Reinventing The Wheel

Local Foods Wheel, courtesy of Maggie Gosselin

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the environmentalist’s charge to “eat local?” Think the term “slow food” means “not McDonalds?” Intimidated by the 100-mile diet, or clueless when it comes to constructing weekly menus that highlight in-season foods from your neck of the woods? (Seriously, who has the time to plan menus?).

Then breathe easy, because you are most certainly not alone.

We are all the products of more than one generation of industrial food conditioning. (Example: As a child, I once asked a grade school friend where the apple she was eating came from, and she said, “the store”). Asking us all to kick our supermarket addiction cold tofurkey will not go over well. Clear, simple, education and awareness, the mundane, yet vital ingredients to any substantial behavior change are definitely in order.

Enter, the Local Foods Wheel.

The result of a beautiful collaboration between a chef, an artist and an educator, the Local Foods Wheel is a brilliantly simply tool for education ourselves about the foods grown our region of the world, and when they are in season.

From the publisher:

“The Local Foods Wheels are beautifully designed, full-color dials showing which foods are grown locally and when they are in season. The top wheel of each dial shows the foods that are available year-round, and the bottom shows foods that are available only seasonally. As you turn the top wheel, it exposes one season of the bottom wheel at a time, so that you can see what seasonal foods are available in addition to the year-round local foods. Turn the wheel over, and you will find seasonality references, arranged alphabetically. This list gives greater detail about when local foods are harvested and available.”

Not only a great tool/reminder for adults, but a fun way to instill an appreciation of the seasons, local agriculture and the bounty they can produce when working in harmony.

Now for the sad part: currently, the wheels are only available for the San Francisco Bay and New York Metro areas (big cities have all the fun). But hopefully, the authorettes will see fit to get the wheels rolling (couldn’t resist) for a few more regions of the country.

In the meantime, why not run with the idea on your own? Contact your most local farmer’s organization, gardening club or University agricultural extension office and ask them for info on seasonal edibles and native plants that thrive in the climate you have to work with.

Won’t discovering a new favorite dish, or inventing a new recipe featuring local goodies, be worth it?

An original 5 Minutes for Going Green post. To read more of Beth’s sustainable scribblings, visit ecospheric.blogspot.com and gengreenlife.com.

And remember the Ecostore USA giveaway is going on until Sunday January 25th at 7pm EST, and all you have to do to enter is comment on the giveaway post with a valid email address; if you haven’t entered yet, what are you waiting for?

5 Responses to Reinventing The Wheel
  1. All Rileyed Up
    January 22, 2009 | 2:34 pm

    For any readers who live in the Orange County, CA area, here is a link to South Coast Farms, which offers customers basket deliveries of seasonal, locally grown veggies –http://southcoastfarms.com/

  2. Robbie (Going Green Mama)
    January 23, 2009 | 4:08 pm

    Hello! I always enjoy reading this site and tagged it this week.

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  5. The EcoSpheric Blog » Locavor-acious
    March 7, 2010 | 6:15 pm

    […] Earlier this year, I filed a report at 5MinutesforGoingGreen.com on a sweet new tool for educating ourselves about the foods grown our region of the world and the seasons in which they are naturally abundant, called the Local Foods Wheel. […]