Sunset Magazine Goes Very Local With One Block Diet

All images courtesy of Sunset Magazine.

Little over a year ago, Sunset magazine food editor Margo True and her staff set about on a very local challenge, the One Block Feast. Over the next 12 months, True and the Sunset staff planned their feast, grew the ingredients, raised their own chickens and even made their own wine, beer, cheese and olive oil — nearly all the ingredients including honey grown and raised in their backyard-sized lot by staff members, many of whom were learning these skills for the first time.

Sunset’s August issue has all the photographs, recipes and the overview of the year’s efforts. Menu items included Deviled Cucumber Cups, Tomato and Herb Salad with Fresh Chive Cheese,  Skillet Roasted Edamame, Corn Soup with Poblano Peppers and Zucchini Blossoms, Pattypan squash with egg, and Rosemary Potatoes Anna. A melon sorbet was served for dessert.

While the menu sounds like a perfect seasonal feast, the article shines for its wealth of information that can help others get started on their own edible backyard.

Online resources accompanied the article including;
Garden Calendars for each region of the West
Enrich your soil, step by step
Organic pest controls
Growing tips for all our crops
Harvesting methods
More recipes
Plus ten downloadable how-to-guides: chickens, cheese, olive oil, bees, wine, beer,salt, and more

The staff kept a blog throughout the year’s efforts, creating an enjoyable and educational resource that can help shorten the learning curve for anyone inspired to “grow their own.”

Sunset food editor Margo True, (shown at left), shares some of her experience here with the Eat Local Challenge:

ELC: What prompted you to try a "one-block" diet?

MT: First, the fine example of others. So many people have been attempting 100-mile diets and 50-mile diets, and we were inspired to try to do something like it ourselves. Second, the food that we’re already growing here at Sunset. When we took stock of all the edibles we were raising on our single block—from figs and oranges to squash and tomatoes—we thought, Why don’t we just do a one-block diet?

ELC: So, how hard is it to make olive oil?

MT: The oil part is easy, especially if you take your boxes of olives to a community press and let them crush the fruit for you. The work comes in when you’re growing the olives, especially if you’re dealing with 40- and 50-foot landscape trees as we are; among other considerations, you have to fight pests like the olive fruit fly, prune the trees correctly so that they grow well, and then figure out how to harvest without breaking your neck. Our trees were so badly infested with fruit flies that we had to pick them at a local farm.

ELC: Which "team" were you personally on, and can you share an experience from it?

MT: I’ve flitted from team to team because I love them all.  But I have a deep soft spot for the chickens. I didn’t expect them to be so...personable. For instance, we have a Rhode Island Red named Carmelita. The chickens started to lay eggs back in January, when they were about 22 weeks old. Carmelita went third. Her coop-mates had laid their eggs silently, without fuss. Carmelita, on the other hand, was in the nest box for hours, scrabbling around and squawking. Finally I opened the nest box to check on her, and she was all scrunched up against the wall with her head thrown back and beak open, like a figure in a Napoleonic war tableau. She did finally make an egg that day. We ate it with respect.

ELC: Was the meal worth the effort?

MT: A resounding YES is your answer. We all learned so much about what it takes to produce items that we take for granted in our daily lives. I myself will never look at an egg the same way again. And I’ll pay good money for honey, now that I know what kind of effort went into it.

ELC: What was one of the most valuable things you learned from the experience?

MT: That raising your own food makes you feel more connected to your little patch on earth. So much in life disconnects us from what’s real. This is real.

ELC: What encouragement could you share for someone who wanted to try this at home?

MT: Start small, with a no-fail crop like: cherry tomatoes, zucchini, basil, or pattypan squash. They are really easy to grow and produce abundantly. You’ll be proud that you raised so much food—and if you pick your produce at its peak and eat it that day, it will be better than anything you can buy.

ELC: What's for dinner next year?

MT: Well, we’re toying around with the idea of a one-block feast for winter...stay tuned!

Comments

[Forage Oakland]

Ditto.

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