Next Week: Compost Awareness Events
Plus, Quick Prep for In-Season Greens, Alliums Takes Weekday Meals Up a Notch
Back to School With Pilot Light
It was my great pleasure on Monday to spend time at a Pilot Light program at Ashburn Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side. The program featured Chef James Martin (photo above) of Bocadilla Market — a Spanish cuisine restaurant in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood — educating 7th and 8th grade students about the Moors, North African people who had a huge impact many centuries ago on the food, culture, education, architecture and music of Spain.
Pilot Light is a nonprofit created by leading Chicago chefs a dozen years ago to help Chicago Public Schools integrate lessons about food and its role in society and education into students’ curriculum. In the years since, Pilot Light has created Food Education Standards shared with school systems across the nation, expanded teacher participation within and beyond Chicago, and did numerous chef visits to schools until the pandemic forced a hiatus. Monday’s event was at the cutting edge of Pilot Light’s return to live programming.
I will have a full story about the event later this week, but wanted to share this quick note of thanks to Pilot Light’s Executive Director Alexandra DeSorbo-Quinn, Partnerships Manager Caitlin Arens, and Director of School and District Partnerships Eileen Torpy for allowing me to share their school day. Some of my best days at FamilyFarmed were spent hanging out with Pilot Light, and it is great to be back.
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Here’s the Sked for International Compost Week
Composting kitchen scraps is one of the best ways to combat food waste, while using compost in gardens and on farms is one of the best and most organic ways of enriching soil. To mark International Compost Awareness Week (May 1-7), a coalition of local organizations is holding a series of events that are open to the public.
The programming (see the graphic above) is presented by the Illinois Food Scrap Coalition, U.S. Composting Council, and the Compost Research and Education Foundation (organizers of International Compost Awareness Week). The week’s events kick off on Sunday (May 1) with a segment on The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki.
Quick Prep for a Spring Greens Garnish
I tend to spend a bit of time in the kitchen each weekend prepping some of our week’s food ahead. It’s nice during the inevitably busy week to have some homemade grab-and-go items in the fridge. And the activity intensifies with the start of the local growing season, because it’s a sin to let any of that beautiful, super-fresh food go to waste.
There were only a few local spring crops at the farmers market last weekend, but with a few minutes of chopping and cooking, I was able to turn a bunch of ramps (from Mick Klug Farm of St. Joseph, Michigan), one big green garlic stalk (Three Sisters Garden, Kankakee, Illinois) and a fistful of pea tendrils (also Three Sisters) into a nice garnish for the week’s proteins and vegetables.
Separately, I sautéed the golden oyster mushrooms I’d purchased from Primordia Foods (Bloomington, Illinois), for use separately or stirred into the combo above.
It’s so easy:
Chop the ramps and green garlic. You can leave the pea tendrils whole because they cook down quickly.
Heat a splash of olive or avocado oil over medium heat. Add the ramps and green garlic together, sauté until they soften, then add the pea tendrils and continue cooking. Salt lightly to taste. This takes less than five minutes and results in this:
While that’s cooking, chop the mushrooms (notice the lacy undersides of the mushroom caps).
After you remove the greens from the pan, warm another splash of oil, then sauté the mushrooms until they’ve softened and browned a bit. Salt lightly.
And now you’ll have a little something extra to make your weekday meals a little more special.