To celebrate The Week of Eating In, I thought I would get you in the mood with one of winter's wonders: kale. Ivy Manning and I go visit farmer Shari Sirkin, of Dancing Roots Farm, who grows three varieties of kale: green, red, and lacinato.

Talking to your local farmer is just one way to learn where our food comes from, which might lead to some inspiration in the kitchen. And if you need a little nudge in that direction, I invite you to return next week and check out Ivy's demonstration of Twice-Baked Irish Potatoes with Stout Onions and Kale - a tasty comfort food made from ingredients found in most kitchens. In the meantime, go visit your local farmers market or look into joining a CSA - some run year round - this weekend. You never know what might spark the cook in you!

Originally posted on Cooking Up a Story.

In honor of our Week Of Eating In, we want to know about all the awesome foods you cooked last week. Did you try a new recipe? Recreate an old family one? Host your first dinner party? Bake your first cake? We want to know what HuffPost Green readers cooked this week, so send us your photos!

I'm laughing at a snarky blog. It's called Trainpigs, and it's essentially snapshots of people eating on trains. The characters in these photos are shoveling Chinese food from Styrofoam trays into their mouths, clutching fast-food sandwiches by a handful of paper wrappings. Sitting, standing, even walking. Nothing strange about this - I rode the four train last night beside a woman digging into a plastic carton of salad. What's surprising is that the blog is calling out something that has become so commonplace, so generally accepted, as unacceptable: eating take-out food on the go.

I'm not one to call anyone a pig, but marvel at the cultural phenomenon that is trainpigs. Making mealtimes out of no time, at the desk or on the train, has become the working world's solution to the all-too lackluster task of filling up on food. From their looks, none of the unsuspecting muses in these photos seem to be savoring their food terribly much, disengaged from the crowd around them. Maybe a more fitting blog for today's workaholic lifestyle might be called foodsloths, and poke fun at those who actually take time out of their day to enjoy a meal. Or, who spend the time to prepare their food, rather than depend on the convenience of restaurants.

What this blog then wouldn't understand and what we as a culture are learning to forget, is that by placing a small amount of time and effort on our daily bread, we are actually earning much more in return. It may be just monetary (compare the price of a bagel from a store to one that you could purchase ahead and toast at home), and it may be just health-related (now, see how much butter the counter person slathers on it compared to what would be plenty for you doing so yourself). Then, you might also find that you're saving yourself from trips to take out the trash, because the disposable take-out containers you're not using while cooking more food won't be clogging the bin. You might also begin to wonder why the apples in your grocery aisle came from Washington State, when you live in a place populated with orchards in the Northeast. You will most surely get better and better at cooking, too, and constantly discover new ways to satisfy.

In total, by preparing your own food, you'll become more mindful of it. And for one of the few physical necessities of every day -- eating -- a better connection with that food is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, it can just be fun. Getting back into the kitchen on a daily basis can be as enjoyable a hobby as it is practical. Over the two years I spent not eating out from any restaurant, I would find many more reasons for why this extreme sort of affliction I had for home cooking was beneficial to myself, the environment, and the community. I began writing about some of them on my blog, Not Eating Out in New York, interspersed throughout recipes that calculated the cost, health factor and green factor of the ingredients. And I described more of them in my memoir, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, which hits shelves this week. Perhaps one of the hands-down, can't-argue, best benefits of eating in is that I can afford to support small farms' local, seasonal, humanely raised or organic foods all the time because I was buying their ingredients raw, and that's a heck of a lot cheaper than filling up on these superior foods in restos all the time.

Of course, I can't wait to see what other folks might find from eating in, too. Now you can along with thousands of others in a fun challenge called The Week of Eating In, a project by HuffPost Green and HuffPost Eyes&Ears. It's simple to sign up, and throughout the week (February 22-28) and this one just before, we'll be adding tips and updates, guest blogs from famous foodies as well as cook-a-phobes alike, some slideshows of the worst kitchens and the best apps for eating in. And we encourage the throwing of potlucks, possibly the best crutch for when the going might be rough. So I invite you to join us in this week-long experiment, and share how it goes.

With The Week Of Eating In fast approaching, we thought it would be fun to take a look at how technology can help us meet our goal to cook all of our own food for a week. From grocery shopping, to planning healthy meals, to finding out the eco-footprint of a product: yes, there's an app for that. Here are HuffPost Green's choices for the best food-related apps to help you eat in. Happy eating!

Sign up here for The Week of Eating In!

