NYT and WaPo Report on Efforts to Fix School Lunch

by Slow Food USA staffer Gordon Jenkins

School lunch is all over the national newspapers today. In The New York Times, Kim Severson writes about a public school in Queens in New York City with an intrepid school nutrition director who manages to cook most of the school’s food from scratch, despite the challenges she faces under a National School Lunch Program that doesn’t give schools the resources to serve real food. Here’s a quote:

“The principal, Laura Mastrogiovanni, readily admits that food wasn’t on her radar when she took over in 2005. The cafeteria keeps a separate budget and cooks don’t report to her. But when Mrs. Barlatier arrived in 2007 and started to improve the food, it didn’t take long to see that the children not only ate more of it but seemed happier at lunch.
‘They needed a little flair in their food,” Mrs. Mastrogiovanni said. “It’s good for their brains.Ҕ

In today’s Washington Post, Jane Black writes about Revolution Foods, a start-up food service provider that serves healthy, delicious food at 250 schools in California, Colorado and D.C. Most of the companies’ clients are public charter schools and private schools, even though the cost of a lunch from Revolution Foods ($2.90) is not much higher than the amount that Congress gives school cafeterias ($2.68) to prepare school lunch. The article does a great job of laying out the problem with school lunch, plain and simple:

“Here’s what everyone agrees on: Too many kids are fat. The food they get at school, which provides 35 percent of most schoolchildren’s calories, is not nutritious enough and tastes lousy, to boot. And there’s not enough money to change this unwholesome picture. So here’s the question: How much will it cost to fix school lunch?”

And it ends on a hopeful note towards finding a solution, with a quote from Kristin Richmond, co-founder of Revolution Foods:

“We have to be smart as a country and a food system,” Richmond said. “But we [Revolution Foods] are living proof that it can be done.’”

Slow Food USA has joined the effort to fix school lunch with our first-ever national campaign, Time for Lunch. Click here to get involved.

Let’s not delay the CRP Transition Option

by Youth Programs intern Heather Teige

Two days ago, I had no idea what the CRP was or what it did. Needless to say, I felt a wee bit hesitant when asked to write about the CRP Transition Option and the Farm Service Agency’s decision to delay it for two years.  If you find yourselves asking the same questions I did, I couldn’t be more excited to share what I’ve learned with you. As for those of you who have a leg up on the rest of us, I look forward to any additional information you can provide and to learning more from you.

What is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)?

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was first drafted in the 1950s to help address the land erosion and resulting water quality problems that run-off sediment from this land creates. The CRP’s goal is to take unhealthy land out of production until it is restored into environmentally sound topsoil. They do this by 1) awarding CRP contracts, which pay farmers an annual fee to not farm on eroded land, and 2) by giving farmers incentives to plant regenerative vegetable covers on their land instead.

What is the CRP Transition Option?

The 2008 Farm Bill introduced the CRP Transition Option which encourages CRP contracted farmers that aren’t looking to renew their contracts, to rent or sell their land to beginning or minority farmers who have agreed to return the land to production using food sustainable farming practices.  The CRP encourages farmers to participate in the CRP Transition Option by granting them two extra years of rental payments even after their contracts have expired, and also works to ensure that the land will return to production in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way.

Delaying the CRP Transition Option

The Farm Service Agency (FSA) is planning to delay the use of the CRP Transition Option in order to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that will review CRP program policies. Thing is, many contracts will expire between this and next year which means 4.2 million acres of land will be released back to production! If the CRP Transition Option is delayed we will have one less option to ensure that our land stays healthy and that it’s farmed using sustainable practices, as well as less farming opportunities for beginning and minority farmers. That’s why the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is sending a letter to Congress urging them not to delay implementation of the transition option.

Want to get involved? Sign the petition today!

Digging into Cheese

by Slow Food USA director of development Kate Krauss

I have the greatest job. While some of my friends attend conventions in windowless hotel ballrooms, I get to go to the international Slow Food festival called “Cheese.” That’s right, it’s actually called Cheese. For 3 days, I sampled goat, sheep and cows-milk cheeses, saw demonstrations about different production techniques, and learned about the traditions of the craft—many of the cheesemakers I met have been working in the same meadows and traditions of generations of family members before them.

