"Two Angry Moms" with Slow Food Boston

Last week, Slow Food BU hosted a film screening of Two Angry Moms with Slow Food Boston.

Two Angry Moms is a documentary following filmmaker and mother Amy Kalafa, who searches for schools that offer healthier school lunches. Susan Rubin of Better School Food is the other "angry mom" in the documentary, and the film shows the efforts of Susan and other leaders in the movement to improve school lunches. The film offers steps for those interested in improving the quality of food in children's schools, such as:

1. Have lunch with your child in the school cafeteria
2. Join a committee or coalition
3. Survey your district
4. Read your contracts
5. Market your new program

Read the more detailed action plan here.

After the film, Alex Loud of Slow Food Boston spoke about Slow Food's Time for Lunch Campaign. The Child Nutrition Act is a federal law that was created in order to help meet the nutritional needs of children in the National School Lunch Program. Because the Child Nutrition Act is reauthorized every five years and is planned to be reviewed by Congress in early 2010, it is the perfect time and opportunity to make change. Currently, Congress allots $2.68 per school lunch, with $1 allotted towards ingredients. Only 20¢ of that $1 is devoted to fruits and vegetables, which simply isn't enough to provide children the real food that they need. If you are concerned about this issue or would like to become more involved, look at Slow Food's Time for Lunch Campaign.

A panel discussion followed, featuring JJ Gonson of Cuisine en Locale, Claire Kowozer of Waltham Fields Community Farm, and Kim Szeto of the Farm to School Initiative.

Claire discussed some of her previous involvement with the Farm to School Initiative in Somerville. In Somerville, children only have 12 minutes to eat lunch. 12 minutes is hardly enough time to eat lunch, much less enjoy it. It is because of this short lunch time that they found that children ate more apples and left less waste when the apples were small- children simply do not have enough time to eat a large apple during lunch. These small apples are now provided to the public schools in Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston, and are locally sourced from Lanni Orchards based in Lunenburg, MA.

Kim is involved with the Farm to School Initiative in the Boston Public Schools. Despite the mere 20¢ devoted to fruits and vegetables per meal in school lunch, they have found that buying local is sometimes cheaper, and they have been able to serve local and seasonal produce including corn on the cob, collard greens, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash.

JJ, involved in Cambridge's Healthy Service Task Force Food Advisory Board, provided a parent's perspective on the issue.

• Because the 12 Cambridge schools feed thousands of kids a day, commodity products are extremely important in controlling costs. Commodity products are provided for free to schools, because they are excess products available from the government as a result of agribusiness subsidies. However, one needs to question the health implications of these commodity products, such as tuna, which poses health risks for children due to the mercury levels in tuna and the potential health risks from the can linings.
• The classic yet deceptively innocent PB & J sandwich has its health implications as well. The bread and peanut butter contain hydrogenated oils, the peanut butter and jelly contain high fructose corn syrup, and the jelly contains unnatural colorings.
• Schools are not allowed to serve water because it has "no nutritional value." Schools typically only offer milk, chocolate milk, and apple juice.
  
• Read more about what JJ has to say on school lunches here.

All three acknowledged how significant Lanni Orchards has been in providing local produce to public schools within the area.

Although there is a lot that needs to change in the school food system, there are many ways to become more informed and to become more involved. Here are a few resources to get you started:

• Find more ways to become active at the Two Angry Moms site and review their action plan
  
• Better School Food
• Slow Food's Time for Lunch Campaign
• The School Nutrition Bill (H2092) and the Local Farm Products Bill (H2107/S1437) were recently passed by the House of Representatives in MA. However, these bills still need to be passed by the Senate. Read the article on the passage of these bills, and keep updated and find out more about what you can do through the Massachusetts Public Health Association

For another recap of this event, read Slow Food Boston's followup.

Sugarbushing in the City

This weekend, Slow Food BU joined the Urban Homesteaders' League for Sugarbush in the City: A Walk and Talk with Meg Rotzel. Meg took us through her neighborhood in Jamaica Plain, showing us how to identify Sugar Maples.

