15 Ways to Eat More Local Food

Source some food for thought. Popular books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The 100-Mile Diet are not only informative, but entertaining and will help get you thinking about new ways of developing a closer, more satisfying relationship with your food.

Think inside the box about seasonal produce, the CSA box that is. CSA is short for "community supported agriculture." CSA farms offer subscriptions whereby members receive a box full of fresh seasonal fruits and veggies each week.

You can find a local CSA farms by using the Get Local Info tool on The Daily Green's homepage.

Find and join a community garden in your area.

As the American Community Gardening Association puts it, community gardening "improves people’s quality of life by providing a catalyst for neighborhood and community development, stimulating social interaction, encouraging self-reliance, beautifying neighborhoods, producing nutritious food, reducing family food budgets, conserving resources and creating opportunities for recreation, exercise, therapy and education." Don't you want to be a part of that?

Try cooking one new dish each week using local and seasonal ingredients and keep track of the ones you, your friends and family like the most.

Summer, when so much food is being harvested, is easier than other seasons. Here's some help with the rest of the calendar:

Seasonal Spring recipes and Spring farmers' market tips
Fall farmers' market tips
Seasonal Winter recipes and farmers' market tips

Search out and visit a farmers’ market in your area to find out what's in season in your area and who’s growing it.

You can find a local market by using the Get Local Info tool on The Daily Green's homepage. Learn how to use unfamiliar spring fruits and vegetables, or salivate over some of our delicious seasonal spring recipes.

Commit to growing at least one ingredient for yourself or your family this year, whether it's herbs in a window box, tomatoes on a balcony or a raised bed container garden full of salad greens.

Need help getting started? See The Daily Green's How to Plant an Organic Garden for help.

Even the most passionate of home cooks don’t always find the time to cook delicious, nutritious foods from scratch every day. What you don’t finish today, you can enjoy tomorrow or freeze.

Host a local foods potluck dinner. One of the best ways to learn what foods are in season and how to prepare them is to invite others to teach you. Ask your guests to bring extra copies of their recipes.

Reap where you didn’t sow this season by visiting a pick-your-own berry farm or orchard. Pay attention to how things are grown and see what fruit crops might work in your own yard.

Regional tourism agencies often have information about local pick-your-own farms. You can also find local farms using the Get Local Info tool on The Daily Green's homepage.

Invest in a chest freezer. Freezing is one of the easiest ways to preserve seasonal ingredients like berries and green beans in large quantities.

If you’re already growing some of your own food plants, take the next green step by starting a compost pile. Composting recycles food wastes into plant nutrients. Even city dwellers can compost their vegetable wastes by keeping a worm bin in a closet or under a sink.

Help others to enjoy the local foods harvest by donating some locally grown foods to a food pantry, planting an extra row of vegetables for the hungry or helping a neighbor or a local school to plant a new kitchen garden.

If you're already a kitchen gardener, invite a few people into your garden on Kitchen Garden Day Aug. 23 to show them what local foods look like when growing and what they taste like when they've just been picked warm and ripe from the vine.

If you're lacking inspiration, here's a surefire recipe for success:

Ingredients:

• friends, family and neighbors (young, not-so-young, green thumbs, greenhorns, etc)
• delicious local and home-grown foods
• laughter
• learning
• music

Procedure:
Combine all ingredients in a garden or on a local farm and allow them to mix, mingle and steep. Serve with joy and gratitude.

Celebrate your July 4 as Food Independence Day by sourcing the ingredients of your holiday meal as locally, sustainably and deliciously as possible and by petitioning your governor to do the same.

Kitchen Gardeners International scored a huge success with its Eat the View campaign, which helped convince Michelle Obama to plant an organic vegetable garden at the White House. The campaign helped earn founder Roger Doiron a 2009 Heart of Green Award. Food Independence Day is the group's next campaign.