Farm-fresh Cooking

This week I’ve been talking about local farms/fisheries and how we can take advantage of their bounties. When I was growing up, local farms in this area would allow berry picking, or set up roadside stands where they would offer their fresh produce or freshly-prepared products, and that was about as far as I got to learning about what these farms had to offer. Today, they are at farmer’s markets, providing CSAs, allowing picking of much more variety (maybe this is not so new, but it’s relatively new to me!), and blogging to educate us about what it takes for our farmers to grow us food and what farms have to offer.

And that’s not all. I also recently discovered that some farms here in Connecticut offer cooking classes under a variety of settings. For example, Jones Family Farm in Shelton, CT, offers a number of different classes designed to guide the student through cooking an entire meal, many of them theme dinners; for example comfort foods or a Mother’s Day brunch, etc. Their 2011 schedule is going to be posted soon.

And although not technically a farm, as I was searching for farm cooking classes, I discovered The Silo Cooking School at Hunt Hill Farm in New Milford, CT. The school offers an impressive lineup of chefs and in the past has had Jacques Pepin, Rachel Ray, and Martha Stewart teaching classes. They offer a number of unique cooking classes on grilling, summer foods, Indian cuisine, etc. But what most interested me is their full-participation cooking classes designed for groups within organizations to foster team building. What better way to inspire an attitude and philosophy of working together than in the kitchen preparing a meal!

If there is one thing that we all can relate to, it’s food and something magical happens when a group of people join and contribute their energy to the preparation of a meal and then sit down and enjoy it together. At the deepest levels, energetically and spiritually, it becomes a part of everyone involved. I thought this was a brilliant and insightful concept.

Have a wonderful day!!