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Food
for Thought Festival - Eight Years and Going Strong
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This
time we really mean it... There's NO WAY we're going to top this year's
Food for Thought Festival! Thank you so much to the MANY
organizers, exhibitors, speakers, tent and bleacher crew, presenters,
musicians, stiltwakers, ALL the volunteers, and especially the weather
gods -- who helped to create our truly "best ever" event.
Anna Lappé and Mollie Katzen drew a full house Friday
night at the Food for Thought forum in Ag Hall on the UW Madison
campus. They shared messages of hope and inspiration as they spoke
about their quests to promote healthful and sustainable eating. Their
sincerity, warmth and wit won the hearts and minds of those who came to
hear their stories.
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Mollie Katzen at forum
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Jim
Goodman, Mollie Katzen,
Anna Lappe at forum
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Anna Lappé speaking at Festival
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Wisconsin
farmer, Jim Goodman, rounded out the forum Friday night with his
own engaging words, encouraging all of us to pay attention to the
direction our food system is going and know when its time to
"get off that bus."
We thank Jim, Anna and Mollie for their generosity of time and
passion. Also a big thank you to Larry Meiller for MC'ing
the event and to Molly Jahn, the new Dean of the
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences for her enthusiastic opening
welcome. |
Jim Goodman at the Forum.
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Food for Thought - A great crowd!
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But the
Forum was really only the opening act for the Food for Thought
Festival on Saturday morning. The plaza on Martin Luther
King Jr. Blvd. featured over 60 local exhibitors,
offering treats for our mouths and food for our minds. The
most gratifying part of the day was walking around and listening
to 1000's of festival-goers engaged in meaningful conversations
with exhibitors about opportunities to support a strong regional
food system as well as other sustainability issues in our
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People
who weren't able to attend the Friday night Forum had another
opportunity to hear Anna Lappé and Mollie Katzen speak at the Festival
on Saturday in the Main Tent. People even got to taste some of
Mollie's recipes during her talk and both Anna and Mollie were kept very
busy signing books for over an hour after their presentations. The
Main Tent also offered an opportunity to watch an award presentation to
Physicians Plus Insurance Corp. for their efforts to promote consumption
of fresh locally grown veggies through their "Eat Healthy
Rebate" program. (For any of you who have Physician's Plus --
you may want to take advantage of this program that subsidizes
memberships to CSA's! Learn
more about the rebate here.)
At the other end of the plaza from the Main Tent, the Demo Tent was
opened by Lilies of the
Alley, an acoustical musical trio who set people's
feet tapping and created a wonderful energy for the demos to come. The
"Lilies" were followed by the presentation of winners for this
year's Food for Thought Recipe Contest, including a demo and samples of
the grand prize winning recipe, "Summer Sprout Salad."
(See the recipe later in this newsletter and all the winning
recipes on line.) Congratulations to all of this year's winners!
The
rest of the day in the Demo Tent was filled with an array of cooking
demos by local chefs and food professionals, graciously hosted by Chef
Sabi of The Casbah Restaurant and the "Cooking the Casbah"
TV show. The Cooking The Casbah crew was on site filming
the whole time and we all look forward to seeing some Food for Thought
footage on the show sometime in the future. Kudos to Sabi as well
as Peter Robertson of RP's Pasta and Huma Siddiqui of White Jasmine
for
their wonderful presentations.
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Making 14 Carrot necklaces in the
kids' tent.
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The
younger crowd at Festival, as always, had a great time in the
kids' tent -- doing craft projects, petting chickens, having their
faces painted, and enjoying a mobile exhibit from the
Madison Children's Museum.
Hats off
again to everyone involved in this year's festival! And
especially to our generous financial sponsors: Whole Foods Market, Williamson Street Grocery Co-op,
Organic Valley, Heartland Credit
Union, Home Savings Bank, MATC |
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Culinary Arts
Department, Johnson Block
& Associates, Natural Ovens Bakery, Madison Area Community
Supported Agriculture Coalition,
Madison Originals, Physicians Plus Insurance Corporation,
Just Coffee, and the Dairy Business Innovation Center. Festival
just plain wouldn't happen without the vision and generosity of
these businesses and organizations!
Speaking of generosity... We are
ever grateful also by the depth of commitment toward REAP's work
from our friends in this
community. Thanks to everyone who purchased a t-shirt or
raffle ticket at Food for Thought. Those funds help keep
REAP programs running throughout the year.
