Chefs and farmers are joining forces to serve a local feast.
Dubbed the “CommUnity Meal,” the event is planned from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Ashland’s Bellview Grange, 1050 Tolman Creek Road. It’s the first of what organizers hope is an ongoing effort to feed members of the newly formed Local Alliance for Food and to support a sustainable food system. Membership in LAFF is free; the group only wants members’ contact information, says spokeswoman Anne Eldridge.
For a price of $4 to $9, crowds can taste spinach-and-kale frittata, strawberry crepes, Waldorf salad, butternut squash lasagna, cabbage-carrot salad, roasted root vegetables, rosemary-and-garlic potatoes, roasted butternut squash bisque, potato-leek soup, focaccia with sun-dried tomatoes, as well as fruit crisp and pumpkin pie. Four dollars buys one item, $7 two items and $9 three items, says Eldridge.
Ingredients hail from Happy Dirt Veggie Patch, Kurth Family Farms, Joshua Farms, Wander Farm, Our Local Bounty, Blue Fox, Neighborhood Harvest and other local producers. Kristen Lyon, former sous chef of The Garden Bistro at McCully House, and Maren Fray, a Sams Valley caterer, are behind the menu of breakfast and lunch dishes.
The concept was born at last summer’s Friday-night markets in Talent, where Eldridge and others served community meals from June through September. Around Thanksgiving, Eldridge started courting local chefs to lend a hand.
Raised on a farm in upstate New York and resident of a self-sustaining, cooperatively tended New York farm in the 1960s and ’70s, Eldridge, now an Ashland resident, says she was spurred to action by the local farm-to-school movement that aims to produce students’ lunches from locally grown ingredients. Peace Village 365, an offshoot of Peace House, is another sponsor.
A mini market will coincide with the meal. Short on seasonal produce, vendors likely will bring meats, canned items, speciality foods and even seeds for spring gardening, Eldridge says.
