Pancake Race (Olney, London, UK)

Every year on Fat Tuesday, all Londoners are lured into the street like a magnet by the smell of freshly baked pancakes that literally rush around the city. No, this is not a mistake and you read that correctly. One day in 1445 in the town of Olney in the south-east of England, one of the parishioners of the church baked pancakes on Fat Tuesday, contrary to the rules of the fast. Hearing the bell ringing and getting out of the “pancake trance”, she immediately ran to church to atone for her sins, but it was still not easy for her to part with the pancakes (and she can be understood), so the lady turned the last one right on the go. The residents of Olney were so amused by this spectacle that they turned it into a tradition.

Today the Pancake Race takes place in both Olney and London. The conditions are as follows: the one who runs the fastest and simultaneously flips the pancake in the pan the most times will receive the ringer’s kiss. By the way, in Westminster, such races are held among members of parliament and lords.

Lobster Festival (Los Angeles, USA)

Not every city can boast that it hosts the largest lobster festival in the world. But Los Angeles can, because in 2009 this holiday got into the Guinness Book of Records as a record holder in the category “The largest number of seafood dishes in the open air.” The heart of the September lobster festival is the port of San Pedro, however, oddly enough, lobsters are not caught here – the fresh catch comes from Maine. In addition to delicious and inexpensive lobsters and many other seafood, music and pirate shows, the most unexpected entertainment awaits visitors. For example, the Lobster Parade is an unforgettable sight: happy and proud owners walk down the street in the company of their pets dressed as crustaceans, and the audience squeaks with delight and affection (you can only sympathize with the dogs).

Radish Night (Oaxaca, Mexico)

The city of Oaxaca is famous for its woodcarving craftsmen, and on December 23, viewers have a unique opportunity to look at the incredible carved radish sculptures. The first festival took place already in 1897, but over time, the event only gained popularity. During the Night of the Radish, you can see animals, people, various architectural structures, costumes and fruits carved from radishes. The exhibition presents both radish masterpieces of professional woodcarvers and statues made by ordinary lovers of this root vegetable.

Watermelon Festival (Chinchilla, Australia)

For several years now, the Australian town of Chinchilla bears the proud title of the “watermelon” capital of Australia: about a quarter of the total watermelon crop in the country is grown here. Chinchilla Melon Festival is organized by the city authorities every two years, and the streets of the city are painted in a rich red. The festival welcomes about 15,000 guests, who are invited to take part in the most fun “watermelon” competitions: the competition for the best watermelon helmet, competitions in skiing (skis, of course, must be made from watermelons), throwing watermelons at a target, watermelon basketball and much more. During the festival, more than 20 tons of fruits are destroyed.

La Tomatina (Buñol, Spain)

In the last week of August, tens of thousands of people from all over the world gather in the Spanish town of Buñol to take part in the tomato battle. At this time, there are so many tourists that there is not enough accommodation for everyone, so many come to the holiday from Valencia. Before the start of the tomato frenzy, during which about 145 tons of tomatoes are used, local residents and shopkeepers cover the windows with plastic shields in order to somehow reduce the area of ​​the upcoming harvest. The central square of the city of Plaza del Pueblo at 10 am resembles a dormant volcano, just about ready to wake up and spew tomato lava. A line of trucks filled with tomatoes drives through the streets and stops in the square. According to the rules, first some daredevil must climb a tall wooden post, smeared with soap. At the top of the dodger, a prize awaits – jamon. The water cannons then make a sign for the start of the battle. You can imagine what is happening on the streets of Buñol for an hour (this is how long this chaos lasts), but it is better to give up everything and leave yourself to throw tomatoes.

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Putin

The dish with the French name “Putin” (stress on the second syllable) was invented in Quebec, a province of Canada where French is the official language. It was prepared by the owner of a local restaurant, Fernand Lutchans, at the request of a visitor. And he asked just a little – to give him French fries, sprinkled with curd cheese. The owner liked the recipe so much that he included it in the menu. Today it is the main national fast food, which you will be served in any fast food cafe, sprinkled with barbecue sauce.

