Tag Archives: Edible Schoolyard
Research verifies importance of school food program
Berkeley Unified School District’s School Lunch Initiative (SLI) has been hailed nationwide as a model for teaching children about food and the importance of good nutrition. But for every glowing report from the Edible Schoolyard, there have been critics carping about Berkeley hippies detracting from “real” education. Now, however, research by the University of California Berkeley’s Atkins Center for Weight and Health supports the claims that SLI and similar programs have a lasting effect on children’s eating … Continue reading »
Alice Waters works with Levi’s on print project
Berkeley based food goddess Alice Waters will tonight reveal the fruits of a creative collaboration with Levi’s Workshop, a community print shop run by the jeans maker which invites members of the public to experiment with letterpress, screenprinting and typesetting.
San Francisco non-profit Garden for the Environment (GFE) is also part of the project, as is Waters’ long-time collaborator Sylvan Brackett.
Waters’ contribution is an educational poster which will be distributed to … Continue reading »
Berkeley Bites: Tanya Henderson
Tanya Henderson is a cooking instructor for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD). During the day she cooks with teens at Willard Middle School. Once a week she whips up dishes with kids in the after-school program at Malcolm X Elementary. She also teaches evening nutrition classes to parents at several BUSD locations.
A former New Yorker who worked in television — including directing a season of MTV’s Real World – Henderson moved to Berkeley to attend Continue reading »
Edible Schoolyard Plant Sale busts fundraising target
The Edible Schoolyard at King Middle School held its annual Plant Sale over the weekend. The event was very well attended and Alice Waters was on hand on Saturday morning signing copies of her new book, “In the Green Kitchen”, proceeds of which benefit the Schoolyard.
David Prior, a spokesperson for the Chez Panisse Foundation, said they believe they have exceeded last year’s fundraising, which brought in a total of $12,500, on Saturday alone. The final tally will … Continue reading »
The Edible Schoolyard throws its big annual bash
This weekend offers the opportunity to celebrate and support one of Berkeley’s best ideas. The Edible Schoolyard at King Middle School will be hosting its annual plant sale in the garden. Schoolyard founder Alice Waters will be on hand on Saturday morning to meet, greet and sign copies of her new book, “In the Green Kitchen”; and Bakesale Betty’s will be serving its iconic organic chicken sandwiches.
King students have spent the past months cultivating the … Continue reading »
Berkeley Bites: Kyle Cornforth
Each Friday in this space food writer Sarah Henry asks a well-known, up-and-coming, or under-the-radar food aficionado about their favorite tastes in town, preferred food purveyors and other local culinary gems worth sharing.
Kyle Cornforth packed up her family last summer and headed to the outskirts of Chiang Mai to spend a year as the director of The Prem Organic Cooking Academy and Farm, which teaches traditional Thai cooking and farming techniques to kids from international schools around the globe, as well as adult travelers.
She wanted to share what she learned about local, sustainable, organic cooking working as the program coordinator for the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. (Kyle, 30, will return to that position this summer. She met her husband Jay Cohen, a teacher at the school, in the Edible garden. Cue a chorus of awws now.)
She has spent the past year documenting her cross-cultural experiences in often amusing entries that can be found on her blog Cornhens in Thailand. The family, including daughter Zorah, will return to their South Berkeley home in a few months. (Full disclosure: I met Kyle at Edible while lending a hand as a kitchen volunteer.)
1. Can you name some favorite family-friendly eateries in town?
For breakfast we regularly go to The Homemade Cafe. We have been taking Zorah there on the weekends since she was an infant. It isn’t so much that the space is set up for kids, but the staff there has always made us feel welcome and been especially warm to Zorah.
Right around the corner there is a wonderful place for dinner, Digs Bistro, that has a parents night out the first Monday of every month. They have supervised activities for kids two and over — art, dinner, ice cream and a movie — and you can sit in the next room and have a delicious meal in a romantic environment.
2. Do you have a local food hero?
Amy Murray of Venus Restaurant is doing good work with quiet passion. I worked for Amy at Venus for five years. A lot of what I know about food and cooking I learned from her. She has been deeply committed to local food for a long time. I also run into her at the farmers’ market all the time, and I think it is important to see chefs out selecting the produce and ingredients themselves.
I often crave her food; anyone who comes up with the veggie nest is a hero in my book! It’s on the breakfast/brunch menu: Two poached eggs atop a salad of arugula, frisee, wild mushrooms, goat cheese, tomato, and bacon. It’s served with tapenade toast but I always substitute the biscuit. It’s the perfect way to start a weekend day. … Continue reading »
Alice Waters on kitchen fear, streakers and why she wanted to feed Bill Clinton a peach
Alice Waters appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday to promote her new book, In the Green Kitchen. She presented Maher with a basket of fresh produce, including lemons picked from Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard. She talked about slow food and how it doesn’t necessarily mean slow-cooked food. “I could have a slow-food hot dog if I cared where the meat came for the hot dog, where the bun came from, where the ketchup came … Continue reading »
Berkeley to Brooklyn: Edible Schoolyard takes root
Details have emerged of the latest Edible Schoolyard project — this time the Alice Waters effect has spread its tentacles all the way from the West Coast to Brooklyn, New York
According to Inhabitat, a new $1.6 million garden and center will be built at PS. 216, an elementary school located in Brooklyn’s Gravesend neighborhood. Designed by Work Architecture Company, it will include a solar-powered kitchen classroom, mobile greenhouse, rainwater cistern, composting system, outdoor pizza … Continue reading »
“Flanagan made me choke on my chard”
Berkeley freelance writer Sarah Henry, who muses about food and family matters on her blog, Lettuce Eat Kale, was so hot under the collar after reading Caitlin Flanagan’s “Cultivating Failure” article in The Atlantic, she had to wait a week to cool off before responding. Henry volunteers at King Middle School’s Edible Schoolyard. Here’s her view, first published on Lettuce Eat Kale:
I was so royally peeved by Caitlin Flanagan’s hatchet job on Alice Waters and the Continue reading »
Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard under attack
An article which claims edible school gardens, such as Berkeley’s famous one at King Middle School, are “cheating our most vulnerable students”, is ruffling feathers, both on this site and more widely.
“Cultivating Failure”, written by Caitlin Flanagan and published in the January/February issue of The Atlantic, was brought to our attention by Berkeleyside reader Alicia. In the piece, Flanagan argues that children who grow vegetables as part of Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard project would be … Continue reading »
