Green Living

If you’ve seen Food Inc., then you may be stopping to think even more before you buy or bite. Just glancing at the 40 pesticide residues on your average head of broccoli over at What’s On My Food? is enough to make me feel faint. In light of that, here’s a menu of options as you concoct a life of cooking and dining you can feel good about, right here in L.A. (and elsewhere).

Friendly Fruits and Veggies:

At Veggie Trader, find farmy neighbors with a bounty of leftover fruits and veggies to spare or find hungry ones who might want yours. Get your barter on and get the freshest produce around.

Fallen Fruit inspires us to find our inner Eve and pluck the fruits from public property that really aren’t so forbidden. Follow a handy map to the overhanging figs and hillside berries in your hood.

Communal Urban Agriculture:

CSAs are a great way to have a relationship with the he or she who grows your food. And they’re getting even closer to home.

CSA California has reinvented the drive-through with a Downtown produce pick up. You swing around a roundabout in your car and come away with a mixed bag of goodies for your week, grown organically in Riverside. 25 dollars; no fries with that.

According to the website, Silver Lake Farms’ garden guru will start up a CSA in September so you can enjoy a box of veggies every week that are grown nearby with care and conservation in mind. Sign up here.

Home Grown Eats:

Heartbeet Gardening and LA Farm Hands help you install and maintain your very own urban cabbage (or bok choy or carrot or tomato) patch.

Sustainable Meat:

At Eat Wild, find farmers and ranchers who grass-feed their animals making everybody healthier and happier. Search the directory for ethical meat, poultry and dairy. These are listings of which Righteous Porkchop would be proud.

You can find 100% grassfed, pasture-raised Lindner Bison at L.A. area farmer’s markets: Hollywood, Santa Monica, Torrance and Long Beach.

To the good life and good food!

Tags: backyard gardening, eat wild, fallen fruit, grass fed beef, heartbeet gardening, lindner bison, public fruit, sustainable agriculture, urban agriculture, veggie trader