Pie Contest In Photos

What an incredible night this was! We thought we might get 40, maybe 50 pies, but no, we got 86 pies for the first ever CitySeed Pie Contest to benefit the SNAP (Food Stamp Double Value program). The event was an amazing partnership with On9 and so many generous donations were made from 116 Crown, Ashley's Ice Cream, Amity Wine&Spirits, and so many others!! We can't wait for next year!!

(Although I don't know if I can say the same for the poor judges who had to taste 86 pies!!!)

Thanks to the fabulous Dj Toot-Skee, who had us all jammin' in the street (working off the calories, as we put them on!) The pie above was made by the 4 year-old group at Creating Kid's preschool, and won best pie made by a kid!

 The judges deliberating!

 The fab folks at 116 Crown, mixed up a great blueberry lemonade cocktail with berries donated by Jones Family Farm (and picked by me!), and fresh herbs from Common Ground School Farm!

And what would we have done without the amazing chalk art by Amy Christensen of Elm City Market (and the crew of kid artists!!)  

Many thanks to all the incredible New Haven community members of all ages who baked delicious homemade pies! You all helped to make this event an incredible success for our the Food Stamp Double Value program, and also for the pure blessing of people coming together around good food. Here's to YOU and here's to PIE!!  

Pie Contest Block Party Friday August 2nd!!

It's Here! The Pie Contest and Pie Party to raise money for CitySeed's Food Stamp Double Value Program. It's gonna be a fabulous party in the street with tons of pie, Ashley's Ice Cream, Dj Tootskee, a Cash Bar by 116 Crown and some fun kid activities!

If you didn't buy tickets online, you can still get them at the event (cash or credit card).

If you want to help out, serve pie, paint faces or serve drinks...come on down to 71 Orange St in New Haven, CT Friday August 2nd. Party is 6-8pm, Volunteers come around 4:30 to help out!

Our celebrity judges include Mayor DeSetefano, Nadine Nelson of Global Local Gourmet, Colin Caplan of Taste New Haven, Matt Finer of Devil's Gear Bike Shop (he can handle eating all that pie!), Joanne Sculli of Solar Youth (a self proclaimed pie lover), and Alex Biker of Marjolaine Bakery.

There are lots more details on our website if you are interested in making a pie, or just want to know more!

It's the hottest party in town tonight! Hope to see you there!

Food Justice

For many years when someone asked me "what do you do?" I had a fairly straightforward answer "I'm a chef".  When the conversation ventured into "what kind of food do you cook?" or "what's your specialty?" I'd try and find some way to explain a lifetime of experience and love of food in a sentence or two; not the easiest task, but people generally left the conversation understanding that I wield a knife and know how to make a royal delicious mess in a kitchen.

These days however, when people ask me what I do, the conversation goes something like this:
"what do you do?"
"I'm a chef, but I primarily do food justice work in the community."
"what is food justice?"

...and then ensues a long and winding conversation about equal access to healthy food for all people, growing food, food education, food policy, cooking classes, composting, food stamps, breastfeeding, economic development and food, food business incubators, food business resource centers, healthy corner stores, sustainably raised food, connecting farms with cities, and so much more....

I have a feeling that people leave this conversation with a vague idea of what I'm talking about, but not really certain what I do. It was a lot easier to just say, "I'm a Chef", but it's so much more statisfying to be living the work that I truly believe in and discovering and building the path infront of me each step of the way....and with so many more wonderful partners than when I stood behind a stove all day.  I often summarize my new work as, "community building through food", and just leave people wondering a bit.

Speaking of wondering, some of you may be curious about the lack of posts on my blog as of late. The answer to this query is much the same as the story of my work life above...it's easier to write about cooking and food than the more complicated world of food justice.... or at least it takes a little more time to write about it, and time is in short supply in the busy life of work I have in front of me right now.

I'll give you a quick intro to some of the projects I'm working on and beg you to forgive me for the lack of postings...I promise they will increase towards the end of October!

Link to a New Haven Independent Article on 
community outreach with the New Haven Food Policy Council and CitySeed


Check out www.NHFoodPolicyCouncil.org for more details to events listed below:

New Haven Food Action Plan - a draft plan from the New Haven Food Policy Council - open for comment until mid October. - see the link on the webpage above.

Community Feedback with the New Haven Food Policy Council  (those colorful post-its to the left are people's ideas of what should be done to improve food issues in out city.)