Cheese is held every other year in the small Italian town of Bra, where Slow Food got its start 20 years ago. Bra is one of those towns we Americans fantasize about when we think of visiting Italy. It’s surrounded by the rolling hills of the Italian Piedmont and full of charming old buildings and narrow cobblestone streets where local pastry shops sell gianduja, a delicious combination of chocolate and chopped hazelnuts, and where ubiquitous butcher shops offer Salsiccia di Bra, the town’s famous raw veal sausage.

Of course, Bra isn’t quite so sleepy during the Cheese festival, when over 150,000 people descend on the town to taste offerings from all over the world and to attend cheese-themed workshops and lectures. These are people who pack the room for a lecture referred to (with a straight face) as “The Joy of Natural Microflora.” That one was about the use of natural bacteria to turn milk into cheese, as opposed to the freeze-dried, packaged cultures commonly used in industrial cheesemaking. I loved every minute of it.

As a relative newcomer to Slow Food USA, I’ve watched as the organization has struggled with criticism for elitism, for promoting food that’s inaccessible to many people. We’ve worked hard to overcome that rap in the US by undertaking programs to help underserved communities and promote family farmers. And so while I was certainly excited to head to a cheese festival in Italy, I admit I went with a bit of a skeptical eye about the role of Slow Food. Wasn’t this just a fancy wine and cheese festival?

What I encountered was something altogether different. It felt like coming face to face with the soul of the slow food movement. Humble men and women coming together from places like Ethiopia, Argentina, and alpine France and Italy (not to mention Oregon, Wisconsin and California) to trade not only production techniques but also stories for how to preserve their way of life. These were people who gathered together in appreciation of good food, but their appreciation and passion didn’t end with taste. The Cheese attendees had a larger vision – to protect mountain villages and traditional pastoral practices; to preserve centuries-old products, customs and natural landscapes.

It was three days among my people. And the realization that my people are present in villages, languages, and traditions all over the world. What a great way to spend a weekend.

Anybody else out there attend Cheese? Or anything like it you’d like to share? You’re my people too, and I’d love to hear from you.

The “Ark of Taste” adds 12 new food products

The Slow Food USA Ark of Taste, a catalog of delicious foods in danger of extinction, has just been expanded to include twelve new food products, nominated by farmers, growers, chefs and food enthusiasts from across the country who are concerned about the diversity of our food supply.

Slow Food USA’s biodiversity committee convened in Portsmouth, N.H., to evaluate, taste and vote on each nomination. The committee was tasked with assessing whether or not each nomination met the Ark of Taste criteria. To be “boarded” onto the US Ark of Taste, a food must: (1) be at risk biologically or as a cultural tradition, (2) be linked culturally or historically to a specific region, ethnicity or traditional production practice, (3) have outstanding taste, defined in the context of local traditions and uses, and (4) have sustainable market potential.

Ark of Taste foods are those that have been threatened by market standardization, industrial agriculture, and environmental damage. “This is not only about food diversity but food security,” explains Jenny Trotter, associate director of Slow Food USA’s biodiversity program, “...we will need many different kinds of fruits and vegetables growing in our fields and many livestock breeds on our farms if we are going to be resilient in the face of climate change,” continues Trotter.

Slow Food USA and its partners in the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) Alliance are promoting the new concept of eater-based conservation. “We don’t want to preserve foods as museum pieces or only conserve the genetic diversity of our food supply,” said Slow Food USA’s biodiversity committee chair Ben Watson. “We want to get these foods back onto farms, back into the marketplace and back onto people’s tables.”

Twelve food products were selected for the Ark of Taste, including ‘Turkey’ Hard Red Winter Wheat, Lake Michigan Whitefish, the Hauer Pippin Apple, and the St. Croix sheep (from the US Virgin Islands).  The Slow Food USA web site tells the story of every Ark of Taste food—its description, history, flavor, and how to source it. Each profile is linked to LocalHarvest.org, which lists producers around the country who grow and sell that food.