TourtièreSt-Jean

The TourtièreSt-Jean Quebec Meat Pie is another hallmark of Quebec and traditional Canadian cuisine. Legend has it that it appeared almost simultaneously with the formation of the province itself at the beginning of the 17th century. In those days, the stuffing for him was prepared from wild boar, deer and other game. Traditionally, all parishioners of local churches received a slice of the pie after the Christmas service.

Canadian pizza

Despite the fact that pizza was invented in Italy, Canadians are proud of the national version of this dish. Its signature ingredient is Canadian bacon. This delicacy has been cooked here for many centuries. Pork slices are rubbed with salt and spices, and rolled in corn flour. In the old days, crushed peas were used instead – in this way the meat was canned. Over time, the snack tasted, and it began to appear on the tables of Canadians more and more often. Why not add it to your pizza?

Pumpkin puree soup

In the fall and winter, Canadians keep warm with pumpkin puree soup, the recipe for which is quite simple. It is believed that the French introduced him to Canadians. However, the locals have tweaked something. In particular, they added spices and began to serve soup with walnuts. And if you boil it down hard, you get a great spicy sauce.

Maple Syrup Pancakes

There is another pumpkin dish that Canadians adore. These are delicate ginger pancakes. And they certainly eat them with maple syrup. You might be surprised, but this sweet addition is poured on not only pancakes, waffles and ice cream. Gourmets generously grease the brisket with it and bake it in the oven with green beans. And in Canada, you can be treated to beer brewed in maple syrup. Pouring over a fluffy maple syrup omelet is also common.

Montreal Bagel

This is one of the most popular types of street food. Malt is put in the dough, so it gets sweetish notes. Raw blanks are dipped in hot water with honey and baked in a wood-burning oven.

Buttertarts

Dessert Buttertarts is one of the favorite national treats of Canadians. Its description is found in cookbooks as far back as the 17th century and takes pride of place among the recipes of the national Canadian cuisine. Basically, it’s a shortcrust pastry basket filled with butter, eggs, nuts and, of course, maple syrup. Depending on the city of your stay, the composition may vary. Sometimes raisins can be found in the filling. By the way, this ingredient in the composition is still the subject of irreconcilable controversy.

Nanaimo bars

Nanaimo Bars pastries are a must try for every sweet tooth. They are said to have been invented and prepared by an ordinary housewife Mabel Jenkins from the city of Nanaimo specifically for their recipe to be published in a cookbook. She made a three-layer cake made from waffle crumbs, butter cream and chocolate icing. The recipe was a huge success, and soon the delicacy began to be prepared throughout the country. The beauty is that the cake does not require baking and is easy to make.

Blueberry pie

Blueberry Pie is native to Canada’s smallest province, Nova Scotia. It is believed that British settlers brought him here to have something to arrange the invariable five o’clock with. In addition to blueberries, Canadians often use rhubarb, apples and strawberries for filling. For the express version, you can get your favorite berry jam from the pantry, prepared in the summer.

This is what a selection of the most popular Canadian dishes looks like, in our opinion. Of course, the gastronomic rating can be continued, because food is a favorite topic for Canadians. Have you tried anything from Canadian cuisine? Share your impressions and unusual dishes that you remember the most.

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With the unprecedented surge in SNAP enrollment, we saw usage of healthy food incentive programs like Double Up Food Bucks soar.

In our home state of Michigan…

To make the Michigan Double Up program work harder for families in need, we temporarily lifted the $20/day earning limit to provide families more food dollars. Over the year, we also brought on 26 new sites. Finally, we ramped up marketing efforts to reach families on SNAP — many for the first time in their lives — including launching a new partnership with the Detroit Lions.

And beyond.

Nationwide, we grew our support of nutrition incentive programs through the Nutrition Incentive Hub, a USDA-designated coalition that launched this year in partnership with Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition. Fair Food Network is honored to lead technical assistance and innovation for the Nutrition Incentive Hub to a growing number of USDA-supported nutrition incentive and produce prescription projects.

As part of this work, $850,000 in grants were awarded to support capacity building and field innovations as well as pivots in response to COVID. The ideas were inspiring: From helping more farmers markets accept SNAP (or food stamps) and Double Up in rural and tribal communities in North and South Dakota to launching a mobile market delivery in rural Mississippi, groups showed continued creativity and resilience as they worked to adapt to and meet local needs.

