Tag Archives: Edible Schoolyard
New guide aims to improve school food beyond Berkeley
Regular readers may think that the only person in town doing anything to fix school food in Berkeley and beyond is Alice Waters via her Edible Schoolyard Project.
But that perception would be wrong. Founded in 1995, the Center for Ecoliteracy has also long championed school food reform and channeled funding in the millions to garden programs, cooking classes, and nutrition-based curriculum in Berkeley public schools.
Along with the Chez Panisse Foundation and Berkeley Unified School District, the Center for Ecoliteracy also implemented the School Lunch Initiative, which kickstarted local, seasonal, and sustainable food for students here and connected the classroom and the cafeteria. … Continue reading »
Alice Waters, Robert Reich talk up a delicious revolution
It was all very Alice: a fire pit outside, a large screen projecting Mr. Smith Goes to Washington on the stage, and, next to her chair, an artfully arranged assortment of fresh-picked fruit delivered to her door by farmer friends.
Alice Waters, a one-time Montessori teacher, wanted to stimulate her students’ senses. So, last Tuesday, that’s how she kicked off her turn to talk at the Edible Education 101 fall lecture series at UC Berkeley, funded by her own Chez Panisse Foundation.
And, in an inspired piece of programming, the woman with a big, broad vision for food reform in schools and beyond, who speaks in a small, wispy way and sometimes appears uncomfortable, even a little lost alone in the spotlight, invited the jovial Cal public policy professor and economics expert Robert Reich to join her on stage for a conversation in front of a close to capacity crowd at Wheeler Hall. … Continue reading »
Chez Panisse birthday fundraising declared a success
Now that the hoopla is over, it’s time to take stock of how the Chez Panisse 40th anniversary celebrations fared as a fundraising effort.
Answer: pretty well. The Chez Panisse Foundation had a goal to raise $500,000 for all its 40th birthday activities combined, which it exceeded by a lot, said event producer Carolyn Federman, who didn’t specify exactly how much the private dinners, restaurant parties, and other activities raised.
The money will go to support the recently launched Edible Schoolyard Project (ESYP) website, which has an estimated annual operating cost of about $1.5 million, according to Federman. This new, national nonprofit, building on the work of the Edible Schoolyard locally, intends to serve as a “best practices” resource for kitchen and garden classes in schools across the country looking for ideas, tools, resources, curriculum and community to support their work. Interviews for candidates for the ESYP director position are currently under way. … Continue reading »
Chez Panisse’s birthday kicks off with party to remember
Last night, Alice Waters launched the weekend-long fȇte for the restaurant she founded 40 years ago with a portrait unveiling and a food-inspired procession. Chez Panisse, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and the art and food collective OPENrestaurant held a cocktail party Friday at the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum, where a portrait of Waters bound for The Smithsonian was revealed, marking the opening of several days of celebratory and fundraising activities.
“I just love that this portrait was … Continue reading »
Local restaurants raise money for edible education
Potentially lost in the tsunami of stories of all things Chez Panisse this week — see yesterday’s Berkeleyside Wire and this post today for a fraction of the coverage circulating in anticipation of the 40th anniversary celebrations that start in earnest tonight — is the fact that the weekend long festivities are, at their heart, a series of fundraisers for the newly launched Edible Schoolyard Project, a national hub designed to broaden the reach … Continue reading »
Fundraising underpins Chez Panisse’s birthday festivities
Forty years after a young Alice Waters opened what was to become one of the most famous restaurants in the world, the Chez Panisse owner is using the anniversary to focus less on the brown-shingled eatery and more on her mission to see kids eating healthily at school.
With this in mind, the Chez Panisse Foundation is to be renamed the Edible Schoolyard Organization this Fall, so that a program that originated in the shadow of the restaurant is now clearly positioned as where Waters is devoting most of her energies.
That’s not to say that the birthday will not be marked with celebrations, many of them guaranteed to delight the taste-buds. Indeed, Waters and her team have orchestrated a full calendar of events over the long weekend of August 26-30, from large-scale cocktail parties to intimate dinners, from educational classes to creative gatherings.
And graduates from the “university of Alice Waters” will be out in force, as Chez Panisse protegés such as Jean-Pierre Moullé, Sally Clarke, Charlie Hallowell, Russell Moore, Gayle Pirie, and Charlene Reis are put to work whipping up feasts. … Continue reading »
Tickets expected to go fast for Michael Pollan’s food class
When word leaked out in the spring that Michael Pollan would be co-teaching a class on the rise and future of the food movement, students at UC Berkeley rushed to sign up. The 10-week, two-unit course was filled minutes after it was listed online.
Now, the general community has a chance to participate in this gold rush.