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On Festival day, we learned from
Jim
Goodman (of Northwood Farm) and Tory and Traci Miller (of L'Etoile
Restaurant) that in addition to their other significant
contributions to Festival, they would be donating all the proceeds
from their local organic hamburger sales to REAP's Wisconsin
Homegrown Lunch Project. Thanks to Jim, Tory and Traci, and
to everyone who bought a hamburger and blueberry lemonade!
Those funds will go a long way toward providing farm-to-school
materials to kids in the coming year! |
Traci and Tory Miller of
L'Etoile grilling burgers.
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See
more photos of Food for Thought Festival at the
photo gallery. |
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Food for Thought T-shirts and
Aprons Still Available!
If you think you missed your
chance to own one of these lovely
Food for Thought commemorative items, it's not too late...
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Organic cotton T's,
U.S. made. Sizes still available:
Adult Unisex: Small, Medium
Women's Scoops: Med, Large
Youth: Medium, Large
Aprons - one size fits all.
All are $15 each.
Contact info@reapfoodgroup.org
to place your order!
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Logo design by Roden Creative
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Local
Night Out and Buy
Fresh Buy Local
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On
Wednesday, Sept. 13th, diners around Madison came out in force to
support local restaurants who support local farms. Sixteen
Madison restaurants participated in REAP's second annual Local
Night Out event. Diners all over town were delighted
with delicious meals prepared
with locally grown products. Our deep gratitude to the
participating restaurants, many of whom used great creative talent to develop special menus just for the evening.
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Participating
restaurants this year were:
Bunky's Cafe, The Casbah, Chautara, The Dardanelles,
Eldorado Grill, Fresco, Fyfe’s Corner Bistro, Glass Nickel
Pizza, Greenbush Bar, Harvest, Lombardino’s, L'Etoile,
Nadia’s, The Old Fashioned, Otto’s Restaurant, and The
Roman Candle. |
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Please
be sure to thank these
fantastic local businesses...for being a part of this
important community event, and for supporting local farms.
We'll soon have the opportunity to expand upon what we've learned
from the two annual Local Night Out evenings we've
coordinated. REAP's newly funded Buy Fresh Buy Local
Campaign
will create a branding mechanism to be used by
restaurants, hospital cafeterias, and government food services to
communicate their commitment to serving local products every
day. Our goal is that soon, every night can be a Local
Night Out.
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To this end, we're thrilled to announce the hire of a full-time Buy Fresh Buy Local Coordinator.
Please join us in welcoming Rachel Armstrong to the
REAP staff. Having worked both in restaurants that buy local and on
farms that sell to restaurants, Rachel brings a strong
understanding of what it takes to make those
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arrangements
work and a great passion for helping to broker lasting
purchasing relationships between food services and farms. |
Rachel
will begin in this position mid-October. She'll launch
quickly into extensive research into the
practices of a wide range of regional food buyers and
producers. She will explore the potential of distribution mechanisms currently in place to
bridge the needs of these parties, and encourage the formation of
new relationships and mechanisms. By next spring, the
campaign will quickly move into identifying participating establishments
and developing a branding label for participants.
We at REAP are delighted to have the opportunity, through funding
from the USDA SARE program, to move
forward with this campaign. Like our Farm Fresh Atlas and
Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch projects, this holds great potential to help close the gaps between our region's farms and our region's
tables.
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We'd love to hear your stories from
Local Night Out!
Where did you
eat?
What did you order?
How knowledgeable was your server about the event and how
enthusiastic about promoting the local foods
on the menu?
Would you support more of these types of events?
Send us your stories, comments or suggestions to info@reapfoodgroup.org
Knowing about your experiences will help us build the message that we are, indeed, a
community that WILL support eateries that Buy Fresh Buy Local!
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Wisconsin
Homegrown Lunch project starts another school year.
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Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch (WHL)
began the 2006-07 school year by saying a sad goodbye to Gill
Davidson, our Education Coordinator for the last year.
Gill's husband, Hiyami, received an unexpected job offer in
Massachusetts that was just too good to pass up, and with heavy
hearts, they decided they really needed to go. We will
surely miss Gill, and wish her and Hiyami our very best as they
get settled in their new life out east.
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As hard as it was to see Gill go, we couldn't be more
pleased to welcome aboard our new Education Coordinator, Brent
Kramer, who joined the WHL team as of September 1st. Brent
comes to this position with a teaching background and a passion
for fresh food education. He is already hard at work
facilitating activities in schools and creating farm-to-school
lesson plans so others can implement similar programs at their
schools.
