Moveable Feast Receives $75K from KomenMD

We just received these pictures and wanted to share! In case you didn't hear about it, in the beginning of April, the Komen Maryland Affiliate granted us $75,000 to continue our services to breast cancer patients.

Here are some pictures of Ted accepting the check.

Grow your Starter Plants Now!

It may be nice and warm outside, but it's still not too late to get your starter plants growing! In fact, right now is the perfect time to do so.
We've already begun transplanting some of our bigger starter plants to our gardens. Here's what they looked like in the office (before the move)!

Herbs growing on the windowsill overlooking Milton Ave.

Yellow of Parma Onion!

Winningstadt Cabbage, soon to feed our clients.

Check out our website for more information on how to cultivate starter plants at home! Click here.

Weekly Health Tip: 200 Calorie Snacks

Got the nibbles at work? Need to snack while studying? Try these snack ideas from the American Dietetic Association - they are tasty, healthy, and best of all, are 200 calories or less.

1. A toaster waffle (like an Eggo!) topped with 1/2 cup of blueberries and 2 tablespoons of lowfat yogurt.
2. A cup of tomato soup with 5 whole-grain crackers.
3. A sliced apple spread with 1 tablespoon of nutty, delicious peanut butter.
4. A small (6-inch) flour tortilla stuffed with 1/4 cup of black beans and 2 tablespoons of fresh salsa.

IWantTheKit.org

According to the Baltimore Sun, around 50% of sexually active young people will get an STD by the time they are 25, yet few seek testing or treatment.

Now, a new program from Johns Hopkins University uses the anonymity of the internet to encourage young people to get tested.

This program, called "I Want The Kit" (iwantthekit.org) "supplies free in-home testing kits for 3 of the most commonly reported STDS" - gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis. It also utilizes social media to increase awareness about testing to youth in Maryland, DC, West Virginia, Illinois, Denver, and Philadelphia (check them out on Facebook).

Very cool!

Check them out at http://www.iwantthekit.org/.

FDA: Chain Restaurants Should Show Calorie Counts

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed a piece of legislation in the health care bill that would require chain restaurants to display calorie counts in their menus.

These menu-labeling requirements would be implemented in any chain restaurants that have 20 or more locations. They also apply to vending machine products whose labels are not clearly visible from outside the machine.

The FDA hopes that these requirements will deter consumers from purchasing those delicious fast-food french fries and burgers. Why? According to the USDA, in 2009, Americans spent 42% of their food budget on eating-out. And eating-out means more calories, fat, and cholesterol.

By 2012, the FDA estimates that calorie counts would be displayed at menus in approximately 280,000 separate establishments.

Many chain restaurants do make their calorie information available, but often on the packaging of the food item (for instance, on the wrapper). The FDA hopes that by printing calories plainly on menus, people will notice them as they are making their meal decision.

Exceptions still under debate are movie theaters (and other venues whose main product is not food), airplane food, and alcoholic beverages.

Here at Moveable Feast, we are glad that the FDA is pushing for transparency about calorie amounts! We support anything that helps Americans make wiser food choices.

Weekly Health Tip: Omega-3 Fatty Acids

According to the American Dietetic Association, one in three adults has some form of cardiovascular disease. One way to reduce your chances of heart disease is to eat more Omega-3 Fatty Acids.

Here are some tips from the ADA on incorporating these into your daily meals:

• Look for cooking oils that have omega-3 fat, such as:
• Canola Oil
• Soybean Oil
• Flaxseed Oil
• Walnut Oil
• Eat two 4-ounce portions of fatty fish each week, such as:
• Salmon
• Albacore Tuna
• Mackerel
• Sardines
• If you already have some heart disease, consider taking fish oil supplements.

Adapted from the ADA article "Heart-Healthy Cooking Tips"

Mt. Washington Tavern's Grilled Cheese Cook-Off Raises $1K

Aged gouda cheese. Portobello mushrooms. Buttery italian bread. Sauteed onions. Look at any pictures from the Mt. Washington Tavern's 1st Annual Grilled Cheese Cook-Off, and you'll know - if you weren't there, you missed out on the best grilled cheese sandwich of your life.

Sunday's sold-out event raised over a thousand dollars for Moveable Feast services. Professional chefs and home cooks reinvented the idea of the typical grilled cheese sandwich by using gourmet ingredients in unique ways. Likewise, Moveable Feast continues to reinvent charitable food service ideals by constantly improving our meals to make them tastier, more nutritious, more personalized, easier to heat up, and more client-friendly. What better way to raise money for our mission to FEED people, FIGHT disease, and FOSTER hope?

The winners were:

• Of the Professional Chef challenge: Kevin Miller of Widespread Concierge Services, who served up a tasty creation using 3 different aged cheeses on a brioche.
• Of the Home Cook challenge: Michelle Howell, who made a delicious vegetarian grilled cheese masterpiece.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the success of this event, and special thanks to Mt. Washington Tavern for choosing us as their charity beneficiary.

