NO SOUP ON TUESDAY THE 24th of NOVEMBER!! We hope you all have a wonderful turkey dinner for thanksgiving, using only the finest quality ingredients from your favorite farmers, taking time to sit, listen and love your family and friends. See you again on December 1st for Jill Richardson! Miss you!!!
Best,
tara
SORRY… I must ask jessica, I am not sure how she made this deliciousness!
I will post tomorrow
The Seasons on Henry’s Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm
by Terra Brockman
We will be discussing Terra’s new book of engaging family stories, literary and scientific reflections, and week-to-week farm events, The Seasons on Henry’s Farm is a mindful and mouthwatering invitation to eat great food grown by people near you. By taking readers on a journey through a year in the life of small-scale farmers committed to producing healthy, nutritious food in a way that enriches the land for generations to come, Terra Brockman appeals to all who not only eat to live, but who live to eat.
Terra Brockman was raised in central Illinois and formerly lived and worked as a teacher, writer, and editor in Japan and New York City for fifteen years, with time out to travel extensively. In 2001, she founded The Land Connection, a nonprofit working to save farmland, train new sustainable farmers, and connect consumers with fresh local foods.
5ea Butternut Squash
5 lbs Sweet Potatoes
2 Yellow Onions chopped
2 cups Cream
2 sticks Butter
4 cups Apple Cider
Salt and Pepper
1. Peel the Squash and Sweet Potatoes. Slice into large chunks and set aside.
2. In a large stock pot, melt the butter and cook the onions until translucent. Add one gallon of water. Bring to a boil, then add squash and sweet potatoes. Cook until they are tender.
3. With a blender, puree the mixture and return to the stockpot. Bring mixture to a simmer. Adjust seasoning with Apple Cider, Cream and Salt & Pepper. Be careful not to boil the soup. Enjoy!
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
Speakers of the Day:
Gajus Miknaitis and Kevin Monahan, board members of the Dill Pickle Food Co-op
Join us this Tuesday to hear about the new Dill Pickle Food Co-op, a community-owned grocery store opening soon in Logan Square. Board members Gajus Miknaitis and Kevin Monahan will discuss the importance of cooperative businesses and the challenges of offering local, organic, and fairly traded foods at affordable prices.
Grocery co-ops are found in cities and towns all over America, from Minneapolis, MN to Fort Wayne, IN. Thanks to a collective effort of neighbors and friends, the Logan Square community is putting Chicago on that list. With convenient hours for both daily essentials and specialties, the Dill Pickle Food Co-op will be a full-service grocery store for fresh, local, and organic food. It will also carry one of the largest bulk food sections in the city. Find out how to get involved at http://www.dillpickle.coop/member
At farmers markets in Chicago, affordable produce out of reach for some
Chicago’s farmers markets bring produce to needy neighborhoods, but it’s often out of reach for those who need it most
By Monica Eng Tribune reporter
October 10, 2009
On a sunny fall morning last Saturday chef Michel Nischan stood in a South Side neighborhood watching the “impossible” happen again.
“Everywhere we go, people say that these communities are addicted to Happy Meals and they wouldn’t eat fruits and vegetables if you dropped them in the middle of the street,” said the pony-tailed chef. “But everywhere we go, that notion evaporates.”
He was at 61st Street Farmers Market, where shoppers were filling bags with apples, winter squash and peppers to buy with food-stamp credits that Nischan’s foundation matched — up to $25 per person.
The Woodlawn-Hyde Park market posted its best sales day ever, with food-stamp card (EBT) purchases adding up to nearly $500 before they were doubled. And this was just the first week.
In the past year, Nischan’s Connecticut-based Wholesome Wave Foundation has planted double-value grants in 55 communities on the premise that the country is healthier when fresh produce is affordable to the poor. This has grown even more urgent as the economy has pushed more Americans onto food stamps than ever.
But Nischan’s program may never reach some of Chicago’s neediest areas.
The city runs 22 farmers markets, and none of them accepts food-stamp credit. By contrast, there are 56 farmers markets in New York City that accept them, 14 in Boston, 29 in Philadelphia and 27 in Los Angeles. Those cities don’t run their markets, but local government supports their EBT efforts.
In Chicago, Mayor’s Office of Special Events representative Veronica Resa says that her office has explored EBT acceptance, but it was deemed too logistically daunting. The process would require procuring EBT machines and finding staffers to run the transactions and oversee the accounting in a year when the city is running massive deficits.
This month, Resa’s office is revisiting the issue at the request of the Department of Family and Support Services, but she stresses that “we are only exploring what a pilot program might entail, not making any commitments.” Her most optimistic scenario envisions “one, maybe two markets in 2010.”
This leaves citizens of Illinois, which has more than 1.5 million people on food stamps, only 10 markets in the state that will accept EBT cards. The state also suffers from the nation’s fourth-worst level of childhood obesity, a problem health authorities combating with better access to fresh produce for the poor.
If not for two independent markets (61st Street and Logan Square), Chicago would offer no reliable food-stamp access at farmers markets at all. But other communities have made it a priority. City agencies in Boston and New York even fund their own programs to increase farmers-market buying power for those on food stamps.
State social service offices also issue farmers-market vouchers to seniors and families that add up to $21 per year, but even these are hard to use, as not all vendors accept them.
Food activists have long fretted that organic and sustainable produce was often too pricey for those who need it most. But advocates believe EBT and double-value programs could change that.
“When we started the market, I decided I didn’t want to sell food that I wouldn’t eat myself or feed my kids,” said Connie Spreen, who founded 61st Street Farmers Market. “But it’s more expensive, so how then do we deal with that ethical dilemma? For me [double value] finally gets me past it.”
Audrey Frost, who was the first EBT user at the market of the day, agreed. “It’s a great way to allow people who don’t have a lot of money to eat properly and to use their dollars wisely,” Frost said. “We spent $25 and now we get $25 more. I think it’s absolutely outstanding.”
Part of the reason 61st Street can support its rich selection of vendors is because it draws shoppers from the University of Chicago crowd and Hyde Park as well as Woodlawn residents who commingle over fresh produce each week. Frost did her Saturday shopping alongside former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and “Top Chef” champion Stephanie Izard.
The chef joins chefs Paul Kahan and Rick Bayless in supporting the program. “It’s a natural fit for so many of us who want to promote local food in our restaurants and for everyone,” Izard said.
It was Kahan who connected Nischan with 61st Street after they got to talking one night about the guilt high-end chefs often feel about feeding only the affluent. After working with the upscale Green City Market for more than a decade, Kahan said this was “the next logical step, getting the food into the hands of people who need it and can’t necessarily afford it.”
Dennis Ryan, the market manager for 61st Street, will need that help if last Saturday’s robust response continues. He’s hoping the $10,000 Wholesome Wave grant will last through late December, but he’s already plotting fundraisers.
As the market hit its stride Saturday, Rick Montgomery, who is launching a South Side produce program called Chi-Town CSA, offered a possible new direction for the city.
“OK, so maybe we didn’t win the Olympics, but let’s keep fixing things anyway,” Montgomery said. “Maybe we take all that energy and civic pride and channel it into making Chicago the greenest, healthiest city in the world.”
meng@tribune.com
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
