Category: Awards

Rick Bayless Paid Homage to Julia Child in Gracious Award Speech

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Though known as a “celebrity chef,” Chicago’s Rick Bayless much prefers to talk about food than to talk about himself. So it was no surprise when he turned an acceptance speech into a loving tribute to the late Julia Child — the TV chef and author who Bayless credits with shaping his culinary career — when he received the second-ever Julia Child Foundation Award at a dinner at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 27.

Rick Bayless’ Julia Child Award Speech Focused on His Role Model

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Rick Bayless received the second-ever Julia Child Award at a ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History. His speech, marked by humility, focused less on himself than on the huge impact Julia Child had on his own career and on the nation’s food culture. Please enjoy the transcript of his speech.

Food Access for Kids, Families Gets $500,000 Boost in Food to Market Challenge

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

“Team Leverage,” a collaboration of three major Good Food entities in the Chicago region, faced serious competition from four other strong finalists in the Food to Market Challenge. The team won the $500,000 award because of a strong social purpose — bringing healthy, nutritious, affordable food to more school children and their families — plus a distribution model with strong potential to be expanded in Chicago and replicated elsewhere.

The $500,000 Food to Market Challenge Picks Its Final Five

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Variety is the word for the field of five finalists in the Food to Market Challenge. This competition will award $500,000 to the team deemed to have proposed the best solution to a problem affecting the supply chain for local and sustainable food in the Chicago region.

James Beard Awards Had Common Thread: Perseverance

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

The James Beard Foundation held its annual awards ceremony in Chicago Monday night. All the winners, of course, serve delicious food to diners. But if there was another quality that linked several of the biggest awardees, it can be summed up in one word: perseverance.

James Beard Awards, Welcome Back … What’s New in Chicago Good Food

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Last year, FamilyFarmed welcomed the first-ever James Beard culinary awards to Chicago with an article providing the sweep of Good Food activities in our hometown. So with the JBF Awards coming back to town on May 2, the best second helping we could think of is this rundown of the biggest Good Food developments in Chicagoland over the past year.

Organic Valley’s Work on Better Growing and Eating Honored With FamilyFarmed Good Food Business Award

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

George Siemon co-founded and heads Organic Valley, the Wisconsin-based producer of dairy products, meats and vegetables that is the nation’s biggest organic farmer cooperative. The work of the company to advance the Good Food movement was honored with FamilyFarmed’s Good Business Business of the Year Award.

Paul Kahan and Other Chicago Chefs Spark Pilot Light Program for Kids’ Food Education

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

There are few more important avenues for ensuring continued progress toward a better U.S. food system than teaching children about healthy food produced sustainably, humanely and fairly. Pilot Light, a chef-driven nonprofit in Chicago, is one of the most promising and innovative programs addressing this priority. Paul Kahan, a co-founder of Pilot Light and FamilyFarmed’s 2016 Good Food Chef of the Year, discusses the program in this Q-and-A.

James Beard Foundation’s Recipe for Change: How the Culinary Community is Creating a Sustainable Food System

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s Trade Show & Industry Conference on March 25 — the middle day of its three-day Good Food Festival & Conference — has an exciting new feature: “Recipe for Change: How the Culinary Community is Creating a Sustainable Food System” is a panel moderated by James Beard Foundation Vice President Kris Moon and featuring four of Chicago’s top chefs and Good Food champions. In this contributed column, Moon details the rising tide of chef activism and how the James Beard Foundation has responded with its Chefs Boot Camp for Policy & Change.

Plate of the Union Campus Challenge: Win Money to Promote Good Food

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Many young people are strongly interested in improving the U.S. food system, and are helping to accelerate the already-fast growth of the Good Food movement. And no small number are working to advance the cause by taking on activist roles on college campuses around the nation. Now the Plate of the Union campaign, staged by three Read more about Plate of the Union Campus Challenge: Win Money to Promote Good Food[…]

Food to Market Challenge Offers $500,000 for Best Idea to Grow Chicago’s Good Food Supply

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Many organizations and companies are working hard to untie knots in the supply chain for local and sustainable food in the Chicago area, the nation’s third most populous consumer market. Now the effort is getting a big boost from the Food to Market Challenge, a newly launched competition that will bestow a $500,000 award on the winning concept.

Good Food Added Savor to Chicago’s Jean Banchet Culinary Awards

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Chicago’s culinary community recently celebrated its top honors at the annual Jean Banchet Awards. The winners underscored he ever-increasing prominence of a Good Food ethos in the city’s restaurant community.

Sam Kass photo

AFP: Chefs Kass, Barber Spotlight Food Waste at UN “Trash Lunch”

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The amount of edible food that goes to waste in United States and around the world is drawing increasing concern and attention from policymakers and producers alike. That was the inspiration behind a special “trash lunch” produced by famous chefs Sam Kass and Dan Barber for President Barack Obama and other world dignitaries Sunday.

Rick Bayless Demo at GFFC

Ten Delicious Facts About Chicago’s Good Food Scene — Tell Us About Your Town

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

[The original version of this article was published May 1 on the Huffington Post website.] As FamilyFarmed prepared for the James Beard Foundation Awards in Chicago on May 4, we decided to welcome out-of-town attendees with an article providing “10 delicious facts” about the blossoming Good Food scene in our hometown. We found we had created a pretty sweeping guide to Chicagoland Good Food, so we’re making it a standing feature. And we’d love to hear about the Good Food scene where you live — let civic pride rule!

James Beard Awards 2015 logo

James Beard Awards Takeaway: Good Food is on the Move in the Culinary Community

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The glamour of the annual James Beard Foundation Awards, held earlier this month in Chicago, has subsided. So it’s timely to assess what the event meant for the Good Food movement. The bottom line is that the James Beard Awards were very good news for Good Food.

Chef Rick Bayless

Chef Rick Bayless’ Stewardship Helps Farm to Table Take Flight

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Chicago on Monday hosted the annual James Beard Foundation culinary awards ceremony, and Rick Bayless was one of the event’s co-chairmen. Famed for popularizing regional Mexican cuisine in the city, he is a celebrity chef with a long-running TV show, and he has just added to his long list of cookbooks. But to many in the Good Food movement, it is his history of helping building the region’s local food system that is his biggest starring role.

Rick Bayless Demo at GFFC

Welcome to Chicago, James Beard Foundation: 10 Delicious Facts About the Windy City

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

by Jim Slama and Bob Benenson, Family Farmed [Note: This article was first published on the Huffington Post news website.] As advocates of the Good Food movement in Chicago, we are honored that the James Beard Foundation Awards are coming to town. The Foundation was created to honor the legacy of chef James Beard. After Read more about Welcome to Chicago, James Beard Foundation: 10 Delicious Facts About the Windy City[…]