The Kensington Community Food Coop has launched an ambitious new membership campaign. You can sign up online through the group's website or visit their table at the Greensgrow Farmers' Market. Here's what they had to say in a recent letter from the Board oK Directors:

When I say we need a co-op, I don’t mean to be overly dramatic. Most of us have figured out how to get by with the grocery stores we currently shop at. When I say we need a co-op, I compare a Kensington future with and without a co-op. Without a co-op, there isn’t a grocery store we can walk to. Without a co-op, our local producers don’t have a friendly store to sell their products. Without a co-op, healthy living isn’t promoted by the place selling you and your family food. Without a co-op, we will have ignored the real crisis of diabetes, obesity and heart disease in our neighborhood. With a co-op, life will be healthier and happier for our community and especially for our members.

For more on the genesis of the Kensington Community Food Coop, check out Grid's February cover story.

A month from Sunday, something awesome happens: The Headhouse Square Farmers' Market returns. In some ways, this monumental event signals the true start of the season.

The market will open 10 a.m. May 2 at 2nd and Locust Streets.With the completion of the Pine and Spruce bike lanes, a ride down to the city's top open air market is going to be even easier. I now have a deadline for finally getting that rack installed on ma bicyclette. Sundays just got a whole lot sweeter.

Join the countdown by following The Food Trust on Facebook and Twitter. And remember, the Clark Park Farmers' Market (Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue) and Fitler Square Farmers' Market (Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at 23rd and Pine streets—my local spot; small but excellent) are open year-round.

Mrs. Q, as she's called on her blog Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project, is a middle school teacher who's spending 2010 eating lunch from her school's cafeteria every day. Whatever the kids are served, she will eat—and take pictures of. Even a quick scroll through is pretty disturbing: nothing is fresh and many items look borderline inedible. 

Grist also has two disheartening stories up today on the progress (or lack thereof) being made to improve school lunches: D.C. schools balk at serving more veggies and issues with the federal school lunch bill.

Last Monday, the Grid team had the extreme pleasure of attending Fair Food's Local Buyer Local Seller event at the Reading Terminal Market. LBLS offers local producers (farmers, cheese makers, bakers, ect.) the chance to interact with restaurateurs, market owners and other wholesalers. Albert Yee, who does some great work for Grid, took some beautiful pictures at the event, which he's posted to Messy and Picky, the blog he writes with his fiancee. Like us, he was clearly transfixed by the serene presence of Garces.

Gerry Mak, one of the folks profiled in the recent Salon piece, "Hipsters on Foodstamps" (an article I discussed yesterday), has written a short response on the site. He makes some good points:

While organic and local foods seem like luxury items to many, it's important to understand that cheap food is the result of government subsidies while local farmers get little to no assistance. Cheap food is the real extravagance. My interest in food stems from my having to care for a diabetic father, and good food is the only form of healthcare I have access to. 

He also addresses the "hipster" hating:

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This story was published by the New York Times over a week ago, but I keep finding myself talking about it, so I figured I would bring it up with the legions of Griddle readers.

Despite the horrific title, "Hip Hop Cuisine" (which just makes me think of this atrocity), the article is an interesting discussion of eating bunnies—er, I mean rabbits. It centers on a rabbit butchering workshop held in What's-Next-In-Food Central: Brooklyn.

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I've been talking a lot recently about the fact that the more I learn about industrial/unsustainable food production, the fewer things I can enjoy eating. This isn't all bad. It's important to be an ethical, conscientious consumer, and sometimes the more you learn about a product (especially when it comes from a local, independently-owned source) the more you enjoy it.

These days I've been finding out a lot about fish.

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