It’s healthy, efficient, fun and sustainable. As such I’m always perplexed when people in North America find every excuse to avoid utilitarian cycling.

It’s not necessarily that people here are inherently lazy; in fact in many cases it’s on the contrary -- many of these people who avoid cycling spend hours in the gym several times a week.

I am baffled as to why people would be willing to pay a monthly fee to sit on an exercise bicycle in the gym when they could instead be cycling outdoors for their daily commute or for running errands.

10 environmental change cliches in need of updating

Eat Local — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 14:36:48 +0000

1. "It's like comparing apples and oranges."

The difference between apples and oranges used to be so stark that to compare them would have been, well, fruitless. But thanks to the triumphs of agriculture and biotechnology, soon we’ll have apples that are oranges. No word yet on whether they’ll keep the doctor away.

Update: It’s like comparing apples to genetically modified apples.

2. "The early bird gets the worm."

If wasted food were a country, it would be the third biggest climate criminal

Eat Local — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 16:39:29 +0000

If wasted food became its own pungent country, it would be the world’s third biggest contributor to climate change.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization had previously determined that roughly one-third of food is wasted around the world. Now it has used those figures to calculate the environmental impacts of farming food that is never eaten, along with the climate-changing effects of the methane that escapes from food as it rots.

The results, published in a new report, were as nauseating as a grub-infested apple:

Drink local: What you can learn about sustainable consumption from boozehounds

Eat Local — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:56:03 +0000

I love beer.

And not in the "I'm going to drink a case of Canadian by myself" way. I'm one of those drinkers who is always bothering the bartender about what they have on draft and is aghast when there's nothing micro-brewed available.

I've now lived in two cities that have opened micro-breweries since I've moved there, something I attribute to divine intervention ("And the Lord cameth and delivered us from crappy booze"). While living in Windsor, all that stood between me and the Walkerville Brewery was a 20-minute bike ride.

Too lazy? Take a bike! Urban bicycling is for lazy people

Eat Local — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:17:08 +0000

Here in Canada, as in the United States, people tend to generally view bicycles primarily for recreation or sport. Thus, when someone asks me how I arrived somewhere and I tell them I rode my bicycle, they naturally assume that I am athletic, brave, unusual, always late and I probably need to take a shower.

In reality however, I arrive on time, I’m not sweaty and I rode my bike not for a workout, but rather au contraire, I rode my bicycle because I am lazy.

I step outside my front door and hop on my bike because I’m too lazy to go downstairs in the parking garage to get the car. I pull my bike up to the front door at my destination because I’m too lazy to drive around looking for a parking spot then having to walk from the car to the building.

When eating local, start with your booze

Eat Local — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 05:17:20 +0000

Sure, eating local is very good for the environment, your health, your chakra and your ability to shame people at sushi bars and curry shops. It's a positive step toward a better future. Let's do all of those things, okay? Great. Settled.

Now I'm going to talk to you about alcohol.

Nine things I learned from growing vegetables in my driveway

Eat Local — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 20:04:47 +0000

1. Vegetables are not vegetarian. Tomatoes rotting on the vine? Add fish emulsion. Zucchini leaves yellowing? Add blood meal. Wilting plants? Disembowel a neighbourhood cat... you get the idea.

2. Eggplants grow on a bush, not on the ground as I always imagined. Who knew? Not this person from Northern Alberta.

3. If there is not a personality test that uses bumblebee/wasp/hornet as its array of results, someone should design one. You know "People who are bumblebees work pleasantly together, hornets are silently efficient, wasps come in and get what they need, destroying everything in their wake."

Perfect for the corporate world.

4. I should have planted potatoes.

Red tomato, green tomato: Supermarkets should sell more ugly produce

Eat Local — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:30:16 +0000

Ever since I signed up for an organic, locally grown community supported agriculture share (CSA), I’ve had to readjust my perspective on vegetables and understand that they are not as uniformly pretty as supermarkets would have us believe.

Tomatoes are not always red, but often orange, yellow, purple, even striped. Carrots and parsnips sometimes have multiple points or shapely-looking “legs” that make them challenging to peel. Unsprayed mustard greens, kale and arugula can be full of little pinholes from nibbling bugs, but it doesn’t affect their taste or nutrition, just aesthetic appeal.

Sustainability is about making time

Eat Local — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 12:26:30 +0000

Eating Local in downtown Toronto is nothing like eating local in rural Prince Edward Island. Maybe this sounds obvious, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something these first few days into the Eat Local Challenge.

Homemade #eatlocal meals: Delicious and nutritious leek soup recipe

Eat Local — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:13:31 +0000

With a little thought rabble.ca's Eat Local: food and sustainability challenge isn't that much of a challenge in Vancouver, where we have the abundant Fraser Valley, brimming with autumn fare for us all to enjoy. And the best part is shopping at Trout Lake Farmers Market on Saturdays. Its more like a social outing where fresh, local veggies, fruits, cheeses, breads, fish and more, are part of the conversation.

The basics: What are factory farms and why are they harmful?

Eat Local — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 13:18:59 +0000

By now, you know that not all meat is created equal.

That familiar fable about Old MacDonald and his happy barnyard menagerie is a far cry from the cruel reality of factory farms, where cows, pigs and chickens are crammed together in giant warehouses, fattened on grain and pumped full of antibiotics, then rolled out to the slaughterhouse to become the next Big Mac or box of McNuggets.

In regulatory lingo, these meat factories are called “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs. (Pronounced "cay-fo.")

Editor's note: CAFOs are known in Canada as Intensive Livestock Operations or ILOs.

Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about them -- and a few things you’d probably rather not know.

Local food at the source

Eat Local — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 16:01:22 +0000

Recently I had the great good fortune to be invited to attend a weekend-long party hosted by friends who own a farm a few hours north of Toronto. We all camped out in a pasture at the back of the property, nestled between a picturesque woodlot and a gentle river inhabited by several industrious beavers. At night we made s'mores over the fire and watched movies on a giant sheet tied to the side of the food tent. And we ate. A lot.

Much of the food we had was either grown within a few kilometres of the farm, or made by neighbours and the local restaurant that catered the party, and believe me, we savoured every bite. You'd think that, being in the middle of farm country, local produce would be abundant, but that's not always the case.

Eating local and the Local Food Act: It's more than semantics

Eat Local — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 13:38:55 +0000

In March of this year, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne re-introduced the Local Food Act, in which "local" is defined as the province of Ontario. This soon ran afoul of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and the federal definition of local.

A couple of small business owners in Ontario could have warned her of that. These same businesses were under threat of fines from the CFIA for labeling as local food sourced from more than 50km away -- this contravened the definition of local, enshrined in federal regulations since 1974.

Get saving! Five sustainability tips to benefit the environment and your wallet

Eat Local — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 17:11:04 +0000

The Eat Local: food and sustainability challenge is upon us starting this Sunday September 29 through to Sunday October 6.

We're diving into recipes, researching local food markets and getting out our pickling jars, ready to start and share our local experiences.

#EatLocal: Your resource guide to farmers' markets and food initiatives

Eat Local — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 20:57:31 +0000

The #EatLocal! food and sustainability challenge is upon us in about a week starting September 29 to October 6!

Who's excited?! We're excited.

Join rabble's Eat Local! food and sustainability challenge September 29 to October 6

Eat Local — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:17:43 +0000

Click into the Eat Local! Facebook event, Facebook group and babble thread for additional information on the challenge!

Join rabble.ca in our new Eat Local! food and sustainability challenge Sunday September 29 to Sunday October 6!