Proud of your local market? Show it off! as part of our our Week of Eating In, where we are encouraging people to get busy cooking rather than relying on restaurants and processed foods, we are mapping out local markets and need your help finding the best ones. Send us a photo of your favorite place to shop, and tell us why it's great--be it Whole Foods down the block, a family-run shop or the farm stand around the corner.

Want more resources on finding sustainable food near you? Check out the Eat Well Guide.

Sign up here for The Week of Eating In!

To celebrate The Week of Eating In, we at HuffPost Green have decided to ask for your help in gathering photos of tiny kitchens. We know plenty of urbanites who see small kitchens as a serious impediment to cooking, but we want to dispel the idea that you need a palace in order to do home cooking. For those of you out there who've cooked feasts of out tiny kitchens, we want to know about it!

CHECK THEM OUT HERE:

Sign up here for The Week of Eating In!

New York City...bright lights, bustling streets, and endless amounts of mouth-watering restaurants. To any foodie, New York City is considered Mecca, filled with the best restaurants to indulge in. To anyone with a hunger pain on their way home from a 12-hour day, it's a quick fix supplied by an overabundance of Chinese, Italian, American, and Mexican eateries.

A majority of New Yorkers don't cook. Trust me; I used to be one. Tiny kitchens and long work days make takeout a nightly ritual along with your favorite TV show. It's so easy to pick up a bagged meal since on any given block you have about ten options to pick from. But what may seem like a good idea in the moment is actually a bad idea for your body and the planet. With every to-go meal you are creating extra waste from takeout containers (64% of the waste created by fast food restaurants is paper and plastic from the packaging) and often times eating low quality ingredients that you can't monitor.

Like I said, I never used to cook. I lived in a small Greenwich Village apartment with two other girls and dinner often consisted on Pinkberry. I would pick up a Starbucks mocha on the way to work, head to the deli for lunch, and pick up something indulgent on the way home (see Pinkberry). I did this for about three years....I know, gross. It wasn't until I started having Sunday night dinner parties with my boyfriend that I actually started cooking. We'd all pitch in some money, head to the store (with a reusable bag, natch), cook up a recipe together, and sit down for a nice meal. From there I started exploring cooking more with local (= less CO2 emitted by shipping) and organic (= no pesticides) ingredients and now it has become my Xanax. After a long day, I love coming home, having a glass of wine, and throwing together ingredients to make a home cooked meal. It's so relaxing...or maybe that's the wine talking.

In honor of Eat In Week, I'm sharing a recipe of one of my favorite dinners/lunch leftovers. Classic Bolognese Sauce. Let me just start this off by saying that I'm a sauce snob. I grew up eating my Italian grandmother's fresh pasta with her amazing sauce that no one to this day can replicate. Needless to say, jars of the bland red stuff just don't cut it. So for years I just simply didn't eat pasta...nothing could live up to hers and frankly anything else tasted bad on my Italian-trained palate. Recently I started experimenting with homemade Bolognese sauces and finally found one that comes in a close second to my Nonna's. It's dummy proof, mouth watering, and you can even freeze the leftover sauce.

Classic Bolognese Sauce

• 1 chopped organic carrot, peeled
• 1 small organic chopped onion
• 1/2 cup organic extra virgin olive oil
• 1 clove minced or finely chopped organic garlic
• 1 lb organic, grass-fed ground beef
• 1/2 cup organic tomato paste
• 1 Tb organic flour
• 1/2 cup organic dry white wine
• 4 cups organic chicken stock
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper

Finely chop the carrot and onion. Heat half the oil in a large pot, add the chopped vegetables, and sauté over medium heat for 10 minutes. Add garlic; let it cook for about 2 minutes. Add the ground meat, stirring frequently, until it is evenly browned, about 10 minutes. Add paste stirring until blended and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for another 2 minutes. Raise the heat, add the wine, and stir in the stock, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour to thicken, stirring from time to time. Serve with your favorite pasta. I used my go-to stash of pappardelle, a broad, flat noodle.

Freeze what you don't eat or pack it up for lunch the next day. Trust me; your cube-mates will be jealous.

Follow Brianne DiSylvester at Get Fork'd, her local and organic
focused food blog.

Stat references can be found here.

Thanks to Cathy Erway I right now have bread dough rising on my kitchen counter. 3 years ago I read Mark Bittman's NY Times article with Jim Lahey's phenomenally easy bread recipe, but it took sitting down with Erway's new book, The Art of Eating In, for me to get cracking.

