News & Views

From the excellent blog You Are Where You Eat. Homegrown Minneapolis is an initiative to develop recommendations for the City of Minneapolis to improve sales, distribution and consumption of fresh, locally grown foods to positively impact the health, food security, economy and environment of our City and the surrounding region. Read the rest of this excellent post and get a link to the Minneapolis' draft recommendations for how the

So here I sit, day after day, week after week, writing about my favorite local foods and places, like The Craftsman in Minneapolis, Flatbush Farm in Brooklyn, and Peace Coffee, roasted in the Twin Cities.

It was just over 6 weeks ago when I joined my first CSA, bought Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and started hunting down restaurants serving local, sustainable foods.

Just read an excellent post by someone in Minneapolis called Reetsyburger on her cleverly named blog You Are Where You Eat. The post includes all sorts of great information on grass fed, local, sustainable meat and why it totally rocks. Here's an excerpt (which quotes University of Wisconsin Extension):

With Easter now over, and copious amounts of ham and potatoes consumed across the nation (including my wife's Aunt Carol's house), I can turn to a question I've been mulling over in my head: what would Jesus eat?

Some of my favorite writing on the topic of local, sustainable food these days comes from Rob Smart in Vermont, whose Every Kitchen Table blog (and Twitter posts) cite some of my favorites (Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser) as inspirations. Smart's March 27 post, explaining the downside of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, is especially good.

Check out the spiffy new Simple, Good, and Tasty logo! It was designed by my good friend Stuart Flake, an amazing designer. You can see more of his work at What Agency, Inc.

No big surprise in the Wall Street Journal's recent article about local businesses suffering when a Wal-mart comes to town. But there's also some interesting advice for small business owners and local grocers when it comes to staying alive. For one thing, the article cautions these businesses against trying to match Wal-mart on price, suggesting that this will simply compound the problem, reducing sales by 25% rather than 17%.

Good news! After nearly a year of promises, and under apparent pressure from the Obama administration, the USDA has finally instituted a ban on downer cows in the US food supply.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, a post about buying food that's local to Ireland. Found a great post from the Value Ireland website, quoting Irish Minister for State Tony Killeen. Here's a quote from Value Ireland:

“I would ask consumers to purchase local this year in solidarity with domestic producers who like everyone else have felt the effects of the economic recession,” stated the Minister of State.