New Orleans: The Crescent City, the City that Care Forgot, the Big Easy — NOLA. Call it what you like, New Orleans is home to perhaps one of the richest food cultures in the USA. The legacy of Cajun and Creole cooking has imparting pride and even a bit of gastronomic elitism in the minds and bellies of local residents. While New Orleans boasts some of the most amazing restaurants and eateries around, at the same time many parts of the city are complete Food Deserts. The Sahara of Food Deserts is indeed the Lower Ninth Ward, an area of the city that still remains underdeveloped post-Katrina. We spent a week and a half training Local Leaders and working with youth from Our School at Blair Grocery, Edible Schoolyard, and Akili Academy. Not only did the we focus on local food culture, but also micro-food cultures that exist within the same city. Our work culminated in a celebration of food fusion at the Live Earth festival the day before Earth Day, where three volunteers from the group at Our School at Blair Grocery came to prepare fresh crawfish summer rolls with fresh herbs and lettuce picked straight from OSBG’s garden. In the future The Cookbook Project is hoping to establish a long-term program in Nola.
In February The Cookbook Project traveled back to Mysore India to work with Odanadi Seva Trust on laying the groundwork for a multi-year vocational training program. The program will train participants in ayurvedic health, organic farming principles, and South Indian cooking with the goal of establishing a healthy Ayurvedic South Indian cafe called CAFE ODANADI! CBP worked with the directors of Odanadi to apply for funding and set a strategic plan for the training program. CBP also connected with local Ayurvedic practitioners, organic farmers, and chefs who have pledged to offer educational modules in their areas of expertise the training program.
The month was not without cooking, thankfully! With a group of a dozen inspired young women, CBP coordinated a cooking celebration of South Indian festival recipes including Banana Erucherry from Kerala and Vegetable Biryani from Andhra Pradesh!
Thanks to an amazing partnership with Community HealthCorps in Boston, we led a Local Leaders on-site training with HealthCorps members who are currently stationed at community health centers around the city. Held at Curtis Hall in Jamaica Plain, this training immersed participants in CBP’s unique experiential education model. We confronted issues including common food allergies, cooking for everyone, healthy substitutions, and of course — HEALTHY SNACKS! All of the participants were empowered by the training to return to their community health centers in order to better serve the at-risk youth they interact with who are suffering from a range of lifestyle-related diseases including obesity and diabetes.
The training was so successful that the National Association of Community Health Centers asked CBP to present to ALL of their volunteers working across the country! Fingers crossed for a future partnership at the national level -
WOW! Thanks to a Seed Grant from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition we have been able to develop this amazing online training program for Cookbook Project Local Leaders. For this PILOT run of the program we selected participants from a competitive group of educators, health care providers, nutrition counselors, and community organizers. It was tough to choose! We ended up with a group from all over the United States, including states as far away as Alaska, to right in our own backyard here in Cambridge, MA. We also have international representatives from Pakistan, Singapore, Japan, South Africa, Belgium, the UK, Jamaica, and more!
Now that the pilot program has come to a close we are so excited to watch as The Cookbook Project’s curriculum and mission is spread around the country and around the world through these enthusiastic leaders!! Check out the Local Leaders Program Page for more information, and stay tuned for opportunities to participate in future trainings.
It is that time of year again — Chinese New Year! To help celebrate this auspicious time of year, our Communications intern, Yue Huang, has shared one of her favorite food culture recipes for the holidays, Chinese Red Bean Soup. ENJOY!
Chinese Red Bean Soup
A staple in Chinese cuisine, this soup is smooth, mildly sweet and absolutely delicious. It is often served during the holidays as the red color symbolizes luck and happiness. It can be served warm or chilled, as a dessert or breakfast!
You’ll need:
1/2 cup of red beans (azuki beans)
3 tablespoon of sweetener (try maple syrup!)
3 cups of water
2 tablespoon of lotus seeds (available in Asian grocery stores)
2 tablespoon of pearl tapioca
A few peanuts or other types of nuts
Directions:
1. Soak the red beans overnight. Rinse.
2. Combine the beans and water in a medium pot, bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook uncovered for 1 hour and half or until beans are tender.
4. Add lotus seeds, sugar and pearl tapioca. Keep stirring for 15 to 20 minutes until tapioca balls are clear. (Tapioca is a starch, so the soup will thicken as you stir it)
5. Top it with some nuts to add crunch and serve warm, or chilled.
At the end of 2011 The Cookbook Project travelled to the southeastern border of Haiti to work in conjunction with Sadhana Forest Haiti and the orphanage Ayitimouno on a joint Local Leaders Training and Youth Education Workshop. The Local Leaders training at Sadhana Forest, which included 11 international volunteers, foreign aid workers and 8 local Haitian community members, helped to cultivate the cooperation and flexibility that would be necessary for the upcoming youth education project. After 2 full days of the Local Leaders Training Program, particpants practiced what they had learned to create a Holiday Dinner utilzing local ingredients and lots of creativity. Over the course of the next three days a combination of trained leaders and locals worked together to engage the youth at Ayitimouno — street kids, orphans, village youth, and a collection of interested locals gathered at the seaside orphanage to play, learn, and most importantly cook! Participants feasted on ripe local fruits, squeezed a seasonal white grapefruit-like citrus called Shadek (imagine if a grapefruit and an orange had a love child), and collaborated to bring together the final meal, which included Haitian style beans and rice with Pumpkin Soup. It was a privilege to be able to work with such dedicated leaders in order to plant seeds of awareness for the 60-plus kids who participated throughout the youth education workshop.
