Moosewood: a Sustainable Food Tradition

The Moosewood brand is familiar in many natural households because of the line of popular vegetarian and pescatarian cookbooks by that name, but before Moosewood was a cookbook it was a restaurant.

Moosewood was founded in 1973, in Ithaca NY, where it is still run by a workers’ collective including many of the original members. Moosewood restaurant is dedicated to serving fresh and delicious vegetable-based dishes. While there are many great vegetarian restaurants today, Moosewood was an early and lasting success [...]

Eat, Drink, and Get REAL: First Annual Oakland Eat Real Fest Hits the Streets

The San Francisco Street Food Festival last Saturday was only a sample of the excitement in store for real food fans this weekend as the first annual Eat Real Festival gets underway this weekend in Oakland. Food, beer, music, and contests are planned for a 3-day celebration that encourages a healthy and sustainable alternative to our typical fast food lifestyles.

When and Where
The festivities begin this Friday, August 28, at 4:00 and will continue through the weekend with full days [...]

Eat Real in California This August

Bay Area residents and visitors can indulge themselves this weekend and next with organic food, live music, beer, and more when the real food revolution hits the streets. This Saturday, August 22nd, enjoy the San Francisco Street Food Festival from 11AM to 7PM. Next weekend, head over to Oakland for 3 days of real food celebrations during the 2009 Eat Real Festival.

San Francisco Street Food Festival
Fun and food for a good cause is what the first Street Food [...]

I Scream for Ice Cream

Organic ice cream is the ultimate luxury dish and the best is always local, always sustainable. Since today is my birthday and I’ll be in New England enjoying the fruits of the season, here are some of my favorite ice cream stands, ranging from simply amazing local to supremely sustainable. If you aren’t traveling up this way during ice cream season (and let’s face it, for a New Englander, any season is ice cream season: we consume the most ice [...]

Slow and Indigenous

Slow Food, one of the premiere global green food groups, has evolved over time. Its origins in Italy and the exclusivity of some conviviums have led to charges of food elitism, while others suggest that the emphasis on artisanal traditions ignores the fact that industrial food is still a necessity and draws energy and attention away from reforming the problems with commercial food systems. Tom Philipott, Grist’s wonderful food and agriculture writer, sums it up successfully:

“For all the buzz surrounding [...]

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved

Sandor Ellix Katz could be called a god, a guru, and a great teacher, but he’s so modest he’d never admit to anything other than being a fermentation fetishist. What Sandor wants you to know, though, is that fermentation is at the heart of human consumption. Consider the simple observation that many common and delicious foods and drinks are probably fermented, including the “ordinary” such as bread, cheese, wine, and beer; the more exciting such as cider, chocolate, coffee, tea, [...]

The Inspired Organic Table

If you want to reduce your environmental impact, the kitchen is a great place to start. Whenever you cook a fresh meal for yourself and your family, you have many different opportunities to shrink your carbon footprint. For example, cooking from scratch allows you to choose more vegetable-based meals, use organic ingredients, and plan menus appropriate to your location and season. Whatever you choose to cook, you will also save power by using more whole ingredients at home and eating [...]

Summertime and the Slow Living is Easy…

Well, maybe not that easy. Slow living, ironically, takes some work in this fast-paced, consume-it-in-a- minute culture. To adopt a slow ethic means to use less resources, savoring the ones we need more fully, and embracing the opportunity to do more with less. It’s possible to change our orientation, but most of us still spend the vast majority of our day working and living amidst people, institutions, and businesses that aren’t conducive to slowing it down.

So how do we find [...]

Full Moon Feasts

Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection, by chef Jessica Prentice, is a different kind of local food book. Based on the lunar cycles of the year, each chapter focuses on the celebratory foods traditionally associated with each month of the year.

For example, according to the book, we have the sap moon in early spring, followed by the egg moon, the milk moon, the fat moon, and the mead moon. The recipes featured in each chapter focus on [...]

Feeding Kids from Berkeley to New Orleans: Edible Schoolyard and Blue Bottle Coffee

The Edible Schoolyard has been one of the most visible sustainable food projects of our time. Surprisingly controversial — Is it really elitist to feed good food to public school children? — there is no denying that Alice Waters’ Delicious Revolution is made manifest in Berkeley’s educational system. As models go, it has its proponents and detractors. As it spreads to less affluent school districts, though, the benefits cannot be denied. The version in New Orleans is part of a [...]