Sustainable Table: Get Involved

The concept of sustainability involves community, especially your local community. This involves friends, family, neighbors and those who live in your area. Industrialization has not just brought us bland and less healthful food, it has helped contribute to the breakdown in social ties that people once had with each other.

Sustainable Table wants to help change that trend. We want to bring people back to the dinner table for delicious food, as well as stimulating conversation and good company. Below are some suggestions on how we can do that – if you have any other ideas, please share them with us!

Ways you can build community include:

Host a Sustainable Dinner Party
Be Social
Buy Local
Transform Others
Cook!

Host a sustainable festival

This can be as simple as a neighborhood barbecue in your backyard to a community event on public land with speakers, music and outdoor markets. The key is community. Start a tradition and have one every year.

You can have a sustainable theme for the festival – spring planting, fall harvest, tomato-fest (or any kind of vegetable-fest). New York City has Pickle Day each October – pick a food or vegetable you like that’s sustainably grown in your area and create a festival around it!

If you’d like to host your own Sustainab le Festival, read our handout “How to Host a Sustainability Festival in Ten Easy Steps.”

Neighborhood Sustainable Club

Start a sustainable club in your neighborhood. Look for ways to make your home more sustainable. Look for nontoxic cleaners, sustainable wood products, energy efficient appliances. A great place to get ideas and tips is in The Green Guide.

Meet regularly to share good food (and swap recipes!) while your group works on ways to get involved with local issues. Adopt a highway, plant trees, save a rainforest, host a sustainable bake sale, have a sustainable community cookout, start a community garden – the list of things you can do is endless. The key is to get involved – and have fun!

Other variations on a neighborhood club are:

Cooking club – Gather with friends once a month and together learn how to can, jar, and cook sustainable recipes. Invite chefs from local restaurants to come and show you cooking tips. And don't forget – fondues are fun! A general internet search for cooking clubs will give you ideas on what to do.
Book Club - You could also start a sustainable book club. There are basically two variations on this – you can take your existing book club and spice it up by bringing sustainable food with you to gatherings, or you can either start a club or convince your existing one to focus on sustainable books – or do a combination of the two.

Some of our recommendations include:

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser – was on the bestseller list for many weeks.

My Year of Meats

Hope’s Edge

Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Join someone else’s club – You could become a snail and join Slow Food. With over 77,000 members in 48 countries, Slow Food celebrates local food and artisans in an atmosphere of community and conviviality. The US Chapter of Slow Food boasts over 12,500 members.

Now that you have all this great food, what are you going to do? Cook it, of course! Many people today were not brought up cooking, so it can seem complicated and time consuming. But, have no fear, cooking is a joy and something most cooks look forward to – try it for yourself and see how rewarding making food can be. Below are suggestions on what you can do.

Take a cooking class. Some chefs offer cooking/tasting courses at their restaurant so check your local papers or phone a few independently-owned restaurants in your area. If you can’t find one, approach a local chef to see if s/he would be interested in doing a sustainable course. People pay a fee for the food and chef’s time – the chef then teaches you how to cook by cooking a meal for you. Everyone enjoys the meal and discusses what they just learned. It’s an excellent way to make new friends and to share your joy of food and sustainability. And it doesn’t have to end with just one meal! Turn it into a course or a monthly event.
You can also look to see if there are any cooking schools in your area or any colleges and universities that might offer cooking classes. Specifically request sustainable food. Sustainable Table’s Sustainable Culinary Schools section has some schools you might want to check out.
Sometimes farms and even community centers offer cooking classes.
If you can’t find a cooking class, start one! You could either cook yourself or try to find a chef (or different chefs each month). Post up fliers around town to get a group together. And start cooking! A lot of the joy of cooking is discovering new things, new tastes, new combinations of flavors – so have fun – and get cooking!
You could turn your cooking class into a sustainable cooking club. Once you get good enough with your sustainable recipes, offer to go to schools and community centers to give cooking demonstrations. Start the type of cooking class you were originally looking for – if you’re interested in sustainable cooking, there are most likely more people in your area with the same interest. Help them get started – it’s a great way for you to continue learning.