The MIT Media Lab has embarked with Target and the design firm IDEO on a multi-year collaboration that will explore areas such as urban farming, food transparency and authenticity, supply chain and health. The story is here.
And here’s a story about a project that is related: Caleb Harper’s Open Agriculture Initiative, the first open-source platform for global agriculture and food hackers.
Knife and Spatula: Nora Schultz ’19; Amy Lerner, postdoc lecturer on Corn, Chiles & Chocolate; and Associate Professor Kelly Caylor, lead faculty for the course, made two dishes: corn tortillas from scratch, and seared zucchini with roasted tomato and chipotle (an adaptation of a Rick Bayless recipe).
Chemistry Demonstration: Chef Craig Shelton discussed phase changes, heat and conductivity as he seared fish filets from Nassau Street Seafood during the pilot.
This seminar bridges the science of the plate and the community of the table – and it couldn’t have been done without support. Thanks to Rozalie Czesana ’18, Rocky! Kelly Caylor, lead professor, of CEE and PEI! Thanks to Harriet Flower, Mathey College master, who paved the way with Flavor Labs! To Maria Bohn of CBLI! To Gordon Douglas MD ’55 and Sheila Mahoney S’55. To Tim Searchinger, research scholar extraordinaire! To Naomi Leonard and Evelyn Laffey, CST! To Shana Weber and crew at Sustainability! To Laurel Cantor at Communications! To Steve Cochrane ’81, superintendent at Princeton Public Schools! And a host of others, on campus and off, whose first answer is Yes. At the pilot, Amy Lerner, postdoc, lectured on politics, economics and cultural significance of Chile, Corn & Chocolate in Mexico, and Chef Shelton guided students through making a full meal with a Cinco de Mayo flavor (including mole from scratch).
Cheeses made at Bobolink Dairy and Bakehouse will be featured at Science, Society & Dinner.
Rutgers Food Innovation Center is hosting RutgersX – Accelerating Food Entrepreneurs Conference on Monday, Nov. 16 at the Rutgers University College Avenue Student Center in New Brunswick.
Scheduled in connection with Global Entrepreneurship Week, the event is part of FIC’s new RutgersX Food Accelerator Program and will connect clients to investors and members of the food industry.
Registration goes up from $149 to $199 per person, effective November 1. For more information or to register, click here.
Thanks to Prof. Anne Cheng, the Department of American Studies and the Department of Anthropology for hosting what promises to be a provocative workshop on our daily bread: “Cooking is a Chore, Cooking is a Craft, Cooking is What Other People Do: Investigating Contemporary American Practices and Perceptions.”
The workshop is with Amy Trubek, associate professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont. She is the author of “The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir,” which begins with a look at French agrarian and culinary traditions, then moves to California and, eventually, to the East Coast and the Vermont Fresh Network (http://www.vermontfresh.net/).
The event is Monday, Nov. 9, from noon to 1:20 p.m. at 102 Jones Hall, and of course includes lunch (register, especially if you’re planning to eat, by emailing cwkessel@princeton.edu).
If current projections hold true, the agriculture sector will need to produce about 70 percent more food by 2050, research shows. How can entrepreneurship in all its forms move the needle?
The challenges range from malnutrition — obesity and diabetes in wealthier countries and hunger and micronutrient deficiency in poorer countries – to meeting an expected demand for roughly 70 percent more food by 2050 while reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint, including its contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, loss of habitat and air and water pollution.
The symposium will explore the efforts of private and non-profit entrepreneurs from Princeton and elsewhere; what entrepreneurship can and cannot help to address; and how the research community, the public sector and the finance sector can improve outcomes.
This all-day event is open to Princeton students, faculty and administration, as well as to interested community members. The event is in partnership with Career Services, which will facilitate a Meetup during the event to connect students with alumni for conversations and networking. The following day, February 20, 2016, is Princeton University Alumni Day. For more information or to reserve your spot, write Karla Cook, coordinator: karlac@princeton.edu.
The Princeton Garden Project encourages participants to play with their food. Click on this photo to see this and more photos from the project on the Facebook page.
The student-run organic garden is always open to more helpers. Click here to see posts about growing adventures and the harvests. For more information about the project or to volunteer, email pugardenproject@gmail.com.
Acorns and oak leaves photo illustration from “Bitter Medicine is Stronger,” a page from the website companion to the book, “The Multispecies Salon.” Click on photo for link to site.
Explore the acorn mush tradition of the Pomo people of northern California and through that, a window to the displacement of native people and native plant species on Thursday, Sept. 24, at the first of a series of lunchtime discussions hosted by the Princeton Environmental Institute.
PEI writes:
“The discussions will orbit around two key questions: Which beings flourish, and which fail, when natural and cultural worlds intermingle and collide? In the aftermath of disasters—in blasted landscapes that have been transformed by multiple catastrophes—what are the possibilities of biocultural hope?”
The first event, “Suburban Foraging: Acorn Mush,” begins with acorn gathering at 10 a.m. at Guyot atrium. Lunch, mush-tasting and discussion follow at 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. and will be led by Kimberly Tallbear, associate professor of native studies at the University of Alberta; Linda Noel, a Koyungkawi poet (click here for an interview with her); Tom Boellstorff, author of the essay (PDF) up for discussion and a professor of anthropology at UC Irvine, as virtual guest; and Henry Horn, Princeton University emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
“The Multispecies Salon” was initially an art exhibition. Gleanings from exhibition – essays and recipes – co-authored by Kim Tallbear, Linda Noel and others, were gathered into a book edited by Eben Kirksey, currently a visiting professor at Princeton Environmental Institute and in the anthropology department. Read a Kirksey interview here.
Background: Native plants and peoples persist in suburbs that have been altered by long histories of white settler colonialism and commercial development. In the case of the oak and its acorns, the bitter mush product evokes the history of massacres, forced marches, and internment for the Pomo, and also the challenges that native plant species face.
The Thursday event will focus on an essay, “Bitter Medicine is Stronger” (abstract) and acorn mush recipe from the book by collaborators Noel and Tallbear, and the Boellstorff essay, “Botanical Decolonization: Rethinking Native Plants,” which explores ideas of Francis Bacon along the way to arguing that
“planting and displanting humans and plants are elements of the same multispecies colonial endeavor, and that native plant advocacy is part of a broad process of botanical decolonization and a strategic location for ethical action in the Anthropocene.”
Please RSVP and register here, or catch the livestream here. Because of space constraints, Multispecies Salon events are restricted to members of the university community, except by special request.