Cooking up Change: What's New This Year?

Cooking up Change, HSC's annual benefit and healthy cooking contest, is tomorrow!


Several years ago, HSC began to include a spotlight on local high school students studying culinary arts at our annual benefit; now, that spotlight has evolved to become an exciting culinary competition in which teams of very talented young chefs from 15 public high schools across the city compete to create healthy, tasty school meals that meet nutrition standards on a tight budget. Their winning meals are served across the city and beyond, highlighting the power of student engagement in healthy change and the need for reform in our school food system.

Cooking up Change is also a celebration, a time to connect with others who care about food, our environment and children's health.

Every year, it seems that Cooking up Change becomes even more exciting. So what's new this year?

• Frozen local produce! This year for the first time, student teams will incorporate local produce in the school meals they create. This may surprise some who know that the students are limited to ordering their food from the same ingredient lists available to their school cafeteria managers. But it's true: the student chefs, like the food service managers in their schools, now have access to locally-grown produce to include in their school meals. The fruits and vegetables, all grown within 150 miles of Chicago, are flash-frozen within 48 hours of their harvest, locking in vital nutrients and -- perhaps just as important to a chef -- the unique great flavor of freshly-picked, locally-grown food. The produce is part of Cooking up Change Gold sponsor Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality's frozen local program.  Through this program, Chartwells-Thompson provides local produce for lunch in all Chicago Public Schools several days a week. Now the teams of student chefs at Cooking up Change will have access to this tasty, bright produce for their entries in the culinary competition!

• Cookie-preneur award! Successful bakers know that it takes more than flavor to make a cookie successful. A cookie that stands apart from the crowd in a bakery or store shelf has to look appealing, stand up to transportation without crumbling, have a reasonable shelf life -- it even needs a descriptive, enticing name. Kenny Muncic, owner of Cookie-preneur sponsor Little Miss Muffin Bakery, will consider these characteristics and more as he selects this year's Cookie-preneur winners from among all the student teams' healthy cookies. Little Miss Muffin will be prepared to manufacture the winning cookie and pitch it to wholesale customers to be sold in stores across Chicago.

• Elevated national profile! This year, all eyes are on Cooking up Change! The students from last year's winning team traveled to Washington, DC to prepare their meal with Sam Kass, chef to the Obama family, at a briefing on the future of school food. On the same day, their meal was served to more than 40,000 students nationwide and in the House of Representatives cafeteria. The young chefs and their fabulous meal garnered the attention of The Washington Post, CNN News, CNN.com, Mindful Metropolis and the popular blog Obama Foodorama. This year, the Cooking up Change judging panel includes influential leaders such as David Lazarus, senior advisor to the Secretary of the USDA. The meals that the students create will be part of a national dialogue on the future of school food, particularly as part of HSC’s advocacy for a strong reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, the federal legislation that provides funding and guidelines for school meals.

We're thrilled about these exciting additions to the healthy cooking contest and can't wait to try the student's creations on Thursday!

You can learn more online at www.cookingupchange.org.