September brings not only cooler weather with it, but a new variety of produce to the market.
Vegetables:
Fruit
The WHO Farm Mobile (formerly the Tospy-Turvy bus created by Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s) was at Wrigley Field on Friday, August 22. They are traveling from New York City to San Francisco, sharing their vision of an organic farm on the grounds of the White House. Their proposal is to draw attention to farm and food policy. Advocating the ultimate in local foods, they hope that with an organic farm outside the White House’s back door, the president will be eating exceptionally nutritious food which may cause exceptionally wise decision-making in the Oval Office.
The bus will be center-Soapbox at Slow Food Nation, 2:30 PM, August 29 in San Francisco. The Slow Food Nation is an organization that believes that food should be healthy and delicious, grown in a sustainable way and economically fair to farmers and consumers. The bus toured the country in 2007 drawing attention to U.S. budget priorities. The seats on the top level have been removed and replaced by an organic garden. While you might have missed the bus on August 22nd, you can still check our www.TheWHOFarm.org to find out how you can get involved with this movement.
According to The Boston Globe, people spend on average 13 percent of their income on food. In order to compensate for rising gas prices, people are aggressively looking for ways they can save money. Cutting back on the amount they spend on food is usually at the top of the list, especially since food prices have been increasing dramatically. Organic food can be costly, and it seems easy to justify buying cheap, factory-farm produced meat and produce. However, the truth is we cannot afford to continue buying from factory-farms long term.
Among the many hidden costs of food, subsidies rank the highest in terms of actual dollar amounts. The government offers big business farmers subsidies to keep food costs below the cost of food production so America can stay competitive on the international market. When we buy cheap food we have already paid for part of the food in taxes, or else that food came from a country with unfair labor practices. If we revert back to eating locally we would not need to pay taxes for farming subsidies. For more information on this visit www.truecostoffood.org.
Farm subsidies are an international problem. The government just pasted a bill that will spend over $180 billion dollars over the next ten years, which will be given to big business farms. Much of this food will be shipped overseas, which will drive down food costs and put small farmers out of business. So not only are we buying sub-par food for ourselves with taxes, we are buying sub-par food for other people with the subsidies. And this is not charitable giving, because it is highly destructive to the local economy in other countries and provides people with less nutritious food. Supporting local, organic farms is the best for everyone’s economy long term. For more information on this visit www.commondreams.org or Google “farm subsidies.”
Lyon Fishery Farm raised Trout of Sandoval, IL
Lyon Fishery is offering trout through Curd and Whey this Thursday at the Geneva Green Market.
There is a demand by environmentally conscious consumers for fresh, healthy, good tasting food products high in protein, low in fat & cholesterol and contaminate free.
The general perception of farm raised products is positive. Compared to wild caught species, farm raised aquaculture products are considered fresher, higher quality & have greater price stability.
Rob Murphy will be demoing this Thursday and answer question about farmed raised trout.
Garbage: The Revolution starts at Home
A documentary film screening on the hard-truth facts about of the global impact of one family’s waste…
How much garbage does an average family generate in three months?
What is the effect on the environment?
Find out the first weekend in September at a screening of “Garbage: the Revolution Starts at Home.”
Geneva Green Market, NFP and Geneva Film Festival will present the film at 7:15 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6, at River Park in Geneva. Admission is free.
“Garbage,” a film by Andrew Nisker details the global impact of local waste. Concerned for the future of his new baby boy, Sebastian, Nisker takes an average urban family, the McDonalds, and asks them to keep every scrap of garbage that they create for three months. He then takes them on a journey to find out where it all goes and what it’s doing to the world.
From organic waste to plastic bags and water bottles to the waste they create carting their kids around town, the McDonalds discover that for every action there is a reaction that affects them and the entire planet.
The park is located at 75 River Lane, just north of Riverside Receptions. Movie-goers are encouraged to bring blankets, flashlights and chairs.
Locally made root beer floats, apple cobbler, or 3 large cookies will be available for purchase for $5 at the screening. Pre-dessert tickets will be sold at Geneva Green Market (5 desserts for $20) from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays. All proceeds will benefit the Geneva Green Market, NFP.
Rain location will be the Geneva History Center, 113 S. Third St.
“We hope the documentary screening of ‘Garbage!’ will get people excited about attending Geneva’s upcoming film festival,” said Vic Portincaso, event chair. Sponsored by the Geneva Cultural Arts Commission, the Geneva Film Festival, now in its second year, will be held Saturday, Nov. 8. The festival will feature morning workshops by film producers, writers and directors. Movie screenings of the finalist movies from the contest will be held throughout the day. All ages are welcome.
