Daily Delicacies March 15

Thursday, March 15, 2012 - 14:27

The Honorable Audrey Rowe

Adminstrator of Food and Nutrition Service

Healthy Soul Choice. When First Lady Michelle Obama says Let's Move, you can be assured that Audrey Rowe, administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture is already in motion. The programs under her agency help feed one in four Americans, including 40 million school children with lunch or breakfast, and the SNAP which serves 18 million households. Part of Let's Move is to bring chefs into schools to help teach nutrition. Another goal is to plant community gardens in any place that gets six hours of sunlight per day and has a source of water.

Delicacies of the Day. The community garden movement is providing new options for fresh vegetables and fruit. Healthy Solutions, based in Washington, D.C., is active in five states with training for new gardeners and encouraging students to take up agriculture as a career.

When Jay Foster, a North Carolina native, started Farmer Brown in San Francisco, he designed the restaurant as a tribute to black farmers and connected with Will Scott, head of the state's African-American farmers group, to provide his produce. Scott and other farmers also bring food to the Mo' Betta Farmers Market in west Oakland, started by David Roach.

DTown Farm, run by the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, is turning the city's economic lemons into lemonade. Anyone can volunteer Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to noon on the seven-acre spread. The network, led by Malik Yakini, has a monthly buying club, which it is seeking to expand into a cooperative food store.

Black Urban Growers (BUGS) in New York City has attracted 500 to its first two conferences on community and family gardens.

In Savannah, the 120 member farms of the Southeast African-American Organic Farmers Network provide their produce at the Forsyth Farmers Market.

Favorite Farmer : Will Scott, who retired from IBM to take over a farm in the Central Valley of California.

Cookbook of the Day: The Black Farmer Cookbook by Wilfred Emanuel Jones.