Real Food Challenge!

Last weekend, four Farms to K members (including myself) got to travel to Baltimore to attend the Real Food Challenge national conference. All three days were jam-packed with workshops, panel discussions, group reflections/activities and amazing food. We left inspired to continue the work we do with greater energy and passion. 

Real Food Challenge is a national organization working with college students to get more 'real food' (ecologically sound, local, fair, and humane) into campus cafeterias across the country. Their goal is to shift $1 billion of college/university food budgets from corporate or industrial food to 'real food'. They have developed tools such as the Real Food Calculator, to help student asses and quantify how much 'real food' is in their cafeteria, and to use the results as a base to work from. By signing the 'Real Food Campus Commitment' schools commit to sourcing 20% real food by 2020. 

Representatives from over 70 colleges and universities attended the conference this past weekend, and we were able to hear, first hand, the progress other students have made toward achieving these goals. It was amazing to have so many ideas and resources in one room, and actually was a bit overwhelming at times. 

One school I found particularly inspiring was Carleton. Their dining provider is Bon Appetite, and they are currently sourcing around 20% real food and aim for 35% by 2020. Bon Appetite invested $15,000 in Carleton's organic farm last summer, which provided farm intern salaries and infrastructure improvements. A portion of this money also went towards purchasing the student grown produce. Tori, one of the paid farm interns, said that the Bon Appetite (BA) chef would buy practically anything they offered him and incorporate it into cafeteria meals. She also mentioned that BA hosts cooking classes once a month (they learned how to make gnocchi last month!), free and open to all students.

Several BA workers spoke on panels at the conference and requested that they be involved and included in these student movements on campus. Christine, a BA worker at American University, said that she wants students to talk to workers directly about their cafeteria food goals, and that they will most likely want to work together. It's so important that we have a working relationship with the people who prepare our food - something I think is lacking at K. There's a great opportunity for collaboration and I hope to reach out to caf workers as we continue the push for real food in our caf. 

Hearing these stories, and many others, made me realize that we can dream BIG. The things we want to see on K's campus (better, more just food, a relationship with our dining provider, more student involvement in the caf, ect.) are possible and are happening at other schools across the country. 

As a school so committed to social justice, I think we can work to have a more active, in-practice commitment to the real food values. 

Bread Making Workshop

A couple of weeks ago (sorry for the delay in posting!) Trace, Kacey and I hosted a bread making workshop in Hoben Kitchen. We each made our specialty bread: Trace- cinnamon raisin, Kacey- French baguettes, and I - Cheese herb boule. To show the different stages of bread making, we had to prepare ahead of time and have examples of the dough in the mixed, risen, shaped and baked forms. Because there were so many stages to show, we had SO MUCH BREAD to eat! Yum! More workshops to come!