As Eat Drink Local Week approaches–our week-long tribute to our foodshed begins Saturday, June 23rd–we wanted to introduce the sponsors that have helped us organize the event and also support local and seasonal eating year-round.
Meatless Monday–a non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns which were founded in New York City, in association with the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health–is one such group.
By providing recipes for healthy and delicious meat-free meals–like those that you’d make from your local farm-stand–the organization hopes to help participants reduce meat consumption by 15% in order to improve both their health and that of the planet, in terms of climate change and our carbon footprint. They chose to focus on one day a week after Presidents Wilson, Truman and Roosevelt, who suggested voluntary “meatless days” during the world wars.
That’s why when we chose the ingredients of the week — the eight often-overlooked seasonally available and locally sourced ingredients we highlight each year–we made sure only one of them was meat, and that even that one could be replaced with another product. The final list is Spinach, Eggs, Goat (milk, cheese, yogurt, meat, etc.), Radishes, Rose Wines, Porgy, Fava Beans, and Hops.
Most restaurants participating in Eat Drink Local Week will be serving a meatless prix-fixe on Monday (find a place to eat here). And you can find recipes for all of these–just check out your choices for radishes!–at meatlessmonday.com.
See you during Eat Drink Local Week!
