Vol 82 No 4 | Wintertide 2008
Inside this issue:
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: The kitchen as classroom (p4)
FOODTRAK: Servinging hot meals and hope (p6)
OTHER STORY: Operators debate outlook for what all view
as a challenging year ahead in the Northeast (front page)
Guest Column: SOS Launches Great American Dine Out®
Share Our Strength founder Bill Shore founded the organization that seeks to end childhood hunger in America in response to the 1984 Ethiopian famine and subsequently, renewed concern about hunger at home. Educated as a lawyer, Shore served as chief of staff on the senatorial and presidential campaign staffs of former US Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) and later, former Senator Robert Kerrey (D-NE). Most recently, he's served as faculty advisor for the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership.
At SOS, he's woven together a network of community groups, activists and food programs to "surround children at risk of hunger with nutritious food," and works together with the culinary industry with programs such as Taste of the Nation®, A Tasteful Pursuit®, Great American Dine Out® and Operation Frontline®. Since 1984, the group has raised more than $200 million, providing support for more than 1,000 groups around the globe that work to end hunger.
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In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Share Our Strength mobilized thousands of restaurants to create Share Our Strength's Restaurants for Relief, a one-day national dine-out event to help raise money to rebuild school cafeterias, establish summer-meal programs, support local restaurant workers and provide other food-related services in affected Gulf Coast areas.
Given the success of this two-year effort which raised over $1.5 million, as well as our long history within the restaurant and food service industry, we are now launching Share Our Strength’s Great American Dine Out, presented by American Express, as a national campaign to end the tragedy of childhood hunger.
For one week in the fall of 2008, thousands of restaurants and food service industry sponsors across America will unite to mobilize millions of consumers to dine out and raise millions of dollars to help Share Our Strength weave a net to catch every at-risk child.
For more than two decades the restaurant and food service industry has embraced our efforts with unprecedented generosity and commitment. As a result, since its inception, Share Our Strength has raised $210 million to fight hunger, That translates into millions of pounds of food that we’ve helped emergency food assistance programs deliver, and hundreds of thousands of Americans we’ve helped through nutrition education, job training, or access to vital food, nutrition and health assistance.
The most exciting aspect of the Great American Dine Out is that it is designed to include the entire restaurant and food service community in all its diversity. It will be an annual event that had a greater impact with each passing year.
The need could not be greater.
Economic inequality has reached record highs with the richest one percent of Americans in 2005 having the largest share of the nation's income (29 percent) since 1929. At the same time the poorest 20 percent had only 3.4 percent of the nation's income.
One in eight Americans lives in poverty, which is 37 million Americans or 12.6 percent of our population, and nearly one fifth of children are poor, of which children living in single parent families are the poorest. Five million Americans are poor today who were not poor in 2000, and eight million Americans live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty where at least 40 percent of residents are poor.
We need your participation because we still have one in six children at risk of hunger in the United States. Our volunteers and community organizations find the invisible hunger where it hides. We surround those children with food where they live, learn and play. We’re weaving a net to make sure no child in America grows up hungry. Ending poverty is complex. Feeding a child is not.
Ending chronic childhood hunger in the United States is a goal that is finally within our grasp. If we are strategic and if our strategy is well funded, we will achieve this lasting legacy. But we need your help. If you have already been part of Share Our Strength, we are grateful for your generous support and hope you will recommit yourself to our efforts. If you have not yet had the opportunity to share your strength in the fight against hunger, please consider joining the Great American Dine Out.
RECIPE: CHEF ERIC BRENNAN'S CELERY ROOT 'PAPPARDELLE' AND PANCETTA ALFREDO
This recipe makes enough to serve 4 people.
For full recipe, please see the current issue's "Food for Thought" section. Download issue now!
PRODUCTS ON PARADE
Line of microgreens grown in "thin air"
A growing company, www.grow-anywhere.com, produces microgreens grown in what is said to be the first commercial aeroponic farm in the country, using no soil, water, etc. The plants flourish in 100 percent organic, pesticide-free conditions, are available year-round, and said to taste better than conventionally grown greens.
For more information, www.grow-anywhere.com
Sustainable seafood from farmed and wild sources
Clean Fish, a seafood broker supplying high-end white tablecloth restaurants, is now in the Boston area with wild and farmed seafood from domestic and international sources. Choose from Fisherman’s Daughter wild shrimp from the Gulf of Sonora, free of common chemical additives and 100 percent natural, along with other selections including Loch Duart prize winning salmon; Nova Scotia Arctic Charr; Queen Conch; Australis Barramundi; Hooker’s Haddock; Texas Redfish and more
For more information, www.cleanfish.com
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