Meatless Monday: The $5 Meal Challenge

Irene is gone. The sky has never been as blue. The many objects brought in have been brought back out. The debris bags are full and lined up on the sidewalk awaiting pick-up. We are fortunate here. No trees came down. No power was lost. Porches and sidewalks are cleaner than they were before the storm. But Irene did take some of my time which necessitates a change of plans. I was away last week, visiting family and friends, gathering stories. For those you will have to wait.

Instead, let me put in a plug for a special up-coming event from Slow Food USA, a national non-profit that believes everyone has the right to good, clean, and fair food.

The event: The $5 Challenge. 

Slow Food USA is inviting people across the country to share a healthy, affordable meal, at a cost of less than $5 a person. 
The Date: September 17

The Purpose: The challenge is to “take back the value meal,” according to Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA, the idea being that “slow food shouldn’t cost any more than fast food.” Slow Food urges, “If you know how to cook, then teach others. If you want to learn, this is your chance…Everybody should be able to eat fresh, healthy food every day.”

More details about the day and the campaign are available in this pdf.

You can pledge to take the challenge here. 

I have heard about the $5 challenge in a couple of ways. One was from an email forwarded by a friend, and signed by Gordon Jenkins from Campaigns at Slow Food USA. Could this be the Gordon Jenkins I remembered from New Haven? Indeed.

Gordon was the food writer for the Yale Daily News during his four years on campus. Each Friday I would look in the YDN for a new recipe featuring seasonal ingredients. Gordon’s clear and entertainingly written recipes always took a little extra time and effort to prepare (think slow food), but they were foolproof and delicious. Here are links to my two personal favorites: Sweet, sweet (corn soup) Love and Tomato confit is a can-do. Oh yes. The corn soup would surely meet the $5 challenge. Enjoy.

Please check back soon for my travel report(s), and next Monday for sure.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”