From sustainability to regeneration

One often overlooked way to significantly decrease your carbon footprint and create a more sustainable community is to consume locally sourced, organic food.  But how do you do that safely during a pandemic? Meet Andy and Janice of The Silo Pantry. Their story is similar to many stories that you may have heard over the past few months. They had a brilliant idea for their new business.  They wanted to provide what was missing at farmers’ markets: staples such as rice, beans, cornmeal, flour, etc.

Silo Pantry seeks to fill in a gap for shoppers who strive to shop locally and cook basic, organic and nourishing food with minimal packaging. But like so many business owners this year, they had to think fast and reinvent their business model. Today Andy and Janice are filling online orders and delivering to your door throughout the Bay Area. They seek out farmers and ranchers in Northern California and on the west coast that are practicing sustainable and regenerative farming methods while contributing to climate change solutions.

It was a pleasure to place my first order with Silo Pantry.  I purchased wild rice, brown rice, arborio rice, walnuts, almond, polenta, cannellini bean and oats. All organic. Stocking your pantry with staples from local producers can be a rewarding task which increases community self-reliance as well as self-reliance in your own kitchen. Here is their story.

“When COVID-19 hit, the whole world was still learning about the virus and our friends and family were absolutely against us continuing our sales at farmers markets.  We quickly transitioned to home deliveries and put up a website within a couple of weeks. We marketed on social media and had former customers and new customers ordering from us all over the Bay Area.  There was a lot of panic buying and we were up until 2am filling orders a few times a week for about a month.  There was a lot of room for error.  Our ordering system was so manual (and still is) so half of our time went into processing orders.  It was extremely challenging, but we were determined to make it work so that we could keep our customers fed with organic, locally grown foods without risking their health or the environment’s. 

Once things settled down a bit, we were able to increase our product offerings with the help of our friends, farmers, and ranchers who we met through our time at the farmers markets.  We now have a very steady stream of customers and hope to make our system more automated so we can meet higher customer demand while staying focused on keeping the quality of our services at the highest level.”

Wild and Brown Rice Casserole With Mushrooms, Almonds and Cranberries

• ¼ of a pound of butter, (½ a stick)
• ½ cup wild rice
• ½ cup brown rice
• ½ cup slivered or chopped almonds
• ¼ cup sliced green onions
• ½ pound sliced mushrooms
• 3 cups hot chicken or vegetable broth
• ½ cup dried cranberries
• 1 tsp salt

Melt the butter in a heave sauté pan. Add the rice and toast in the butter while stirring for about 1 minute. Add the almonds, green onions mushrooms, salt and cranberries. Put the ingredients into a casserole dish and add the hot broth. Cover tightly and bake in a preheated oven at 325 degrees for 1 hour.