Key traits to look for when identifying a Sugar Maple:

shaggy, grey bark, a dome crown shape, and three-pronged winter buds

We then learned about the sugaring process, or boiling down the sap into maple sugar. Meg recommended doing this outside over a turkey frier, although it can be done indoors as well (especially if you have a wood stove). Did you know that it takes 40 gallons of Maple sap to produce just 1 gallon of syrup?! The sap is boiled at 119 degrees fahrenheit until most of the water is boiled off, at which point it is moved to a finishing pot and heated to 218 degrees fahrenheit. It is then filtered into containers of your choice (Meg uses jam jars).

Grades A, B, and Meg's homemade syrup on

waffles from Centre St. YUMM...

The day ended with delicious waffles at the Centre St. Cafe where we got to taste test Meg's syrup with other A and B grades. I think it is fair to say that Meg's home batch came out on top!

Bread Makin' & Bakin' with the Urban Homesteaders' League

Last weekend Slow Food BU joined forces with the Urban Homesteaders' League for a Bread Making workshop at Myles Kitchen. The Urban Homesteaders' League's Lisa Gross showed us how to make whole-wheat no-knead bread.

Lisa mixing the no-knead dough.

Charlotte Dion of Northshore Permaculture walked us through the process of making our own sourdough as well as sourdough culture.

Charlotte showed us how to shape the sourdough...

...then everyone joined in the fun!

Everyone went home with their own loaf of sourdough and sourdough culture (did you know that every sourdough culture is named for where it originates?).

The final product. Lisa's bread was so

delicious it was gone before it was even cooled!

Lisa's No-Kneed Whole-Wheat Bread Recipe

Ingredients:

4 c. lukewarm water

1 1/2 tbsp. instant yeast

2 tbsp. kosher salt

5 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

2 c. unbleached all purpose flour

1/4 c. vital wheat gluten

cornmeal for the baking surface

Directions:

1. Warm the water to about 100 degrees (lukewarm).

2. Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix.

3. Pour in the water.

4. Mix in the flour with a spoon. Do not knead.

5. Cover with a lid (not airtight). Allow the mixture to rise for 2-5 hours.

6. Refrigerate, or proceed onto the next section.

7. Dough can be refrigerated for up to 10 days.

On Baking Day:

1. Prepare a pizza wheel or cutting board with flour.

2. Sprinkle the surface with of the dough with flour.

3. Take half of the dough.

4. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go. The bottom of the loaf will appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but this will flatten out during resting and baking.

5. Gently mold the ball into an oval.

6. Fold one side of the dough in thirds like a letter--don't fold down too much.

7. Bring up the other side to meet it and pinch in closed (this is called a letter fold).

8. Place the loaf on the cornmeal covered pizza wheel or cutting board, let it rest, loosely covered with saran wrap for about 40 min, if fresh, 90 min if refrigerated.

9. 20 mins before baking preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a dutch oven or large cooking pot (WITHOUT plastic handles) on the middle rack.

10. Dust the top of the loaf with flour, make diagonal slash marks with serrated knife.

11. When the dough is ready, take the pot out of the oven, and place the loaf inside it. Cover the pot with the top.

12. Bake for 30 mins with the top on and 20 mins with the top off.

13. When done, allow the bread to cool completely on a wire cooling rack before cutting and eating.

HomeGrown Film Screening with Slow Food Boston

Slow Food BU kicked off the semester with a film screening of HomeGrown in a collaboration with Slow Food Boston.

HomeGrown explores the urban, organic farm Path to Freedom run by the Dervaes family in Pasadena, California. Although the family of four began the farm in order to feed themselves, they were doing so well that they began to sell their produce. Now, the Dervaes produce over 6,000 pounds of produce annually in less than a quarter of an acre! The family also produces their own biodiesel, power their computers using solar panels, use non-electric appliances such as those from Lehman's (hand-cranked blender, anyone?), and more. If you missed the film screening, we highly recommend watching the documentary and reading more about the urban homstead on their website and on their blog.

