What We're Reading Right Now

The End of Food, by Paul Roberts

"The very meaning of food is being transformed: food cultures that once treated cooking and eating as central elements in maintaining social structure and tradition are slowly bring usurped by a global food culture, where cost and convenience are dominant, the social meal is obsolete, and the art of cooking is fetishized in coffee-table cookbooks and on television shows."

The Face on Your Plate, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

"We eat every day. We put our forks into something or someone three times a day. We cannot disengage ourselves, even if we wanted to. We are all involved in agriculture on a daily basis. We vote with every meal. We make a difference with every bite. We cannot choose to ignore this issue, thinking it has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with us."

A Month's Worth of Lunch

Want to go a little further in your fight to help the environment? We all eat, but have you ever taken into account the massive amounts of packaging tied to the food we consume? Being more conscious about how to reduce food waste is one of the easiest ways we can make a difference environmentally.

Danielle works a typical 9-5, and she used to spend upwards of $50 per week on lunches from nearby grocery stores and restaurants - lunches wrapped in plastic or styrofoam, with plastic silverware, in plastic or paper bags. However, she stopped all that ridiculousness in 2007, and she's been bringing her own lunches to work ever since: homemade soups, leftover rabbit stews, pastas, sandwiches, tomatoes, squash and other vegetables from our garden - all on reusable china or in compostable wrappings. The picture here is what July's lunches looked like for Danielle.

The folks at TakeOutWithOut have launched a campaign to reduce restaurant waste. Check it out and become inspired to readjust your own eating habits. You can make a difference too, one lunch at a time.

What We're Reading Right Now

Animal Factory, by David Kirby

"Nature did not intend for animals to live by the hundreds or thousands, crammed together inside buildings, raised with pharmaceutical products, with no access to grass, sunlight, or the clean, healthy scent of outdoor air."

"Many Americans have no idea where their food comes from, and many have no desire to find out."

'Tis the Season for Tomatoes

Not only did our Matt's Wild Cherry win highest brix at yesterday's The Good, The Big, & The Ugly Tomato Festival, but our tomatoes are also featured in this month's Sauce Magazine, on stands now. Check out the stunning photos of our tomatoes taken by Greg Rannels.