Farm Food Connection

Last week, I was honored to represent other farmers and ranchers at an event with the Farm Food Connection held at the Kansas City Culinary Center.  Farmers were paired with dieticians and food bloggers.  You all know how I love to cook, so that is why I jumped at the chance to go the culinary center.  Getting to talk food and farming while cooking was so much fun for me.  I have been wanting to go for a couple of years to the KC Culinary Center and the staff didn’t disappoint my expectations.

The Food

We got to make an amazing manicotti, but we didn’t take it home.  We were divided into 4 groups each group made 3 pans of Manicotti to be donated to the local Ronald McDonald Houses. That's 12 pans of yummy manicotti to families going through very rough times.

I was amazed to find out that the KC Ronald McDonald Houses have $1000 budget for groceries...a year.  Wow!  Back in December, I talked about all the ways that you could help the houses and here is another one.  The KC Culinary Center has a program called All Hands for Hunger and has groups come in on a regular basis to prepare food for a variety of charities.

Now, don't think they sent us home hungry.  The chefs at the center made us a salad with an amazing salad dressing, our own manicotti which was out of this world and tiramisu for dessert.  My picture of the dessert just didn't do it justice click on the link and see a much better one.  We have the recipes and I can't wait to make them again.  I am really thinking I need to get a group of friends together to go back to take a cooking class!  I found they have a blog and several of their recipes are available.

The Conversation

While we prepared the food we talked nutrition, meat processing, and farming.  Our guests could ask us any questions they wanted about how we raise food.  I will be sharing the answers to some of their questions over the coming weeks.  

One of their questions has prompted me to start a new series on Thursdays called #TBT.  I have others farmers who have agreed to help me and I couldn’t be more excited about their input and learning about their farms.  Every farm has evolved differently over the years and I can’t wait to see how their farms work today compared to ours.  Each week we will look at a single aspect of our farms that has changed from previous generations.  We will start simple and obvious this week.

Here are links to all the attendees:

The Food Bloggers:
 Mama Dweeb
Fashion Plate KC

The Dieticians:
Kansas City Dietician
 Abby

The Farmers:
Heim Dairy


What would you like to know about our farm histories?  What are your favorite charities to support?

-A Kansas Farm Mom