Celebrate the the beauty of the world we eat!

Offered: To Be Announced
Location: Commonweal Garden, Bolinas, California
Instructors: Carin McKay, and special guests

Eating for the well-being of ourselves and the planet

• Deepen your connection with nature
• Celebrate the bounty of homegrown and local food
• Create healthier eating habits

Eating may be the most intimate relationship we have with the natural world.  When we make conscious and well-informed choices about the food we eat, we can create health and well-being for ourselves and for the planet.  

For many of us, simply creating healthy eating habits is overwhelming.  How do we create eating habits that give nourishment back to the earth, as well? 

The Earth Café is a practical, interactive, personalized program that will empower you to build a healthier lifestyle, for yourself and for the planet, through the exploration of food.  The program weaves together hands on gardening, culinary and food-crafting skills, nutritional education, as well as nature based personal wellness practice. The program will inspire you to deepen your relationship with food, strengthen your personal health, and develop a deeper connection to the natural world.

Video: See Carin McKay making Nettle Goat Cheese Quiche!

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The Earth Cafe Spring series provides a three month continuum of learning.  This unique curriculum is designed to move you into action, with hands-on learning in the garden, in the kitchen, and a personalized plan to help you implement more nourishing habits into your daily life

Key elements of the Earth Café Program include:

• Regenerative Kitchen:  Discover traditional food culture integrated with modern nutrition. Participants will harvest directly from our gardens, as well as forage wild foods. You will learn to choose the highest quality cultivated foods for your health needs. There will be cooking demonstrations and hands on skill building – from meal planning to food preparation.

• Traditional Food crafting:  Prepare delicious high quality products like sourdough bread, cheese, pickles, preserves, and other traditional, naturally processed foods easily at home.

• Inner Ecology:  Learn nature-based practices to strengthen your health and overcome common ailments at home.  Design a regenerative health plan for yourself, and receive support in paired sharing exercises to help you implement your food and wellness plan during each three-month program. Explore plant medicine, simple remedies and home care, healing with the seasons, movement and energy practices skills to understand and balance your health.

• Study:  There will be a list of recommended books that you can read along as you take the course to help inspire your food adventures.

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Series Schedule

Class 1 – Foundations of Regenerative Food and Wellness
• Personal regenerative design and daily self diagnosis
• 
Basic skills: cutting styles and knife care

• The gift of greens: wild food foraging and preparation
• Medicinal teas with Kyra Epstein

Class 2 – Kitchen Traditions 
• 
Urban homesteading with K Ruby Blume
• 
Basic cheese making, lacto-fermented drinks and saurkraut with K Ruby Blume

Class 3 – Healing Foods & Remedies
• 
Natural health care and herbal first aid with Rachel Berry
• Medicianl plant walk
• Food preservation: basic canning for fruit preserves

Descriptions

Personal regenerative design and daily self diagnosis
We will develop the connection of permaculture principles and our internal health and daily practice. Over the course of 2 months, we will begin a process of supporting and strengthening our health.  We will learn about what is most essential in a functional kitchen and pantry, and how to design it for yourself.  Each person will be given a recipe to practice during the month.

Urban homesteading with Ruby Blume
What is Urban Homesteading? Can it save the world? Or even just save us some money? What is the relationship between homesteading and permaculture? Some of these questions and more will be addressed in a slideshow surveying some of the possibilities, followed by discussion.  We will talk about urban agriculture including integrating animals, greywater systems, urban food forests, rainwater catchment and more. 

Beginning cheese making
This segment will introduce participants to concepts and techniques of milk transformation and preservation. We will learn about equipment, ingredients and cultures used and get hands-on practice making a simple fresh cheese and a mozarella.  Time allowing we will talk about the hard cheese process, uses for whey and the history of cheese making.  We will be working with fresh goats milk from the site.

Ferment! Lacto-fermenting for flavor & health
Fermenting foods is a healthful and amazingly easy way to preserve and enhance the flavor and nutrition of food. Sadly some of the healthier ferments have passed out of common usage because they are impractical for commercial production. In this class we will learn about different types of fermentation and cultures including pickling vegetables, ginger beer, traditional sodas and more. We will learn how to preserve food with lactic fermentation, a technique that requires neither canning nor vinegar (includes fresh sauerkraut and kim chee) and will prepare one lacto-fermented soda and one fermented veggie medley.

Natural health care and herbal first aid with Rachel Berry
We often talk about food as medicine, but how often do we look towards our kitchen cupboards for natural remedies to common ailments? In this session, we'll explore how to apply folk medicine techniques with resources you likely have at home in your cabinets.  We'll also discuss commonly used herbal first aid remedies, and what additional ingredients you may want on hand for unexpected emergencies.

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Location

The course takes place at Commonweal Garden, our 17-acre permaculture demonstration site in Bolinas, on the northern California coast. Nestled into its own quiet valley, the site features multiple grey water systems, production green house, ponds, seasonal stream, springs, a yurt classroom, goats, sheep, and chickens, and a Registered Organic production garden.

What To Know

Our What To Know page has information on things you will need to know for your time at Commonweal Garden, including directions.

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Course Fees

All fees must be paid in full prior to the start of class.

$375 for three part series

Early bird discount: 
$325 for three part series, registration completed by February 18

Registration

Regenerative Design Institute
P.O. Box 923
Bolinas, CA 94924

For questions or additional information, contact:
415·868 9681 voicemail or email us

Refund Policy
Cancellations up to 2 weeks before the workshop will be refunded, excluding a $50 processing fee.