CHEZ PANISSE FOUNDATION

Chez Panisse is a very very expensive california french restaurant in Berkeley just down the street from my mother. I remember when it first opened. It has a set menu downstairs. Requires reservations sometimes 6 months in advance.

I remember Alice Waters recruiting farmers to grow her signature baby vegetables for the restaurant. She MADE her menu-she didn't adapt to what was available. She created it. I was inspired by that years ago.

She also had a vision for school kids, and what she terms "delicious eating". A while ago Alice started some very interesting projects. She started the Chez Panisse Foundation. One of the projects are what she calls the edible schoolyard which consists of a one-acre organic garden at Martin Luther King Middle School-which happens to be where my father taught. It's permanent now, but it started by her getting the owners of vacant lots around town to let the kids turn them into edible gardens.

Since 1996, 3000 students have participated in the edible schoolyard program, and they have had 1,000 visitors. Her vision is to change what all 10,000 Berkeley public school children eat and they are reinventing the school lunch programs. They were instrumental in hiring a new "chef" for the schools, and have eliminated all processed foods from the menu, and have introduced FRESH and ORGANIC to the menu, and are still inside the budget, and they are looking to replicate the program in other areas, and have.

They have partners in New Haven, Connecticut, New Orleans, Louisiana, Los Angeles, and are talking with other areas. Keep this in mind when we get the foundation going-we don't have to invent everything. We can partner with those ahead of us. Joining hands...and making a difference in small ways where we can, and then expanding out.

Wouldn't it be awesome for the kids to have fresh food options at every school lunch? Jon misses the salad bar he had in Ogden-get that. They DO NOT have a fresh lunch option here in PC. That amazes me for as "forward" and "health conscience" PC is...

Here is a link to the school lunch initiative. the chef at Martin Luther King threw out 4 day old pizzas and was thrilled saying that they USED TO make 40 pizzas a day. What does this mean to her? It means the KIDS are making healthier choices because they are offered healthier choices.

I do believe that given the choice the kids will WANT healthier foods. I am really feeling like PC is the perfect place to start the raw food initiative here...anyone else feeling this or is it just me?