We’re lucky to be living in a place that boasts such a thriving culinary scene. Rhode Island’s breezy coasts and fertile inland soils produce fine wines, succulent shellfish, plump fruits and delicate greens. They’re the perfect mix for a cadre of inspired chefs who know how to craft these quintessentially Rhode Island ingredients to thrill any palate.

So it will be a delicious occasion on August 6 when eleven talented chefs gather at the Local Food Fest to benefit Farm Fresh RI. Each paired with a local farmer, they’ll offer a guided tour for the tongue that celebrates the harvest of the fields and waters of the Ocean State:

• Castle Hill – Jonathan Cambra
• Newport Restaurant Group – Casey Riley
• Blackstone Catering – Derek Jolie
• Café Zelda – John Philcox
• Chez Pascal – Matt Gennuso
• DeWolf Tavern – Sai Viswanath
• Gracie’s – Joe Hefner
• La Laiterie – Matt Jennings
• Local 121 – Dave Johnson
• New Rivers – Bruce Tillinghast
• Nick’s on Broadway – Derek Wagner

Buy your ticket online for a flavorful evening at Castle Hill in Newport. Taste the bounty and wide-ranging flavors of summer in Rhode Island.

One more note: the Local Food Fest was the brainchild of Chef Casey Riley, once the Executive Chef at Castle Hill and now Culinary Arts Director for the Newport Restaurant Group. Casey pioneered many of Castle Hill’s relationships with local farmers and we’re excited to have him back as a chef at the Local Food Fest in its second year.

…if it would just rain! Rhode Island soils are parched. We need a good solid rain to produce plump apples, peaches, summer squash and tomatoes. At the Pawtucket market today, Allan Hill of Hill Orchards said that for the most part the early season varieties he has in his orchard, which are usually ripe by now, are still just a little too small. He had a few at the Hope High market this past Saturday, and with some help from the clouds above, there will be more at markets starting this week.

We’re at a great point in the season: the return of crisp apples, fleshy peaches, juicy ears of sweet corn, aromatic basil, and the first outdoors heirloom tomatoes – so many summery flavors to savor. And don’t forget about blueberries; there’s nothing like a picking a fresh blueberry warm from the sun.

Based on the forecast it looks like we’re in for some rain this week. But it may be better not to leave anything to chance. Time for a rain dance, in between blueberries!

The RI Local Food Fest, if you haven’t already heard, is August 6 at Castle Hill in Newport. The evening celebrates the harvest of the Rhode Island fields and waters, and doubles as a fundraiser for Farm Fresh.

Join us for a taste of 11 chefs’ visions of the season (including a very friendly cook-off in the VIP hour) inspired by the harvest of a dozen local farmers and food artisans, and accompanied by wines, beers and a raw bar. Here’s what else is special about this year’s Local Food Fest:

• 100% compostable evening. Thanks to Blue State Coffee and Whole Foods, all dinnerware and food waste will go back into healthy RI soils.
• Back-of-the-house tours led by the roasters of New Harvest Coffee, the bakers of Seven Stars, local farmers and fishermen. And many more opportunities for flavorful outings at the auction.
• Superchief Trio. These local favorites know how to jazz up a party.
• Sunset at Castle Hill. The ocean view is not to be missed.

Buy your Local Food Fest ticket online now!

Our farmers’ market schedule really gets humming this week with three more market openings:

• Tuesday 4-7pm in Woonsocket. This year, the market is in a new home at St. Ann’s. (Last year’s market was not on a particularly visible street and was held on Monday mornings, a time that isn’t very convenient.)
• Saturday 9-1pm in Providence on Broad St. It’s part of our collaboration with Southside Community Land Trust. The market is a quieter alternative to Hope High with a wide variety of colorful produce from 3 great farms. This year will also feature pies, bread and dried beans.
• Sunday 12-3pm in Pawtucket. Now three years old, it’s a busy market with a dedicated following and a healthy variety of farms, produce and bread. The crowd draws from a mix of families young and old – there are always lots of children – who are stocking up for the week. Since the market is easily accessible from 95, there are also folks from Providence getting what they forgot to pick up at a Saturday market!

All 3 markets will accept cash, EBT, credit cards, WIC and Senior vouchers, as do all 8 city farmers’ markets run by Farm Fresh.

By the way, each year we ask a different local artist to print a poster that captures the spirit of the markets across Providence and Pawtucket. The photo is of the 2008 Farmers’ Market poster by Jean Cozzens. It’s a gorgeous vision. If you have a chance to get up close with one that’s been posted around town, take a few moments to appreciate the detail of the market and farm landscape. She’s written a bit about what went into creating the poster.

The poster serves as a pretty reminder that there’s a Providence-area market every day of the week where you can enjoy fresh food from RI farms!

Support your local farmers this Independence Day. It’s one way you can vote for a food secure future. Fresh healthy foods for all Rhode Islanders!

Stock up for a deliciously local July 4th weekend:

• Zucchini and littlenecks for your BBQ grill
• Sandwiches with sliced tomatoes, lettuce (or spicier mustard greens) and some fresh bread
• Berrie apple pie with fresh ricotta for dessert

The Downtown Providence Market will be closed for July 4, but please visit the Armory Market on Thursday, Hope High Market on Saturday or one of the many other markets across the state.

Oh, and it’s almost last call for pick your own strawberries! The silver lining: raspberries.

