Iron Chef, whole grains edition

by Robin Kerber, CIA Student and volunteer with Slow Food Hudson Valley

As I sat in the car, waiting for my friends, I was thinking about a recipe for winter barley vegetable soup: butternut squash, roasted beets, celeriac, and barley.  After spending all day making pastries in class, nothing sounded more satisfying than a bowl of warm soup made with fresh, local ingredients.  But I wasn’t making the soup for me.  I was about to travel to the Mount Kisco Child Care Center to help with a friendly “Iron Chef” whole grains themed competition.

The first time that we—six students from the Culinary Institute of America—had traveled to Mount Kisco to plan our meal with the kids, I had had no idea what to expect.  What do children know about cooking let alone designing a dish?  It turns out they know a lot.  At least the children of The Mount Kisco Child Care Center do.  They have their own edible schoolyard, which produces a huge variety of fresh fruits and veggies.

My friends and I arrived with our knives sharpened and our whisks in hand.  My team came up with a recipe that sounded delicious and hearty, with flavors like thyme and parsley.  I’m fairly certain I didn’t know what thyme was until I was much older than these kids but the experience made me realize that something remarkable was spreading slowly but surely across the nation: initiatives to teach children how to live sustainably. The children were gathered around a table, carefully cutting vegetables into chunks.  We immediately got to work in the kitchen, helping the excited children prepare a tasty meal.  And, as dinner - time rolled around, the Center was packed with friends, family, and local purveyors.

Many of the courses featured wheat, oats, and cornmeal that were grown and milled in the Hudson Valley.  Local honey sweetened whole wheat bread and polenta with I&Me Farm pea shoots setting the stage for a fantastic meal.  My team’s vegetable barley soup and an entrée of quinoa pilaf with local apples helped make the meal a celebration of winter flavors.  By the time apple crumble was served, the consensus was clear: local food is simply great.  But it wasn’t just the food that made the night unforgettable.  It was the feeling that we were working as a unified group, rather than as individuals.  By the end of the evening, most would have to agree that life feels more meaningful when you understand the connection between land, food, and community.

Final words from the Mt. Kisco Child Care Center kids-Stephanie, Paulina, Sabrina, Vincent, Benji, Emily, Sam, Nitza, Jocelyn, Emma, Clara and Zachery aged 5-11:

“Everyone got to practice their knife skills.  We ran back and forth from harvesting fresh pea shoots to the busy kitchen.  Yummy taste of peas.”

“Maybe we’ll go to school to become chefs one day, but even if we don’t, we’ll be healthy eaters.”

Farm-to-School Programs Help Nutrition Without Hurting the Budget

by intern Julia Landau

An exciting new study, highlighted in Medical News Today, suggests that farm-to-school programs can be implemented without raising food service costs. And that’s just one of the perks.

The study, entitled “Farm-to-School Programs: Perspectives of School Food Service Professionals,” also found that there is a direct relationship between sourcing locally and students’ fruit/vegetable consumption. School food service professionals suggested that having met or learned about the farmers providing these foods made the act of eating the produce more personal for students.

That being said, what happens when food comes from a local food distributor rather than directly from the farmer? For many schools, sourcing from a distributor provides a more feasible option than from multiple individual farmers. In that case, education about the origins of the food can provide a key link to healthier school eating habits.

On the farmers’ side of the equation, interviews with school food service professionals suggested that schools are attractive markets for local farms. Oftentimes schools can make use of “outsize” and imperfect items, such as smaller apples and twisted carrots. As opposed to the retail market, schools may have more flexibility in regard to product appearance and size.

This study contributes to a growing body of research supporting local food sourcing for schools. Food service professionals are proud to serve it, students feel encouraged to eat it, and farmers have another market to sell it.

“Farm-to-School Programs: Perspectives of School Food Service Professionals” by Betty T. Izumi, PhD, MPH, RD; Katherine Alaimo, PhD; Michael W. Hamm, PhD can be found in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, Volume 42, Issue 2, (March/April 2010) published by Elsevier.

