From What Food Desert Maps Get Wrong About How People Eat, which highlights mobility as an often left-out factor. Spot on.
garlic fingers: recipes & inspiration from an urban vegetarian
Completely easy-to-follow (and delicious) food blog brought to you by my friend Allison. Enjoy!
I went to an incredible risotto and wine dinner party last month prepared by chef Michelle Lawton of joyful plate. The dinner was an auction item at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger’s 2012 benefit dinner that new friend Marianne won and graciously invited me to share in. You should read more and look at the photos, especially if you’re hungry for some risotto!
The issues are complex, and there’s no magic bullet. But there are strategies that have demonstrated progress and promise. We believe that the way to move forward is to empower and engage communities, foster collaboration, and provide the tools to implement change. With our new Healthy Food & Community Change initiative, the Illumination Fund aims to inspire healthier communities.
Laurie M. Tisch, President, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund
I’m very excited about this new initiative and the conversation surrounding it.
What’s your vision to make your community healthier?
Bringing Policy to the Table: New Food Strategies for a Healthier Society
This morning, we’re launching the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund’s Healthy Food & Community Change Initiative. The conference, Bringing Policy to the Table: New Food Strategies for a Healthier Society, features an incredible lineup of participants who hold positions in public office, philanthropy, nonprofits, and health entities.
Want to learn more? The event is over capacity, but join us from the comfort of your computer! Tune into the livestream beginning at 8:45am, and tweet with us using #tcfood.
Editorially, I’ve worked hard on this event, and I think it will feature fantastic conversation and ideas. Very worth joining in, or at least sharing with a friend or two!
2013 Joan H. Tisch Public Health Forum
More than 100 people gathered in person and virtually for the annual Joan H. Tisch Public Health Forum. The topic: Can City Food Policies Reduce Disparities? Lessons from New York and London.
Jennifer Raab, President of Hunter College, and Laurie Tisch gave welcoming remarks, and Sue Atkinson, the Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health at Hunter College, introduced the forum topic. Corby Kummer, Senior Editor at The Atlantic, then moderated a lively panel of Sue Atkinson, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Thomas Farley, NYU Professor Marion Nestle, and Senior VP of The Vitality Group Derek Yach.
Watch the complete panel above, and then join the conversation and learn more.
(Reposted from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund because I really enjoyed this event. Great conversation, and was another reminder of why I love NYC; it values health and acts on that value.)
Panera Cares, nonprofit outpost of chain, to open soon
“It is a community cafe of shared responsibility. One of the goals of this charitable program is to help ensure that everyone who needs a meal gets one and to raise the level of awareness about food insecurity in the country.” -Kate Antonacci, project manager of Panera Cares
The role of the SNAP program isn’t to provide additional money to paid government volunteers; it is to help feed hungry American families.
Senator John Thune, R-ND, in an article framing food stamps as a perk for paid government volunteers.
Right. Food stamps (SNAP benefits) are to help feed hungry Americans. At an AmeriCorps salary, especially in a city where needs are high and the cost of living is far higher than in more rural areas, it’s tough to get by. Being an AmeriCorps volunteer means that you make sacrifices and cuts, but safety nets like food stamps are there to support people having a hard time supporting themselves who (hopefully) are working honestly towards making ends meet (and making their communities better). AmeriCorps employees are and deserve the support of any safety nets they can access should they choose to.
Further, if AmeriCorps volunteers could opt into food stamps but only if they are then be ineligible for the education stipend, we as a country are training the exactly right people to become civicly excited and motivated, and then are pulling the rug from under them and making it far more difficult for them to get degrees often needed to apply their skill base and experiences on a more impactful level.
Even further, AmeriCorps volunteers accessing SNAP benefits does not take those benefits away from anyone else who is deserving!
Or, maybe the Senator is correct. In that case, let’s get used to the idea that AmeriCorps volunteers will increasingly be those coming from comfortable economic backgrounds. Because it’s tough to get by on an AmeriCorps salary alone.
New NYC Fresh Food Pack Launches!
A new set of 10 recipes, cooking tips, and kids fun has arrived! Get your free digital copy of the NYC Green Cart Fresh Food Pack here, or see if you can snag one at your local Green Cart vendor. And, if you cook any of the recipes, let me know how it goes!
This has been a fun project to work on through my job at the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund in collaboration with the James Beard Foundation. Here’s to health and cooking fun!
