Farm to Chef – Tastes of Whidbey – Slow Food

May 232011
 
 May 23, 2011  Posted by Kathy McLaughlin 1 Response »

Slow Food Whidbey Island will present “Farm to Chef: Taste of Whidbey” on Sunday, June 5th at Greenbank Farms.

The concept for the Whidbey Island event is to teach what Slow Food means. The Slow Food movement began in Italy in the late 1980′s to provide an alternative influence to the encroachment of fast food in European eating habits and life style. The mission was to show people that updated pre-industrial food production methods and manufacturing are a viable, healthful and a preferable alternative to current food manufacturing and agribusiness practices.

At the Greenbank Farm you will have a chance to taste, smell and see beautiful local products cooked by our local chefs. People can learn to appreciate real food which has been handled more by hands than machines.

Some locals at last years event.

Our Whidbey growers give their crops and animals the care, time,  and energy needed to produce high quality and nutritious products.  You will learn to why our island chefs buy local product instead of the cheaper sources trucked in from far and wide.

Last year’s event was sold out. One hundred sixty guests enjoyed tastes prepared by 6 fine dining chefs with ingredients from local growers.

This year there will be 8 chefs and 8 growers participating in the event. Each chef and grower will share a table with the chef’s prepared food available for guests to taste and the grower’s raw product ingredients available to see and learn about. It is a rare opportunity to catch these chefs out of their kitchens for a chat!

The chefs include: Scott Fraser (Fraser’s Gourmet Hideaway), Joe Scott  (Oystercatcher), Andreas Wurzrainer (Christopher’s), Jeremy Ritchie (Front Street Grill), Jan Gunn (Whidbey Pies Café), Gordon Stewart (Gordon’s On Blueberry Hill), Sieb Jurriaans (Prima Bistro) and Matt Costello (The Inn at Langley).

Participating growers from Whidbey will be Wilbur Bishop, Willowood Farm, Sherman Farms, 3 Sisters Beef, Penn Cove Shellfish, Little Brown Farm, and Crescent Harbor Ranch.

There will be excellent wine & beer, too. Winemakers Gregory Osenbach of Whidbey Island Winery and Greg Martinez of Holmes harbor Cellars will be pouring wine. Premium beers from Langley’s Olde World Ales & Lager and Oak Harbor’s Flyers will be served.

Slow Food Whidbey Island is a year and a half old.  They are a small energetic group looking for more members and they hope you will all attend their event. Membership in Slow Food is $25. I attended their monthly meeting this morning and it looks as though they will be participating in the Chef Cook Off at Good Cheer’s Annual Harvest Festival, let’s give them a helping hand.

Tickets for the tasting event are $30 and include all food & beverage. Tickets are available at many locations throughout the island; however, you can call Chef Vincent Nattress at 360-969-4200 to secure your tickets. Remember, last years event was a sell out.

Slow Food supports the small farmer, local artisans and believes in preserving cultural food traditions. The top  item on the current agenda of Slow Food USA is nutritious food in school cafeterias across the country.

Good Tastes and Good Cheer!

Healthy Eating

May 282010
 
 May 28, 2010  Posted by Kathy McLaughlin No Responses »

Healthier eating is a hot topic in this country today. Media coverage of the First Lady’s initiative to reduce childhood obesity and instill
healthier eating habits is widespread. We even have ABC’s primetime reality show, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” where the young English chef is trying to change the dietary habits in Huntington, West Virginia, dubbed America’s unhealthiest city by the Centers for Disease Control.

Here in Washington State obesity rates more than doubled between 1990 (9%) and 2004 (22%). I can’t imagine that things have been getting much better.

On South Whidbey, Good Cheer Food Bank, is leading a food revolution of its own. This involves back-to-basics healthy, low-cost cooking. Good Cheer has been steadily ramping up its efforts to provide fresh, nutritious food. This has been done by focusing on the right purchases for the Food Bank, then by creating an on-site garden, and now by teaching clients how to cook fresh, healthy, unprocessed food in convenient, affordable ways that dispel the notion that fast food has to be junk food.

A lot of people simply don’t know how to cook healthy, which is something we’re trying to change for our clients and the wider community. The Slow Food Movement is very much like what we are trying to do.

Slow food is the antithesis to fast food.  Fast food is popular since it is low priced but the cost to our health is a large one. The dollar menu or some healthy food?

The mission of Slow Food is to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Slow Food is dedicated to bio-diversity (preservation of food variety) and sustainability (meeting present needs without compromising those of future generations). Slow Food works to support the small farmer, local artisans and preserves cultural food traditions.

Since relocating the Food Bank to the more spacious facility in Bayview in October 2007, Good Cheer has not only been able to increase the volume of food available to neighbors in need, but has made a concerted effort in improving the quality of food with an emphasis on fresh, local and less processed foods.

“We are very aware that the funds used to purchase food for our food bank comes from community donors and thrift store patrons, so we work really hard to spend the money wisely on the most nutritious food we can,” says Damien Cortez the Good Cheer Food Bank Coordinator.

One way the Food Bank encourages clients to select nutritious food is by assigning fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, rice and other raw staples with lower points. A one-person household has a base of 70 points to spend per month at the Food Bank, with an additional 10 points per person in their household.

They will rapidly run out of points selecting highly processed foods at 5 or 10 points instead of fresh vegetables and fruit for 1 point, or a ten pound sack of potatoes for 1 point versus a small box of instant mashed potatoes for 3 points. A can of baked beans is 2 points, whereas a five lb. bag of beans is only 1 point.

What we’re trying to do is to show the benefits to healthy food selections and how much further the basics can go in feeding a family, so that few refined foods and sweets (mainly donated items) are selected only on an occasional basis.

Part Two of this series will deal with education and some of the classes that you can find at the food bank.

Good Cheer!