Spoons Staffer in the News

Stacey leads a group of students at one of our recent Dinner Party Project events.

We’re thrilled to see our program director, Stacey Ornstein, highlighted for her work outside of Spoons in the Epoch Times. The article discusses Stacey’s passion for teaching food preparation skills to children, as well as the need for more free classes so that families of any income level can participate.

Read the Epoch Times article.

Be sure to check out the slideshow of images from Stacey’s recent pasta class in Astoria, Queens. Way to go Stacey!

Volunteers Needed for Food Miles Relay!

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We are currently seeking volunteers for our annual Food Miles Relay programming. This is a great, hands-on program in which students around New York City get to learn about local food and how far various foods must travel from their origin before they are ultimately consumed. Kids will learn why local food is fresher and how to pay attention to where different foods come from, all while having fun and being physically active!

The program will take place in schools around NYC from May 21-25th, and there will be a mandatory volunteer training on May 8th at the Institute of Culinary Education at 50 West 23 Street in Manhattan. If you’re interested in participating as a volunteer, please complete the volunteer registration form and return it by Monday, April 30th to our program director, Stacey Ornstein at Stacey@SpoonsAcrossAmerica.org.

We hope you can participate and look forward to meeting you!

The Apple Pushers

Spoons is excited and proud to support the release of the new film, The Apple Pushers. This film follows five immigrants who have become part of an exciting experiment to bring more fresh fruits and vegetables to areas of New York City where, often, fresh produce is difficult to come by.

Check out the trailer to see why we’re so excited!

Check the screening schedule to see if the film will be screened in a city near you, or pre-order the film online. If you’re NYC-based, there will be a screening this Tuesday, March 20th, at Hunter College.

Be a Local Food Hero and You Could Win a Dinner at Craftbar!

We are thrilled to announce the addition of a fantastic prize to our Local Food Heroes campaign! From now until the end of the campaign, your donation will enter you into the running to win a $100 gift certificate to celebrity chef Tom Colicchio’s New York restaurant, Craftbar! If you’ve already donated, you’re entered to win too!

And remember, due to a generous matching grant, right now your donation will double and reach twice as many kids in March during Agriculture Literacy Week!

Please help us reach our first milestone of $1,000! Just visit our page at NY Charities and designate your donation to the Spoons Local Food Heroes Campaign to be automatically entered to win.

Thanks, heroes!

Local Food Heroes is Here!

Last year, our generous supporters helped us raise nearly $3,000 during our first-ever Local Food Heroes campaign. This exceeded our greatest expectations and allowed us to bring our Agriculture Literacy Week programming to over 300 students – that’s 250 more than we expected!

We’re hoping to exceed last year’s amount and raise $4,000 to bring Agriculture Literacy Week to 400 students this year. And our supporter Harry Wils and Company has generously provided a $500 matching grant to get us started!

The cost of bringing the program to one student is $10. With this match, your donation of $10 will become $20 and bring the program to two NYC public school students. To donate, simply visit our donation page at NY Charities – be sure to designate your donation to the Spoons Local Food Heroes Campaign in the blue box so we’ll know where to send it.

Thanks in advance for your support and have a great holiday season!

The Spoons Team

Update 12/12/11: Now with your donation, you’ll be automatically entered to win a dinner at Craftbar!

Take a Taste Programming

Last month, we held our signature Take a Taste with Spoons programming in 3rd grade classrooms across the city, and we were thrilled to have such a great response from both the students who participated and the volunteers who made the program happen!

The week of Take a Taste programming kicked off on the first annual Food Day on October 24th. This year, the participating students had an opportunity to explore the different sensations of taste through sampling various “mystery” items, such as citric acid, chocolate powder, salt and sugar. Then, they got to sample apples from local New York state producers. Here are a few of our favorite photos from the PS 72X in the Bronx:

As always, we love to see how excited the students can get when they have an opportunity to participate in these programs. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen – we can’t wait to see how Take a Taste turns out next year!

In Season with Spoons: Tomatoes

Biting in to a slice of a juicy heirloom tomato at the end of summer is bittersweet: of course, they’re delicious, but they also remind us how much we dislike the generic supermarket tomatoes that are the only game in town in January! Here our some of our favorite ways to enjoy seasonal tomatoes while we still can:

• A tomato and goat cheese tart is an easy, fresh alternative to homemade pizza.
• Jarred salsa doesn’t hold a candle to freshly prepared salsa. We love this one with lime, cilantro and cumin.
• Heirloom tomato ketchup? You betcha, and it’s a great way to get kids excited about summer’s harvest! We also love that you could make green or yellow ketchup with no artificial coloring.
• Sometimes, the best way to highlight an heirloom tomato’s flavor is a simple Caprese salad, with mozzarella, salt and basil.

What’s your favorite way to enjoy seasonal tomatoes?

Packing a Safe Lunch for Preschoolers

A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics found that preschoolers lunches are held at unsafe temperatures 90% of the time, even when packed in an insulated container using an ice pack. Yikes!

Many foods are not considered safe to eat at temperatures above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the development of food-born pathogens is especially concerning for young children with still-developing immune systems. If your child’s school doesn’t have adequate refrigeration for school lunches, avoid the following foods:

• Meats, especially deli meats
• Dairy products such as cheese, eggs and mayonaise
• Leafy greens, sprouts, tomatoes and potatoes which are more susceptible to contamination than other vegetables
• Previously cooked leftovers

So what does that leave for your child’s lunch? Processed, packaged foods are usually safe, but usually lack in nutritional quality. Experts recommend sticking to fresh foods such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit. But since the same old PB&J can get boring pretty quickly, try these suggestions to keep lunches interesting:

• Whole grain bread with almond butter and fresh fruit slices (such as peaches)
• Milk packaged in aseptic cartons (such as Horizon Organic)
• Whole grain snacks such as crackers and oatmeal cookies
• Carrot sticks, grapes and sugar snap peas
• Raisins and trail mix
• Foods that can be frozen before being packed, like yogurt

Do you have any suggestions on how to pack a safe, healthy lunch for school-age children? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Pardon the Construction

We are in the process of updating our new website and moving our WordPress blog directly onto our main site. For now, you can access older blog content here.

Thanks for reading and we’re looking forward to sharing our new blog with you!