Cooking For People Who Don't Carnival: Let's Do This Thing.

The First (and I hope not the last) Cooking For People Who Don't Carnival: Food Security Round.

When:

Due date February 2nd 2012.

Where:

I will make a master post in this journal on that day for people to post links to.

What:

Food Security is defined by The World Health Organisation as existing

when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.

Food security is built on three pillars:

Food availability: sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis.
Food access: having sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.
Food use: appropriate use based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and sanitation.

How:

Write a post to pass on something[s] you know that you feel is useful to anyone who wants to increase their level of food security by increasing their level of skill, knowledge, comfort around getting, storing, or preparing food. How-tos are good, recipes are good, linkspams are good. Reflective essays are good too, even if not of a strictly practically useful nature. You are your own best judge of what's on-topic. On February 2nd, come back and post a link to it in the comments of the Carnival Round Up Post.

You don't need my or anyone's permission or approval or anything for your choice of topic or angle of approach. I am going to make have made a post for discussion and idea sharing, but nobody is in any way required to use or even read it.

You don't need to "sign up". If you find it useful and motivating to make a public commitment when you want to make sure you get a thing done. the discussion post would be good for that, but it's in no way required that you tell anyone if you are in or out. Come February 2, if you have a post, come and link it.

You cannot "miss the deadline". If you finish a post later, come and link it then. The point of a carnival as I see it is to make a community thing of it and to exchange ideas, so it's nice to have a LOT of posts on the due date just to make it that kind of collaborative, but more at a later time are great too, they keep the momentum happening.

Posters are asked to keep the following guidelines in mind, using their own judgement to interpret them:

Think of your audience as highly intelligent beginners: that is, posts should be addressed/useful to one or more of new cooks, people not used to doing their own grocery shopping, people adapting to a sudden income drop, people who have had an income increase and want to use it to improve how they cook and eat, people adapting to living and eating alone instead of with a family, people adapting to living and eating with a family instead of alone, people adapting to a disability, etc.. If they are also useful to experts looking to become more expert, that's great, but experts shouldn't be the main intended audience.

That said, Describe much; Prescribe little. Readers may be complete beginners in the kitchen, food store, or garden patch, but they are, and deserve to be respected as, experts on their own lives, resources, abilities, and circumstances. Avoid the phrases, and the mindset, "anyone can", or "everyone should".

Diet Talk and the Food Police:

Should be a band name. And it shouldn't be happening at this carnival. Again: Describe much; Prescribe little.

Please be especially careful not to:

-- label certain foods "good" and others "bad", unless you are comparing the firm green chard to the wet brown chard. No guilty pleasures, no "healthy" vs "unhealthy", no "more food than anyone needs", no "natural" versus "unnatural", and so forth. This is surprisingly tricky. I think it's worth learning how to do.

-- Be prescriptive about how much or how little or what kind of food anyone "needs", or how often.

-- Write a post about your (weight-loss) diet or about calorie restriction or about how everybody's life can be made perfect and shiny by us all avoiding entire classes of foods.

DO feel free to talk about: not liking some foods. Foods that don't work for you. Foods that make you sick. Foods that violate your personal ethos of eating. How you do and don't want to eat. Ways in which you yourself feel you have been smarter and healthier or less smart and healthy in your approach to food. If your post is on a topic in this area, consider getting someone you trust to look it over quickly before you post it, and consider warnings and cuts, because these are incredibly valuable and necessary conversations but they're also conversations many people have to pick their times for carefully.

And, of course, to quote the fabulous kerrypolka, "-isms in my opinion are not good". Do your best, be ready to do better if you find you have made a mistake. Be kindly - not necessarily "nice" or "polite" or "quiet", but kindly - with yourself and others.

Please feel absolutely free to link or promote this elsewhere.