Biodynamic: Taking our food to Organic and beyond?

Real Time Farms Food Warrior, Lauren, explores biodynamic farming in her community.

Written by Lauren Telfer, Real Time Farms Food Warrior

On my weekly trips to the grocery store I transform into an avid food inspector for a short period of time: I look for different certifications, growing practices, and any other pertinent information about my food. I am on a constant quest for food that is not only nourishing for my body but also for the earth. Until recently, I thought that organic farming practices was the be-all and end-all answer to this quest; on a recent enlightening (and very rainy) trip to the Ecology Center’s Farmers’ Market in downtown Berkeley, I was informed that this is not the case.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn about biodynamic farming – a practice that actually surpasses organic farming in sustainability and environmental awareness.

I was first introduced to biodynamic farming at this farmers market through a vendor from Flying Disc Ranch, a date and citrus farm located in Thermal, California.  I inquired about their practices and was surprised when the usual response of “certified organic” didn’t come, instead his reply was, “We are a biodynamic farm.” Biodynamic? This sounded intriguing and innovative, I was immediately captivated and rightfully so.

More after the jump

Humboldt Park’s Rooftop Revival

A high school science project becomes a community mission for local food; leads to a cafeteria rooftop greenhouse and the community’s first produce market.

Written by Kate Soto, Slow Food USA member who can also be found at her blog, DomestiKating

Humboldt Park is one of Chicago’s 77 neighborhood areas, just west of trendy Wicker Park. It’s known for its beautiful 207-acre park, as well as its deeply rooted Puerto Rican community. Every June, thousands descend upon California and Division Streets to celebrate the Puerto Rican People’s Parade, where you can buy corn and arepas and any number of delicious foods. Yet, this neighborhood, comprised of a community with strong ties to cuisine, is considered a food desert.

The term food desert has been buzzing around Chicago since Mayor Emanuel declared it one of the key issues of his tenure. Approximately 40 percent of the city lives in a ‘food desert’, characterized by a lack of access to fresh, healthy food and grocery stores. These areas happen to occur exclusively in low-income African-American and Latino neighborhoods—like Humboldt Park.

Long before Mayor Emanuel took office, groups had been exploring the implications of food deserts on health and community. In 2006, Mari Gallagher produced a notable report examining their negative impact on public health. Around the same time, Sinai Urban Health Institute did a study that identified Humboldt Park’s obesity rate as considerably higher than the city average: 50 percent of Humboldt Park’s children were found to be obese.

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Inside Slow Food USA’s Youngest Chapter: Slow Food West High

Four of the youngest leaders in the Slow Food movement walk us through how they founded a Slow Food chapter at their high school in Iowa City.

Written by Bennett Thompson, Benjamin West, Elizabeth Vandenberg, and Joseph Malanson

We are students from Iowa City West High School, and Slow Food USA’s youngest members. Surrounded by the corn and soybean fields of southeast Iowa, we’ve all grown up in the spirit of agriculture, but with varying visions of what a farm should be. Over the past two years, our activities as a part of Slow Food have formed our understanding of sustainability and good food.

The first time I heard about Slow Food was September 2010, when I listened to chef Kurt Friese speak at his restaurant, Devotay. I asked him what high-schoolers like me could do to help the cause. He said it’s simple: start a Slow Food chapter at our school.

So, that’s what we did. We got in touch with Slow Food USA & through the Slow Food on Campus program, our fledgling club become a proper chapter—the first and only High School Chapter in the country. Just like that, the West High Slow Food Chapter was up and running—described to the rest of the student body as one part environmental, one part culinary club. At our first meeting we decided we wanted to do something big, something that would not only tell students, but show them how proper food should grow and taste. Naturally, the solution was to start a garden. To tell that story, I’ll pass it on to Benjamin, another West High Slow Food leader.
- Bennett Thompson, ‘12, West High School Slow Food (WHSF) Leader

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Youth Leadership in the Garden: Slow Food Boulder and Cultiva

The Cultiva Youth Project and Slow Food Boulder have teamed up with Anolon Cookware to provide top-notch cooking education and leadership opportunities in North Boulder. Here, teens get to cook and eat together, as well as learn from their peers. And, of course, brand new cookware doesn’t hurt!

Submitted by Ellie Goldberg of Growing Gardens’ Cultiva Youth Project

Here at Growing Gardens’ Cultiva Youth Project we are so thankful for our ongoing partnership with Slow Food Boulder! Each spring and summer, Cultiva youth participate in Slow Food cooking classes with local chefs, preparing meals at our garden in north Boulder, at the market, and in a downtown church kitchen. Slow Food recruits the chefs, purchases the ingredients, and helps staff the class. This time around, Anolon Cookware has given us the pots and pans.