GoodSearch, the charitable way to search
I love google, but I love having regular actions (searching! shopping! dining out!) support wonderful nonprofits. Once you sign up with GoodSearch, a nonprofit organization of your choice benefits from your everyday actions without you spending any additional time or money. It’s very easy to sign up, and satisfying to see the dollars add up. ASPCA, for instance, has earned more than $46,500! Download the toolbar now!
If you are a nonprofit organization or school that would like to benefit from GoodSearch, that’s easy too! Sign up!
There shouldn’t be a distinction between what’s healthy and unhealthy. Cooking and eating well, meaning deliciously and nutritiously, is not just an issue of access or cost — it’s also an issue of education and understanding, and our government has a responsibility to help with this transition. And as chefs, we have the responsibility to do our part both from behind the stove and beyond.
Marcus Samuelsson, Chef, in his article Banning “Healthy Food” From Our Diet
Top 5: Fun Things I’ve Learned From Sam Hansen (though there are many more)
In no particular order…
- Yellow watermelon not only exists, but is delicious.
- The Jen Bokoff is not only a drink, but it is delicious.
- We are very creative with subject lines; we’ve only repeated ourselves a handful of times. Sometime Someday Somewhere was a good one, as was the more recent Sporific Sundays is a fun one; too bad it’s Tuesday. Trends include alliteration and musings. Wednesdays are highlights, with lines such as Wednesday is for Weeping Wimpy Witches and Whoopsie Wednesday. Soccer matchups are also popular. Sam deserves most creative credit.
- Adam Schafer has the best house ever, including lots of Eames chairs.
- The golden ratio isn’t actually magical; it’s the most often mentioned and most often incorrectly mentioned mathematical thing in the world.
I don’t think American taxpayers should be footing the bill for people’s pie purchases. To me it’s no different than nail salons and Lottery tickets. It’s pastry, it’s dessert. My pies are great, but come on.
Andrea Taber, proprietor of the Ever So Humble Pie Co. in Walpole, MA, who sells her baked goods at the Braintree Farmers market. Ms. Taber does not accept EBT cards, because she argues that on principle, if taxpayers are underwriting this program, purchases should go towards healthful foods whenever possible and not luxury, decadent pastries.
I agree with Ms. Taber ideologically, but I also value consumer choice. A person on food stamps should be able to indulge their sweet tooth every now and again the same way a person not on food stamps should. Ms. Taber, however, is under no obligation besides from the farmers market where she vends that “encourage[s] everyone who sells eligible products to participate;” I respect that she is willing to sacrifice a few more purchases to run a business in line with her beliefs. It is non-discriminatory because she is not saying a person on food stamps can’t shop at her business, just that they must use money instead of monthly food benefits. If someone wants to purchase baked goods with their EBT card, there will almost certainly be somewhere else that they could purchase it, too.
It’s a fascinating issue to think about. What do you think?
To show me how a Cheesecake Factory works, he took me into the kitchen of his busiest restaurant, at Prudential Center, a shopping and convention hub. The kitchen design is the same in every restaurant, he explained. It’s laid out like a manufacturing facility, in which raw materials in the back of the plant come together as a finished product that rolls out the front. Along the back wall are the walk-in refrigerators and prep stations, where half a dozen people stood chopping and stirring and mixing. The next zone is where the cooking gets done—two parallel lines of countertop, forty-some feet long and just three shoe-lengths apart, with fifteen people pivoting in place between the stovetops and grills on the hot side and the neatly laid-out bins of fixings (sauces, garnishes, seasonings, and the like) on the cold side. The prep staff stock the pullout drawers beneath the counters with slabs of marinated meat and fish, serving-size baggies of pasta and crabmeat, steaming bowls of brown rice and mashed potatoes. Basically, the prep crew handles the parts, and the cooks do the assembly.
Atul Gawande, in an article exploring franchising the health care system. As with all of his books and articles, it is brilliantly written and presents viable arguments and examples. Well worth a read and hopefully conversation or blog comment after.
One more offshoot thought: The franchised food chains mentioned in the article aren’t exactly the most healthful. Connection to hospitals in the current state: not the healthiest food, but more franchised procurement-wise than the health care itself. With active franchising of health care, would we be able to follow in suit with spreading healthful food in hospitals, too?
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Posts to keep you entertained, thinking, sharing, and discussing. I blog across subject areas because there's a lot of interesting stuff out there; why limit our conversation?
