Presenting our new Family Cook-In! Screening Toolkit. Designed to take your family through an afternoon of learning about food and cooking together — it has games and activites for all aged kids, places to record family recipes, and ideas for real ways you can make a difference.

Enjoy with curious kids and a good meal. Cheers.

Mrs. Q — the teacher in Illinois who is eating school lunch everyday in 2010, taking pictures,  and blogging about it — has started bringing it guest bloggers. Teachers from around the country, and the world, are reporting on the state of their own schools lunches. The contrasts are quite stark. Let’s take a look:

First, a typical meal from Mrs. Q’s public school:

Here’s what she had to say about it:

Wow. Truly monumentally bad. I couldn’t get through the main entree. I was hungry too… I bit the cheese lasagna and it didn’t even pass muster as pasta! Al dente? No, al crappy. The pasta couldn’t hold its form and it crumbled. I ate two bites and I was done. Yuck.

Meanwhile, at a nursery school near Hiroshima, Japan, eating school lunch is a different experience. Guest blogger Daniel Ferguson took this photo:

From Daniel:

At lunch, we waited until all children, about 60 total, had been served soup, fish, and sushi before saying “itadakimasu”, a kind of secular grace said before eating in Japan, meaning thanks to those who prepared the food. The cook teachers also joined us and everyone thanked them for the meal they had been preparing all morning. Then they walked around the room responding to children saying “oishii” meaning delicious. And as they always do, the children ate everything, stacked their dishes, and put their chopsticks and cup away to be used again tomorrow.

Wow. Respect and thanks for the lunchroom cooks, teachers and students eating together, delicious looking food, happy kids cleaning their plates, and to top it off: reusable plates and utensils. I’m a huge fan of Mrs. Q. Not only for exposing the grossness of her own school food, but also for showing us that  another way is possible.

The ban didn’t stop hundreds of residents from keeping hives secretly in backyards. The risk of getting caught however was steep — fines up to $2,000.

Just Food and other groups have been working hard for almost 2 years  on a campaign to lift the ban. We salute you.

Come out and celebrate tomorrow night with The New York City Meetup Group, Gotham City Honey Co-Op, The Commons, Just Food and other bee-lovers.

First, let’s be skeptical about the beverage industry standing up for the rights of the poor to drink soda.

To address the real issue, of whether a soda tax is unfair to people already struggling to afford food for their families: theoretically, yes, a tax on food items will be felt more by those with less money. Sugar and fat rich foods pack in more calories per dollar, and in the U.S.A. it’s cheaper to eat heavily processed, nutrient-void food than fresh, healthy food. This is the current reality. But no one benefits from us collectively throwing our hands in the air and saying, “Oh well! That’s life!” And no one benefits from a continuation of the status quo. As so many people have argued, the cost of eating junk may be cheaper in the short term, but in the long term is is hugely more expensive. 2 in 3 American adults are overweight. 1 in 3 kids. The money saved at the grocery store is being felt on a nation-wide scale in the rising costs and expenditures in health care.

A tax on soda would be a step towards changing this discrepancy. However, the solution is not to raise the price of processed food so it is as expensive as fresh food and therefore less appealing. We must also lower the cost of fresh food so healthy stuff is affordable for regular working people.

The question we should ask about the soda tax is: what will this money subsidize? Will it directly fund school lunch programs that provide fresh healthy food to kids on free or reduced lunch? Will it be used to change our food system so healthy options are available and affordable?

So far, the soda tax is being touted as a two-for-one fix: funding Medicaid and education, and addressing childhood obesity. Bloomberg has specifically said that this money would go towards keeping teachers in classrooms and preventing further cuts to public education. But I think we should get specific: If this tax is really being done in the interests of nutrition and health, than some of the money should be used specifically to fund healthy food programs. We can’t just make junk more expensive, without making the good stuff affordable.

But that’s just my opinion. What you think readers? Soda Tax: Yay or Nay?

