Joel Salatin speaks at UNC about organic and sustainable foods
Several hundred people ate up every word Joel Salatin had to say about organic and sustainable foods Wednesday night.
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Several hundred people ate up every word Joel Salatin had to say about organic and sustainable foods Wednesday night.
Joel Salatin, a local food advocate and author of “The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer,” will speak at an event Wednesday titled “Local Food Talk and Taste.”
Food fed more than just stomachs Friday.
Matthew Roybal doesn’t look like a farmer.
If you live in Chapel Hill and shop at the grocery store, you’ve probably seen the glass Maple View milk jars available in the dairy section. But are you familiar with the story behind the milk or conscious of the business that produces it? Us either.
A new food processing center’s opening date has been pushed back to April, with more than half the construction left to be completed.
An official ground breaking ceremony commemorated a space that could soon revolutionize the way area farms do business.
Farmers’ markets across the Triangle area will team up for the first time this weekend to raise food to aid the hungry.
Maple View Farm consists of more than 400 acres of farm land, about 300 cows, an on-site milk-bottling operation and now an acre of solar panels.
Shoppers at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market will no longer be limited to paying with cash. The Carrboro Farmers’ Market will begin the Common Currency Program on May 1 in an effort to broaden its customer base and attract underprivileged residents. The program will allow participants of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly the Food Stamp Program, purchase food at the farmers market. The assistance program gives underprivileged families allowances in the form of electronic food stamps. Participants are given Electronic Benefit Transfer cards that work like debit cards and can only be used to purchase food. Previously, the market only accepted cash. The farmers market will allow participants to exchange the federal food assistance money for tokens that can be exchanged for food. The market will also begin accepting debit and credit cards. Market manager Sarah Blacklin said she expects the program to expand the customer base the market caters to. “We just think this is just going to be another way that more people can come to the market,” she said. The market worked closely with Leaflight, a Chapel Hill nonprofit focused on the development of local food systems and food security, in getting the program started. Since 2004, Leaflight has been working with farmer’s markets around the state to allow them to accept federal assistance benefits as well as debit and credit cards, said Robert Andrew Smith, executive director of Leaflight, Under its 21st Century Farmers’ Markets Program, Leaflight has provided the service to 11 farmers markets across the state, with four more set to join this spring, including the Carrboro market, he said. “We evaluate markets with the highest likelihood of success based on community need,” he said. Blacklin said that the farmers market has also been working with numerous other partners in the community, including the University. Nutrition professor Alice Ammerman, director of the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, helped the market get a grant for funding and expects the program to help lower income consumers gain access to fresh, locally grown food. “It will broaden the base of people shopping at the market,” she said. Cathy Jones runs Perry-winkle Farm in Chapel Hill with her husband, Mike Perry, and sells food at the farmers market. She said she expects the Common Currency Program to have a positive effect on her farm and the community. “I just think it will bring more people who haven’t been able to afford it before.” Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
A hint of math, a dash of science and a sprinkle of experience — that’s the recipe for serving about 4,000 students a day in Top of Lenoir. “The first time around, whenever we create a menu, it’s really a guesstimation of how much we think we’re going to serve,” said executive chef Paul Basciano. Chefs and managers create these estimates based on how popular they think a meal will be that day. For example, if barbecue is on the menu, they might assume that 70 percent of customers will eat that entree, while another 30 percent will opt for something else. These formulations are also rooted in experience, Basciano said. “Some us have a lot of years of experience in the business,” he added. “We kind of know our customer base.” But these