02061 Household Food Systems Inventory

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting. — Mark Twain

Complete this inventory via a process that includes all members of the your household old enough to contribute meaningfully. This includes roommates, or if you are a household of one, it is Just You. The numbers below correspond to lines on the 02061.1 spreadsheet.

No one expects you to keep these kinds of records for the rest of your life. You may not want to do this much observation of your household’s food systems right now. If not, that’s fine, just understand that the purpose of these suggestions is not to gratuitously complicate your life. However you get there, each of us needs an understanding of —

What and how much do you eat? Are you cooking meals from basic ingredients at home? Or do you frequent fast food restaurants and buy a lot of take-out?

Where do you get what you eat? The supermarket? A farmers’ market? A coop?

Where do you eat? How often do you eat at home? How often do you eat out? How often do you eat at the homes of friends? How often do you get take-out?

With whom do you eat? Do you eat by yourself? With your family or household? With friends? With strangers?

So we want to get a base line on what you eat, how much you eat, and where it comes from. We look at where you eat and with whom you eat.

Yes this will take some time. Which is fine, because we don’t have time to be in a hurry. Think of your involvement as an investment in your future and the future of the planet.

Don’t get uptight about this kind of observation. If you forget to write something down, don’t chastise yourself or feel guilty. Just make better notes next time.

Your observation will almost certainly influence your food choices. While observing your personal food choices, you will make better food choices than you would otherwise. You may stop your hand even as it reaches for the junk food because you know you will have to write it down. Even though your only audience is yourself, you will subconsciously not want that written on your food inventory.

This is not a bad thing. We all need to learn to make better food choices. Keeping a food diary is well known as a method of helping people improve their diets.

Regarding the spreadsheet and its explanation below. . . you don’t have to use this method. You can develop your own method. You could decide, for example, to simply write a narrative (like a diary or a journal or a blog) about the food you eat, where you get it, and etc. Some people like spreadsheets and work well with them and will understand the explanation below immediately. Others won’t, and that is just as fine as any other response.

I am not in the business of dictating a method of observation to you for your food or anything else. I will say “you must observe your situation” if you want to do permaculture design. I will also say — “the more accurate and comprehensive your observation, the better your design will be.” I can offer the option below as one possible method. How you do your observation is up to you.

For persons living in dormitories and eating at college cafeterias: Complete as much of this as is relevant to your own situation, including noting the foods you eat with your meals in the cafeteria. Be sure to account for your off-campus eating and snacks, as it is unlikely that you take all of your meals on-campus. Regarding food production questions, you can answer those “in the future” when you have access to some garden land, or you can design a program to encourage on-campus food production for use in campus cafeterias. For “source” of your groceries for meals eaten in the cafeterias, enter “College Food Service” or just “Cafeteria”.

For persons who have no land on which to grow food: Complete as much of this as is relevant to you. Later, as you do design work based on this inventory, you will consider how you can use local structures to access local foods, such as farmers markets and cooperatives. You can consider how you might be able to find some land on which you can garden in your city.

THE PRESENT SITUATION

1. Your Household

  1. List all the household members (age and sex).
  2. If you have a kitchen, or some other kind of resources to prepare foods, and/or any household food production. . . Describe the kitchen and any associated household food production.
  3. A narrative describing the household’s present food situation. Describe any participation in local/regional food shed. (Farmers markets, local food coop, direct purchases, etc.)

2. Household food log.

You can download a spreadsheet at http://www.ipermie.net/ or you can develop your own system. Depending on your existing household records, you can run this backwards or you can start it now and run it forward.

  1. List all groceries bought for your household, by source, and amount paid, and all home production foods used during the analysis period.

  2. If you don’t buy groceries for most of your meals because you eat in a cafeteria. . . List any groceries you buy in a month (items to prepare in your dorm room, snacks, etc.

  3. Make a “historical menu” list of foods for the period you keep the food log. Include this information for the entire household:

    — List all meals eaten out or take out, by person, and what you

    eat at those meals. If in a given day, the family eats breakfast and dinner together, and 3 family members eat separate lunches, the total number of meals for that day is 5 — two common meals, plus 3 separate meals.

    — Show the cost of meals eaten out/take out.

    — If you prepare meals at home. . . List the menus for all meals

    prepared at home or prepared for “carry-out” (i.e. lunches prepared at home and taken to eat at work or school).

    — Determine the cost of home-prepared meals as best you can.

    — Identify meals with home production foods, and with foods

    sourced from the local/regional foodshed.

    — If you don’t prepare meals at home because you eat in a school

    cafeteria. . . List the meals you eat in the cafeteria and the foods you eat at those meals.

