Macomb Food Initiatives Group

Food will be the topic for two speakers at WIU this week. The first speaker will be nutrition expert Jim Painter who is coming to Western Illinois University on Wednesday, February 17, to present “Portion Size Me: Why We Eat More than We Think”.

Dr. Holly Stovall of WIU’s Women’s Studies Department and Food Initiatives Board member will make a presentation at noon, Thursday, February 18, entitled, “In the Kitchen With the Local Foods Movement: A 21^st Century Feminist Theory of Cooking.” The location will be room 180 of the Malpass Library.  The Western Organization for Women (WOW) is sponsoring the talk.  Bring your lunch!

Filed under:
Cooking, Local Food by Dan Barclay

As many of you know, our area lacks an infrastructure of small-scale food processing facilities. This recent story at the Blog For Rural America by Steph Larsen does an excellent job highlighting the problem and suggesting a number of solutions.  I especially liked the attention paid to developing beginning farmers, butchers, millers, cheese-makers, grocers, etc., who have the skills, enthusiasm, and community spirit to revitalize our communities and lead us in the future.

Filed under:
Economic Development, Local Food by Dan Barclay

The Food Initiative Group (FIG) Winter Community Supper on Saturday, January 23rd, was a great success.  An estimated 150 people attended this free community supper.

Winter Supper guests enjoy great local food

Great food was available (recipes below) and several information tables informed people about community gardening, growing sprouts, and FIG.

Karen Peitzmeier prepares her sprout-growing display

Students from one of Dr. Heather McIlvain-Newsad’s WIU anthropology classes greeted arriving guests, bussed tables and otherwise kept everyone comfortable.  The Macomb First Presbyterian Church hosted the event and provided a wonderful venue with plenty of comfortable seating and a spacious, modern kitchen in which to work.

Great cooks in a great kitchen!

The FIG Winter Community Supper planning team of Holly Stovall, Jamie Lane, Lisa Gruver, and Jan Welch did a terrific job putting the event together.  Local NPR station WIUM interviewed Holly Stovall at the supper and you can listen to the interview here.

Local producers Ann Runner, Kenne and Debbie Dallefeld, and others provided the food for the event from their farms in the area.  One of the goals of the event was to keep food dollars in the community and spur the local economy by buying local food.  The McDonough County Voice newspaper covered the event and helped spread the word about the availability of local food in their January 27 article. Many FIG members arrived at the kitchen at 9:00am to begin preparing the meal.  Everyone had a great time.  You can view more photos of the event that were taken by FIG memeber and WIU faculty member Dr. Joel Gruver by clicking here.

Here are recipes that were used at the supper and a list of the local producers who supplied the food. (more…)

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Cooking, Events, Local Foods Dinners by Dan Barclay

A community meeting to plan a community garden has been scheduled at 6:30 Monday, January 25, 2010 at WIU’s Horn Field Campus.  Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Professor Rob Porter will lead the meeting.  Anyone in the community is invited to attend.

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Community Gardens by Dan Barclay

UPDATE: The community information meeting about a local foods co-op in Macomb has been postponed.

This meeting was originally scheduled for 7 pm Wednesday, January 27rd, in the 1st floor Community Room of Macomb’s City Hall to inform the public about initial planning efforts to open a natural food store featuring locally grown and raised food.  The co-op steering committee will reschedule this meeting for a later date.

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Food Coop by Dan Barclay

The Food Initiatives Group (FIG) will host a free winter supper from 4:00-6:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 23^rd at the First Presbyterian Church in Macomb.  The family-friendly event will feature a variety of soups and chili, accompanied by fresh wheat rolls or cornbread, and an apple crisp dessert.  The entire community is welcome to attend the supper at no charge.  Dinner will be provided on a first come, first serve basis, and the group expects to serve 200 people.

The church is located at 400 E. Carroll St. (entrance to the building is on Dudley St.). “We chose the location of the First Presbyterian Church because it is also the home of the Loaves & Fishes Food Bank,” said FIG treasurer Jamie Lane. “This event is a great opportunity to bring attention to the affordability of simple home-cooked meals during a period of tight economic times.”

FIG is a grassroots group which is working to involve the community in supporting a fair, sustainable, and local  food system in the Macomb area.  FIG members hope the dinner will help illustrate the ability to support local growers even in the winter. In anticipation of the event, several items for the dinner were purchased at the Macomb Farmers’ Market in October and were placed in cold storage or frozen.  The chili features tomatoes and onions from the Farmers’ Market and beef from West Prairie Farm.  The butternut squash soup uses squash from Barefoot Gardens.  Both West Prairie Farm and Barefoot Gardens are located in Macomb.  The chicken in the chicken noodle soup is from Hickory Grove Farm of Colchester, and the vegetable soup includes potatoes and green beans purchased at the Macomb Farmers’ Market.  Wheat from WIU’s Allison Organic Farm is the main ingredient in the bread, and apples from M&M&m farm of LaHarpe are featured in the desserts.

