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Event celebrates locally grown food

By Elaine Paoloni | epaoloni@am-ny.com

July 16, 2007

Getting exceptional produce in the city has always been a challenge -- except for the bounty brought by farmers to greenmarkets around the city. Great Performances caterers, which has its own 60-acre farm upstate, recently hosted an event celebrating locally grown produce.

In between lessons on how to plant, preserve and pickle foods, guests were able to grind their own wheat and shop at a farmer's market specially created for the evening. There was also a spread of food and drink sourced from within a 100-mile radius of the city.

We spoke to Liz Neumark, founder and CEO of Great Performances and founder of The Sylvia Center:

What's the benefit of locally grown food?

First of all, it's typically fresher because it doesn't have to travel as far to reach its markets. And because it's traveling less, there's less energy consumed in delivering the food, so it's better from an environmental point of view. So flavor and environment are two compelling reasons to eat local food.

What are the greatest barriers to promoting fresh, locally grown food in New York City?
There's no wholesale outlet directly from farmers to users. A great example is when you go to the supermarket, it's easier to buy apples from Washington state than it is from New York state because of distribution. So by promoting locally grown food and saying that locally grown food is important and is something we want, it corrects such absurd situations like the apples.

Why did you choose 100 miles for your 100 Mile Menu event?
It was really an offshoot the 100 Mile Diets [which are rooted in sourcing your food and drink from within 100 miles of your home]. Five, 10 years ago, there was a certain sense of the farther [food] travels, the more exotic, the better. And we still do that for our clients; if they want to source something from a remote mountain in the Himalayas that blooms on a full moon in the spring, that's fine, we'll get it for them. But we're also going to start to educate them about locally grown food. So we thought that celebrating a 100 Mile Menu and starting to focus on that as a concept is part of an educational mission that we have to expose our clients to and raise awareness of the flavors.

What can New Yorkers do year round to promote locally grown food?
You know what our grandmothers all did? They canned, they preserved. That's what mankind has done for millennia. We can bottle and preserve some of our products and have those little flavors through the winter, whether we make chutneys or relishes. [Also,] farmers markets are year round. It's slim pickings, but you can get local meats, local fish, and certain harvests can be kept in cold storage. In winter, when we're not bringing kids [from the city] onto the farm, we're going to bring them here into the kitchen, and have them cook, taste, learn and explore those flavors and [instill] the subtle message about health and nutrition through fresh foods.

How does a hands-on approach to food help people?
The community act of preparing food is powerful. We had a group of kids from P.S. 180 in Harlem at the farm. They did the farm walk, they saw what a farm is, then we prepared lunch together. We had zucchini, onions, scallions, tomatoes, red peppers, carrots and lettuce, and we made salad and we made omelets from fresh local eggs. Later that week -- P.S. 180 does its own farm stand on Fridays outside the school and we supply them with their produce -- one of the little girls who had been at the farm was coming to school. She picked up a zucchini and said, "Mom, let's buy a zucchini. Tomorrow I'm going to make you an omelet with [it]." It's experiential learning. We're not catching the fish, we're teaching them how to fish. And in that you plant a seed, you make connections.

What do you hope people take away from the 100 Mile Menu event?
I hope they take away some awareness of the two organizations that we're fund-raising for: Just Food [which makes fresh, locally grown food available to New Yorkers through connecting urban consumers with farmers and community gardeners] and The Sylvia Center [an organization dedicated to educating at-risk urban kids about healthy foods and nutrition]. But the main thing: I hope they have fun. Just like the kid who saw the zucchini in the market and said, "Ooh, I'm gonna make that," I hope they start to have relationships with local produce, stop by a market and appreciate the flavors. And if we can conscious-raise a little bit I'm all for that. But I just want people to enjoy the flavors, to mingle, to talk with like-minded people, to meet some of the farmers -- just have a fun experience.