In addition to Gary Hirshberg, the Food and Health Forum has added dinners featuring Jim Gerritsen and Ben Hewitt in the coming months. Tickets for these as well as the January 23rd event with Gary Hirshberg are available online. From The Wire:
The Food and Health Forum is bringing national visionaries to Exeter in 2012
Kathy Gallant opened Blue Moon Market & Café in Exeter in 1995, offering a variety of organic and nutritional food products. In October 2010, she transformed the store into a restaurant called Blue Moon Evolution. By then, Gallant had seen the movie “Food Inc.” and learned that large corporations had furtively bought out a number of organic food lines. She decided it was time to establish a business model that focused specifically on traceable food sources from around the Seacoast.
“We decided to dissolve our market filled with cans and jars of things from all over the world and focus on our local food economy,” Gallant said.
The restaurant now gets its ingredients from 54 local farms and businesses, including meat, cheese, produce, honey, bread, beverages and more. The positive response she’s gotten from customers has inspired Gallant to launch an educational local food initiative in 2012.
Toward that end, she recently joined forces with Tracey Miller, a local communication specialist, health coach, cooking instructor and freelance writer. The two started the Food and Health Forum, which will launch its “Food for Thought” dinner seminar series this month, beginning with a visit from Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg on Monday, Jan. 23 at 6:30 p.m., at Blue Moon Evolution.
“We have been so well-received by our community. It has enabled me to have enough energy and desire to bring it to the next level, and that’s what I see this Food and Health Forum being,” Gallant said.
The local food movement has already gained significant traction in the area. Groups like Seacoast Eat Local, Slow Food Seacoast and the Seacoast Growers Association have helped enlighten residents to the abundance of local farms, restaurants and markets offering fresh, sustainable food. The challenge is to expand awareness among the many shoppers who still subscribe to the “standard American diet.”
“Basically, people go to a supermarket and they have no idea where the food that they’re buying comes from,” Miller said. “It’s basically this monolithic supermarket, so they get the food, they bring it home and they don’t have to think about what they’re eating or how it affects them.” Read more…
For more information: www.foodandhealthform.com