Feast From the Fields - Saturday Sept. 29, Common Ground fundraising dinner and auction

New Haven Food Summit, w/ guest Will Allen of Growing Power - October 12, 2012

The Big Stink, October 13, 2012 - making a stink about growing food in New Haven, a citywide bus tour and garlic planting.

Food Day 2012 - www.foodday.org


Two other great events in October you  might want to know about:
New Haven Land Trust 30th Anniversary Gala dinner with Will Allen
Tickets available

15th Annual Cook & Care Walk-a-thon
to benefit 4 area emergency food providers

A Food Month poster should be available soon...
Please read the Food Action Plan on the city website and let me know what you think! -Tagan

Back (or front) Yard Gardening

It's that time of year again...time to get some seeds started, or start thinking about where you can grow a little food on your stoop, in a window box, or in your front or backyard. Lettuce and strawberries grow wonderfully in a window box, tomatoes, herbs, cucumbers, eggplants and many other things grow well in large pots, and without too much effort or money, you can set up a raised bed over a small plot of yard in the front or back of your home or apartment building. A raised bed allows you to plant above the existing soil, so you don't have to worry if there is lead or other soil contamination, and if your beds are at least 12 inches deep, you can grow just about anything.

 Before: 

After:

Growing food is much easier than you might think, and there are tons of online, and local resources to help you. Community gardens, master gardener programs, and local schools and organizations teaching people about urban agriculture and offering assistance to people wanting to grow food. I started out with a few pots, then some mounds of dirt in my yard (when I finally lived somewhere with a yard) and now have 6 small raised beds. Start small and try something new each year, don't be afraid to ask questions, and before you know it, you will be harvesting your own cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes and so much more...

Here is a link about how I built my raised beds a few years ago with detailed instructions to help you get started. And, a little info on starting seedlings as well.

Are you going to try growing some food this year? Let me know if you have any questions!

A Farm Grows in New Haven

5 hours, 2 vacant lots, 70 volunteers, 4 wheelbarrows, dozens of shovels and rakes, tray upon tray of seedlings, a ton of passion for bringing fresh food to people who otherwise wouldn't have it, and a farm is born. Mark your calendar, because today, July 17, 2011 the first two parcels of New Haven Farms have sprouted to life.

There is an incredible movement across the nation, and around the world to bring the process of growing and eating fresh food back into people's lives, and the city of New Haven is no exception. In fact there are quite a few schools and organizations here who are doing just that. This new group, New Haven Farms started earlier this year as a result of the successful garden at the Fair Haven Community Health Center as part of their diabetes prevention program and a partnership with the local bakery, Chabasso who donated the land. The new farms are located on vacant lots, donated and leased by the city and will grow food as part of a low cost Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) modeled farm where shareholders will get a weekly portion of produce from the farm's harvest. "New Haven Farms’ mission is to promote health and community development through urban agriculture."

The amount of work and commitment that went into making this day possible was incredible, and it showed. A dedicated group of local volunteers have spent months refining a vision, acquiring land, testing soil, and finding donations of tools and soil. Students from the Fair Haven School grew the seedlings in their roof top greenhouse and volunteers from around the city, and around the world helped to build and plant the garden today. What is next? Well, we'll have to watch it grow and lend another hand when needed...

Maria-Luz - checking in with her children while planting tomatoes, helps out in the 

Fair Haven Health Center Garden and lent a hand establishing the new farm!

Rebecca Kline, the passionate leader of this project taking a moment 

to bask in the glory of this new beginning.

Check out New Haven Farms on Facebook

Contact New Haven Farms

As if a new urban farm wasn't enough, 3 new school gardens are getting started this summer... more posts on that soon.

There's a Party Happening at Stop & Shop!

Finally, after over a year of shuttered doors, there is a new, full-service, centrally located grocery store in New Haven! Yesterday, the Stop&Shop near downtown opened to the public. It was incredible to see the parking lot full, and hundreds of people milling in and out of the store. Typically big corporate ventures are not high on my list of things to be happy about, but when you live in a city of 126,000 with no centrally located full-service grocery store, and very few grocery stores within city limits at all, this is really something to celebrate! 

