Tag: Local

Food Programs 101: How Local community Schools Are Encouraging Students Connect Farm to Fork

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On the back again 16 acres of Walla Walla Group Faculty, 30 Crimson Angus cows stand munching on furry vetch, ryegrass and other address crops that ended up planted to help restore the soil.

The cattle, which were artificially inseminated by college students in the spring, will sooner or later be harvested at a USDA plant and incorporated into the wonderful eating menu at the college’s scholar-run campus restaurant, Capstone Kitchen. 

All those cows are just 1 section of the shut-loop program the college aims to spotlight in its new farm-to-fork software that is rolling out this faculty yr. “The agriculture learners will be escalating and increasing specialty crops and animals for us, and culinary students will get the likelihood to get their hands in the dust to understand what it can take to grow a crop,” says chef-instructor and Best Chef alum Robin Leventhal. “It’s certainly whole circle.”

Walla Walla’s hands-on coursework is bringing jointly agriculture and culinary students as section of a nascent motion among the community schools that are progressively bringing food generation into curricula in new and impressive techniques.

Walla Walla Group College’s program may perhaps be a person of the most comprehensive culinary-agriculture curriculums, but there are other folks. Bakersfield Higher education boasts an Edible Gardens Catalog program, Kalamazoo Local community School features Sustainable Food stuff Units Competencies coursework and Greenfield Community College’s Farm and Foods Systems addresses mushroom foraging and cultivation, permaculture style, beekeeping, food preservation and a lot more.

The federal govt is making an attempt to aid spur expansion in these varieties of programs, as well. As aspect of its attempts to foster a new crop of farmers, previously this year, the USDA announced it would be investing $262.5 million in grants to bigger schooling packages that provide underrepresented college student populations as component of an inaugural application to establish and sustain the following technology of the food stuff and agriculture workforce.

Bergen Community School was 1 of the grant recipients, obtaining a $4.5-million grant for its soon-to-come vertical farming, hydroponics and plant-based mostly culinary arts packages. The grant,

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Hawaii’s ‘Local Foods,’ a Prosperous Mix That Isn’t Strictly Hawaiian

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In Honokaʻa, on the north facet of the Huge Island of Hawaii, the firefighters and paramedics at Station 8 can’t predict when the alarm will blare, but they know that if Maikaʻi Piʻianaiʻa is on obligation, they’ll eat perfectly.

In the station’s small kitchen, he has made Japanese curry, steaks seasoned with oyster sauce, Portuguese bean soup, mahi mahi meunière and pork and peas the Filipino way. 1 evening, Mr. Piʻianaiʻa, a previous skilled cook, questioned his fellow firefighter Ricardo Garza to train him how to cook pinakbet, the Filipino pork and vegetable stew.

“He will set his twist on it,” Mr. Garza stated.

Mr. Piʻianaiʻa imagined about how he may slip in some pork tummy and prepare dinner the tomatoes and onions in the rendered hot extra fat, or enable the bitter melon steam on best of the stew to minimize its bite.

Like the pinakbet, the dishes he prepares have a huge array of cultural roots, but a collective belonging in Hawaii — cooking that anybody elevated on the islands would describe only as “local foods.”

“It is a cultural mosh pit of stuff,” Mr. Piʻianaiʻa claimed. “But if you’re from in this article, you know what is regional.”

Even if you are not, you’re possibly acquainted with beloved nearby dishes like poke made with tuna and soy sauce, or gravy-glossed, egg-topped loco moco.

Regional foodstuff is a unique reflection of the various groups who settled on the islands: the enterprising Polynesians British colonizers sugar-cane plantation personnel from Asia, Puerto Rico and Europe and Us citizens. As they labored, ate and endured jointly — like the firefighters at Station 8 — they produced a cuisine all their have, in which authenticity lies in the merging of cultures, not the siloing of them.

The delicacies carries on to evolve, as residence cooks riff on community meals classics and cooks introduce new strategies and flavors. And as it grows, some cooks are highlighting the part of Indigenous Hawaiian delicacies, context that the really feel-excellent story of nearby food has usually brushed apart.

“We borrow from each individual other’s lifestyle,” 

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10 Best Small Towns in Maine, According to a Local

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Maine is full of small-town charm that often gets overlooked when visitors flock to the southernmost parts of the state. As a Mainer, I always encourage tourists to save time for all the magic that lies north of Portland.


My advice often invites the question, “Oh, you mean Acadia National Park?” While Acadia should not be missed, I’m talking about the in-between towns — the places with convenience stores that sell a mishmash of groceries, antiques, and lawn ornaments; places where your server is probably also the owner, and where “ayuh” is used instead of “yes.”


Here are some of the best small towns in Maine.