estimates aren’t always correct. “Sometimes we’re wrong,” Basciano said. “Sometimes we’re way wrong.” In an effort to make sure this doesn’t happen frequently, the managers and chefs maintain detailed breakdowns of the production and consumption of food. Records include dates, the menu items served those days and the number of students served. These production sheets also take into account the weather and special events that could cause the customer numbers to fluctuate. At the end of the day, these sheets are used to figure out what went wrong and to correct it for the future. “Hopefully, in a couple of months into the process, we have it down to such a science that we really are zeroing in,” Basciano said. Then if that particular menu item is served again, “we’re already ahead of the curve,” said Dontez Pherribo, location manager for Top of Lenoir. But most students aren’t aware of how much really goes on behind the scenes. “I didn’t know that so much work went into it,” said freshman Alex Payan. Having even the slightest advantage is important, especially when the dining hall is in charge of feeding so many people each day. But even with all of the mathematical calculations and careful records, there are still some leftovers. Leftovers When this happens, there are a couple of options that the kitchen has, including recycling some of the leftover food. “Depending on what it is we’ll use some items to rework, for soups, different types of stir-frys, things of that nature,” Basciano said. “But that’s all by judgment call. Things we can’t rework, some of our products made in a sauce that would be detectable the next time, you try to serve in a different way. We never re-serve it the same way we originally served it. We creatively rework it.” Junior Krista Douglas said she knew there a lot of food produced every day in Lenoir but didn’t know what happened to leftovers: “I wondered if they had extra leftover if they put it somewhere else the next day.” Lenoir uses an estimated 1,200 pounds of chicken within a single week. If there is leftover chicken that has not been cooked, it can be reworked and used in chicken noodle soup, Pherribo said. Basciano said leftover shrimp that has only been steamed can be used in shrimp chowder or shrimp bisque. The other option they have is to donate food on Fridays to the local food bank, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service, said Bruce Eckmeder, senior foodservice director. The food bank does not take dry grocery items from UNC — such as seasoning and salad dressings — but will take items such as vegetables, proteins, food in the coolers and other leftover food. But Eckmeder said it’s very rare that there is excess waste. “That’s one of the beauties of having such a high volume, is food is constantly flowing through the process,” he said. Pleasing everyone Along with managing hundreds of pounds of food both before and after it’s cooked, managers and chefs must consider the diverse array of palates that comes with the large student body at UNC. “We try to get a feel of what the customers want through our customer comment cards,” Pherribo said. “And we like to just walk around and interact with our customers and just see what they want.” Pherribo said managers view the comment cards as an important way to make sure their customers are satisfied. Managers even make an extra effort to respond to the comments and incorporate some of the ideas into future meal planning. Pherribo said they are already planning meal cycles for the fall semester and are using these comment cards to help with the preparation. They also use their own tastes. The managers eat meals in the dining hall three times a day, Pherribo said. If they walk around the dining hall and nothing appeals to them during that meal period, they take note. But in the end, it’s about pleasing the customers. “We enjoy seeing the reaction from the kids and seeing that they like it,” he said. “We have fun with what we do upstairs.” Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
If the James Beard Foundation Awards are the Oscars of food prizes, then two Franklin Street chefs are on the red carpet.
Correction (March 18 12: 18 a.m.): Due to reporting and editing errors this story is incorrect. At Whole Foods, organic cereal (cornflakes) cost $3.29; a half-gallon of organic milk costs $3.69; and a half-gallon of organic orange juice costs $3.69. Harris Teeter does not sell organic orange juice. The total cost of buying the 16 organic food items on the Daily Tar Heel’s shopping list at Whole Foods was $56.93. The total of the 15 organic foods sold at Harris Teeter was $54.66 The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the errors.