The chefs choose recipes that use the vegetables the Cultiva youth grow at our organic market garden. Cultiva teens come from all walks of life; participants come from all socio-economic levels and represent a diverse cross section of Boulder County youth in all ways. Many of the teens have never prepared an entire meal from scratch, especially using vegetables they grew and under the guidance of a professional chef. Slow Food cooking classes are definitely a highlight of working at Cultiva; the teens love working together in the kitchen, learning new techniques and recipes from a pro, and above all, sitting together and enjoying a tasty home-cooked meal. To see a documentary about our Cultiva summer program, click here!

Thanks to Anolon’s generous donation of top-notch cooking supplies, we were also able to offer 6 youth-led cooking classes in the garden. The teens harvested vegetables and prepared garlic scape pesto, kale chips, and zucchini pancakes. The youth loved cooking using the shiny new tools!

But that’s not all we’ve been up to! This season, we had the opportunity to visit Shamane’s Bake Shoppe and bake with Shamane herself, prepare pizzas at the market with Antonio Laudisio, make kale tacos with Rayme and Serena on the Comida taco truck, and prepare a meal at the church with Tim Payne of Terroir. We’re excited to keep on growing.

Fresh From the Farm Cooking Classes for Kids

Participants of the Willamette Food and Farm Coalition’s Farm to School project make frequent trips to local farms to learn and see first hand where their food comes from.

by intern Sasha Hippard

The Willamette Food and Farm Coalition’s Farm to School project just finished their spring season with great success! Through lessons both on the farm and in the kitchen, students left with an increased knowledge of where their food comes from, how to prepare it, and the benefits of eating local and healthy ingredients.

The Willamette Food and Farm Coalition is a community based non-profit based in Lane County, Oregon. They represent a diverse group of stakeholders in the local food systems, from farmers and producers to restaurateurs and consumers. The Farm to School project is aimed at educating Lane County kids about where their food comes from and working to incorporate locally grown produce into the meals served in schools.

As participants of the Farm to School project, students make frequent trips to local farms to learn and see first hand where their food comes from. However, thanks to the recent Anolon donation which included veggie peelers, cooking pots and pans, measuring cups, spoons, and spatulas, students can take this experience one step further. Not only can students see where their food comes from, but learn how to use it as well. From the farms, fresh fruits and veggies are harvested, and eggs gathered. Once in the classroom, students get busy cooking in small groups. By cooking up a snack with the food they’ve harvested themselves, students not only learn valuable lessons on food production and farming, but also tasty ways to use the ingredients they just saw produced. 

With help from adult volunteers, kids have whipped up corn cakes with fresh strawberries, green salad with veggies and home-made ranch dressing, and scrambled eggs with sautéed greens. In the fall, the groups will return to the farms to harvest. Plans are being made to extend the repertoire of recipes further and make things like fresh salsa, potatoes with leeks and broccoli, and veggie soup with noodles.  Yum.

Having good cooking supplies makes cooking fun and easy and connects kids to the source of their food to inspire healthy eating habits. The next master chef or revolutionary organic farmer just might come from this group of inspired (and full) kids!

Table Talk Winning Recpies & Stories: Young Cooks

The second in a series of slow food recipes and the stories that inspired them. This week young cooks take the spotlight.

by intern Kelsey Wickel
This week’s featured Table Talk contest category is “Young Cook,” where cooks under 25 were encouraged to submit their personal recipes. These young chefs share a common value in creating good food inspired by taste tradition and local flavor and sharing it with friends and family.

Rachel Nichols’ first place-winning pickled heirloom tomato recipe comes from her time working as a Youth Educator in Chester County Pennsylvania CSAs. In her first week of work, the Assistant Director of the Program and local farmer handed her an heirloom tomato seedling. Originally, she claims, “I had no idea what to do with the thing,” but after some experimentation making sauces, salads, and pickles, Rachel settled on her favorite recipe for pickled heirloom tomatoes. “This is the pickled tomato recipe I experimented with after growing my first garden. The heirloom tomatoes I inherited from a young organic farmer were a life changing experience, as I am now working as a full-time cook and nutrition educator.”

Read Rachel’s recipe for pickled heirloom tomatoes here

2nd and 3rd place winners after the jump

More after the jump

Tools for Transforming the Kitchen into the Classroom

The recent donation of cookware from Anolon to Slow Food Skagit Salish Sea means the families of Lincoln Elementary can keep on cookin’!

by Sasha Hippard, SFUSA intern

The recent donation of cookware from Anolon to Slow Food Skagit Salish Sea means the families of Lincoln Elementary can keep on cookin’!
The Lincoln Elementary Family Cooking Classes, started in 2009 by the Slow Food Skagit chapter in Washington state has been providing 1st through 6th graders and their extended families with inspiring opportunities to make and enjoy home-cooked meals together. Since the program’s establishment, Slow Food Skagit has served 30-40 students and families annually, teaching approximately four cooking sessions a year. These fun, educational, hands-on sessions incorporate seasonal produce from Lincoln Elementary own school garden whenever possible and teaches students and parents alike how to make their food good, clean, and fair.
Along with high quality cooking pans of a variety of types, Anolon’s donation also included cookie sheets and a number of different kitchen tools like spatulas and garlic presses. This new cookware has changed what volunteers have been able to cook with the students and families at Lincoln Elementary.