    NB: This is not the same as the “list of grocery purchases” in 2-a, as presumably you will use some ingredients that are on-hand and not purchased during the month.. If you fully account for a particular meal, and use left-overs later, include only the cost of any new ingredients added, since you accounted for the cost of the left-over’s when you served them for the first time. Alternatively, if you quantity cook, you cost the ingredients when served. If you bake two casseroles at a total cost of $5.00, the cost of each meal is $2.50,

  1. List any home grown/processed ingredients used during the month, the number of meals in which you used the household-produced ingredients, and the amount used.
  2. Log your time spent preparing and eating food. For eating out, count the travel time. Don’t worry about accounting for 30 seconds eating a carrot stick or a chocolate bar. Guestimate “snacking time”. Keep track of meal preparation time and time spent acquiring fast food/take-out. Do this by household member and location. If you eat in a school cafeteria and thus you don’t prepare food, just account for the time eating.
  3. From the information in your food log, make a summary list of foods actually eaten over the previous month, by “food”, e.g. “Mashed potatoes, 10 times; roast beef, 3 times; Cheesy-poofs, 25 times, whatever. For take out/eaten out meals, note this on the log. E.g., hamburger eaten out, 6 times. You might have two lines for some foods, e.g. hamburger eaten out, and hamburgers

3. Summary of foods acquired.

Enter the total dollars for foods acquired for preparation at home, eating out, or take out brought home. Foods acquired for preparation at home includes any foods prepared for carry-out (lunches for work, school, etc.) Enter the percent of total food dollars for each category.

You may also find it interesting to determine how often you eat at home versus how often you eat out or bring home take-out.

4. Kitchen Skills, Resources and Work

  1. If there are any defined roles in household food production, list them by household member, e.g. mother — cooks and shops, teenage son — washes dishes, takes out trash, complains often, etc.
  2. List the food production/preparation skills of members of the household.
  3. Household food production equipment on hand. It's not necessary to list every pot or skillet, instead, skillets — 6, stock pots — 3, food processor — 1, etc.
  4. In an emergency situation, estimate how long your family could eat on the food you have presently on hand.

5. Household food production.

  1. List perennial food/useful plants that you grow, and where you grow them. Estimate production and measure the space devoted to perennial food production (if any).
  2. List annual food/useful plants you grow, and where you grow them (if any). Estimate production and measure the space devoted to annual food production.

6. Household materials cycling

  1. Describe any household organic materials cycling you presently do (composting, vermiculture, etc.)
  2. Describe any kitchen-related non-organic materials cycling you do (glass, metals, used appliances, etc.)

7. Kitchen energy

Prepare a table showing 12 months of household energy consumption and expense, showing amount spent (including taxes and fees) and amounts used in kilowatts of electricity, dekatherms or cubic feet of natural gas, gallons of propane, cords of wood, etc.

If you use utility services (natural gas or electricity), you can probably get this information from your utility.

Note any renewable energy you used (wind or water generated electricity, sustainably harvested wood, homestead biogas production, etc.)

8. Tables and Maps

The utility of this section is somewhat limited for college students and others without any land. If your local permaculture organization decides to work on college food systems as a project, or you get involved with a community garden, developing this info and the maps will be helpful.

  • Base map of kitchen area, and any other food production area(s) at the site.
  • A list of the “Needs and Yields/Benefits” of each element of your kitchen.
  • A sector analysis of your kitchen — planetary energies (solar, wind, rain, weather, climate), Grid energies (electric, water, natural gas, waste disposal, sewage, communications), Fetched or delivered energies (gasoline, propane, wood, food), Invisible energies( the effects of invisible structures on you — laws, crime, education etc.)
  • Describe the zones on your kitchen and how it fits within the place you live and the geographies of your life.

THE DESTINATION SITUATION

9. Household Food Goals

List the food goals of the household, by individual member and/or by consensus. Spend time talking with family members to develop this information.

What food system skills/techniques do the household members want to learn? (List by household member.)

What food system equipment does the household need or want?

Are any particular changes to the present set-up of the household’s kitchen desired?

Does the household wish to increase its food storage? If so, by how much?

10. Household Food Production

List any changes desired to the household’s food processing/preserving systems.

List additional perennial food producing or useful plants the household wants.

List additional annual food or useful plants the household wants to grow.

Do you want to expand the area dedicated to food production? If so, how much?

Are there any new foods you and your family want to incorporate into your diet?

Are you interested in growing anything for sale? If so, list items and the amount you desire to make from this activity.

List any improvements to the household’s nutrient management systems you want to implement.

Anything else relating to the household’s goals for its food production systems.

11. Materials and Resource Cycling

Describe any changes you want to the resources or materials cycling in your kitchen.

12. Energy

Describe any changes/improvements to your kitchen energy situation.

13. Miscellaneous

List any problems uncovered during the inventory that you want to solve.

List anything else developed in your research that you want to address with this design process.