LAND AND SEA YOUTH HIGH SCHOOL CLUB, SUNDAY AT LOCAL INGREDIENT COOKING SCHOOL!

The slide show at right (click on pictures to enlarge) is from our Land & Sea Slow Food Youth club trip this Sunday to Madden Surbaugh's wonderful Steps restaurant in Friday Harbor.

Madden is a strong supporter of our islands' farms, being a driving force behind the Islands Certified Local program, among many other great things too numerous to list here. We cooked with dairy and produce from the island, and with Layne Sundberg's Quail Croft goat cheese. We were fortunate to have Red Fife wheat grown by longtime farmers and educators Margaret and Joel Thorson (on Thousand Flower Farm on neighboring Waldron island) to grind into flower for lovely scones. Margaret and Joel traveled over on their boat from Waldron for the day, just to talk with us about their farm and their wheat. The story of Red Fife, and Margaret and Joel's experience with it, is fascinating and inspiring.

Our Land and Sea Youth members ground flour, made butter, roasted squash, and chopped, measured and mixed until we had a beautiful lunch of creamy roasted squash soup and savory scones. It was delicious.

Madden, Margaret, and Joel told us more about food grown on our islands, including local eggs and dairy and about eating locally (for us, much less than 100 miles - more like 5 miles!) We also talked a little more about our new youth farm worker training program, the Slow Food organization, and food activism. And about the webpage for our club, newly built by one of our members.

More info about our trips and meetings will be part of what will be available on that site, and a longer account of our trip today ( we learned a LOT!)
It was a wonderful day. Thanks Madden, Joel, and Margaret, for your time and generosity!

(More about our day at Margaret's Thousand Flower blog - Nov. 16th entry.)
To read more about our club, & our first meetings, see Nov. 15th blog entry, below.

For more links to San Juan islands farmers and producers, scroll down the list to the right.
Click here for Slow Food USA Youth Movement info.