Amy's Yard

“Chocolate. … By getting it good in quality, and cheap in price, the superiority of the article both for health and nourishment will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America…”
Nov. 27, 1785, Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, from Paris

Join us for a day of pure chocolate indulgence at Monticello! Celebrate your love for chocolate at Taste: Chocolate at Monticello with a full day of chocolate themed events.

Learn how chocolate was a favorite of Jefferson’s and how it was prepared and served at Monticello, enjoy a chocolate-making demonstration and savor several pairings of chocolate and Virginia wines.

Create your own itinerary with your friends or surprise your significant other for a special Valentine’s Day treat. ‘Taste’ includes a chef demonstration, keepsake recipes to try at home, and numerous indulgent chocolate tastings. House tour included.

House tours
Offered throughout the day, included in the price of Taste: Chocolate at Monticello.

Experience: The History of Chocolate
1 - 1:30 p.m.
From Thomas Jefferson’s first recorded purchase of chocolate in 1775 to recipes used in the colonial period, learn about the history of chocolate in Jefferson’s time. See an 18th-century method of making chocolate, by grinding roasted cacao beans on a traditional metate, a heated grinding stone, and adding sugar and spices to provide a variety of flavors.

This ‘Bean to Beverage’ demo includes a demonstration of making chocolate from bean to a hot chocolate drink. At the end participants will have the opportunity to try American Heritage Chocolate, and Pure Dark® Rounds--bite sized disks of intense, dark chocolate with 62% cocoa content, dusted with intriguing taste sensations.

Indulge: Chocolate Today 
1:45 – 2:15 p.m.
Take part in a cooking demonstration with local chef Harrison Keevil of Charlottesville's charming Brookville Restaurant.  Keevil, a  French Culinary Institute-trained chef will create a modern day dessert for you to sample using American Heritage Chocolate. Take home new recipes to try at your table.

Taste: Chocolate and Wine Pairing 
2:30 – 3 pm
Nothing says “indulgence” quite like the pairing of chocolate and wine. Learn about Jefferson’s passion for wine, with winemaker and assistant director of gardens and grounds Gabriele Rausse.
 
Taste three  Pure Dark® specialty chocolates paired with three local Virginia wines and take home an American Heritage Chocolate “chocolate wine” recipe.
   
The Monticello Museum Shop will have tastings and additional demonstrations from 1- 4 p.m.

Chocolate tasting and demonstration at Monticello's Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center

With Valentines Day around the corner, here is a perfect opportunity to hone your knowledge of Chocolate!

Art has the power to show us our familiar world in new ways. We love Charlottesville and want to see it through the artist's eye. Artists are asked to submit two-dimensional work, (less than 3ft square and 20lbs) mounted and ready to hang, representing the theme "Local Food." This is in honor of our local agriculture, both urban and rural, and the food we love at home and when we go out. All work submitted will be hung. A $10 entry fee per work is required. We want the artists to explore their passion for the community which is their home. It is our hope that this event offers a special opportunity for artists of every age. ArtInPlace retains the right to refuse to accept work deemed inappropriate.

Schedule for 2011
Work will be received at the McGuffey Art Center on Saturday, January 29, 2011, from 1:00-5:00 p.m. or email info@artinplace.org for an appointment. All work will be on display from February 1st to 27th, 2011.
Artwork must be picked up at McGuffey on Sunday, February 28th, 2010, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

4 awards for elementary/middle school age at $25.00/each
2 awards for high school age at $50.00/each 
One adult "Best in Show" award at $500.00 

The opening is February 4, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. with awards given out at 6:15 p.m. by a member of City Council..

Farmers Fresh Market is a virtual "Farmers Market" linking growers, chefs, and individual buyers. Once orders are placed online, local growers process them, and we deliver them - picked and shipped within 24 hours! The goal of the program is to provide the freshest and most flavorful local produce in a convenient and sustainable manner.

props to treehugger for the link

I had to post this to my blog just because the presentation of the photos and recipes is so beautifully done.

This applesauce gets complex flavor from cinnamon, sage, and maple syrup. Leaving the apple skins on before cooking results in a delightful pink hue.

Click here for the recipe search.

So You Say You Want a Food Revolution? Part Dos

It is ironic that my last post elicited so many enthusiastic responses from farmers and ranchers around the world but that many consumers/eaters thought my list of suggestions were either: 1) too difficult because they lack money, a car, time for cooking; or 2) they are doing the 'best' they can and that should be good enough for me (i.e. the perfect is the enemy of the good); or 3) we shouldn't be eating meat anyways, so my list of suggestions does not apply to a vegan world.  Farmers on the other hand were giving me virtual high fives, re-posting my article in their CSA newsletters or on their farm blogs.  Since we need farmers and ranchers to stick around to keep feeding people, maybe we should be more accommodating to their needs, perhaps, instead of dismissing them as inconvenient, trivial, or too costly.  Anyways, to address the issue of cost, I have assembled another list of things people can do to make our food system more sustainable and that require no exchange of currency at all, or some that are very budget-friendly.