UC will be releasing tickets for Edible Education 101 on a first-come, first-serve basis on August 15. There will be about 282 tickets available for each class and people will be able to sign up for just one lecture or all of them, said Carolyn Federman, director of development for the Edible Schoolyard, which is co-sponsoring and paying for the course. The tickets will be free and will be sold through Ticketweb, she said.
Pollan is co-teaching Edible Education 101 with Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery, a food justice organization in Oakland. While Pollan and Henderson are the co-teachers, much of the class will center around lectures given by luminaries in the food movement. Confirmed speakers include Carlo Petrini, Peter Sellars, Marion Nestle, Frances Moore Lappé, Raj Patel, Ann Cooper, Eric Schlosser, and Alice Waters. … Continue reading »
Alice Waters goes to Twitter HQ, to tweet
Sitting in front of a laptop nursing a herbal tea at the Chez Panisse Café, or perhaps pulling up a chair at the kitchen table or even a straightforward desk, is not the way Alice Waters intends to use her brand new Twitter account.
Instead, Waters is traveling across the Bay to the Twitter offices in San Francisco this afternoon in order to post a tweet.
This won’t be her inaugural tweet because that was sent out at around 10:30am today informing us of the fact her second tweet would be “coming soon”.
The “big announcement” which was being heralded last week by Waters’ staff — and which the foodie world (the food media, Michael Pollan and Ruth Reichl included) is seemingly waiting for with bated breath – focuses on the arrangements for Chez Panisse’s 40th birthday celebrations and the concurrent campaign to support the Edible Schoolyards that are popping up all over the nation. … Continue reading »
A planner who favors edible, eco education — and risks
In the course of her travels researching her new book Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation, Sharon Gamson Danks was struck by two things: First, the United States is a world leader in school food gardens and Berkeley is firmly at the epicenter of that movement.
And second, the U.S. lags far behind other countries when it comes to building green schoolyards with eco-friendly aspects beyond a produce patch — in other words spaces that encourage play with potential risk. We’re talking less asphalt and metal structures, and more nature nooks and shaded ponds.
An environmental planner, Danks and landscape architect Lisa Howard run Bay Tree Design in Berkeley, which specializes in designing ecological outdoor play spaces. They incorporate ideas Danks picked up from her playground adventures overseas. … Continue reading »
U.S. Surgeon General visits UC Berkeley, Edible Schoolyard
The U.S. Surgeon General, Vice Admiral Regina Benjamin, came to Berkeley today where she delivered a lecture on her vision for a healthy, fit nation at UC Berkeley, as well as being greeted warmly by a group of enthusiastic school children.
After her morning visit to the campus, Dr Benjamin dropped in to the Edible Schoolyard at King Middle School at about 2:30pm. A welcoming party was there to greet her, which included, among others, King’s Principal Jason Lustig, BUSD Superintendent Bill Huyett, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, food reformer Joy Moore, and restaurateur Alice Waters who led Dr Benjamin on a tour of the garden. The Edible Schoolyard is a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation. … Continue reading »
Garden teacher Kim Allen offers youth space to grow
For four years Kim Allen has served as garden program manager for Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA), which provides a minimum-wage, internship program for socio-economically challenged adolescents ages 14 to 18. Some come to the garden through word-of-mouth from family or friends, others as part of mandated community service.
During the school year Allen’s youth garden crew, typically a group of six to eight, work and learn alongside her in two community garden plots in West Berkeley. There’s the half-acre Bancroft Community Garden, which the BYA shares with two dozen community gardeners on Bancroft Way, and the smaller Community Orchard garden on land the nonprofit owns on Bonar Street. The fruit tree garden includes many heirloom varieties, donated by Trees of Antiquity – among them citrus, apples, and pluots. The Bancroft Garden boasts typical farmers’ market fare.
In the summer, BYA offers an eight-week program for a dozen youth, who put in about 20 hours a week. The organization runs a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) during peak harvest season. It sells flowers and whatever is in abundance in the garden to Bill Briscoe, who owns The Bread Workshop. Briscoe puts surplus fava beans, sunchokes, garlic, and other vegetables to good use in his in-house soups. BYA youth harvest about two to four boxes of produce a week for The Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice program, which serves low-income residents. Every other week the garden provides perishables for a local food bank pick-up point. … Continue reading »
Berkeley Bites: Alice Waters
Do Berkeleyside readers even need an introduction to the mother of the American fresh, local, sustainable, organic food movement?
Alice Waters is a living legend. For four decades, the California cuisine innovator, Chez Panisse chef, Edible Schoolyard founder, school food reformer, and Slow Food advocate, has influenced how people in this country buy, cook, eat, talk, and think about food.
As with any icon, Waters has her fans and foes. Some see her as … Continue reading »
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 »