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The images of miles-long lines at food banks have illuminated the fragility of a food system that has left too many behind. In 2020, food banks nationwide distributed 6 billion meals to those facing hunger in the United States.

Yet alongside hunger is another equally crippling public health crisis: Poor nutrition. According to the CDC, six in ten Americans live with at least one chronic disease including heart disease and stroke or diabetes for which poor nutrition and lack of physical activity are major risk factors. These and other chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability in America, and they are also a leading driver of health care costs with $1 out of every $4 in U.S. health care costs spent on diabetes care alone.

“Nutrition insecurity” is a top priority for the newly returned head of the USDA, Secretary Tom Vilsack, who recently noted, “We cannot have the levels of obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease that we have. It will literally cripple everything we’re trying to do as a country.”

Thankfully, there are solutions on the table.

The pandemic demonstrated the effectiveness of America’s top safety net: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), previously known as “food stamps,” served 43 million people during the pandemic — roughly one of every eight Americans — and accounted for nine meals to every one provided by food banks.

What may be less recognized is how SNAP works even harder for families when paired with healthy nutrition incentive programs like Double Up Food Bucks, which today operates in 28 states from coast to coast with other models of nutrition projects in every state.

Healthy food incentives immediately increase the buying power of families, helping them bring home more food when using SNAP. In addition, those dollars are prioritized for fruits and vegetables, simultaneously reducing hunger while improving nutrition.

But the benefits don’t stop there: In addition to these critically important contributions to combating hunger and bringing healthy food within reach, SNAP and nutrition incentives also support local economies.

According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), SNAP benefits significantly strengthen the economy, with every dollar of SNAP generating $1.70 to $1.80 of local economic benefit. During a crisis like we are facing with COVID-19, SNAP provides a seamless economic stimulus, with 97 percent of benefits redeemed by the end of the month of issuance.

The broad economic impacts of SNAP are further enhanced when paired with nutrition incentives like Double Up. New research by a team of agricultural economists at Colorado State University shows that healthy food incentive programs don’t just help the families that use them to buy more food, they also provide direct financial benefits to grocers, farmers, and the local economy.

For example, every $1 of incentives that SNAP shoppers use to buy more food results in an estimated contribution of up to $2.90 for the local economy. At the national level, the conservative modeling from this study estimates that scaling incentives to grocery stores and farmers markets across the country (with SNAP families redeeming $680 million to $1.4 billion in incentives in one year) would result in 10,000 to 22,000 jobs and $518 million to $1.1 billion in additional labor income.

The pandemic has underscored how important efforts like SNAP and nutrition incentives are, and recent COVID relief packages have invested in them to expand their impact. This includes increasing the maximum benefit of SNAP by 15 percent through September 2021 and providing a one-time $75 million boost to the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program to support existing USDA-funded efforts.

As we face the daunting twin challenges of hunger and nutrition insecurity, the opportunity ahead is to ensure such efforts remain strong and resilient in providing all Americans access to the fresh and nutritious foods they need to thrive.

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“I realized that something was going on that was bigger than anything I had ever experienced in my life.”

When Michigan went into lockdown in March 2020, Joe Gappy, owner of Detroit’s Prince Valley Market, began logging 60-hour weeks. He managed staffing shifts and worked to keep shelves stocked amidst supply chain disruptions and pandemic purchasing all while reimagining his family’s 45-year-old grocery store.

“The parking lot was full, and the store was jammed with people going up and down all the aisles buying everything we had in the store,” Gappy said. “I realized that something was going on that was bigger than anything I had ever experienced in my life.”

Gappy and his team went to work installing hand sanitizers throughout the store, upping cleanings, sourcing gloves and wet wipes, and implementing other safety precautions.

They also needed to realign the store’s business model. This included shuttering its renowned bakery and pivoting the kitchen from made-to-order items to pre-packaged and grab-and-go foods. This in turn required the purchase of new coolers, hot food cases, and other equipment.

The COVID-19 crisis has upturned nearly every aspect of our lives, not least of which is the system on which we all depend: Food.

Along the way, it has brought about a renewed appreciation for the importance of grocery stores and the frontline workers who have kept our communities fed throughout the pandemic.

“Produce is a huge part of our Prince Valley store. At first people didn’t believe it. ‘How do you get free produce?’ It’s phenomenal.”