Creating a more sustainable food system for free (or on a budget):

FREE

-Inform yourself about GMOs and fight their release into the environment. Do that by making phone calls to your elected officials, signing on-line  petitions, sending a hand-written letter, etc.

-Join your child's school PTA or Site Council to advocate for better school lunches and food gardens on school campuses.

-Volunteer at your local food bank- often you will get free food out of this in addition to being altruistic. (Note: I don't think emergency food is sustainable, however, we need a food safety net in our country)

-Advocate for a sane, legalized agricultural worker program in our country so we don't continue to perpetuate an illegal, exploited workforce. Also, advocate for a legalized farm apprenticeship program in each state, where often it is illegal to pay apprentices-in-training below minimum wage and deters US citizens from working in agriculture or learning how to run their own farming businesses.

-Help get a farmers market established in your community or volunteer with one that already exists. You can help them with marketing, making a website, physical set-up or take-down, recruiting farmers, board management, bookkeeping, etc. Bonus is you often make friends with the vendors and they give you nice deals on food.

BUDGET-FRIENDLY

-Plant a garden- in a bed, in a box, in a pot, even in a jar (think sprout garden). Got excess? Can it, freeze it, dry it, or give it away to your neighbors, your kids school, or your church/synagogue/mosque/grange/etc.

-Buy jamming or canning flats of produce at the farmers market (they usually appear when farmers have excess or slightly blemished product). They are often half the price, but you have to make some time to process them. Make that your Friday night fun- invite some friends over, turn on some good music, & process some berries!

-Fish or hunt if you are going to enjoy the privilege of eating meat, then dry, cure, freeze, or can the meat to store for the long-term. If you don't hunt or fish but have friends that do, offer to help them process and I bet you will get a little meat in exchange for your time.

-Don't buy chicken or turkey breasts & thighs. Much cheaper to buy the whole birds and make several meals out of it, including a rich stock with all the bones.

-Make your own yogurt. Simply start with a container of yogurt that has just a little left in the bottom (use a plain, whole milk, organic one if possible), add some whole milk to it (raw is best if you can find that) and then set in your oven overnight with simply the warmth of the pilot light on. If you have an electric oven, set is at 85 degrees overnight.

-Make your own queso blanco with simply whole milk and lemon juice- no rennet or starter is required. Good cheese is expensive, so try making some of the quick, soft cheeses on your own!

-If you live near any fishing ports/docks, go down and ask a fisherman/woman for their fresh fish scraps. Then take them home and immediately simmer them in water for your own rich fish stock.

-Eat lots of greens- they are cheap and available longer than most any other vegetable.

-Buy your beans, lentils, dried peas, rice, etc. in bulk. Way cheaper....

-Find a rice cooker at your local thrift store (there are often 5-10 of them lining the shelves). Make at least one pot of rice a week (brown, organic, US grown is preferable in my opinion) for an easy, cheap filler you can put in burritos, tacos, stir frys, or even for breakfast with some milk & honey.

-Join a CSA that has a sliding-scale price based on income level, graduated payment plans, or work options to lower your cost. Offer to be a CSA host site and you normally get a free share altogether, plus all the leftover boxes that shareholders forget to pick up!

-Help a farmer clean up at the end of the farmers market by loading up their boxes or sweeping their space- they will likely give you a free box of produce for this.  Better yet, offer to work a regular market shift and earn a little cash and a bunch of produce too!

-Pack your kids a healthy lunch instead of paying for the school lunch. Save money and save their health too.

-Eat less meat & consume smaller portion sizes, but pay more for the meat you eat (paying for better values, humane animal care, raised in your local vicinity, pasture-based, endangered breeds, etc.)! Or go vegetarian if that suits you.

 

How about you? Got any budget-friendly or free tips on how to make our food system more sustainable?

 

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One of my favorite events of the year in Cville....yummy food and adorable doggies to coo over.

The biggest news about the Child Nutrition Act pending in Congress isn't increased funding, or more vegetables and whole grains in school meals. The reason we need this bill passed now is to save children from government standards that are destroying kids' health.Every day I visit the cafeteria in my daughter's elementary school here in the District of Columbia and watch a quiet struggle unfold. It's the same battle schools fight all over the country: trying to provide kids the calories the U.S. Department of Agriculture says they must have, on a budget that won't cover the cost of healthy food. The result? Meals loaded with sugar -- enemy No. 1 in our current epidemic of childhood obesity.