It's been a flurry of activity in the five short weeks since
school re-opened. Here's just a bit of what WHL staff have
been up to:
WI Homegrown Classroom Snack Program
This fall, WHL expanded our fresh snack program from last
spring's pilot program at Lincoln Elementary to 3 additional
schools. Now, all 1700 students at
Lincoln, Midvale, and Falk elementary schools and at Sherman
Middle School are enjoying a local fresh vegetable or fruit
snack every week. Making this happen involves an
arrangement between WHL, local farmers (from who we buy the
fruits and vegetables), Willy St. Coop’s kitchen staff (who
chop the food into snack size portions), the Madison School
District's Food Service (who deliver the snacks to the schools)
and the teachers in each classroom (who serve the snacks.)
Along with each snack, each classroom teacher receives a
"snack bite", a resource for a teachable moment about
the food and farm from which it came. So far this fall
students have devoured 900 lbs of cherry tomatoes, sweet pepper
strips, daikon radish discs, carrot coins, and kohlrabi sticks!
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CHOWing down at
Sherman
Middle School
Who says 7th graders won’t eat their vegetables? Not Tory
Miller, chef and co-owner of Madison’s L’Etoile restaurant,
who, along with L’Etoile’s Eva Ringstrom, and WHL is serving
up a new series of fresh food cooking lessons to 7th graders at
Sherman middle school. Called CHOW (Cooking Healthy Options
in Wisconsin), these participatory classes are providing students
with hands-on and ‘mouths-on’ experiences to help them
appreciate a wider variety of fresh foods and learn simple
preparation techniques to use at home. These cooking lessons
are being documented to be shared with other schools and chefs so
that students in other middle schools can learn how to CHOW down!
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Chef Tory Miller
serves green beans from the farmers’ market to 7th
graders at
Sherman
school.
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Read Erika Janik's
fantastic
recent article
in Isthmus about CHOW!
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WI Homegrown
Holiday
Fundraiser
WHL is proud to once again be offering an alternative fundraiser
to schools this holiday season. Modeled after
a successful fundraiser that Hamilton
Middle School has implemented for years, WHL developed our own
"Homegrown Holiday Fundraiser" which we successfully
piloted last year at Lapham and Marquette schools. The
Homegrown Fundraiser offers the opportunity to purchase delicious
high-quality foods and support local farms and businesses while
raising funds for schools. In a partnership with Just
Coffee, the fundraiser this year will expand to six
Madison
schools. Over thirty farm-fresh and locally produced items
will be available for purchase including fruits and vegetables,
cheese and summer sausage, maple syrup and honey, and farmstead
soap. Providing truly practical items for gifts or family
use, additional sales to local producers, and funds for schools,
this fundraiser is truly a win-win-win for all involved.
[If you'd like to help out with the school fundraisers or want
to learn where you can place an order to support one these school
efforts, please contact Doug
Wubben.]
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Events Calendar.
Hunger
Prevention Council meeting with a special focus on the Farm Bill.
Wed. Oct. 18, 2:00 – 4:00 pm River
Pantry (2201 Darwin Rd. - off CV on the northside of Madison) The
"Farm Bill" impacts all of us in many, many ways: nutrition
sites, commodities, food stamps, extension educators, farm subsidies,
school lunch programs, etc. The Farm Bill is scheduled for
re-authorization in 2007. Speakers include: Ben Miller, Assistant Dean
of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS), UW-Madison; and
Rev. Sue Moline Larson, Director of the Lutheran Office for Public
Policy in Wisconsin.
Empty Bowls Dinner (7th annual!)
Saturday, October 28, 11
am–2 pm Madison Senior Ctr. (330 W. Mifflin)
Choose a handmade pottery bowl for a minimum donation of $15, and enjoy
a free lunch of soup and bread donated by area restaurants and bakeries.
All proceeds support the Partner Shares Program, an assistance fund that
subsidizes 50% of the cost of CSA shares for low income households.
Advance tickets are available or pay at the door. For more
information call 226-0300 or visit: www.macsac.org.
Wine and Cheese Tasting Fundraiser for REAP
Thursday, November 2, 5:00-7:30 pm, Bunky's Cafe 2827 Atwood Ave.
Sample
a selection of wines from Bunky's menu and artisanal cheeses from Cedar Grove
Cheese Company. Hors d’oeuvres will also be served.
Suggested donation of $15 per person. All proceeds will benefit the programs
of REAP Food Group.
