FOODSHARE NEWSLETTER - August 2003

Welcome to the electronic version of our quarterly newsletter. Click on the link above if you'd like to get on our mailing list.

FESTIVAL ARTICLES
- Field to Table Festival Highlights
- Favourite Festival Moments from our volunteers
- As FoodShare Sees It. By Debbie Field, Executive Director (click on the title to read in our FOOD POLICY section of the website)

FOODNOTES
- The Boston Food Project
- Salad Bar : Back to School!
- Good Food at Home

UPCOMING

FESTIVAL ARTICLES

Field to Table Festival Highlights

The Field to Table Festival on June 8th and 9th was a huge success and from this first year can only get bigger and better. We brought together many people, organizations and sponsors to celebrate healthy, affordable, delicious food!

Eighty exhibitors participated in the market over the two days of the festival including organic suppliers, local farmers, small merchants and caterers, as well as a wide range of community partners and grassroots organizations. Local performers added their energy and music to both days. Celebrity servers including mayoral candidates Gary Benner, Barbara Hall, David Miller, John Nunziata, Rabindra Prashad and John Tory served up the salad bar at Nathan Philips Square. City Council declared June 9th Field to Table Day.

More than 150 volunteers made this event happen and run smoothly - thanks for your amazing help. We estimate that about 4000 people attended over both days. Honourary co-chairs for the event, Dr. Sheela Basrur, Medical Officer of Health, and Andy Barrie, host of CBC Metro Morning, worked hard to get the message out. People throughout Toronto learned about FoodShare and the event on CBC's Metro Morning, on the evening TV news, radio and community press.

We received a great deal of positive feedback from those who attended. Some people even asked if we were going to do this every week in Nathan Philips Square!

As well as building awareness, we see the Festival as an important fundraising opportunity for us in future years. Please visit our website ww.foodshare.net to see a photo album of the festival. We’ll keep you up-to-date with the Field to Table Campaign Eat It, Grow It, Share It: Put Food First you helped us to launch.

See you at the Festival next year!

Favourite Festival Moments from our volunteers

“For me the greatest pleasure was to see my wife, daughter, son-in-law, granddaughter and a few other friends come to visit me at the festival on Monday. I also enjoyed giving out pamphlets to friends and talking to them about the event..

Thank you FoodShare for all the wonderful ideas and the work you put into making them a reality.”

“I loved serving food at the main food table. I also loved eating it, I must admit.”

“I have to say.. that day was so much fun that I can't really pinpoint a favourite moment of mine. The people were great, the music was awesome and the food was delicious. The crazy percussion orchestra was intense ... it was like hearing thunder all around you.”

FOODNOTES

The Boston Food Project

Youth interns from the Boston Food Project recently came to Toronto to get some first hand experience of FoodShare in action. FoodShare's Focus on Food youth spent the week with the Boston "BLAST" (Building Local Agricultural Systems Today!) interns as they worked together on a variety of projects.

The Boston interns arrived at the Field to Table Centre on a Tuesday morning. After a brief tour and overview of FoodShare's programs the Boston interns were quickly integrated into our weekly Good Food Box packing day. After packing 800 boxes with our volunteers and Focus on Food youth, the interns gave us a presentation on what they do.

Youth at the Food Project in Boston work on a 30 acre farm located in the outskirts of Boston/Lincoln and on several smaller urban farms. They give about half of the harvest away to people who need it, and sell the other half at their farmer’s market or through their CSA (Community Shared Agriculture). The BLAST interns have worked at The Food Project for a few years in their various youth programs. This summer they are touring the northeast visiting food security organizations.

On day two, the BLAST interns spent the morning at our market garden at CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) working alongside the CAMH clients harvesting and maintaining the garden. Next was a visit to the rooftop garden at 401 Richmond where resident gardener Beth-Ann is experimenting with “closing the loop” - growing vegetables and herbs on the roof, selling them to the building's café, and then composting food scraps which will become fertilizer for the next crop. Rounding out the day was a seminar on the Toronto Food Policy Council.

