Edible Schoolyard
I don’t know what it is about this week but I keep running across stories, environmentally related stories, that just tug at my heart strings. For instance, this read from The Daily Green: Edible Schoolyard and New Orleans: A Recipe for Success. From the article:
When the hearts and minds of our children are captured by a school lunch curriculum, enriched with experience in the garden, sustainability will become the lens through which they see the world. - Alice Waters
Alice Waters is a sustainable earth advocate on a mission to change the way America eats (Slow Food Movement, Slow Food Nation Exposition) . Among her numerous accolades, Best Chef in America (James Beard Foundation 1992) and one of the ten best chefs in the world (Cuisine et Vins de France 1986).
The Edible Schoolyard New Orleans mission: “is to create and sustain an organic garden and landscape that is wholly integrated into the school’s curriculum and lunch program from grades K through 8.” Seems simple enough but I think there is so much more to the program that really comes from the experience itself. I’ll let Ms. Waters elaborate:
Waters says that if Americans would choose seasonal organic food grown through sustainable techniques by local farmers, if we would serve caring meals at the family table rather than scarfing Happy Meals in the minivan, we would restore family values, transform our communities and stabilize the environment. We would also enjoy ourselves more. ‘There’s so much pressure to continue the way we’re going,’ she says, ‘and no enlightened direction to go the other way. You have to begin someplace. And I think it’s with children. It’s right here.’ – New York Times Magazine, March 7, 2004
Not only can she cook, she knows how to make a point.
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