To view today’s press release, click here.

Chicago Remembers Forgotten Fruits

By Megan Larmer, co-founder of the Chicago Rarities Orchard Project

After an early train ride last Thursday I strolled through Chicago’s Botanic Garden, savoring the tingle of early fall, to discuss that quintessentially fall fruit, the apple.  My friends and I were headed to a RAFT Alliance “Forgotten Fruits of the Great Lakes Region” workshop.  We knew we had the right conference room when we saw a few familiar faces from the Midwest Fruit Explorers (a group of local fruit enthusiasts and possibly the most ambitious “hobby club” ever known).  You may think a day devoted to discussing how to get heritage apple varieties into the hands of the masses would be a total dweeb convention. Honestly, you’d be right.  Pickle me dweeby.  But what an amazing diversity of dweebs gathered around that table as I sipped my coffee, reviewing my notes for the presentation I’d give that afternoon.

There was a young lady from Milwaukee there to learn how to care for the trees growing on her rented land, local farmer Vera Videnovich with a bag of apples off the trees her uncle grafted decades ago hoping someone could identify them, chef Dave Swanson who has pioneered Restaurant Supported Agriculture, Asian pear guru Oriana Kruszewski, wizened orchardist Ken Weston who’s donated his family orchard to the city of New Berlin, WI, apple historian Dan Bussey… in true dweeb fashion I could go on and on.  An amazing group of people.  Perhaps most notably was Gary Nabhan, co-founder of the Renewing America’s Food Traditions Alliance.  His piped cowboy shirt and vest made my westy heart ache with thoughts of home, and the intensity of his commitment to bringing variety back to our land and our table was inspiring (watch video of Gary here).  The RAFT Alliance is doing the good work.  It builds “food communities” through skill sharing events and documentation of culinary traditions.  Food memory goes beyond the apple in your kindergarten lunch sack, the pie at your favorite diner. There is a cultural memory of food that is a bridge to bringing community, history, and ecology back into our lives through the daily experience of eating.

More after the jump

Seed-to-plate curriculum at Desert Marigold School

by Youth Programs Intern Heather Teige

Slow Food USA will profile a number of our 2008 Slow Food in Schools Micro-Grant recipients in the coming months.  Look out for these profiles, along with best practice suggestions for Slow Food in Schools projects from our 2008 Micro-Grant recipients, which will be housed on the Youth Programs page this fall.

Desert Marigold School in Phoenix, Arizona is a charter school that firmly believes in using an interdisciplinary approach to educate its students.  And so, it’s no surprise that five years ago they partnered with Slow Food Phoenix to establish a 5,000 square foot garden to formalize their commitment to hands-on learning. The teaching garden program focuses mostly on farming and food preparation, but hopes to expand its curriculum and give students a broader and more complete view of the seed-to-plate process by building a fully sustainable outdoor kitchen.

What started off as an in-school garden will come full circle after the kitchen is built. The outdoor kitchen will be fully functional and is expected to prepare lunch for all of Desert Marigold School’s 200 students. The program looks forward to having their student’s witness the fruits of their labor by letting them eat and delight in what they’ve grown. Through the collaborative efforts of the school, local farmers, and chefs, the students will be given a tangible education about where their food comes from, how to prepare it healthily, and how to turn their kitchen’s leftovers into compost for the garden soil.

The project is now a reality through Slow Food USA’s 2008 Slow Food in Schools Micro-Grant, the volunteer help of a local architect, and private donations. Still, construction has yet to begin.  Unanticipated Arizona state budget cuts have halted progress on the outdoor kitchen’s construction, but the school continues—undeterred—to work towards its goal.

A snail of sustainably-grown corn?  It’s a-mazing.

Although the east coast has had temperatures in the `70s and `80s, the seasons are changing. Soon, the green of summer will transition to the red, orange and gold of fall. It’s the time of year when friends and families venture out to pick apples, select pumpkins for carving or find the perfect hayride.  It’s also an opportunity to learn more about sustainable farming and what better way than getting lost in a corn maze in the shape of a snail dedicated to the Slow Food movement?
 