• Bitter: Last Thursday we sent out an e-mail alert to 1,800 farm and food loving Rhode Islanders that the state’s farmland preservation program was in danger. It’s the first time we’ve ever sent such an alert, and it was for good reason: one of the few programs RI has in place to ensure a sustainable future for our state’s food supply was about to be shut down. (RI also stood lose millions in federal matching funds every year.) Soon after our e-mail came the news that, without any debate, the RI State Assembly voted 31-37 against allowing a November vote on $5 million for farmland preservation. The decision has been made behind closed doors. (By the way, RI voters overwhelmingly support farmland preservation, by 70% to 30% in the 2004 election. Go figure!)
• Sweet: Fast forward to Saturday. Your phone calls and e-mails to state senators and representatives helped a last-minute bill pass the Assembly and Senate to allow RI voters to decide on a $2.5 million bond for farmland preservation this November. It won’t cover all of the need, but it makes clear that our farms and our food are a priority even and especially during hard economic times. Your calls reached legislators and gave Rep. Walsh, Rep. Loughlin and Sen. Sosnowski the backing they needed for this surprise and very bi-partisan victory. Thank your senators and reps for voting to support our farms and our food!
• Very sweet news: We’re already been noticing an upswing in traffic at the markets this year. Last week strawberries, apples, turnips, basil and arugula were in short supply and sold out quickly. It’s happening at both long-running and newly opened markets, like the new Friday farmers’ market in Charlestown. Happily, the summer weather has brought more abundance, though it still helps to get to the market early!Thank you for supporting Rhode Island farmers and choosing food that nourishes our local communities. It’s working – though it would be great if more of the people who make policies and write our laws understood the important connection between our farms and our food, too!

Please support Farm Fresh RI’s strategic work to create infrastructure for a vibrant, lasting local food system, that supports vibrant family farms and healthy communities across RI.

What are you going to do with all of the strawberries you just picked?

• Freeze ‘em
• Make jam
• Slice into a Strawberry, Sugar Snap Pea and Fresh Herb Salad
• Bake a Strawberry Shortcake
• Dip into Narragansett Creamery’s fresh ricotta
• … or are they already all eaten?

Here are a few scattered notes from the past few days:

• Congrats to Local 121 on a full year of menus crafted from food harvested from Rhode Island fields and waters. Here’s to the decades ahead!
• On June 7, Hope High School Farmers’ Market farmers pooled $180 for the school’s college scholarship fund. Congrats to the recent grads!
• The Projo video-profiled Young Family Farm at the Downtown Providence Farmers’ Market.

by Stu Nunnery, Director, RICAPE

State business leaders like to point to our quality of life as a pillar of economic development. They understand that part of what will attract the high paying jobs and cutting edge industries they covet are those natural and historic assets that make us who we are.

Remember that.

The Rhode Island House Finance Committee has killed an important bond issue and we are about to run out of money to preserve farmland and open space. The budget deficit will be blamed but simply, some members of the assembly no longer believe that agriculture’s contribution to the State is enough to merit the investment.

Not enough?

Continue Reading »

Not to overshadow today’s opening of the Armory Farmers’ Market, but we hope you can join us tomorrow for a press conference that will mark the 2008 season kick-off of the Downtown Market. The event is Friday 6/13 at 12:15pm.

The Downtown Market is adjacent to Kennedy Plaza, a cross-roads of people from all walks of life in Rhode Island. After a successful pilot program last season, all Farm Fresh RI farmers’ markets will accept Food Stamps / EBT this year. So it makes sense for the Downtown Market at Kennedy Plaza to be the place to announce a new statewide campaign to address an issue that spans communities: access to affordable, healthful foods.

Eat Better Today is the theme of a new statewide campaign at the URI Hunger Center that simplifies the message of Food Stamp outreach and addresses rampant misperceptions that often cause families to not sign up. (For example, many people believe that if you sign up for Food Stamps, your participation will lower the amount of aid that other needier families will receive. That’s not true.) RI ranks 44th in the nation for participation by eligible households, meaning just half of those eligible actually participate, a scary statistic given soaring food costs. Come tomorrow to hear from elected officials and advocates in RI discuss hunger in our communities and the importance of the new Eat Better Today campaign:

• Maria Cimini, Manager, Food Stamp Outreach, URI Hunger Center
• Josh Miller, RI State Senator
• Grace Diaz, RI State Representative
• Seth Yurdin, Providence City Councilor
• Jessica Knapp, Development VISTA, Farm Fresh RI, and Food Stamp user
• Noah Fulmer, Executive Director, Farm Fresh RI
• With our favorite host, Jen Huntley-Corbin, Jen’s Dish, WNRI 1380AM

See you tomorrow at the Downtown Market!

Soaring food prices, obesity and diabetes epidemics, record recalls of spinach, lettuce and beef. Just in case you didn’t doubt the ability of the industrial food system to feed us well, today brought this headline:

Florida tomato industry in “complete collapse”

Supermarkets and restaurants nationwide have thrown away their fresh tomatoes after the FDA warned about potential salmonella contamination. Work has stopped across thousands of acres of tomato farms in Florida (just two weeks after the Coalition of Immokalee Workers reached a deal with Burger King to pay workers 1.5 cents more per pound). But did the rotten tomatoes originate in Florida? at a farm? or a processing plant? or none of the above? Unfortunately and as usual no one seems to know, “the FDA has said it does not know where the contaminated tomatoes originated”.

Our advice? We suggest going local for your tomatoes! Expect an early season crop this week from Moosup River Farm at the Armory on Thursday and from Wishing Stone Farm and Woodstock Farm at Hope High on Saturday. Direct from the farmer to you, it’s about flavor, community and food safety, too.