This was an unexpected revival. With increasing online competition and a continued shifting of the American diet toward restaurants and prepared foods, neighborhood grocery stores like Gappy’s have seen their already tight margins further stretched in recent years.

Yet as the pandemic eliminated commutes or strained transportation options, many people increasingly relied on stores closer to home. Often family-owned and run, these stores also tend to hire locally and are anchors in their communities.

For stores like Gappy’s this meant being busier than ever. Amidst increased sales and larger deliveries to keep up with demand, Gappy also a saw a jump in SNAP sales as unemployment rates surged. (SNAP stands for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.)

At Gappy’s Prince Valley and his other grocery store in nearby Redford, families on SNAP found another benefit: Double Up Food Bucks.

Double Up is a healthy food incentive program designed by national nonprofit Fair Food Network. It matches SNAP dollars spent on fresh fruits and vegetables. This dollar-for-dollar match provides families more food dollars while increasing sales for area farmers through local sourcing commitments. And by attracting new customers with increased purchasing power, Double Up is also a win for store owners like Gappy.

Gappy was one of the first grocery stores in the nation to offer Double Up as the program transitioned from farmers markets, where the idea was born, to the grocery setting.

“Produce is a huge part of our Prince Valley store,” said Gappy, which serves a largely Latinx community in Southwest Detroit. “At first people didn’t believe it. ‘How do you get free produce?’ It’s phenomenal.”

“If you can get more produce to customers who need it yet can’t always afford it, that’s something important that you can do for them, your store, and your community.”

During COVID-19, Fair Food Network pivoted to make Double Up work harder for the families it serves. This included offering Double Up with Pandemic-EBT purchases and lifting the daily cap on Double Up earnings. This helped families earn a Double Up dollar for every SNAP dollar spent on fresh produce (previous limit was $20 a day).

Fair Food Network also fast-tracked the onboarding of new sites and developed a free phone-based app to support online program sign-ups and use. Finally, it launched a statewide marketing campaign to get the word out to SNAP consumers, many of whom were receiving food assistance for the first time in their lives. These pivots, at the height of the COVID crisis, contributed to a doubling of Double Up use in 2020 compared to 2019.

“If you can get more produce to customers who need it yet can’t always afford it, that’s something important that you can do for them, your store, and your community,” Gappy said.

The post What is Essential? A Profile of a Grocer appeared first on Perthgarlic.

From farmers markets…

Deemed essential in states across the country, farmers markets quickly pivoted to keep customers safe and provide a steady market for farmers while other revenue streams dried up as a result of the pandemic. By accepting food assistance and programs like Double Up, markets also helped families experiencing hunger stretch shrinking budgets for fresh, healthy food.

“This May, we allowed a farmer to carry an array of fresh produce at our market…the demand for fresh produce was very high and customers were taking advantage of our curbside pickup.

So although not all of his items were Michigan grown, it really helped out our SNAP customers. May was a very difficult month for everyone due to the pandemic, so for our market to offer such a large variety of items to the public was a huge success that really kept our market in the spotlight.”

To corner stores…

In Detroit, we worked with local store Marcus Market as part of a neighborhood grocery training. This corner store had been known for grab-and-go groceries, liquor, and an in-house taco stand, but they were eager to bring in fresh produce.

The result?

Marcus Market swapped an entire section of its liquor wall with a cooler and display full of fruits and vegetables and other fresh offerings. Check out the striking before and after photos.

The post The Essential Workers Who Made it Possible appeared first on Perthgarlic.

Some of the programs operating across the country today are quite large and well-established. Others are just getting started. Regardless of their current program reach, they all share the potential to benefit far more people, retailers, farmers and communities if they expanded more broadly – for example across states or the entire country. That level of expansion would require a significant investment from policymakers.

This pioneering study shows that broad expansions of healthy food incentives would provide powerful returns on that investment – for families, grocers, and farmers, as well as more broadly among the state economies where such benefits are expanded. The findings demonstrate that state and federal policymakers would be wise to double down on their support for these programs.

The research was initiated by Fair Food Network and SPUR, in collaboration with ten partner organizations that operate incentive programs in states across the country, and was conducted by a team of agricultural economists at Colorado State University led by Dr. Dawn Thilmany.

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