Seriously, it’s true.  Check out the actual picture of the snail maze created by Slow Food East End chapter member, Harry Ludlow, who owns Fairview Farm in Bridgehampton, New York.  Although the maze is meant to be fun and entertaining, Harry also tries to educate visitors on the importance buying local, sustainably farmed or raised foods, such as the heritage pigs he also raises on the farm.
 
So, if you can get out to the South Fork of Long Island in the coming weeks take a walk through the snail maze.  Hopefully you can find your way out.

Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying pepper

by Biodiversity Intern Alaine Janosy

In 2005, when Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying pepper was “boarded” to Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, the pepper was considered endangered, putting the variety at risk of being lost forever. At the time, the pepper was available from just a handful of mail order seed companies in the United States and Canada. Recognizing the pepper’s rich history, cultural significance, and culinary viability, the U.S. Ark Committee voted to include the variety on the U.S. Ark of Taste. This decision took the variety off a path of extinction and put it on a path of successful propagation.
Today, when you search for Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying pepper on Local Harvest, a list of over 200 sellers from their database of farms, farmer’s markets, restaurants, and grocery stores is returned. The variety is even available in both seed and pepper form directly through the Local Harvest online store. This is quite an astounding shift in availability in just 4 short years.

Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying pepper is considered a U.S. Ark of Taste success story. It is a demonstration of how simply making people aware of a particular heritage product can lead to its revitalization. The pepper’s resurgence has even made it accessible for those who think they do not ‘know much about vegetables’ like blogger Cristin Kearns Couzens. A link to her blog post about the pepper is here.

Produce to the People: the Video Recap

Living in New York City and working for a sustainable food organization, I’m often asked if I’m able to actually get farm fresh produce in the middle of this thrashing metropolis.  Turns out the answer is a resounding YES!  Not only is New York City home to a thriving network of Greenmarkets shilling all types of deliciousness from around the Tri-State area, but a new wave of innovative food collaborations and businesses are making it easier than ever to eat good, clean, and fair food in your tiny air-shaft-windowed studio.

Here’s the play-by-play:

New Amsterdam Market is seeking to bring a permanent, year-round public market back (a la Ferry Plaza in San Francisco) to the Fulton Fish Market at the South Street Seaport.  Battling city officials and big developers, Robert LaValva has produced one-day events showing the support for the market and the vivacity it would bring to a dilapidated area.

Watch the video here.

Sweet Deliverance is a CSA-based prepared foods delivery business.  What that means is that busy New Yorkers purchase a CSA share from Paisley Farm and Blue Hill trained chef, Kelly Geary, transforms it into soups, salads, sides, and desserts and delivers it to your door each week.

Watch the video here.

Tell us what unique ventures are going on in your neck of the woods! 

Join the Heirloom Apple Scavenger Hunt

Win a DVD of the upcoming film “The Botany of Desire!” Apple season is here, orchards are producing their first fruits, and the Renewing America’s Food Traditions Alliance continues its work identifying rare apple varieties, coordinating regional “forgotten fruit” workshops and compiling resources on apple diversity.

What can you do? A lot! At the community level, you can find where old orchards still exist, take cuttings from them, learn how to graft those onto rootstock (or find someone who knows how to help), organize apple tastings and celebrate your own local apple culture. Today, we invite you to create your own Heirloom Apple Scavenger Hunt at local farms and orchards, or even at your local farmers market. 
Take photos of as many heirloom/heritage/old-timey varieties as you can, including the farm or farmer where you located it. Your own backyard counts! Send us your list of apples, your photos, and a recipe for something you made with one or more kind of apple.
The deadline is Oct. 15.  Email your submissions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

We will enter your name in a drawing—Ten winners will receive a DVD of the upcoming film “The Botany of Desire.”  Winners will be announced on Oct. 28, the same day that the movie airs on PBS (8 pm).