Right around when I was reading Bittman's article, Cathy Erway was making a radical decision; in this capital of restaurants, in this city of buying and spending, she was going to stay in and cook. Every night for 2 years. So while other twentysomethings blogged about which new restaurants they'd tried, she chronicled her home cooking adventures on Not Eating Out in New York. But there are a million home cooking blogs out there--why did hers capture people's imaginations? Why did it capture mine?

Well it turns out that the somewhat odd and haphazard parameters she set up for her experiment allowed her to explore (and then blog about) NYC's emerging DIY food renaissance. She discovered and then immersed herself in a world of cook-offs, takedowns, park foraging, underground supper clubs, and dinner parties. She even hung with the dumpster-diving freegans once or twice. In the process she became entrenched in a new community of bloggers and foodophiles, becoming a kind of mini-celebrity herself. You know, "that girl who decided not to eat out anymore."

And this is a young girl, a cute girl. One who the fellas might want to take on a date. In this town, a date basically equals a restaurant trip. What's a girl to do? I am reminded of the Beavans of No Impact Man, and how when they gave up eating out, they sort of fell in love with dinner parties and family time. Erway, too, reminds us--both on the blog and in her book--that there are many more fun and creative ways to court a person than going to a restaurant. Her #25 reason for not eating out? Creative dating.

She also learned that if you are making your own food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you had better get good at it, and learn new techniques and discover your creative side. What she makes plain is that cooking is fun, yes, and delicious, yes. And it will also save you a hell of a lot of money. And you'll also create less waste--something she actually calculates, by ounce, in her book. And guess what, you'll also probably spend more quality time with people, and build community and make new friends and be healthier all around. The blog and the book inspire through storytelling, hence the bread dough growing on my counter and the parsnip pancakes I am making for dinner tonight.

Speaking of inspiration: next week, to coincide with the release of Erway's book, the Huffington Post is challenging their readers to do as Cathy does by pledging to stay in and cook for a whole week. To my grandparents, one-time residents of the Brooklyn and the Bronx, respectively, this would have seemed preposterous--what the hell else would you do? To our generation of New Yorkers, accustomed to buying egg and cheese on the way to work, salad bar for lunch and sushi for dinner, this is an honest to goodness challenge. I have signed up and I can already foresee my failure.

But I can also foresee the homemade lunches I am going to bring to work, and the way I'll lure people to my house with promises of free homecooked food. And I'll console myself by remembering that, in the end (SPOILER ALERT), Erway's message seems to be that eating out does have its place; but it works best as a treat.

Let's not eat alone: I dare you to take the Huffington Post's challenge with me; for inspiration, supper club tips and recipe ideas, check out Not Eating Out in New York and The Art of Eating In.

Eating outside of your home generally requires three things: food, food containers, and food utensils.

With increased awareness of global warming, more and more people are realizing that long-term consequences can outweigh temporary convenience. After all, the average plastic fork is only used for three minutes before it's thrown away.

The situation is far from palatable, which is why Stephanie Bernstein founded To-Go Ware.

Making your own food is a great way to save money. There are so many examples of how making your own food is way less expensive (and less wasteful in terms of extra packaging) than buying the food pre-made or pre-packaged. Eating in restaurants can get very pricey, so to that end, the Huffington Post is trying to make it easy for you to keep track of your expenditures during the Week Of Eating In challenge, which starts February 22nd.

Just Use THIS SPREADSHEET to help you budget. Download the spreadsheet by going to File > Download As > Excel/PDF

First, use the spreadsheet to record how much you spend on each meal during a week where you eat normally. Then, use the spreadsheet to record how much you spend in a week when you participate in the challenge.

When the week is over, you should send your report back to us -- submissions@huffingtonpost.com -- so we can crunch the numbers. We're hoping to report on the average savings of eating in rather than going to a restaurant. Sign up for the week using the form below, and let your friends know about the week of eating in using the pledge tool below.

More info on The Week of Eating In Challenge.

We'd like to invite you to participate in a special project brought to you by HuffPost Green and HuffPost Eyes&Ears.

What: A week-long experiment in cooking your own food inspired by Cathy Erway, author of The Art of Eating In. We'll be providing awesome commentary and how-to's on everything from how to not waste food to great winter recipes. And we'll invite you to share your experiences with the HuffPost Community.

When: February 22-28th, 2010.

Who: Anyone from eco-warriors to average Joes, from to accomplished gourmands to first-time novices are invited to participate.

Why: Not only do we think this will save you money and get you eating healthier food, we think this will be a fun consciousness-raising activity in better understanding where your food comes from. If you know what you are eating, that's the first step in making good food decisions for you AND the planet.

Where: Everywhere! There are no restrictions -- anyone and everyone can participate.