1.5.0., the newest restaurant at Lenoir Mainstreet, is known for advertising the farms its products come from and how the food being served each day was grown or raised. “We can source it all the way to the ground,” said Bill Cunningham, resident district manager for Carolina Dining Services. The reason why is reflected in the restaurant’s name. Those numbers represent the 150-mile radius that serves as Carolina Dining Services’ definition for what is considered local food. CDS has worked hard to make 1.5.0. a successful venture by finding farmers and distributors for executive chef Paul Basciano to work with to keep the food that’s served local and sustainable. “The growth in this market has been tremendous,” said Matt Tunnell, who represents FreshPoint, a fresh produce distributor that works with UNC. “In the last five years, it’s probably grown 100 percent, probably more than that.” Tunnell worked previously as a food service marketing specialist for the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Demand for local and organic food makes up at least 15 percent of FreshPoint’s business. “We’re responding to demand from the market,” Tunnell said. A 2008 survey conducted by the National Restaurant Association showed that the No. 1 trend among chefs was using local produce. According to the association’s research, 89 percent of fine-dining operators served locally sourced items, and nine in 10 believed demand for locally sourced items would grow in the future. “Compared to organic, there is a lot more demand for local. Local food is seen as more sustainable, and it keeps money in the state and in the community,” Tunnell said. Average weekly purchases for local, organic or sustainable food for Carolina Dining Services since January has totaled about $18,200, but that number could fluctuate based on the time of year. When UNC places an order with Eastern Carolina Organics, an organic farm produce distributor roughly 20 miles from campus, many items are still in the fields. The produce is received, quality-checked and stored, going to customers within 1 to 2 days after arrival. “Seasonality affects local food purchasing, and these numbers only reflect from January to March, so during spring semester, that average will increase,” said RJ LaPorte, marketing coordinator for Carolina Dining Services. “Paul Basciano has had a challenge with seasonality, but it’s been interesting — he’s been able to create a new menu, tapping into his skills as a chef to find new and interesting things to do.”
Correction (March 28 11:05 p.m.): Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly named the Gillings School of Global Public Health. This story has been updated to reflect this correction. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.
Renee and Randall Parker of Parker Farms went from farming tobacco to keeping pasture-raised hogs. Renee discusses the benefits and challenges of sustainable farming practices.
When Carolina Dining Services first started offering sustainable food last year, the menus looked a lot like what they were already serving. Executive Chef Paul Basciano was struggling to find enough local ingredients, and students weren’t backing the offerings with their dollars — two continuing challenges to UNC’s efforts to provide more sustainable dining options. “I would put a menu together and then start calling local farmers, finding out they couldn’t keep up with our demand,” Basciano said. Then Basciano changed tactics. Now, “I don’t write a menu until I know what they have.” Sales at 1.5.0. in Lenoir, which opened in January, are so far exceeding expectations. Basciano credits the unique menu and the sustainable focus. “I try to cook fresh, interesting food you can’t get anywhere else on this campus,” he said.
Paul Basciano, executive chef at Carolina Dining Services, gives us a look at 1.5.0, the new restaurant in Lenoir Dining Hall.
Lenoir's newest restaurant, 1.5.0., gets all of its food from farms within 150 miles of Chapel Hill. This map shows which farms supply which products.
The local food movement in Orange County just got a $30,000 boost. The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project awarded the Orange County Cooperative Extension the grant with the purpose of implementing a deserving local food project. Local consumers can influence how the grant money is spent by participating in an online survey at orangecountyfarms.org. The survey allows participants to rate the impact of different projects on availability and access to local food in the Piedmont region. So far more than 200 people have taken the survey, said Noah Ranells, the agricultural economic development coordinator and an author of the grant. “The results of the survey will inform the decision a great deal,” he said. Possible projects include the creation of a regional food label for locally grown food or the development of infrastructure for local food distribution — a “farm-to-fork” system. Cathy Jones, a farmer and member of the steering committee formed for the project, said she saw the survey as a good opportunity to determine what project the community thinks the grant should be put toward. Jones and her husband, Mike Perry, own Perry-winkle Farm, an organic vegetable, flower and poultry farm. “We can think about how we as a community can raise people’s awareness of the possibility of shopping locally and eating seasonally,” Jones said of the grant. Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, a member of the steering committee and an associate professor at UNC, said there is increasing community awareness of the health and economic benefits of eating local. He said there has been growth in the number of small farms producing food for urban markets in the state’s central counties. “Lots of consumers are interested in buying locally,” he said. “The problem is connecting them.” Although Colloredo-Mansfeld said that the committee members want to make consumers aware of seasonal local options, they realize there are some foods that can’t be grown regionally. “Most people working on it aren’t advocating that people be fed only by the farmers around them,” he said. Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.