Seed saving and seed exchanges are playing a crucial and increasing role in ensuring continued biodiversity and a robust variety of food. But these practices have come under political pressure in recent years. This issue will be discussed by a panel of experts at the Food Policy Conference within FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Trade Show and Industry Conference this Friday at Chicago’s UIC Forum.
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival is this Saturday at the UIC Forum on the campus of University of Illinois at Chicago. With exciting activities for adults and children too, it is hard to boil down the list of things to do. But we think this Top 10 Reasons to Attend the Festival list will be a useful guide.
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival this Saturday caps our three-day, 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference. The Festival is our big public celebration of the fast-growing Good Food movement, and we say “public,” we mean the youngest among us, too! It is a very family-friendly event, and children 12 and younger get in free!
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference is coming up Thursday at Chicago’s UIC Forum, and it is a must-do for anyone with an interest in the business of the fast-growing Good Food movement. The event — which makes up the first day of the three-day, 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference — has an amazing lineup of farm and food entrepreneurs, industry leaders, thought leaders and policy makers.
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.
Rob Levitt of The Butcher & Larder at Local Foods, one of Chicago’s leading butcher shops, is conducting a ham-curing workshop at FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival on March 26. Read here about Levitt’s love of ham, his dedication to providing the highest quality products, and his devotion to consumer education about meat.
Chicago chef Paul Kahan has long been known for the culinary excellence of the successful and high-profile restaurants in the One Off Hospitality Group, currently at eight locations and growing. His kitchen mastery earned him the James Beard Foundation (JBF) Outstanding Chef Award in 2013. He was inducted into JBF’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage Read more about Chicago’s Paul Kahan, FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Chef of the Year: His Culinary Career[…]
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival — its big public celebration of the Good Food movement — is coming up on Saturday, March 26 at Chicago’s UIC Forum. One of its many features is an authors’ table featuring great books about food, and we are pleased that Read It & Eat, Chicago’s culinary bookstore and event space, Read more about The Best Cookbooks of 2016? Ask Read It & Eat, Our Good Food Festival Bookseller[…]
Family Farmed’s Good Food Festival on Saturday, March 26 is the big annual public celebration that will cap the three-day Good Food Festival & Conference. The Festival is all about hands-on workshops and learning. And we are excited to welcome book authors Hannah Crum and husband Alex LaGory who will be part of our Brew Your Own Kombucha workshop at 1:30 p.m. on March 26.
Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery, LLC, located in Champaign, Illinois, makes artisan, farmstead goat cheeses and goat milk gelato from its herd of 80 milking goats. Owners Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell also host Slow Food, farm-to-table meals and other agri-tourism events. And now they are movie stars, And now they are even movie stars, thanks to A Farmer’s Road, a new documentary about Prairie Fruits, which will be shown March 26 at FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival.
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.
A Good Food trade show retains its traditional place as a centerpiece of FamilyFarmed’s 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference, March 24-26 at Chicago’s UIC Forum. But the day’s programming expanded greatly over time to include panels and discussions of a wide range of Good Food business and policy issues — and this year it steps to a new level with a panel of all-star chefs presented by the James Beard Foundation (JBF).
Josh Katt, a Chicago chef, came up with the idea for his eight-year-old Kitchfix company while working as a personal chef and creating healthy meals — made from anti-inflammatory superfood ingredients — for customers who were fighting cancer. Kitchfix enabled him to expand the concept to a broader customer base. He grew a business that delivers prepared meals to homes and dropoff points, does catered events, and even has a small store in the Gold Coast neighborhood just north of downtown Chicago. Along the way, Katt and his team hit upon a product they learned had serious commercial potential: a grain-free, superfood-loaded variant of granola. His desire to grow this part of his business led to his participation in FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator.
One of the biggest challenges in the Good Food supply chain is getting products from farm and processor to market and consumer in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner. Suzanne Ma, co-founder of the Routific route optimization company, explains in this contributed column how software can help producers deliver their products more effectively.
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[…]
The nine Fellows participating in the second cohort of FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator represent a wide range of exciting entrepreneurial ventures — from bakeries to a prepared meal kitchen to an herb farm, from an apple orchard and cidery to packaged Latino food products to a kombucha maker, and more.
Make a small, charitable donation this week to help deliver delicious and healthy food from leading Chicago restaurants and other food servers to nonprofit organizations that distribute it to people in need. Get a voucher for a treat from one of dozens of participating outlets. Sound good?
Just four years ago, Main Street in the small city of Corbin, Kentucky looked and felt like most downtowns in rural America: Vacant buildings. Empty sidewalks. A few surviving businesses. Today, though, there are thriving businesses and it’s hard to find a parking space on the mile and a half of Corbin’s Main Street. And local food is the engine driving this community’s revival.
Vending machines. Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of Good Food… Until now, that is, thanks to companies such as Farmer’s Fridge, a business that is selling same-day-fresh jarred salads and healthy snacks from vending machines in dozens of locations around Chicago. This fast-growing company got a boost from participating in FamilyFarmed’s annual Good Food Festival & Conference and its Financial Fair.
SAAGE Culinary Studio in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, is a shared-use commercial kitchen providing startup food businesses with access to all the commercial grade equipment that they need to make their products. Owner Gayatri Borthakur discusses the philosophy behind the business, which will be a participant in FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival & Conference.