Second
Biennial Conference for Community Supported Agriculture
November 10-12 in Cadillac Michigan
Raising vegetables and civic values: The
role of CSA in the 21st Century. Visit www.csafarms.org
for more information or contact Laura Brown at MACSAC 608.226.0300
MACSAC
(Madison Area CSA Coalition) Annual Meeting
Sat. Dec 2 10 am-12:00 am 12
am- 4pm, Atwood Community Ctr, Madison
Annual Grower gathering and
sharing meeting. For more information, contact Laura Brown
at MACSAC infor@macsac.org or
608.226.0300
Friends
of Troy Gardens Annual Meeting
Monday, Dec. 11, 5 pm at
Lakeview Lutheran Church (at Northport and Mandrake Rd).
Potluck Dinner and Slide Presentation.
For more information call 240-0409.
FERMENT - a monthly
local/sustainable food and agriculture "happy hour"
Second Monday of every month at 5:30 PM, Madison
FERMENT is an informal social gathering dedicated to
providing all the good folks involved in local food and sustainable
agriculture efforts a place to meet others, cultivate connections and
have fun! Please see http://www.fermentmadison.org
for details and location. (The next FERMENT gathering is Monday November
13th at RP's Fork & Spoon Café, 1133 E. Wilson St. Madison.)
Last Outdoor Farmers' Markets
The outdoor farmers' market season is soon coming to an end for our area
markets. Please see information about closing dates in the Southern
Wisconsin Farm Fresh Atlas.
Winter Dane County Farmers' Market: DCFM (downtown Madison) moves
indoors on Saturday mornings on November 11th, first to Monona
Terrace for November and December, and then to the Madison Senior Center
starting in January. See www.dcfm.org
for details.
Hilldale Market: Moves indoors Saturdays Nov 4 - Dec 30. 9 am -
1 pm in the Hilldale Food Court. Contact Joyce Nelson for more
information 608-238-6353 #8.
Other markets (including Madison Westside Market and McFarland
Farmers' Market) are also hoping to offer winter market opportunities.
Please contact them directly or check their websites for dates and
locations. (Contact info for area markets is in the Atlas.)
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Grand Prize Winning Recipe from the 2006
Food For Thought Recipe Contest.
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From grand prize winner Sarah Shatz:
“This was my first year as a CSA member at Troy Community Farm.
I have been enjoying the vegetables, and for a Madison
resident, you can't get more local unless you grow it
yourself! When I saw that buying local was a category for
the contest, I decided to make a recipe made from some of the
current contents of my weekly share."
"As we all become more aware of the politics of food and think
about all of the energy that goes into the production of what we
eat, it is refreshing to know that the resources involved in
producing this recipe come from an organic urban farm that I can
bike to, or easily purchase at various local farmers' markets.
(The ingredients are also available at your local co-op, too.)”
Summer Sprout Salad
by
Sarah Shatz,
Madison
Makes
5 one-cup servings
6 large cloves garlic
3 Japanese eggplants (the long, slender kind)
3 cipollini onions (these are flatter-looking than most onions)
6 medium tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups lentil sprouts
1/3 heaping cup finely chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
salt
optional sourdough baguette (Sarah recommends Madison Sourdough)
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Begin by peeling the garlic
and slicing each clove into 3 smaller pieces. Slit the skin of the
eggplant in 6 places, making slits that are just big enough to
stuff with the garlic pieces. Stuff the slits with the garlic.
Slice the onions. Cube the tomatoes.
2. Place the eggplant, onions and tomatoes on a baking sheet.
Drizzle the olive oil over the vegetables and stir the mixture.
Make sure the eggplant skin is covered with oil. Bake until
the eggplant is soft and wilted. 35 to 45 minutes.
3. Slice the eggplant open and use a spoon to scoop out the
insides. (Compost the shells.) Transfer all the vegetables to a
serving bowl. Add the lentil sprouts, basil and vinegar. Add salt
to taste and toss mixture. This salad may be served hot or cold
and is delicious accompanied by a Madison Sourdough
Baguette--perfect for dipping in the sauce.
Copyright by REAP Food Group, 2006
[All of this year's Food
for Thought Recipe Contest winners]
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If
you have any questions about any of REAP’s programs
or want to learn more about how to help, contact REAP’s Executive
Director, Miriam Grunes. (miriamg@reapfoodgroup.org)
To receive email versions of future newsletters, send your
request with "subscribe to REAP Reporter" on the subject line
to info@reapfoodgroup.org.
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