Update on the Child Nutrition Act

On March 3, Senator Blanche Lincoln told a conference of school meal providers that she plans to start marking up the Child Nutrition Act before March 26, when Congress goes on Easter recess. If the Senator is true to her word, this will be the first progress on the bill since Congress passed a one-year extension last fall.

Lincoln also said that she’s seeking the biggest increase ever in funding for child nutrition programs, citing President Obama’s proposal to add $1 billion per year. While that amount isn’t enough to transform school lunch, it is an important step forward and we encourage everyone to let Congress know it’s a priority.

Our other policy goals – strengthening nutrition standards for all the food at school, and linking schools to local farms – have strong support from the USDA and will likely be included if Congress supports the funding increase.

Legislators will be home in your district for Easter recess from March 26 to April 11. This is a great opportunity to get their attention. Some easy things you can do are:

• Submit an Op-Ed to your local paper. One fantastic story would be to gather a group of parents to eat school lunch, and then write about it in an Op-Ed.

• Schedule a meeting with your legislator or his/her staff. Bring kids, parents, teachers and school meal providers, and let them do the talking.

• Invite your legislator or his/her staff to eat school lunch.

• Drop off letters of support at your legislator’s office. Deliver them all at once, have people stop by one-by-one, or draft a statement of support that local community leaders can sign and then deliver together.

Learn more about the Time for Lunch Campaign at www.slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch, and email Slow Food USA staff member Gordon Jenkins (gordon [at] slowfoodusa [dot] org) if you’d like to get involved.

Chicago Kids Write to Eat

by Emily Dagostino, Slow Food Chicago volunteer

Wee toddlers scribbling in crayon, kids and teenagers tuned into the trouble with today’s school lunches, and parents advocating for the well-being of their children were among dozens of Windy City denizens who penned letters at a recent event asking Congress for increased funding for school lunches.

“It was great,” says Slow Food Chicago board member Ryan Kimura. “We received about 40 letters, but I felt the impact was stronger than that.” Sara Gasbarra, Green City Market Sprouts Program Chair, agreed: “I think the event was a total success!”

Green City Market and Slow Food Chicago teamed up to sponsor the “Kids Write to Eat” event on February 27 as part of a ramping up of outreach efforts for the Time for Lunch Campaign that began with Slow Food Chicago’s annual meeting in January. Since then, dozens of volunteers have emerged ready and excited to help spread the word. Teachers have approached Green City Market and Slow Food Chicago about bringing the letter-writing campaign back to their classrooms, and volunteers have redoubled efforts to reach out to like-minded organizations in the Chicago area to find new ways to tell our collective story.

In the next week or so, representatives from Slow Food Chicago, Green City Market and Common Threads plan to hand-deliver the kids’ (and parents’) letters to the Chicago office of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill. They hope to use the meeting to discuss with the senator’s staff why childhood nutrition and healthy lunches are a priority and to request the senator’s support.

In the letters, 6-year-old Alyssa, 7-year-old Quinton and 13-year-old Taisha asked Congress to “please serve healthy food” in their schools. Not only would it help them concentrate but it “gets you going at recess,” Quinton wrote.

More after the jump

House Ag Committee Rejects Obama Cuts in Farm Subsidies

by intern Valerie Scott

In his 2011 budget President Obama proposed to make cuts in farm subsidies and the crop insurance program that would save almost 11 billion dollars over 10 years. This proposal – Obama’s second attempt to cut farm subsidies - was rejected last Wednesday by the House Agriculture Committee .

Since the passage of the 2008 Farm Bill, farmers eligible to participate in the subsidy program must make no more than $500,000 in adjusted gross income (AGI) from off-farm sources and no more than $750,000 on-farm AGI. The newest Obama farm cuts would have lowered these eligibility caps to $250,000 off-farm AGI and $500,000 on-farm AGI. Direct payment caps were targeted for cuts of 25%, from $40,000 to $30,000 annually. A cut of $8 billion from the Federal Crop Insurance Program was also proposed.