The activities will culminate that evening at an awards ceremony at the history center, where the winners will be announced in the seven categories of films: Feature Films, Short Film; Short Documentary; Animation; Music video; Student film (College/University); and High School.
Submissions to enter the contest must be postmarked by Monday, Sept. 15. For more information, visit www.genevafilmfestival.org. Read More…
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has become the defacto vocabulary for green building discussions and the LEED green building rating systems provide a straightforward methodology for verifying the level of green of a building. This session is intended for those who want to take a crash course in the most easily achieved LEED points based on historic data at USGBC. This session will help in various project situations — for the owner who wants to quickly become a bit grounded in LEED for a first project meeting with an architect or contractor, or for a designer or contractor who is part of a LEED project, but has little background.
Speaker: John Albrecht, Nelson
Pre-registration is required.
When: Thursday, September 18, 2008 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Where:
Interiors for Business
409 N. River Street
Batavia, Illinois 60510
773-265-5911
USGBC - Chicago Chapter
Contact Katie Kaluzny for more information
773-265-5911
email Katie here
Aurora Library to host Rick Bayless cooking demonstration at Paramount Theater.
Award-winning Chicago chef, restaurateur, cookbook author and television personality Rick Bayless will appear at Aurora’s Paramount Theatre on Sept. 13 for a cooking demonstration, tasting and book signing.
The Aurora Public Library is hosting the program featuring two chefs who specialize in Latin cooking to highlight Hispanic Heritage Month. The event will begin at 1 p.m. when Chicago chef Dudley Nieto takes the stage to speak about regional differences in Mexican cooking.
Bayless, star of public televisions Mexico One Plate at a Time, will demonstrate his trademark Mexican cooking peppered with stories about the dishes he is preparing, his travels to Mexico, and the history behind the traditional Mexican recipes he loves.
Tickets will be available beginning Friday, Aug. 8. Read More…
Humidity isn’t the only thing that August has to offer in Kane and Dupage County. Come and check out a new variety of fresh produce available at the market! Here’s a short list of the fruits and vegetable available in August from Dekalb County, Dupage County, Kane County and Kendall County farms:
Vegetables:
Fruits:
Packing school lunches in reusable lunchboxes protects our environment from unnecessary waste, but it is also important to protect our children from food containers that are potentially harmful. Along with avoiding plastic-leaching #7 water bottles, we must now look for lead-free lunchboxes. Back in February 2007, the Boston Globe reported that while the Consumer Product Safety Commission told consumers that the amount of lead in found in vinyl lunchboxes was safe, the specialists that actually performed the tests were alarmed by the lead levels found in 20% of the lunchboxes that were tested. The CPSC’s argument was that food is rarely in direct contact with the lunchboxes and children are not likely to put their mouths directly on the boxes. Words such as “rarely” and “not likely” imply that there is a chance that children could be exposed to hazardous levels of lead if parents and children do not handle their toxic lunchbox properly. Although it is common sense that children should not lick their lunchbox, it makes even more sense to store food a non-toxic container.
There are inexpensive products available at www.leadcheck.com to test lunchboxes that you already own, but if you need to purchase new lunchboxes the Center for Environmental Health recommends avoiding vinyl altogether. In the wake of these findings the FDA urges consumers to switch to paper bags as an alternative, but choosing between the environment and health is unnecessary. At www.reusablebags.com a number of lead-free, environmentally friendly bags are available.
The Kane County Chronicle did a cover story featuring the Fox Valley Farmers Markets and local food on August 8, 2008 entitled Think Local, Eat Local: Fueled by‚ buy local trend, farmers markets remain popular choice, by Jonathan Bilyk:
For more than 25 years, she and her husband, Phil, had hawked their homegrown produce at the Downers Grove farmers market.
But as fuel costs grew, the couple, owners of Stojan Produce in Maple Park, had to cut one of their weekly market appearances loose.
And Downers Grove was the one to go this year, swapped for a weekly appearance at the Campton Hills open-air market.
So, Stojan said she is happy to see that business at the other seven markets at which she and her husband vend their produce – including the markets in St. Charles, Batavia and Elburn – appears to be holding steady or, in some instances, picking up this year.
“We seem to be going along smoothly,” Stojan said. Read More…
