Sunset's One-Block Diet and Feast includes more than just planting fruits and vegetables on their land in Menlo Park. The staff has taken on some challenging initiatives for this project including the above mentioned: raising chickens for eggs, pressing olive oil, fermenting beer, wine, and vinegar, and raising bees for honey.
Tips for easy ways to start an edible garden:
1) Plant no-fail crops. Cherry tomatoes, zucchini, pattypan squash, and herbs are simple to grow. For Sunset guidelines on growing these and other edibles:
http://www.sunset.com/sunset/garden/edible
2) Stay small. You don't need to plant an entire garden to raise your own
food: Try growing vegetables in pots:
http://www.sunset.com/sunset/garden/article/0,20633,677662,00.html
3 ) Raise salad greens in a box. It's a project you can do right away for harvesting in fall:
http://www.sunset.com/sunset/garden/article/0,20633,1212043,00.html
4) Start dreaming. It's not too early to think about summer crops for next year. Visit www.sunset.com/oneblockfeast and look at the garden calendar to know when to plant the crops you'd like to grow.
You can find recipes for the all of the food pictures featured in this segment at www.sunset.com and in Sunset Magazine.
Sunset's Headqaurters
80 Willow Road
Menlo Park, CA
Website: www.sunset.com
Featured in this segment:
Margo True, Food Editor of Sunset magazine, joined the company in January 2006. As Food Editor, she works with her team of writers and cooks to develop accessible, fresh, and reliably delicious Western-inspired recipes. Her team creates features that celebrate local ingredients, Western cooking styles, and the people and places behind them.
Prior to joining Sunset, Margo was Executive Editor of Saveur magazine in New York City where she worked for 8 years, writing and editing stories about food and its culture. From 1995 to 1999, she was an editor and writer for Gourmet.
Margo has won several awards for her writing, including three James Beard food writing awards, and her pieces have been anthologized in the Best Food Writing series. She lives in Menlo Park, California.