Thanks to the Serious Eats site for alerting me to a new July 4 campaign. Kitchen Gardeners International (the same people who successfully led the charge for a White House Kitchen Garden) are encouraging patriotic citizens to celebrate America’s independence by feasting on locally grown and raised food on the fourth.
The related “Food Independence Day” petition asks the nation’s 50 governors to participate and share their recipes and the names of the local farmers, fisherman, and food producers whose ingredients they’ll be using.
So far, more than 5,000 people have pledged to eat a meal made with local food on July 4. Check out the map of where things are planned. If there’s nothing near you, join the campaign and add yourself. If you don’t think you can create a mostly local meal, pick one dish and try to include one local thing–maybe some mint from a community garden in a drink, broccoli from a CSA, watermelon from a roadside stand in a salad, or a roasted pastured chicken from a nearby farmer’s market.
Need help finding a source of local food? Local Harvest is a good resource for finding farmers, CSAs, and other local producers by zip code.
And just so this doesn’t all sound too utopian or elitist, heed organizer Roger Dorian, who wisely cautions that “moving towards food independence doesn’t mean having to do everything and grow everything on our own. It’s about learning what we, our soils, climate, and local farmers can produce, effortlessly or with some coaxing, and committing to eat more of these things when nature offers them up to us. In doing so, we discover that we have more choices and freedom than we realized.”
Help spread the word about Food Independence Day by adding the map, petition, press release and widgets to your website, blog, or social network page.
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