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Trying to eat a sustainable diet? One big reason the whole Eating Locally trend has caught on is that a lot of environmentally conscious consumers have started thinking about their carbon footprint. Now a group of Minneapolis restaurants has taken the next big step - composting kitchen wastes to cut down on landfill.

Restaurants produce a lot of trash, and most of it winds up in landfills, where they produce methane, which contributes to global warming. Composting, by contrast, turns the waste into nutrient-rich soil.

At a press conference Monday morning at the Wedge co-op, mayor RT Rybak joined Susan Hubbard of Eureka Recycling, and owners of the five restaurants that participated in a pilot composting project: Danny Schwartzman of Common Roots, Tracy Singleton of the Birchwood Café, and Kim Bartmann, who owns Barbette, the Red Stag Supper Club and Bryant Lake Bowl. "It's easy to think about where the food comes from," said Schwartzman. "It's easier to forget about where the food goes."

Since the launch of the program, five other local food businesses have joined the project, including the Fireroast Mountain Café, Sen Yai Sen Lek, Gluek's Restaurant and Bar, Brasa, and Chowgirls Killer Catering. For links and details, check out www.makedirtnotwaste.org.

According to Susan Hubbard, CEO of Eureka Recycling, the participating restaurants are now recycling or composting over 90 percent of their kitchen waste. The compostable wastes are collected from the restaurants by truck, and processed by commercial composting facilities. It's a little different from backyard composting - city ordinances prohibit backyard composting of meat products, but the commercial composting operations are able to handle meat leftovers, as well as a variety of paper products that cannot be recycled.

A pilot project in the Linden Hills neighborhood offers curbside pickup of compostable wastes - check out the website of Linden Hills Power and Light for details.

And now for something completely different:

I stopped in last night for dinner at the Rainbow Chinese Restaurant, where I had the best fried calamari I have had in ages, and ran into Tammy Wong, and learned that there are still some places left for their four-course $55 Year of the Ox wine dinner this Thursday. It's sort of a sneak preview of the menu they will offer next month, when the Year of the Ox actually begins. (The new year starts January 26. but the New Years menu will be offered a couple of weeks earlier -stay tuned.) I don't have many details, but you can register for the event by calling 612-870-7084.  Somelier Leslee Miller will select five wines to accompany the dishes. Turns out Leslee Miller has her own business, offering wine tastings, events and parties, and has a bunch of upcoming wine events listed on her website. Just got word from Tammy Wong that tomorrow's dinner is canceled, but she plans to schedule another for the second week in January..,