The atmosphere within the store was festive, with balloons, music and tasting stations everywhere. They did a great job at having a lot of foods for different ethnic communities, Chinese, Jamacian, Kosher Jewish foods, Latino, etc. They've hired 100% New Haven folks, a bunch of great people to run departments, including a large number of people of color,  and are planning community outreach and nutrition events. This is certainly a great step towards improving availability of healthy food for the people of our city. Let's hope that the store continues to respond to the needs of the entire city to create a vibrant and thriving urban food center!

It has been deeply disturbing to me recently how all of the large grocery store chains refused to open a store within our city limits, and even shuttered the one existing store, even though it was profitable. Most large grocery companies don't really seem to understand the urban grocery market, and seem unwilling to alter their suburban models at all to provide a service and make money within these under-served "food deserts".
Enormous congratulations go out to the Greater Dwight Development Corporation, the people of the Dwight community, and all the New Haven partners that worked extremely hard to get this store open!!!

I was caught up in the party atmosphere and kind of randomly snapped some pictures...

 And, I bumped into 3 friends while I was there!

Food Coops Over the Years

Photo credit: Dave Robbins Photography

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Between the work I am doing as the Chair of the New Haven Food Policy Council, and my new paid work helping to get a new grocery store and food coop in New Haven, CT : Elm City Market off the ground, I've been more than busy. And, let's not forget the family: many sick days and snow days. It's been a full month and there are more than a few half written blog posts awaiting my attention. While I try and find time to finish those I thought I'd share a few links to some food coops that I have either been a member of or have shopped at over the years.

I grew up lending a hand at the original New Haven Food Coop when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's, until it closed and turned into a Meat Market and Hostess outlet (no joke!). When I was in College in the early 90's at Sarah Lawrence, I moved to Brooklyn to dance and teach and joined the Park Slope Food Coop, a fairly unique food coop, one of the few left where a monthly work shift is required of all members and only members are allowed to shop at the store. I loved being part of this coop, and many years later when my son was born, my husband got a job there as one of the few paid employees, so we felt even more a part of it. There was a window of time in the late 90's when I lived in Boston, and I joined and shopped at the Harvest Coop in Cambridge and in Jamaica Plain, MA. This coop was more of a standard small grocery store open to the public where anyone could shop but members had special benefits and discounts.

You may have heard me say more than once that my life revolves around food, and I do mean this literally. When I travel or spend any time in another city or town one of the first things I do is go in search of a grocery store, food market or food coop to explore. I love wandering the aisles noticing the familiar and the unexpected. What little gems might be waiting to be discovered on high up shelf,  in a prepared food case, or on a market table. As a child of the 70's, raised at least partially in a fairly alternative hippy community, I find visiting food coops particularly interesting. Many of them still around today were born of that era; natural food stores with a crunchy granola style and explicit social and communal missions. Some of them have survived, evolving in some ways, but holding onto their roots, others have closed and other new coops have been inspired by these older markets but try to create something new and more contemporary. Some of the new food coops strive to have an affordable mix of natural and conventional foods to help them appeal to a wider audience, many are open to the public: to members and non-members alike, and, all of them are striving to create a member owned independent grocery store in the face of huge corporate expansion.

For me, being part of a food coop has allowed me to have an even deeper connection to the source of my food and involvement in the community I live in. It just feels different to shop in a grocery store that you are a member/owner of. When there is a spill on the floor, I care more about helping to clean it up; if the item I am looking for is always out of stock I am more likely to talk to the manager rather than just buy it at a different store; if the store is doing particularly well or poorly, I feel proud or concerned. In other words, when I'm a member of a food coop, I'm invested in more ways than one, and this helps me and the store, so it is a win win situation.

Here are links to some of the food coops I have been a member at or shopped at over the years:

Park Slope Food Coop Brooklyn, NY 
Harvest Coop Cambridge and Boston, MA
Rainbow Coop San Francisco, CA
Flatbush food coop, Brooklyn, NY
East End Coop, Pittsburgh, PA
Brattleboro food coop Brattleboro, VT
River Valley Market, Northampton, MA

A few other coops of interest:
City Market, Burlington, VT
Willimantic Food Coop Willamantic,CT

Have you been a member at a food coop or shopped at one? 

Please share your thoughts below!

Three Bits of Food News

New White House Initiative to End Childhood Obesity:

 

Chefs Move to Schools is a new initiative of Michelle Obama, White House Chef Sam Kass, and the US Department of Agriculture, to connect Chefs with schools in am attempt to end childhood obesity by introducing kids to the importance and deliciousness of fresh healthy foods. 

