Chelsea Community Kitchen

Now is the time to start planning for the 2012 Farmers Market season.

Are you familiar with Michigan’s Cottage Food Law?

Do you know what it takes to run a successful food-based business?

Check out our Links page to find related resources and contact us if you’d like to be on our email notification list for the class “Starting a Food-based Business: the Cottage Food Law & Beyond.”

Food Day is a day designed to call attention to these goals:

1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
2. Support sustainable farms & limit subsidies to big agribusiness
3. Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
4. Protect the environment & animals by reforming factory farms
5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids
6. Support fair conditions for food and farm workers

Among the actions we can take as individuals are:

• Take advantage of the fall harvest to buy locally-raised vegetables, fruit, meat and poultry
• Prepare tasty, nutritious meals for ourselves and our families
• Choose healthier options when eating out
• Ask local grocers to make healthier items easier to find in their stores
• Cut back on high fat, high sugar, high calorie snacks
• Visit the CCK web site’s Links page and explore resources on food safety and eating better

In addition, we can let our representatives in local, state and federal government know that we expect them to advance these goals when they draft and/or vote on related legislation.

More information about Food Day is available at www.foodday.org.

There’s food for thought in this article by Nathan Bomey of Annarbor.com, “4 ways locally grown food can create more jobs for the Ann Arbor area“.  An incubator kitchen in eastern Washtenaw County would be a welcome addition to our list of available resources.