Attendees will have the opportunity to take home copies of the soup recipes and estimated budgets for making each soup at family scale.  “We are excited to offer a supper in the winter with food grown by local producers and with recipes that anyone can make at home for a reasonable price,” said Holly Stovall, FIG supper committee member.

The wholesome feast is sponsored by FIG, in collaboration with members of the Service and Justice Committee of the First Presbyterian Church, Macomb.  WIU students from FIG member Heather McIlvaine-Newsad’s “Applied Anthropological Methods” class will serve the guests as part of their community service project.

In addition, guests will be able to learn about a variety of food related topics including upcoming community gardening projects under the direction of the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Administration; Sociology & Anthropology; and the School of Agriculture in collaboration with the Western Illinois Regional Council, FIG, and various community groups. For more information about the dinner, FIG, or about FIG membership, visit www.macombfig.org/blog/ or contact Jamie at 309-833-3748.



Filed under:
Events, Local Foods Dinners by Dan Barclay

One of the topics that has been under-represented in this blog is eating… or “cooking” or “recipes”.  One of the places that I go for some good ideas is the Kitchen Window series on the National Public Radio website.  I can read the articles or listen to them if I have the time or inclination to do so.  The latest entry on the Kitchen Window website includes some great ideas for using whole grains in a variety of tasty-sounding recipes.  The bulgur-mushroom pilaf with grilled butternut squash kebob sounds great and will also help me use up the butternut squash that was so plentiful this past fall.

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Cooking by Dan Barclay

I have more than one list of New Year’s resolutions for 2010.  Here are a few that I have for eating well, enjoying our family outdoor space, and contributing to our community.

1. Learn to utilize all of the new freezer space we added last year by preserving more local and homemade food during the next growing season.  I will also throw in the hope that I can learn more about drying fruits, vegetables, and herbs and, a big leap here, actually can something like peaches from Illinois’ Calhoun County.  I loved the canned peaches and pears that my grandmother would give us when I was growing up.

2. Fertilize, compost, and otherwise improve the soil in the three gardens that our family started last year.  Our big compost bins have been collecting our household leftovers and yard waste for over a year now and spring will be the time to take more advantage of all that good compost.  Last year our gardens benefited from lots of help from friends.  Thank you to Bob for the seeds and rototiller, Michael for another round of rototiller work, John for the tomato cages, Bradley and Erin for the strawberry plants, and Ann and Anna for some of the other plants that succeeded in growing vegetables.  The garden has been a great way to connect with friends and neighbors.

3.  It is all about the SYSTEM here.  I hope that as a community we can work to establish a more assessable venue, maybe a food co-op, to purchase and sell local food.  At least one community garden is within our reach as well.  Macomb’s local food system is growing!

I recommend the New Year’s resolution list at Craig Goodwin’s Year of Plenty blog. Year of Plenty is a local food and gardening blog based in the Spokane, Washington, region.  Craig Goodwin describes himself as a Master Food Preserver and Minister at Millwood Presbyterian Church.

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Gardening by Dan Barclay

One of the best ways to combat the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States is with nutrition and gardening programs that are integrated into schools.  One such program is giving children in Washington, D.C. a chance to taste garden-grown winter spinach (cool weather spinach is sweeter!) in an after-school program that includes a trip to the White House garden as well as kitchen lessons provided by a chef and other interested volunteers. With more and more McDonough County families struggling to put food on the table and with convenient junk food so readily accessible it only makes sense for schools in our area to incorporate more gardening and nutrition information into the curriculum.

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Gardening, School Food by Dan Barclay

According to a new study published by the Leopold Center at Iowa State University the cost of locally produced food available at farmer’s markets and natural foods stores is statistically the same as non-local food available in supermarkets.  In fact, the local food was slightly less expensive than the non-local food.  The study was conducted at the peak production season for Iowa summer vegetables.  This is a strong incentive for local producers to invest in affordable greenhouse technologies such as high tunnels or hoop houses that can extend their growing season and allow them to market their produce at the best price consumers will find.  Check out this image from the White House lawn to see Michelle Obama’s hoop house that is extending the growing season of the White House organic garden right through the winter!

Ok, these low tunnels in the White House garden are more precisely referred to as row covers since they are only about 2-3 feet tall and hoop houses are usually structures that a person can walk in.  But they function the same way and are much easier to set up or remove as the circumstances warrant.

Filed under:
Economic Development, Farmers' market by Dan Barclay