Sugar, and especially the high-fructose corn syrup that proliferates in cheap processed food, has emerged as the leading culprit behind a host of modern ills. It packs fat onto waistlines, raises blood pressure, creates bad cholestorol and unhealthy arteries, primes bodies for diabetes and heart failure, and now is suspected in an outbreak of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in children.

Right behind smoking, sugar has become the health scourge of our time, contributing greatly to this country's estimated $147 billion annual tab for weight-related illnesses. Yet in the world of federally-subsidized school meals, sugar not only goes virtually unregulated, but has emerged as the go-to ingredient to boost calories in perpetually under-funded cafeterias.

Take breakfast, for instance. The USDA says that a school breakfast must provide 554 calories for children in elementary school. Where do those calories come from? Well, if you have less than $1 to spend, your breakfast might very well look like the ones that used to be served every day in D.C.: Sugary Apple Jacks cereal topped with strawberry-flavored milk, accompanied by a Pop-Tart, a pack of Giant Goldfish Grahams, and a carton of orange juice.

All together, children as young as five routinely were consuming the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar before classes even started.

This year, D.C. school officials have taken the extraordinary step of eliminating not just flavored milk and sugary cereals, but also those other processed "treats" that were standard fare in the breakfast line. Now we see low-sugar Kashi cereal, organic yogurt, sunflower butter, and cottage cheese on the menu. But how do you make a small blueberry muffin, a scoop of cottage cheese, a carton of low-fat milk and four ounces of orange juice add up to 554 calories?

We're lucky here in the nation's capitol. As the result of a "Healthy Schools Act" passed by the D.C. Council earlier this year, we now have 10 cents extra to spend on breakfast and another 10 cents for lunch. Few local jurisdictions have been so generous. That's why you see cookies and brownies in subsidized school lunches all over the country. The sugar provides a cheap boost in calories. In the Chicago area, parents continue to complain about "brunch for lunch," meaning pancakes, phony syrup, and cookies posing as the midday meal. Other healthy food advocates despair of getting sugary flavored milk off the menu, because their schools would then fall short of the USDA's calorie requirements.

The measly 6 additional cents that the U.S. Senate recently approved for school meals as part of its version of the Child Nutrition Act re-authorization won't solve the problem. But its call for new meal standards might. Under the Senate bill, the "Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act," the USDA would be required to "update meal patterns and nutrition standards" within the next three years. Proposed new standards have already been developed by the Institute of Medicine at the USDA's behest.

Don't look for any regulations aimed specifically at sugar. The sugar lobby is too strong for that. Instead, the IOM attempts an end run around sugar's tyranny over school meals, lowering calorie requirements while boosting the amounts of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains schools must serve. Sugar essentially would get squeezed off the menu.

In fact, the current calorie minimums enforced by the USDA exceed the IOM's proposed maximums. The calorie requirement for an elementary school breakfast, for instance, would change from that flat 554 calories, to a range: 350 calories up to a maximum of 500. That means 204 calories that cash-strapped schools wouldn't have to pay for, calories kids might not be exposed to in the form of sugar.

For lunch, the IOM recommends a range of 550 to 650 calories for kids 5 to 10 years of age, compared to the USDA's current fixed amount of 664. The Institute of Medicine also proposes to raise the percentage of calories that can be derived from calorie-dense fat in school meals, from 30 percent to 35 percent, a move that would further reduce schools' reliance on sugar and bring the meals program more in line with the federal government's dietary guidelines.

In addition, this year's version of the Child Nutrition Act for the first time would give the USDA authority to regulate all foods sold in school, not just in the subsidized meal line, as Tom Laskawy blogged last week. If the agriculture secretary is in a mood to take on the processed-food industry, that could mean no more sugary drinks and snacks in vending machines, no more ice cream bars or fruit roll-ups in a la carte lines.

For healthy school food advocates, the Senate's trifling 6 cents is hard to swallow. But we need to get over it for now, and make sure the House moves quickly on its version of the Child Nutrition Act, HR 5504.

As we've seen here in D.C., a lot can be accomplished just by ridding school meals of unhealthy foods, especially sugar. That's reason enough to make passage of this bill now an urgent priority.

Grist Get Off Your Ass opportunity: Contact your House representative via this handy look-up link and urge him or her to pass the "Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act" (H.R. 5504) -- note that phone calls are more effective than emails, legislative activists say.

I don't normally share an entire article here, but this one is important enough that I have.  Please lobby Congress to pass the Child Nutrition Act.

and afterwards, check out the Midtown Street Fair on West Main Street! This on is from 12 - 5pm.