Podcast

Farm to Table to Good Food EXPO Chef of the Year

March 9, 2019May 17, 2019 Mike Nowak Austin Hall, environment, farm to table, gardening, Good Food EXPO, Greenwise Organic Lawn Care, Jason Hammel, Lula Café, Peggy Malecki, pesticides, sustainability, The Mike Nowak Show

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Good Food EXPO Chef of the Year Jason Hammel

(March 10, 2019) The Good Food EXPO Chef of the Year Jason Hammel is a trailblazer. Not only is he a pioneer in the Chicago “farm to table” movement, he was doing it in Logan Square before Logan Square was cool. I should know. I moved to Logan Square before Logan Square was cool. In fact, my section of Logan Square still isn’t cool. But I digress.

Presented by Family Farmed, this is the 15th year for the annual Good Food EXPO. It used to be called the Good Food Festival, and at one time was simply a one-day Local Organic Trade Show. And The Mike Nowak Show has been reporting on this event pretty much since the beginning. Nowadays, it’s a regular part of our March schedule.

This is the Midwest’s premier annual event focused on locally and sustainably produced food. Presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois on March 22 and 23, the venue is once again the University of Illinois at Chicago. It attracts, entrepreneurs, buyers, investors, mentors and consumers with topics like

regenerative agriculture
hemp production
converting farmland to organic from conventional production
growing better grain
Chicago’s role as an urban agriculture center
and bringing more farm-to-table sourcing to restaurants.

That brings us back to Jason Hammel, who joins us in the WCGO studios this morning. Twenty years ago, he started Lula Café, which brought the concept of “farm dinner” to Logan Square. Since then, he created Marisol at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. He will be honored as the 2019 Good Food Chef of the Year at the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois Chefs at Play stage on Friday, March 22.

It’s been a good year for him. In January, he received a Jean Banchet Chef of the Year Award. By the way, he’s not the only chef you will find at the Good Food EXPO.

Chef demos at the Good Food Festival — the big public celebration of Good Food held this year on Saturday, March 23 — also are among the EXPO’s most popular programming. Hitting the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois Chefs at Play Stage will be Joe Flamm of Spiaggia, fresh off his win in Bravo TV’s Top Chef: Season 15; past Jean Banchet Award winner Sandra Holl of Floriole bakery/restaurant, who will present with Purple Asparagus, which brings lessons about food to Chicago schoolchildren; plus several other local favorites.

Another part of the EXPO are the Good Food is Good Medicine panels, about the powerful connections between food and health. The include

The Doctor is In
Food and Mood
Good Food Leadership: Eating Our Way to a Healthier Chicago
Healthy Food, Healthy Families
The Road to Wellness Is Paved With Good Food;
and The ABCs of CBD.

There’s a Kids’ Corner presented by Purple Asparagus. If you’re a backyard gardener, you’ll appreciate The Good Food Commons. And Advocates for Urban Agriculture is once again featuring Test Your Soil! conducted by the University of Illinois. From samples collected, the soil data will be integrated into an open access map of the Chicago metro region. I’ll certainly be bringing a sample from my yard.

Peggy and I will once again be doing live streaming interviews on Friday from the Good Food Trade Show. That event is $55 in advance, $65 at the door. Then, on Saturday, we’ll be hanging out at the Good Food Festival, which is FREE. All you have to do is register.

A pivotal year for Greenwise

Regular listeners to the show–all three of you–know that I have a love/hate relationship with lawns. I love walking on my own lawn in my bare feet. And I hate the fact that so many folks have a lawn obsession. So I’ve spent many years trying to convince people to be smart about how much lawn they have and what they put on it.

So when I have the opportunity to talk about “natural” or “organic” lawn care, I take it. Today, we welcome the new owner of Greenwise Organic Lawn Care and Landscape Design to the show. Entrepreneur Austin Hall recently purchased the Evanston-based company from Marc Wise, who founded it in 2007. As is the case in many of these stories, Wise started with one truck and a mission to prove that organic lawn care works.

I guess he was right. More than eleven years later, the company is going strong. They do

Design consultation
Landscape installation
Garden and landscape maintenance
Tree and shrub care
Snow removal

and, of course, organic lawn care. Austin Hall and Director of Community Engagement Robyn McMurray Hurtig join us this morning to talk about the future of Greenwise and, of course, provide our listeners with some natural lawn care tips.