PolitiCook.net

Eating Close to Home: the Locavore and Other Challenges

What happens when one takes on the challenge to eat only locally produced food (and wine) and all within a 160 kilometer radius (100 miles) for an entire month? It’s about getting back to our grassroots, supporting our local farmers and reducing the miles our food travels from paddock to plate. It’s that simple. It is a movement sweeping the world.

Coined by a Bay Area group, the term locavore refers to people who only eat food grown, processed and produced within a 100 mile radius of where they live.

More and more of us are turning our backs on imported products and getting back to our grassroots supporting local farmers and producers. Eating local food cuts back the distance it travels from the paddock to the plate and in turn reduces harm to the environment. Read more »

Midnight Cocktail Hour at the bento box

(Crossposted at The Breeze at Dawn, my personal blog on LJ)

Whoa. It went from winter to summer around here in one day, seems like. A couple of nights ago I was huddling under a down comforter. Tonight I’m sitting out on my porch barefoot, moonlight filtering in through the bamboo (though, honestly? It can’t really compete with the poetic glow of my computer screen), a light breeze stirring the leaves. And my potatoes have sprouted!

I’ve been bento-ing. It’s part of Project Empty, my big life-decluttering. Simplify, reduce, reuse, eat better, eat less, slow down: an attractive and reusable bento box containing a modest, well-balanced, home-prepared breakfast and lunch, wrapped in a pretty furoshiki, has turned out to be my newest obsession meet a number of criteria in my radically altered way of life.

On my honor, I promise to take this to one of the many, many bento forums online hereafter, but…pictures. Just this once.

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