Category: Local Food

Good Food Festival

Pasta Power: Sarah Grueneberg’s Golden On Good Food Festival Chef Stage

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Sarah Grueneberg, award-winning chef-owner of Chicago’s award-winning Monteverde restaurant, will receive FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Chef of the Year Award — and conduct a cooking demo — at the 2018 Good Food Festival, part of our 14th Annual Good Food EXPO. And as if Sarah were not enough reason to make your way to the UIC Forum on Saturday, March 24, wait until you see the rest of the lineup for our popular Chefs at Play stage. Mind blown.

Tickets Are On Sale For The March 23 Good Food EXPO Trade Show!

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s 14th annual Good Food EXPO is coming up March 23-24 at Chicago’s UIC Forum. Make your plans now to attend the nation’s oldest trade and consumer event focused specifically on local and sustainable food. Tickets are on sale for the Friday, March 23 programming: The Good Food Trade Show: Production, Policy and Industry Exchange. These affordable tickets can be purchased on this linked page. The Good Food Festival, FamilyFarmed’s big annual public celebration of the fast-rising Good Food movement, will follow on Saturday, March 24.

Publican

Paul Kahan’s Publican Cookbook Rates Three Cheers

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If you want to show off that you can cook like a James Beard Outstanding Chef awardee, then Cheers To The Publican is for you. The recently released cookbook is co-authored by Chicago culinary giant Paul Kahan with writer Rachel Holtzman and Cosmo Goss, now a former chef de cuisine at The Publican. Restaurants in the One Off Hospitality group headed by Paul and his business partners — which include The Publican, Blackbird and avec —  played a major role in converting the gritty meatpacking district in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood into the city’s Restaurant Row.

Help Grow Our Good Food Mission: Donate to FamilyFarmed

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Everyone eats, and what you eat matters — which is why we at FamilyFarmed are proud of our work growing the availability of Good Food. In the coming weeks, we’ll share stories of the local food and farm entrepreneurs whose mission to produce Good Food has been served by FamilyFarmed, thanks to contributions from Good Foodies like you. We ask for your support so these programs thrive and we can continue to develop new and innovative Good Food initiatives in 2018.

Wholesome Wave

Remembrance: Gus Schumacher, Food & Farming Hero, Wholesome Wave Co-Founder

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Gus Schumacher was a leader in the Good Food movement who died Sept. 24 at age 77. He made his greatest mark as a pioneering innovator in efforts to improve access to healthy local food for lower-income and older Americans — as a public official and as a co-founder of Wholesome Wave, a Connecticut-based non-profit best known for its program to double the dollar amount of healthy food that individuals can purchase using federal food assistance benefits. Wholesome Wave CEO Michel Nischan wrote the remembrance highlighting Gus Schumacher’s contributions that is published here.

Good Food Accelerator

Good Food Accelerator Businesses Hail Learning and Bonding Experiences

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator (GFA) staged its annual Application Celebration and Networking Event at Chicago’s 1871 business incubator on Tuesday. It included a panel of four GFA graduates moderated by Scott Mandell, a program “supermentor” who founded hugely successful Enjoy Life Foods. And when Scott asked the alums about the biggest change in their businesses fostered by the Accelerator, the response by Mitch Wasserman of Full Belly Foods drew chuckles from the full-house audience.

The Talking Farm

Walk The Walk With The Talking Farm’s Urban Farm Dinner

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Farm dinners have become a popular facet of “agritourism,” with farms working with chefs to bring “farm to table” dining back to the source. Dozens are held each year just in the Chicago food region alone. But most of the participating farms are well out in the country, requiring a day trip or an overnight stay. That location is what makes The Talking Farm’s dinner on Sept. 10 distinctive. The farm is just outside Chicago’s city limits and a short Sunday drive for most residents of the metropolitan area.

Paul Virant

Paul Virant: A Good Food Chef Who Keeps On Giving

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“Farm to table” dining may have become commonplace on Chicago’s restaurant menus. But Chef Paul Virant was in the vanguard of the movement just 13 years when he opened Vie restaurant in the suburb of Western Springs. And he is all about giving back to the community. Within a recent three-day span, Paul did a cooking demo with the Gardeneers audience for schoolchildren in Englewood, then was the honoree for Angelic Organics Learning Center at their annual dinner.

Pilot Light Chefs Stirring Up More Food Education On Chicago’s South Side

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Pilot Light is the chef-driven program that helps Chicago Public Schools integrate food and nutrition education into their students’ overall curriculum. And the nonprofit organization is prepping for its biggest expansion yet, adding eight schools to its lineup for a total of 14 around the city of Chicago.