The Haiti Cookbook Project was an extremely challenging yet rewarding experience for everyone involved. The area of Haiti where we were working was isolated by an overnight boat trip or multi-day mountain road trip to the nearest town or city. Unlike other projects, where we had a local market at our disposal, we had to travel across the border to the biweekly ‘international market’ in the Dominican Republic to get food supplies for the workshop in anticipation of what we thought the group would want to cook. Even though there was no running water, electricity, or other modern infrastructure, this project bestowed so many gifts to all of those involved. On the final day, we were all filled with joy serving the 60 some kids from Ayitimouno and the surrounding village who had come to participate — we were even more overcome with happiness when many of the local youth asked to bring back their extra large portions of food to share with their families.
Merci, Haiti — for all of the lessons we learned, the new friends we made, and the delicious food that we shared!
We at the CookBook Project are always reading about food trends, health findings, education news and everything else related to what we stand for. Whether it’s news updates on the farm bill, a thoughtful essay on vegetarianism or an experimental school lunch program we just heard about, we want to share what we are reading with you! From this week, we will post a weekly roundup of links to stories online that we find interesting and inspiring. We hope you enjoy them!
Boston.com - The number of winter farmers markets in the Boston area has doubled since last year! Stay local through the cold months by visiting a winter market.
Edible - Rhode Island has a great school lunch program introducing local produce to kids, complete with farmer trading cards.
Mother Jones - Neither the FDA nor the Italian equivalent really regulate the Extra Virgin Olive Oil market, so what’s really in our olive oil? Find out in Tom Mueller’s new book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.
Grist- Besides the local food movement, what were other good food trends of 2011? Check out this roundup from Grist’s Twilight Greenaway.
Fed Up with Lunch - Last but not least, we heard about this wonderful school lunch project this week. In 2010, Chicago public school teacher Sarah ate school lunches every day, took photos and blogged about it. She found that students not only have a mere 9 to 13 minutes to eat lunch, the food itself is often reheated, frozen fare that’s high in fat and sugar. Her blog is recently turned into a book: Fed Up with Lunch, where she talks about her experience and how educators and parents can improve lunches in their schools.
What’s your favorite story from last week? Please share with us in the comments!
Welcome to our new BLOG! What great timing too — after finishing up a successful youth education workshop in Harlem in conjunction with Litworld and Children’s Village at The Polo Grounds Community Center we are now gearing up for an international trip! In two weeks we will be heading to Anse-a-Pitre Haiti to facilitate a Local Leaders Training Program and a youth education workshop in partnership with Sadhana Forest Haiti. From Harlem to Haiti in just one month!
Coincidentally, the Harlem workshop featured many Caribbean inspired dishes, such as Callalou-style Collard Greens, Spicy Beans and Rice, and a Sweet Potato dessert. The group of awesome multi-cultural students that we worked with represented a variety of different countries including Honduras, Jamaica, The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and more. Caribbean cuisine traces its roots to a variety of sources including various traditional African food cultures, european colonial influences, and the flavors and ingredients of indigenous civilizations from the new world. Together, these flavors have created the truly unique food cultures of the Caribbean.
We are SO excited to head to Haiti to taste Haitian Creole dishes like Djon Djon (black mushroom rice), and Pain Patat (Sweet Potato Pudding) AND to train the short-term volunteers at Sadhana Forest and any local aid workers who plan to join as well. Get ready to learn about some of the delectable Haitian recipes that we will be bringing back with us for the new year…
Until Then, Love - Peace - and Chow!
In conjunction with Litworld, The Cookbook Project just ran our first successful domestic project in the USA at the Polo Grounds Community Center in Harlem! Sponsored by Children’s Village, the workshop built on literacy work that Litworld has been conducting with Harlem youth who are underpeforming academically, and are more specifically in need of literacy support. The focus on creating Food Culture Recipes drew on participants growing literacy skills, and helped to cultivate pride amongst participants whose first generation immigrant families hail from Honduras to Nigeria and everywhere in between. The group came together on the final cooking day to prepare a Food Culture Thanksgiving meal to share with their families. Dishes included Machuco from Honduras (mashed plaintains), Dominican style Rice and Beans, Jamaican style Collard Greens, and down home Sweet Potato Pie. YUM!!!!
In partnership with the Leaders-in-Training program at Windsor Mountain International Summer Camp in Windsor, New Hampshire The Cookbook Project facilitated a camper-led Cookbook Project class. Older campers in the Leaders-in-Training Program trained as Local Leaders and then led their younger friends in creating Food Culture Recipes, learning about Food Geography, and preparing healthy salads from the camp’s garden. The hands-on, garden-to-table program was a huge success, and created a greater sense of awareness amongst the Leaders-in-Training and their fellow campers about where food comes from, what really constitutes a healthy snack, and how delicious freshly plucked salad greens from the garden can really be!