Following the film screening was a discussion panel featuring Jess Liborio from The Food Project, Lisa Gross from the Urban Homesteaders' League, and Nathan Phillips from BU (previously featured in the Boston Globe for his carbon neutral office!), moderated by Willow Blish from Slow Food Boston.

Panelists Jess Liborio, Lisa Gross and Nathan Phillips

The audience asked good questions for a lively and engaging discussion. We learned that there are many ways to incorporate growing your own food in urban areas with or without a backyard. If you live in an apartment, you may consider sprouting, growing herbs, or growing microgreens in your kitchen or on your windowsill. Or if you live in Boston and have a backyard, The Food Project may help you to build your very own raised bed through their Build-a-Garden program! Meanwhile, Green City Growers in Somerville installs raised beds, and even helps to maintain them for you. In addition, farmers markets now abound, more people are signing up for local CSA's (community supported agriculture), and more winter farmers markets are cropping up!

If you want to get your urban homestead on, you may consider joining the Meetup Group The Urban Homsteaders' League. Run by Lisa Gross, the UHL hosts and sponsors various urban homesteading events around the Cambridge area, and we will be co-sponsoring our next event with them, a No-Knead Bread Making Workshop, on January 31! (Our apologies, but this workshop is full! E-mail us if you want to join the waiting list).

Thanks to all the volunteers and speakers who helped to make this event happen!

If you missed HomeGrown, this was only part one of Slow Food Boston's 3rd Annual Film Series! Watch Two Angry Moms with Slow Food BU and Slow Food Boston on February 21, or join Slow Food Boston at Tufts for film screenings of The End of the Line and Bullshit. More details can be found here.

Fall Wrap-Up

We had a wonderful fall semester, learning important knife skills, going cranberry bogging, canning green beans, discussing Fair Trade, and fermenting sauerkraut, all with good food and amongst good company!

This year we wrapped up the semester with a Green Groups Potluck in BU's Women's Resource Center, with the fabulous folks of the other sustainability groups on campus, including the Environmental Student Organization, BU Bikes, the Compost Club, the Organic Gardening Collective, and more.

Thanks to everyone for a great fall semester. Enjoy the winter break, and be ready for fun foodie events in the spring! First-up: Screening of HomeGrown with Slow Food Boston, to be followed by a discussion panel on Sunday, January 17th. More details, TBA.

Happy Holidays!

Gift Alert! Electrolux Cocoon

How futuristic is this? A meat- and fish-growing "Cocoon" designed by Rickard Hederstierna of the Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden won this year's Electrolux Design Lab 2009 competition that challenged industrial design students around the world to create home appliances following the theme “Designs for the next 90 years."

The cocoon is a concept design intended for every day use that "prepares genetically engineered and prepackaged meat and fish dishes by heating muscle cells identified by radio frequency identification (RFID) signals."

Hederstierna said in an interview that he had sustainability and a minimal environment impact in mind when designing it. By using science to create food, it would reduce the need for intensive farming and fishing: "The negative effects of this process, including the mass transportation of food around the world, clearing of land and distortion of ecosystems, are then negated."

Future of food? We shall see.

Make Your Foodie Voice Heard: Take the 2009 BU Dining Services Survey

Ask the average BU student how often the Administration asks for their opinion and the answer would most likely be: not often. Well, BU Dining Services is doing just that. They've just released their 2009 Student Dining Survey asking for student feedback about their dining experience.

So, for those of you who are currently eating, or who have ever eaten at the dining halls in the past, now is the time to voice your opinion about Dining Services! They really do take what the students have to say into account, so the more of us who fill out our foodie preferences on the survey, the better!

Want to see more Vegan, Vegetarian, Fair Trade, Organic or Local options? Let them know!

Take the Survey here: http://www.bu.edu/dining/survey/