For more info, check out this post on the White House Blog about the new program or on the New Haven School Food Blog run by Tim Cipriano, the Executive Director of New Haven Public Schools food service program.

  
Check out Tim Cipriano, White House Chef Sam Kass, John Turenne of Sustainable Food Systems meeting in D.C.  Notice the cookbook in Sam's hands, New Haven Cooks!

We've been working on promoting healthy delicious fresh foods to our community and schools, it's great that the whole nation is getting mobilized too!

 _____________________________________________________________________________

Cooking demo from New Haven Cooks cookbook

Wednesday May 19th @ 6pm - Mitchell Library, New Haven 

Seven Pepper Collard Greens and other Sneaky Greens recipes 
with Chef Tagan Engel and guest Tabitha Carter

The last of 3 cooking demos at the Mitchell Library in New Haven. Join us to learn about delicious easy recipes using greens such as collards, dinosaur kale and spinach. If you are in New Haven and aren't going to the Taste of the Nation event, (see below) or don't mind showing up a little late, stop by and see what's cooking. New Haven Cooks will be available to purchase at this event, it is also available online, all proceeds go to support CitySeed.

__________________________________________________________________________

Taste of the Nation - Delicious Fundraiser to End Childhood Hunger in the USA

"Savor the finest food, spirits and wine from the nation's hottest chefs and mixologists. 

100% of ticket sales supports Share Our Strength's efforts to end childhood hunger." 

If you are in New Haven:
The Taste of the Nation event is this Wednesday May 19th from 6-9pm at the Yale Commons on the corner of Grove and College streets. Tickets are available for this fun and important event. 

If you are elsewhere in the country: 
Check the Share Our Strength Website for dates and locations in your area.

Taste of the Nation is a nationwide event run by Share Our Strength to raise funds to fight childhood hunger. Chefs and restaurants donate food for a fun evening of tastings and socializing. Participants purchase tickets for the event and profits are distributed among local organizations who work to combat childhood hunger. Many of these events around the country are happening this spring and summer. Check the website for dates in your area.

Cookbooks at the Farmers' Market Tomorrow

New Haven Cooks will be on sale tomorrow at the CitySeed Wooster Square Farmers' Market!

Saturday April 3rd from 10am-1pm. Chapel St. near Wooster Sq. Park.

The market will be filled with beautiful flowers, fresh vegetables, greens, eggs, milk, meat, cheese, honey, Easter cupcakes, grilled cheese, bread and so much more! I will be there selling cookbooks, so come on down and enjoy the market and pick up your copy!

To receive the great CitySeed newsletter with detailed information about what is available at the markets and other special events, click here.

New Haven Cooks/Cocina New Haven

is a beautiful and delicious bilingual community cookbook which celebrates the cultural richness of New Haven through food.  The book is packed with wonderful and intriguing recipes featuring fruits and vegetables. Over 100 people in our community donated time and talent to making this book such a successful collaboration!I spent the past year and a half working on this book and am thrilled that it is making it's way out into the world.

If you are not located near New Haven:

To purchase New Haven Cooks/Cocina New Haven online click here.

Copies of the Book are selling for $14.95 plus tax (total 15.85). All proceeds go to support CitySeed which is a non-profit organization.

In the late spring we will be distributing 5,000 copies of New Haven Cooks/Cocina New Haven to low income families through WIC and SNAP offices, Health Centers, Nutrition Classes and School based wellness activities.  Four recipes from the cookbook are being incorporated into the NH public school lunch program. The Cookbook and related projects were funded by a grant from the CT Department of Public Health.

Starting Seedlings - will last year's seeds sprout to life?

The weather in March in New England can feel like the dead of winter or a warm burst of spring. A few weeks ago we had a foot of snow, but this week the weather was well into the 50's and 60's and sunny. The warm weather and the added hour of daylight in the evenings brought me and the kids out into the backyard just before dinner, a bag of dirt, some half filled packets of seeds from last year, and a glimmer of hope that they might yield us an early crop of veggies this year.

