This is the time of year when many of us think more deeply about our food choices and perhaps resolve to grow our own food, to buy sustainably raised ingredients, or to support conscientious food producers. To help, we've assembled some resources for conscientious cooks…
Emma recently shared that she intends to integrate more vegetarian dishes into her meals, while Anjali posted about a decision to give up cheap chicken. One of my own local food resolutions this year involved joining the Silver Lake Farms CSA. Until now I haven't joined a CSA because I love farmers' market shopping, but I decided to make the leap because this one is based in my very own neighborhood. I'm excited to pick up my first box next week!
Do you have any sustainable food resolutions this year?
Here are a few resources that may help, and let us know if there are other topics you'd like to see covered at The Kitchn this year!
Meat, eggs, and dairy
Eat Humane: Food Guides for Meat, Eggs, and Dairy
Green Guide's Beef Label Decoder
New Trick: How to Track Your Chicken Back to the Farm
Good Beef: How to Find Local Meat
Meat CSA's in the San Francisco Bay Area
On Why I Pay $7.50 for a Dozen Eggs
Seafood
National Smart Seafood Guide 2010
Community Supported Fishery: A CSA For Fish!
Local produce (and more)
The Farmers' Market: Helpful Hints and Etiquette Tips
From Alabama To Wyoming: Farm Stands In All 50 States
Good Question: Choosing a CSA
Organic produce
Conscientious Cook: What Should You Buy Organic?
Conscientious Cook: Understanding Organic Labeling
Fair trade
October: National Fair Trade Month
Fair Trade: Honey
Fair Trade: Sugar
Fair Trade: Vanilla
Wine: All About Fair Trade Wine
Growing your own food
On Growing Food
Ledge Veg: Window Box Gardening
How to Start a Green Roof Garden
Reducing food waste
American Wasteland by Jonathan Bloom
Tips and Tricks: How to Avoid Wasting Food
10 Tips to Help Reduce Food Waste
Related: No Cheap Chicken: A New Year's Food Resolution
(Image: Emily Ho)
Monterey Pitcher fr...

My food resolutions just happen to be sustainable:
-No sodas (made it halfway on this last year)
-No fast food (I gave up my only real FF craving last year, Taco Bell, so this one shouldn't be hard)
I already by local produce and eggs, bake my bread and have backyard garden and compost, so these resolutions are just a part of making my way back to the slow food movement of yesteryear.
*whoops! I meant buy. :)
This year, my food resolutions are:
1. Pack a lunch (instead of buying out) 4 out of 5 days a week.
2. Join a local CSA.
3. Raise my own chickens and pigs.
4. Grow my own herbs.
Not an official resolution, but after plenty of pressure from my health food chef mother, I'm trying to visit the farmer's market more often. Helps me eat more local food, more fruit & veg, and can even be cheaper than Costco.
No fast food
No commercially farmed meat
I find that if I make it an actual resolution, I always fail... how sad is that!
Last year I started buying a harvest box every other week from my farm stand down the street and storing in green bags to keep waste down. I am also going to continue to buy from the local butcher and as much organic as possible... those are the best I can hope for considering how much I was raised on processed food!
If I can keep these up like I did all last fall, I will definitely think of it as an accomplishment.
We've currently got a food scandal in Germany - dioxine in eggs and meat because they feed toxic waste to animals. Yuck! So I'm determined to buy as much organic meat as possible and also cook more vegetarian dishes.
Buying local, pasture-raised meat and eggs. Beware at farmers' markets - much of the produce there is not locally grown, organic, sustainable, etc., just produce those vendors get from a big warehouse. In Dallas the local vendors get special signage, but sadly I haven't seen any with that designation since the summer.
My resolution is to open my own restaurant where I (and my partners) will be ultimately responsible for its sustainability. By sustainable I mean the type of products (food and other) that are purchased, how efficiently they are used, how waste is handled, how energy and water is consumed, etc. And by being ultimately responsible for its sustainability I mean that every decision that is made will have taken the idea of sustainability into consideration.
More vegetarian meals
More sustainably raised seafood
More whole grains
Pack my lunch
Be better prepared when traveling with my kids-- having to feed my 16m old "chicken" from Carl's Jr. has got to be the culinary low point for this year. (Granted, we were stuck on the five freeway because of a snow storm...)
I have vowed to buy cage free local eggs and milk sourced from our local dairy farm.
To the comment above- I live in SLO, California... I am very lucky to not only know my produce is local when I go to the farmers markets, but to know my farmers as well...
Think of buying organic for the produce I use most. And limit waste!
I've put myself on a weekly food budget, not so much to limit money but to force myself to use up what I have in the fridge. When I've to cook 2 more meals without going to the grocery store, I get surprisingly inventive and find a way to use dry beans and rice I'd otherwise forget I even have!