Ellsworth

Fred J. Field/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

Most know Ellsworth as a place to drive through en route to Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island. But there are a few reasons you should do more than stretch your legs here. For starters, you can buy cheesecake on the honor system. Momo’s Cheesecakes offers its treats from a garage that has been renovated to keep up with the demand.


On the other end of Main Street, 86 This! calls itself “a classy, punk-rock burrito shop.” A wide variety of creative wraps are perfect for your picnic basket. Meanwhile, yogis will delight in Steamy Buddha‘s offerings. And just past the Ellsworth line, there’s a Maine experience like no other: Timber Tina’s Great Maine Lumberjack Show. Watch the show or try your hand at log rolling.


Where to Stay: Under Canvas Acadia, a luxury glamping experience, is a short distance away in Surry.



Greenville

Getty Images

Moosehead Lake is Maine’s largest lake, but it’s not as frequented as its southern counterpart — Sebago Lake. Greenville is a 1.5-hour scenic drive from Bangor International Airport and Moosehead is certainly the focal point of the town. One way to take in the lake’s beauty is by booking a seaplane ride — ideal for both the summer and fall.


Steamboat Katahdin has been around for 100 years and outlived what used to be a competitive market of vessels. Visitors can also join a Registered

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Culinary gardens provide fresh, local produce for Napa Valley’s food and wine pairings | Local News

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Napa Valley has marketed itself as a food and wine pairing destination, but behind the carefully-curated plates and perfectly-positioned fruits, veggies and herbs are not only the chefs, but also the culinary gardeners keeping these farm-to-table offerings afloat.

Spending their days plucking microgreens, snipping flowers and watering vegetable beds, these farmers grow produce like leafy greens, fancy herbs and more to supply fresh and local ingredients to their teams of chefs, eventually landing in the mouths of visitors.

You won’t find any grapevines in these gardens — there are enough of those in the surrounding areas anyways — and now that spring has sprung, a lot of change is happening in the Napa Valley’s edible estates.

“Right now is sort of a transitional time,” said Tessa Henry, manager of the Clif Family Farm up on Howell Mountain. “We have spring plants growing, but then we have hot days where it doesn’t feel like spring anymore, so the lettuces and the spinach might not be so happy, but we are also preparing peppers and harvesting fava beans, green garlic, tatsoi and parsley.”

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Clif Family has one of Napa County’s approved culinary garden programs, and since Henry took over as farm manager after working as a gardener for Frog’s Leap Winery, she has been able to experiment with growing fruits, vegetables and flowers on the hillside property.

“Every season has been trial and error with what we can grow and what the kitchen likes and the amounts, because they like pretty much everything we give them, but they also want to make sure that there is room for it on the menu,” she said.

When miscalculations do happen, though, the chef team can get creative. 

Once, Henry and her fellow gardeners harvested far more sunchokes than expected, resulting in some innovation and an added soup item on the menu.

“When it becomes available, the kitchen team figures out what to do with it, and they always turn it into something really delicious,” she said.

Additionally, since Clif Family manages a food truck and sells food retail items

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Redevelopment would mean another hotel for downtown Lincoln | Local Business News

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A hotel is back in the plans for the Gold’s Building.

Mike Works, who bought the building at 11th and O streets for $5 million last fall, said he’s planning a ”limited-service hotel with first-floor restaurant and retail opportunities.”

The hotel will have approximately 100 rooms and will take up the six-story north part of the building.

Works, who has experience developing other hotels in Lincoln, including the Holiday Inn Express at Ninth and O streets that opened last year, declined to provide any other details about the hotel planned for the Gold’s Building.

A redevelopment plan announced for the building in 2019 had originally included a hotel, but that plan fell through because of the coronavirus pandemic. A subsequent plan to turn the building into apartments also fell apart when developers failed to get approval to use historic tax credits to help pay to add windows on the south side.


Downtown Lincoln Gold’s building to be sold to local investor

The previous owner, Gerard Keating, had said he might demolish the whole building after the redevelopment plans fell through.

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Works’ plan would save the northern half of the building, but he does plan to demolish the southern half.

Representatives of Works who spoke to the city’s Historic Preservation Commission on Thursday said the south part, which had housed a number of state government offices, now is completely vacant and needs too much work to make a redevelopment feasible.

Demolishing the building will provide space for some hotel parking, but Works said he does plan to eventually redevelop the site with a mixed-use building that would include apartments.

Works indicated that a formal redevelopment plan will likely be coming forward in the next few weeks that will focus on the hotel plan, which if all goes as planned could open sometime in late 2023.

A potential sticking point is the StarTran bus transfer station on the 11th Street side of the building.

The representatives who spoke to the Historic Preservation Commission, attorney Andrew Willis and Justin Hernandez of NGC Construction, said the hotel plan might not

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