How: Just sign up below, and take the pledge to tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter what you're up to. The more people you get to Eat In with you, the more people you could cook with, have potlucks with, or invite over to dinner!

Sign up here!

Happy eating (in)!

We'd like to invite you to eat with us.

As HuffPost Green has expanded and grown over the past year and a half, we've come to learn that our readers are extremely passionate about all things food. How we eat impacts everything from climate change to the farmers in our communities to our country's growing waistlines.

HuffPost Green readers have shown that they are totally engaged on topics like the local food movement, sustainable agriculture, factory farming, seafood politics, farmers markets and even hot farmers. But now we'd like to invite you to go beyond just consuming news to present you with a way to make it all personal. So that's why we'd like to invite you to participate in The Week Of Eating In Challenge.

One of HuffPost Green's bloggers, Cathy Erway, embarked on an exciting journey last year that helped her think about what she ate in a whole new way. She decided not to eat out in restaurants for two full years and embrace the value of home cooking instead. Along the way, she learned how to be ingeniously self-sufficient about cooking for herself and built a passion for understanding where her food came from. She made up awesome recipes, saved money and had lots of fun along the way.

Cathy started a a popular blog about her adventures, Not Eating Out in New York and just wrote a book, "The Art of Eating In: How I Learned To Stop Spending and Love The Stove", about her time in the kitchen. With Cathy's expert help, we want to bring you mini-version of the experiment featured in the book.

We're proud to announce that starting on Monday February 22nd, HuffPost Green and HuffPost Eyes&Ears will be doing The Week of Eating In. For seven days, we'll invite you to take a pledge to eat in, aka COOK all of your own food for a week. There are no complex rules to follow. Just sign up below so that we can communicate with you, and pledge to do the week by letting your Facebook friends and Twitter followers know what you are up to.

We're defining cooking with broad strokes. We encourage you to use basic, whole food ingredients to prepare food, avoiding pre-packaged, pre-made food, like frozen dinners and ready-to-eat canned goods, but there are no strict rules. Make the rules for yourself. If this experiment for you means making your own bread and eating locally, so be it. If it means turning on your stove for the first time in your life, that's great too.

We think The Week of Eating In is important for the environment for a number of reasons.

When you don't cook what you eat, it is so much easier to be disconnected from what it actually is. Maybe you object to factory farming and buy organic meat. When you go out for an $8 chicken sandwich, however, you have no idea how that chicken was raised. Maybe you assume french fries are just potatoes-- but at restaurants, they can be cooked in partially hydrogenated oil, frozen, filled with preservatives and shipped thousands of miles.

We think taking responsibility for actually preparing what you eat for a week will be an (outrageously fun) consciousness-raising activity. Reading food packages, learning your way around your local grocery store or farmers market, and understanding what actual ingredients go into making your favorite dishes will empower you to think about what you eat in new ways.

In addition to making decisions about food that are better for the planet, we think you will also save money. Eating organic food, for example, can often be more expensive, but is very often cheaper to buy and cook than eating non-organic food at a restaurant. Eating non-packaged, non-processed food is also a better choice, even if it's conventionally grown. We ultimately think that if you cook your own food, you'll be eating healthier food -- less processed food, less snacks, less sweets.

One awesome rule we love from Food expert Michael Pollan's book, "Food Rules", is eat all the junk food you want -- as long as you make it yourself. Think about what a difference in effort it would be to make a Twinkie from scratch than to merely open a package? It makes the treat much more of a rarity.

So if you'd like to join us of a week of putting our aprons on and getting messy in the kitchen, we're here with resources every step along the way. Get started with this awesome slideshow explaining the most important and common food buzzwords and why they are important. Always wondered what the deal was about grass-fed beef? This slideshow will explain this and important eco-food lingo. In addition to exploring the environmental costs of eating out and where our food comes from, Cathy will be sharing everything from tasty winter dishes to kitchen must-haves.

We are also very excited to bring social media and citizen journalism elements to The Week of Eating In. We'd like to invite our readers as citizen journalists to send us photos of their favorite food stores, and track how much money they spend before the week of eating in and during the experiment. We'll also ask you to tell us what you got out of the week, and send us photos of some of the best dishes you made.

Sign up here!

You can take the pledge below and let your friends and contacts know what you are up to.

Happy eating (in)!

Local. Organic. Cage Free. Free Range. What does it all mean?

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of labels out there for your food, and more importantly, to know which ones to trust. As part of our Week of Eating In challenge, we've compiled a list of the biggest eco-food buzz words that will help guide your choices at the grocery store. Which food product/philosophy do you think is the best way to eat?