Planting seeds with a 5 year old, is a wonderful experience, but the addition of an almost 2 year old, added a frantic, chaotic and humorous element to the project. Dumping being the main skill-set of that age meant that there were 30 seeds where there should have been 2,  and dirt everywhere.  Overall, I think we got at least a few seeds planted properly and everything straightened out and labeled in the end. I kept my seeds in a bag in the uninsulated mudroom off the back of our house, which I have a feeling may have been a bit too cold or hot at times to be good for the longevity of the seeds, so, we'll just have to wait and see if they will sprout.

Left: Ayo's marigold seeds planted and labeled. Right: 2 kinds of spinach, nasturtiums and zucchini seeds, planted and awaiting water.

When we left Brooklyn and landed in New Haven almost four years ago the long yard with space for growing food was my solace for the vast land of fabulous grocery stores and restaurants I was leaving behind. The yard had not a drop of sun until we reluctantly removed a few trees, but now we get a solid 6 hours of midday sun and can grow a good deal of produce to get us through the summer and fall months. Our growing area is about 4 feet by 20 feet with small walkways between the raised beds. We have a small strawberry patch, raspberries, two struggling blueberry bushes, and 5 beds that last year had an assortment of tomatoes, lettuces, kale, cucumbers, carrots, sugar snap peas, zucchini, beets, green beans, nasturtiums, and a few ears of corn.

 a spring crocus

As the spring continues, I'll add more info about starting a home or school based garden, but for now, you might just start thinking about where and what you might like to plant. You can grow food in buckets and pots as well as raised beds or straight in the ground. Get your soil tested at a local Agricultural cooperative extension office (just google that plus your state). For the CT office click  here. You can get seeds at most garden centers and some grocery stores. Try and find organic, heritage or non-GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds. If you want to order online, two good companies I have ordered from are Johnny's Selected Seeds and High Mowing Organic Seeds.

If you have kids and want to engage them in gardening and food, here are a few great picture books:

• Carrot Soup - by John Segal
• The Green Truck Garden Giveaway: A Neighborhood Story and Almanac by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Alec Gillman
• Eating the Alphabet - Lois Elhert
• Bee-Bim Bop! - by Linda Sue Park and Ho Baek Lee
• The Gardener - by Sarah Stewart and David Small

What are you planning to grow this year? Any home or school gardening tips? Please post any comments below!

The celebration of oil - aka - hanukkah [Part1]

We are just starting the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, and a week long cooking event filled with OIL! There is so much to know about oil in our diets these days. Some are good for us, and in moderation, our bodies need oils to function well. However, these days many oils in store bought foods are hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, high oleic, modified, iteresterified, etc...all of those words you will find in the ingredient list of packaged foods, and none of them are good for you. I try to eat mostly, whole foods, so I am able to avoid these most of the time, but I do have one big challenge when buying cooking oil, and the answer can't be found on any labels: Genetically Modified Organisms.

Most people in the U.S. have no idea that most bottles of cooking oil in a regular grocery store are made from genetically modified or engineered ingredients. When I go to the chain grocery store near my home, in the cooking oil section I primarily find 3 kinds of oil: vegetable (soy), canola, and corn. All of these oils are made from three of the most highly genetically modified crops grown in this country. However, nowhere on the bottle or in an ingredient list are they required to tell us that.

It is easy to find scientists who will tell you that there is no proven harm to eating geneticaly modified foods. I don't believe this for a second, and find it to be incredibly arrogant for anyone to make such a statement. These ingredients have only been in our food supply for a short time, and had very little testing before they were introduced. I did hear a study once where they gave mice a choice between two seemingly identical foods, one was genetically modified and the other wasn't and the mouse always chose to eat the non-genetically modified food. There is a difference.

As a logical argument, changing the basic genetic structure of an organism couldn't possibly be good for us, or for the environment, genetic engineers are messing with mother nature, with no idea of the consequences. Genetic modification is not the same as grafting or the crossing of plant varieties that farmers and nature have done for generations. The genetic engineering of food can have devastating effects on agriculture. (Check www.sustainabletable.org/issues/ge/ for more info and links on this and many other sustainability issues)

I sometimes feel that I have so much information about our food system and ingredients in our food supply, that it makes it very hard to shop for food. Now that I don't live near a great food coop, I have to go to numerous stores, farmers markets and farms to supply my family with healthy "natural" and affordable foods. It seems that it is much more effort than it should be. Fresh, affordable, sustainably grown and raised foods should be accessible to all people, not just those of us who have the passion to learn about and seek them out.