The Obama administration’s first unsuccessful attempt to cut farm subsidies in 2009 focused on phasing out direct payments to farmers with annual sales of more than $500,000. Direct payments are a highly controversial subsidy given to farmers based on the size of their farm and the commodity they grow - regardless of crop prices or production levels. In 2007, a year of high crop prices and record net income for farmers, taxpayers paid out $5 billion in direct payment subsidies. Despite the current deficit crisis, cuts in even the most controversial subsidies to wealthy farmers clearly remain an uphill political battle.

Farm subsidies primarily benefit growers of just five crops – corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice. With Congress currently giving school lunch programs just $1 per meal for a generation of children afflicted with epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes – can we really afford not to put those 11 billion dollars towards better nutrition programs?

The School Lunch Revolution in San Diego

by intern Julia Landau

What can one Slow Food chapter, one local school, a Whole Foods Market, and a Renegade Lunch Lady get done together? Just ask Slow Food Urban San Diego, who just spent two jam-packed days advocating for healthier school lunches with Chef Ann Cooper.

The two-day event was catalyzed by Whole Foods Market’s “School Lunch Makeover” video contest. With the help of a dedicated parent, students from the Albert Einstein Academies charter school made their case for a school lunch overhaul. Their video “Where Did the Good Food Go?” came in first place! The prize? A visit from the Renegade Lunch Lady herself, Chef Ann Cooper.

Chef Ann has been challenging and transforming the school lunch system across the country. A chef for over 30 years, she now focuses on strengthening links among food, farms, family, and child wellness. As part of this, Chef Ann is calling for a school lunch revolution in which schools shift from packaged and processed food toward healthy, nutritious meals. Her online resources, appearances, and campaign to increase school lunch funding by one dollar per meal are inspiring and empowering local schools and activists from coast to coast. This time, she made a two-day stop in San Diego.

Slow Food Urban San Diego, having partnered with Albert Einstein Academies, helped kick off the events with a press conference featuring Chef Ann and the Mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders. The partnership among Chef Ann, Whole Foods, Slow Food Urban San Diego, Albert Einstein Academies, and the local restaurant Alchemy drew so much attention, in fact, that the Mayor issued a proclamation declaring February 18, 2010 “Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Day.” Later that day, Chef Ann addressed over 150 people at the Natural History Museum of San Diego. A Slow Food member gave lead-in presentation about the Time for Lunch campaign, complete with live tutorial on sending e-letters to congress.

More after the jump

Drake Forum discusses getting new farmers on the land

I just spent an invigorating 2 days in Washington DC at the Drake Forum, a gathering intended to “identify innovative policies and projects at the federal, state, and local levels to support new and beginning farmers.” Right now the average age of the American farmer is 57, a statistic we bandy about without really knowing how to correct it.  I mean the answer is simple: get more young people on the land! Make farming a cool, viable career again! But easier said than done.

Jane Black covered it anecdotally in the Washington Post today, capturing just one of many of the fascinating stories shared with the 200+ group.  We heard stories of frustration--navigating the confusing maze of USDA programs available; stories of renegades succeeding despite the obstacles--Hmong farmer Susane Moua in St. Paul MN, turning backyards into a CSA program. 

The strength of this gathering lay in a few key places:
1. The focus on discussing real, possible solutions, especially in the policy arena
2. The presence of US Agencies, especially the USDA (including Secretary Tom Vilsack delivering the opining keynote)
3. The focus on bringing together big ag and sustainable ag (though the deck was a bit stacked towards the sustainable ag folks)

The conference was organized by Professor Neil Hamilton, Slow Food chapter leader in Iowas as well as the head of the Drake Agricultural Law Center.  Attendees seemed extremely energized following the final session today--one in which “policy reporters” from each panel summarized the potential policy solutions that arose on their panel as well as posing the essential remaining questions.