On their last day, we took a trip to Everdale Environmental Learning Centre in Hillsburgh to visit the organic farm and learning centre. The youth were right at home in the fields harvesting garlic and weeding the carrot beds. We toured their straw bale cabins, the solar panelled water heating system, as well as the newly installed wind turbine to power the aptly named straw bale house "Home Alive".

We hope to visit The Food Project in the fall to experience their innovative approach to working with youth.

Salad Bar : Back to School!

The Salad Bar pilot project, in partnership with Canadian Feed The Children, has served up lunches since April 2002, with choices of fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, alternatives and grains to over 900 children. This translates into over 16,000 healthy lunchtime meals from a salad bar unit that is small enough to fit through any door, is at a height perfect for kids to be able to serve themselves, yet large enough to feed over 100 kids during the school lunch period.

We always knew that kids would go for bite-size fruits and veggies but teachers and parents alike have been surprised at the heaping plates kids serve themselves. One principal commented that not only was the salad bar introducing the children to a healthy lunch, it was helping to bring the community together with parents keen to volunteer with the project from fundraising to chopping veggies.

Ten schools have trained at Field to Table to prepare and serve the salad bar lunch and seven will continue to offer a salad bar after the pilot in their schools have ended. Five additional schools will be piloting the salad bar lunch in their schools in October 2003 for an 8-week period. To start a salad bar in your school call Joanne Porter at 416 392-1658

Mexican Salad Bar with Quesidillas
fruit: Cantaloupe, Honeydew, Strawberries
veggies: Mini Carrots, Cucumber,
Grape tomatoes, Broccoli, Green Peppers
greens: Boston Lettuce
grain: Quesidillas with cheese
meat and alternatives: Black Bean Salad

Black Bean Salad Recipe
4 cups cooked black beans
3 cups cooked corn kernels
1 cup chopped peppers
½ cup chopped green onion
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
2/3 cup olive or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon oregano
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
salt and pepper to taste

Toss together, let sit for a few hours (overnight if possible). Makes 8 cups or feeds 30 children. FIESTA!

Good Food at Home

FoodShare is partnering with Toronto Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre, Cancer Care Ontario, and the Ontario Breast Cancer Community Research Initiative to measure the effectiveness of our Good Food at Home program. The evaluation will study 40 women recently diagnosed with breast cancer who will be offered the program over one year.

The Good Food at Home pilot project, funded by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Ontario Chapter, provides practical nutrition support to women in active treatment for breast cancer. The project started in April 2002 from an interest by breast cancer survivors and others working in the health care field who found that active treatment for breast cancer created problems around healthy eating for women and their families.

The Good Food at Home program includes a weekly home delivery of fresh fruit and veggies known as the Wellness box, an invitation to attend five chef-led healthy cooking classes and the opportunity to join a monthly, peer-led community kitchen. The pilot project has served approximately 100 women to date and continues to provide Wellness boxes, community kitchens and cooking classes to women.

The study will evaluate the impact of the Good Food at Home program by talking with participants at the beginning of the program, after six months and one year later. They will be asked questions about their social support network, consumption of fruits and vegetables, food preferences and food availability, as they are all affected by cancer and treatment. This information will tell us how the Good Food at Home program affected their fruit and vegetable consumption, and provide feedback on the program itself.

While this program focuses on women with breast cancer, the Wellness box could eventually be made available to anyone who is "shut-in" due to health-related reasons. The aim is to make eating well as simple as possible when someone is not feeling well enough to cook. There is always a prepared soup or salad and a few items, all pre-washed and chopped, in the box which can go a long way to supporting healthy living.

UPCOMING

Composting Workshop - Online
September 8 - September 26, 2003

Urban Harvest Festival
September 13, 2003 Lawrence Heights Community Centre 1 - 9 pm

Toronto Community Garden Network’s Community Garden Tour
September 13, 2003

FoodShare Gift Baskets