Now in its 12th year celebrating local and sustainable food, the Food for Thought Festival will take place this coming Friday and Saturday, Sep. 24 and 25. If you practice sustainable eating or if you are just looking to find out more information about the local food movement, this is a festival that you will surely not want to miss. Festival attendees will have the opportunity to sample the food of over 40 local restaurants and businesses.
For the past 12 years, the event has had great success. Last year, Michael Pollan, a well-known journalist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley spoke at the festival. This year, ""Renegade Lunch Lady"" Chef Ann Cooper will be speaking at the event. She first channelled her love for food into the restaurant business, but her focus later switched to following her passion to put fresh, healthy food into our public schools across the nation. She is accomplishing this one school system at a time, moving across the nation and taking out the highly processed foods and replacing them with fresh meals made from scratch.
Chef Ann will kick off the Food for Thought Festival on campus this Friday evening, giving a speech that will be followed by a panel discussion. This discussion will take place in 3650 Humanities from 7-9 p.m. and all are welcome to attend.
But if you find a Friday night discussion to be a bit sobering, the true festivities will take place on Saturday on Martin Luther King Boulevard just off of Capital Square. The festival will take place at the same time as the weekly Dane County Farmers' Market, so this is a great opportunity to truly submerse oneself in a celebration of local food.
Those unable to catch Ann Cooper on Friday night will still be able to see her off Saturday morning's events. The festival will feature a cooking content, in which local chefs from Willy Street Co-op, Whole Foods Market and Metcalfe's Market will compete.
It's natural to be a victim of immense hunger when you're surrounded by a lot of tasty food. Luckily the festival will be offering food served at various local restaurants, including L'Etoile, Crema Café and Monty's Blue Plate Diner.
Anyone looking to get a closer look at the local food movement or simply satisfy their appetites with some truly amazing food, the Food for Thought Festival is sure to do both of those and more. Both Friday and Saturday will be days filled with attrations as well as a collection of people coming together to celebrate the art that is local food. It would definitely be worth taking a few short hours out of your Saturday morning to head down to check out this awesome event.