More after the jump

New Obama program to bring healthy choices to food deserts

by intern Jackie Fortin

“We can create the best nutrition education and physical education programs in the world, but if dinner is something off of the shelf of a local gas station or convenience store, because there’s no grocery store nearby, all our best efforts are going to go to waste,” the First Lady said during a speech at Philadelphia’s Fairhill School on Feb. 19 to launch the Obama Administration’s new Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI).

Currently, the USDA estimates that 23.5 million Americans, including 6.5 million children live in “food deserts,” or economically distressed areas that are typically served by fast food restaurants and convenience stores offering little or no fresh produce.

“Food deserts,” which can now be identified using USDA’s new Food Environment Atlas, are one of the many results of the nation’s broken food system preventing individuals from making better choices and denying them the ability to vote with their forks. When an area lacks healthy, affordable food options, its inhabitants are prone to higher levels of obesity and other diet-related diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

In order to achieve the Obama Administration’s goal of eliminating “food deserts” nationwide in the next seven years, the HFFI will fund a movement of bringing grocery stores and other healthy food retailers to underserved urban and rural communities across America. The effort will also include providing grocery stores on wheels for less densely populated areas, said Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan during her “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” presentation at The New School Feb. 25.

The $400 million initiative, which will use a mix of federal tax credits, below-market rate loans, loan guarantees, and grants aimed to attract private sector capital, is being made possible through a partnership between the departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services.

Modeled after the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI), the HFFI will ideally not only provide access to healthy food, but will also invest in communities by removing financing obstacles and operating barriers, as well as by creating living wage jobs and qualified work forces.

More after the jump

Chicago Students Cook Lunch for Congress

by intern Christine Binder

Earlier this week, a team of Chicago high school students traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak up for better school food, but they did not come empty-handed. The students, from the Tilden Career Community Academy, brought along their award-winning recipes. Back in October, the team of six won the Healthy Schools Campaign’s 2009 “Cooking Up Change” competition. Their chicken-vegetable jambalaya, jalapeno cornbread, and cucumber salad were served to Congress in the Longworth House of Representatives cafeteria and also at a Capitol Hill briefing on the future of school food.

The students specifically designed the menu to exceed current nutrition standards for school lunches and fall under a budget of one dollar per serving, which is the same amount that school districts around the country have to spend on ingredients for each school lunch. Meeting budgetary and nutritional requirements was the most difficult part of the competition, according to the Tilden students.

Cooking up Change gives students a forum to present their creative ideas about what healthy school food can be,” said Rochelle Davis, the founding executive director of Healthy Schools Campaign. “And while the contest is fun, it carries an important message: schools need more money for better food.”

More after the jump

Middle School Slow Food clubs meet with Josh Viertel

by Daniela Salazar Monárrez, 8th grader at Hillcrest Academy and Slow Food Club founder

Yesterday the Slow Food clubs of Van Avery Prep and Hillcrest Academy got together with the Slow Food USA president Joshua Viertel. Josh kindly came to Temecula to meet our two Slow Food clubs, which are the first middle school clubs in the country. We had prepared our questions and were armed with freshly picked lettuce, organic salad dressing, and lemonade made from school grown lemons. With tasty food and our questions ready to go, both schools felt comfortable for the arrival of our Slow Food celebrity.

Josh was tall. He was warm and friendly, greeting with a smile and handshake. All the members of both clubs got to shake his hand and listen to some information about the Slow Food Organization. The younger members got to ask a few questions, then the twelve chosen representatives went to the round table (which was really squared). The smaller group settled down and got ready to ask questions.

After an introduction by yours truly, the questions began. They ranged from personal specific things like “Do you have a garden?” to bigger more general things like “What would you change about food in the world, and why?” but each student got a chance to ask a question.

We learned about how he believes that the fact that some people don’t buy good food doesn’t mean they have bad morals. “… It says something bad about our society, that people don’t have enough money to buy good food for themselves,” he told us. We discovered that even Josh has bought fast food, when he was stuck at an airport, hungry, and had only fast food available. “No one is perfect,” he said “the main thing is how you act most of the time.” Josh explained his interest in slow food and how he believed in the concept before he heard about the organization.

More after the jump