Michael Pollan and Bill Kurtis

The event was held in the auditorium along with three overfilled overflow rooms — I was lucky enough to get into the main room (although in the last row).  My apologies on the quality of the picture.  While I brought my real camera, I thought I might get kicked out for taking too high quality of a picture.  The camera phone will have to suffice.

Michael and Bill covered all of the hot topics in food and organics including HCFS, local food, school lunches, and Whole Foods.  Michael gave a shout out to local urban farming great Will Allen of Growing Power, last years MacArther winner, for growing food in a sustainable greenhouse in the cold.  Here is a quick link to the super hot compost that heats the greenhouse.

Michael also gave the audience a chuckle with his comment, “Salads are overrated.”  Working off of his Will Allen comment, a number of audience members wanted to know how do we eat local in the winter. Michael raises a good point.  We’re so trained to get whatever kind of vegetable whenever we want it, we assume we should be eating salads in January.  As much as Will can get lettuces and spinach growing in March, we should be eating winter, storage vegetables like potatoes and squash.

Finally, Michael talked about school lunches after a great question from a Chicago Public School teacher.  How are Chicago Public Schools suppose to teach kids about food and how are they suppose to afford organics.  While giving many examples, it is important to note that the School Lunch Reauthorization is this year.  Slow Food USA will be starting a campaign to bring better meals to schools.

Michael also plugged David Kessler’s new book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.

• Tending the Stanford Garden – Article from the Stanford Daily on farming education and maintaining a vegetable garden at Stanford.
• Growing Grain on a small scale – From Treehugger, their guide to growing grains in a home garden.
• City Farm Spring Start, Saturday, April 18, 2009, 10am to 2pm
  Join the Resource Center’s City Farm as we begin our tenth season by helping to get our main garden ready to produce another 12,000 pounds of food for Chicago.  We will have groups rotating among four activity workshop areas: preparing compost, spreading compost, planting, and recycling (not a typical farm activity but an integral part of what we do).
• Pass on the Gift – Pass on the Gift from Heifer International.  I’m a big fan of Heifer because they are an organization that “teaching people to fish” instead of giving people fish.  Today is Egg Day.  If you donate, your donation supports projects that include chickens, ducks and other poultry to provide nutritious, delicious eggs.
• White House Garden Layout:
  

  White House Garden (from the New York Times)

Related articles:

1. Friday Weeds – April 17, 2009
2. Friday Weeds – April 24, 2009
3. Green City Market, April 18, 2009