Spoons Board Member, Bill Yosses, Receives Award for Sterling Performance

Congratulations to Spoons Board Member, Bill Yosses, on receiving Food Arts’ September 2012 Silver Spoon Award for sterling performance. Yosses, executive pastry chef at the White House, has always been an advocate for healthy eating. ‘“Education is the part I love,’” says Yosses, who now harvests vegetables with school groups in Mrs. Obama’s kitchen garden” as well as serving on the Board of Trustees for Spoons Across America. You can read the entire article here…

Spoons Volunteer Wins 2012 Culinary Legacy Award

We are so excited and proud of Spoons volunteer, Kubee Kassaye, winner of the prestigious Les Dames d’Escoffier International (LDEI) 2012 Legacy Award for culinary achievement. LDEI is an invitational organization of women leaders in food, beverage and hospitality whose mission is education, advocacy and philanthropy. Kubee, a graduate of New York City College of Technology (City Tech) is a long time volunteer with Spoons Across America, and describes this and other volunteer experiences as influencing the chef she has become today. “For Spoons Across America,” says Kubee, “I was able to teach the children how to grow fresh produce and to create meals with fresh ingredients. They were so eager to learn.”

Read more about Kubee here: Learning to Cook on her Mother’s Knee in Ethiopia

Want to volunteer with Spoons Across America? Check out our programs for children starting this fall.

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.

Volunteer now for Agriculture Literacy Week!

We’re seeking volunteers to read and lead curriculum for our upcoming Agriculture Literacy Week (ALW) program. Volunteers are in the classroom during (approximately) 1-hour class periods for our program week of March 19th.  Please see the Volunteer Letter and complete the Volunteer Registration to find out more or to participate in this and future programs.

Registration deadline extended to February 13th.

Spoons, in conjunction with Cornell University’s New York Agriculture in the Classroom, hosts Agriculture Literacy Week. The program fosters awareness, understanding, and appreciation of agriculture and the food and fiber system. This year’s ALW includes reading the book Seed, Soil, Sun (American Farm Bureau’s 2011 “Book of the Year”). Each participating classroom receives an educator guide with classroom learning opportunities, a free copy of the book, plus one for the school library. More about the program is available on our website.

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!