Last Friday team WOYP headed over to the Neighborhood School in NYC for some screening, eating, and talking. There was a signup for the Angel Family Farm CSA (Season 2! alright!), homemade tamales, a Q&A, and a chance for parent and kids to see their school on the big screen.

Remember the part from WOYP that takes place in a school cafeteria? Going into the kitchen and kids talking about school food and their lunches? That was the Neighborhood School. There’s other neat stuff happening over there as well: a school garden which also serves as science classroom, and ongoing projects to make the school green and sustainable.

It might actually go down a little differently, but yes, there is a Chef’s Day of Action planned for March 17th 2010 in Washington D.C. All those involved in the culinary profession are invited to join in the action — which will involve visiting representatives and talking to them about the crucial importance of funding child nutrition programs.

It’s great to see chefs building as a political force. We often think of cooking as an entertainment or leisure activity — it’s about butter, and chocolate, and fennel — but not politics. No longer. Chefs around the country are speaking out about food justice, childhood obesity and the need to change our food system. And as lovers and masters of quality food, they are great spokespeople.

Spread the news to other Chefs, cooks, sous chefs, and culinary pros! For more information visit the NYC Alliance for CNR.

Mihail Kossev  is a  young farmer, a NYU alum from Brooklyn, who is, in his words:
“pursuing my dreams and starting a small CSA in southern Albany county.”

He’s looking for CSA members for his first growing season. (The drop-off location will be in Catskill, NY.) He also has a really nice and informative website where he is selling seeds he personally collected from organic farms all over the Northeast. All seeds are open-pollinated, grown and processed organically.

If you live in the area, or need seeds for your own garden — check out his Collected Seed Farm or get cozy on  Facebook.

Young farmers are courageous warriors! Let’s support them.

After it’s super-popularity last fall, the Hungry Filmmaker Series screens again TONIGHT! Come see snippets of the best in food films: What’s On Your Plate? (of course), Fresh, Mad Cow Investigator, The End of the Line, and Fly on the Wall.

And think about taking the eat in challenge, organized by The Huffington Post and Cathy Erway.
Eat at home for the week and see how good it feels.

We’ve reported before on Mrs. Q, an anonymous public school teacher in Illinois, who is eating lunch in her school cafeteria everyday in 2010, taking pictures, and writing about it. Her blog, Fed Up: School Lunch Project, is a straightforward and smart account of what’s being served every day in our public schools. On Day 16, a prepackaged PB&J sandwich, which she could barely choke down, brought on some post-work vomiting. Other meals, she says, aren’t so bad. One thing you’ll notice right away is all the packaging. Everything is plastic wrapped, served on disposable plates, with disposable utensils.

Now Ed Bruske, a dad, urban homesteader, blogger, and former Washington Post reporter, has spent a week investigating his daughter’s school cafeteria, writing about his findings in a six part series, Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen on his blog, The Slow Cook. Just prior to his week in the kithcen, the food service provider for the D.C. schools, Chartwells-Thompson, decided to do away with pre-packaged, military MRE-style lunches, and serve “fresh-cooked” meals. Bruske, an avid gardener and cook, was expecting to see actual cooking in this kitchen, which was recently renovated and outfitted with a new freezer and stainless steel equipment. What we found was a lot of frozen, processed foods, reheated and steamed to appear “fresh-cooked.” Not surprising. But the stories are engaging, and give a full picture of school lunches and how budgetary concerns are dictating the health and nutrition of our children.

One of the reasons school systems have been able to serve bad food for so long is that adults were not paying attention. Now that the national spotlight is on school cafeterias, and grown-ups are peeking around inside, things are going to have to change.

And in the world of NYC beekeeping, there is news! Did you know that beekeeping is legal in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, San Francisco,  and Seattle — but NOT New York City? Sad. Fortunately, this may change soon. The NYC Board of Health is holding a public hearing on the future of NYC beekeeping on February 3, 2010! Following the hearing, the Board will decide on whether or not to revise the code to legalize beekeeping.

Our friends Just Food are on top of the issue, and have great resources for how you can get involved, submit a testimony, or sign a petition.