The only thing that could bring 30 students from Tennessee, Michigan, Texas, Nebraska together in the Washington, D.C. summer heat: The Annual Campus Kitchens Project Boot Camp.

This week new kitchen leaders committed to two dozen hours of training learning how to make their Campus Kitchens tick, from lessons in food safety to recipe creativity and volunteer management.

On Monday, leaders dug their hands right into the thick of it, planning their own lunch and traveling to various professional kitchens to cook up the feast. Later, the group talked about asset-focused community development, or the reciprocal community relationships that could help a Campus Kitchen grow and thrive. Campus Kitchens then individually plotted their own asset maps.

The group returned to the kitchen Tuesday for the DC Central Kitchen volunteer experience and some words of wisdom from DC Central Kitchen Founder and President Robert Egger and CEO Mike Curtin.

Future Campus Kitchen leaders will also train in leadership development, food procurement, gardening initiatives, and social media among other things. The culmination of Boot Camp is the National Restaurant Association’s ServSafe examination, which certifies students to act as safety managers in kitchens.

Stay-tuned for more pictures and stories from the front lines of Boot Camp.

Share on Facebook

Kojo aptly named shoppers who look to eat and buy local foods “Locavores”, a term first coined by Bay Area chef Jessica Prentice.  It’s a great name and a great frame of mind not only for DC Central Kitchen but the whole CKP network as well.

You know, you used to be able to get great strawberries for a week or two twice a year; now you can get lousy ones all year round.”  -Bill (listener comment)

Ann Harvey, from FRESHFARM Markets, talked about how to double the value of Food Stamps at Farmers Markets.  Many farmers markets already take WIC and Senior Get Fresh Coupons.  Last year they added Food Stamps to Silver Spring and H Street farmers markets in DC.  She heard about other national programs that doubled the dollars for Food Stamps, and received a grant from Wholesame Wave to double the amount of buying power on Food Stamps for the local markets.  WIC/Senior Gardens are typically $35/a season but Food Stamps provide hundreds more per month.  It really served as growth for the market as well as paying huge benefits to local low-income programs.

Mike Curtin, our CEO, then talked about DCCK’s own Healthy Returns Program.  He referenced their work about the importance of nutrition, how to access the nutrition and all the work the program has done.  We’ll put a shout out here to our own guest blogger (and hero) Dahlia Rockowitz, who has been doing an amazing job at running the program this year.  (If you haven’t already read them, you can check out her guest posts here and here.)

The last comment I’ll leave you with is from Mark Toigo of Toigo Farms.  Particularly notable in these economic times, he mentioned his background as an Aerospace Engineer: it was the recession that caused him to go into farming.  He talked about the local foods movement and mentioned that he thought it’s been a pretty good movement (in regard to demand).  A lot of consumers want better quality.  As the national distributors expanded local farmers began to tail off.  People lost interest in where the food was coming from and as the quality dropped, everyone began to care again.  He doesn’t think of it as increased demand but as a renaissance of food.

That’s just the highlights: I encourage you to listen to the entire piece on the Kojo Nnamdi show. And tell us what you think!

Share on Facebook