Cooking classes like the ones at Lincoln Elementary are a great way to not only bring families together, but promote healthy and responsible eating habits. It’s so much easier to incorporate simple, yet powerful change into your everyday life when the whole family gets on board and has fun while doing it!

There are endless dishes to try that are healthy, delicious, and responsible, but only if you know where and how to look for the recipes and inspiration. The addition of the Anolon supplies means that the Lincoln Elementary cooking classes don’t have to be limited to a few simply dishes. The sky’s the limit for these families and they are free to explore, experiment and sample all kinds of healthy and delicious meals.

More after the jump

Shaping a Movement over a Meal

It’s called the food movement, but what does that really mean? Students and campus dining workers come together to show us that it’s about building community and making change.

by Hnin Hnin and Kyle Schafer

When Slow Food on Campus and UNITE HERE’s Stir It Up Campaign celebrated National Food Month together with Eat-Ins—part potluck, part protest—across the country, it signaled a small but inspiring convergence of two worlds: sustainable food & sustainable jobs.

Over 300 people participated in 6 Eat-Ins hosted by students and local union members at Northwestern, Wesleyan, and Harvard and Yale (jointly) and by SFOC chapters at Hamilton, Vassar, and Clemson.  While each Eat-In was unique, they all shared the goal of building community to create change for good food and food workers—including everyone from the farmers and farmworkers who produce the food to the campus dining workers who serve it up.

It’s not a new idea, but it is just now starting to grab the attention of the on-campus food movement: the fight for sustainable food is tied to the struggle for sustainable jobs.  Processed food requires less skill to prepare.  Lower skills requirements means lower wages for food workers.  So when food preparation consists of switching knives for scissors to open bags of processed food, we have to ask ourselves: what’s the difference between skimping on fair wages and benefits and skimping on fresh, healthy food?  By sharing stories over a meal, students and dining workers get a chance to hear how the same broken food system impacts one another on both sides of the counter.  They get inspired to change campus food together.

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Slow Food Vermont Leader Growing Next Generation of Farmers

Slow Food Vermont chapter leader Mara Welton and her husband Spencer are spearheading a new sustainable farming certificate program at University of Vermont.

by Grace Moore

Vermont’s exciting new Sustainable Farming Certificate program is linking experienced farmers with promising apprentices and practical experience to train much-needed new farmers. Slow Food Vermont leader Mara Welton and her husband Spencer are helping to spearhead this new program by lending their expertise.

Just over ten years ago, Mara and Spencer got their first taste of farm life working on a Boulder, Colorado flower and herb farm. Fast forward a few years, and you’ll find the couple setting up hoop-houses and spinning greens on the aptly named Half Pint Farm, a 2 acre specialty and baby vegetable farm located in Burlington, Vermont’s Intervale.

As the Weltons enter their ninth growing season, they’re bringing their expertise and experience to the table in the new partnership with University of Vermont’s Sustainable Farming certificate program.

More after the jump

Got a truck? You can help the “coolest urban ag project around.”

After months of planning and planting, a fleet of 25 Truck Farmers across the country are about to take to the road. One snag! Not enough trucks.

by Hnin Hnin

Some farmers have thousands of acres of land. Some farmers have a few. Truck Farmers have a pile of dirt in the back of a pickup truck.  Truck Farm is a simple concept with a big impact. It’s a mini-mobile farm, an edible exhibit, and the focus of a documentary coming out this winter. What exactly can you do with a 4x8 bed of soil and seeds on wheels? Add an ambitious farmer with the passion to teach kids about growing and eating healthy food, and you’ve got one of the coolest urban agriculture projects around.  That’s why Slow Food USA has partnered up with Truck Farm to recruit some of the freshest new urban farmers in town.

After months of planning and planting, a fleet of 25 Truck Farmers across the country are about to take to the road, popping up at schools, camps, street fairs, outdoor concerts, and anywhere else large groups of youth congregate.  They’re revved up and ready to go…

BUT there’s one snag—7 of the 25 farmers don’t have a truck!  Meet Cate Brennan, a student and leader of Slow Food University of Rhode Island.  With your help, she and her group can become some of the youngest Truck Farmers on the fleet. 

More after the jump