FamilyFarmed

The Pride of Pecatonica: Women Farmers, Amber Waves and Happy Goats

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We at FamilyFarmed conduct most of our work to build a better food system from our base in the city of Chicago. So we relish the opportunities to get into the country and visit the farmers who are the heart and soul of the Good Food movement — such as our trip Monday (July 24) to two of our woman-farmer friends in Pecatonica, a farm town 100 miles to the west with a whole lot of progressive thinking about Good Food growing.

Green City Market

Green City Chef BBQ In Review: Feasting With Purpose

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So much amazing food and drink. That’s the simplest way to describe the 2017 Green City Market Chef BBQ, the annual fundraiser for Chicago’s premier farmers market, which brought together a world-class lineup of the city’s farm to table restaurants, along with many of the city’s leading craft breweries and distilleries. It might be indulgent if the only purpose of this event was a ginormous outdoor feast. But the money raised by Green City Market at the event goes toward its social mission programs, which include double bucks for shoppers using SNAP/LINK food assistance dollars, a satellite market in the underserved Bronzeville community every Wednesday through the growing season, and a broadening palette of food education programs.

Growing Young Farmers: Jen Rosenthal Seeking To Say “This Land Is My Land”

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Jen Rosenthal is one of the most talented urban farmers in Chicago. Now if she could only find a piece of land of her own to continue and expand her Chicago urban farming career.

FamilyFarmed Food Stuff: The Delicious Ease of Roasted Vegetables

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We at FamilyFarmed obviously are big advocates of cooking healthy, delicious meals at home (preferably from fresh ingredients produced by local farmers and food processors, of course). But for many busy and overcommitted people today, cooking seems too complicated and time-consuming. To which we suggest this two-word solution: roasted vegetables.

FamilyFarmed At Play: Green City Hit A Homer With First Wrigley Farmers Market

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As a longtime friend of Chicago’s Green City Market, we had been waiting with anticipation for its inaugural evening farmers market at famed Wrigley Field on Thursday (June 15). We are happy to report that the market was everything we expected and more — with the new Park at Wrigley, located right next to the Chicago Cubs’ home field and the team’s new office building, proved a perfect setting on a bright, sunny, hot day. Enjoy this photo essay.

FamilyFarmed At Play: This Easy Fruit Salad Could Make Your Whole Summer

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Most of what we do at FamilyFarmed, and most of what we write about on Good Food on Every Table, is pretty high-minded, focused on our efforts to build a better food system. This FamilyFarmed At Play article — about a boozy fruit salad — isn’t quite so lofty. But we can virtually guarantee that it will make your summer eating (and picnicking) better.

FamilyFarmed At Play With Rick Bayless: Every Good Party Deserves… Another Party

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If the mezcal tasting event hosted Wednesday (June 7) by Rick and Deann Bayless proved anything, it is that their Frontera Farmer Foundation and FamilyFarmed love to party around Good Food and artisan beverages. The party — at the Frontera group’s Cruz Blanca on Restaurant Row in Chicago’s West Loop — was a sequel to the Frontera 30th Anniversary Celebration, held April 30 at The Art Institute of Chicago. That fundraiser produced (at latest tally) more than $140,000 in proceeds to be split evenly by Family Farmed and Frontera Farmer Foundation, to advance their efforts to help farmers and businesses build a better food system.

FamilyFarmed Better Together With Jack Johnson At Chicago Concert

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FamilyFarmed is a natural ally for star singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, an environmentalist and supporter of sustainable food. We also are benefitting from the financial generosity of his All At Once Network, which matches donations to dozens of non-profit organizations. But FamilyFarmed learned that Jack Johnson is generous with something extra — his time — when we attended his June 2 concert at Chicago’s Huntington Bank Pavilion to participate in the “Village Green” with other local non-profits.

FamilyFarmed At Play

FamilyFarmed At Play: La Vie En Rose at Chicago’s Green City Market

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Red is a very fashionable color at Chicago-area farmers market in late spring. The explosion of brilliant colors as the growing season approaches its peak makes visiting your local farmers market an amazing aesthetic experience — a true thing of beauty.

FamilyFarmed At Play

FamilyFarmed At Play: Money Does Grow In School Gardens For The Kitchen Community

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It is alway a joyous day when FamilyFarmed gets to visit a school garden that gives children the tools to learn how to grow food and other plants. The Kitchen Community nonprofit installed a new garden at Wendell Smith Elementary on Chicago’s far South Side May 30, and the enthusiasm of the children who helped in the planting was infectious. But the trip was even more rewarding, because a $2 million donation to The Kitchen Community from Wells Fargo Bank was announced at a ceremony at the end of the installation

FamilyFarmed At Play

FamilyFarmed At Play: Bob Goes To The Farmers Market — The Movie!

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We at FamilyFarmed are proud of all of the written content that we have provided on Good Food on Every Table. But people have been asking us, “Why don’t you do videos? People love videos!” So in the spirit of giving the people what they want, we present “Bob Goes To The Farmers Market,” the premiere of our FamilyFarmed At Play video series.