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!