Photos credit: Jason A. Knauer, Jason Knauer Photography, www.jasonknauer.com

Grilled Cheese Today!

At last! Satisfy your cheesy cravings! Today is the long-awaited 1st Annual Grilled Cheese Cook-Off at Mt. Washington Tavern, one of our Dining Out for Life restaurants.

At 2:00PM, join Baltimore's famed celebrity chefs - including Chad Gauss of City Cafe in Mount Vernon, who was just voted "Baltimore's Best New Chef" by Baltimore Magazine - as they battle it out over the griddle. The home cook challenge will be just as exciting and satisfying to your stomach. 

Tickets have already sold out online. They will be sold for $10 at the door and are expected to run out rapidly, so get there early. One hundred percent of the ticket sales will be donated to Moveable Feast!

Lymph Node Surgery?

Some radical news from the laboratories of breast cancer research and treatment. 

A recent study of almost 900 women with breast cancer suggests that complete lymph node removal may not be necessary. 

If women meet certain criteria, surgically removing lymph nodes has no proven benefit. The patients in the study survived at the same rate regardless of whether or not their lymph nodes were completely removed. 

Many doctors now believe that chemotherapy, drugs, and radiation can fully kill the cancer in lymph nodes, thereby eliminating the need for surgery. 

And surgical removal of lymph nodes can have many negative side effects, including infection, loss of movement, abnormal sensations, and painful lymphedema. 

This discovery is being called "radical," "practice-changing," and a "big deal in the world of breast cancer." 

Of course, more research and study is required, but we're happy to hear that breast cancer patients may not need to go under the knife as often as we thought!

Weekly Health Tip: Bountiful Browns

Next time you visit the supermarket, keep an eye out for whites, tans, and browns as you browse the produce section. Fruits and vegetables of these colors have many health benefits.

According to the American Dietetic Association, "onions, garlic, and mushrooms may promote heart health and reduce cancer risks."

Fruits: bananas, brown pears, dates, and white peaches

Vegetables: cauliflower, mushrooms, onions, parsnips, turnips, white potatoes, and white corn

Brown pears

Parsnips

 

Starter Plants Growing Quickly

Here at the offices of Moveable Feast, we're growing starter plants. When they are big enough, they will be transplanted to our gardens. The plants will yield fruits and vegetables to feed our clients in our nutritious meals. 

Starter plants overlooking the view from Moveable Feast offices.

Starter herbs - one day to flavor chef Damon's meals for our clients!

Aji Crystal Pepper and Tequila Sunrise Pepper, both growing quickly.

Starter plant set-up in the office.

There are many ways to get involved with the Moveable Feast Garden Program. If you'd like to grow a starter plant in your home for Moveable Feast, please contact Sara at smcclean@mfeast.org. It's easy, cheap, and a fun way to help us!

Start of Season One!

As you know, Moveable Feast will be one of the organizations profiled in the current series Good Fellas of Baltimore, which airs on WBFF Fox 45 on Saturdays at 1:00PM. 

Check out this rough cut of the first episode, "The Chiosi Family." The episode beautifully sets up the rest of the season and catches you with a heartwarming story of a family stricken by a destructive fire in their homes. While this episode doesn't focus on Moveable Feast, keep an eye out for shots of the Moveable Feast offices, kitchens, and even our Executive Director Tom Bonderenko.

Good Fellas of Baltimore -- Episode 1: Up From The Ashes from Good Fellas of Baltimore on Vimeo.

The Good Fellas TV show is all about showing viewers how easy it is to get involved in their communities. The Good Fellas are just a bunch of regular Baltimore guys - with one defining characteristic. They take initiative to search out those in need, reach out to their colleagues and business partners, and achieve a solution.

Encouraging Research about Antabuse

Researchers at UCSF and at Johns Hopkins University, just down the road from Moveable Feast, are trying out something pretty interesting in their quest for an HIV/AIDS vaccine. 

The researchers are studying if Antabuse, a dependable and classical medication for alcoholism, can help to rid the body of the HIV virus.

Current drugs work by preventing the HIV virus from replicating in the bloodstream, causing it to die within a few hours.

But the HIV virus doesn't go away that easily. It also hides in the cells of the body, so that the drugs cannot find and kill it. These are called latent reservoirs of HIV. If patients stop using the treatment, the HIV will reactivate, come out of the cells into the bloodstream, and start producing life-threatening effects again.

Researchers think that Antabuse can help flush the HIV virus out of the latent reservoirs so that the drugs can find and kill it. Drugs similar to Antabuse have been shown to do this in test tubes, but not yet in the body. Antabuse was chosen because it has minimal side effects on patients and is regarded as very safe.

The researchers will be conducting a 1.5-year clinical trial, where Antabuse is added to patients's drug cocktail. 

Here at Moveable Feast, we hope that their results are promising!