The Farmers Dinner
Posted by Charles P. Rehberg
on Jun 20, 2016
On June 20th, Keith Sarasin, founder of The Farmers Dinner, addressed the Rotary Club of Nashua regarding The Farmers Dinner. Founded in 2012, The Farmers Dinner travels the country hosting dinners using local ingredients to educate people and support local farms. As a classically trained chef, Keith saw something wrong when apples from 2300 miles away were being served in restaurants and sold in markets when excellent apples were being grown just down the road.
To understand this better, Keith visited and worked on Farms where he heard stories of growing up on the farm. Over the last 4 years, Farmers Dinner has sourced food from 31 different farms, served 2000 people with everything [as much as possible] from within a 50 mile radius (some items like olive oil are not grown locally).
Have you ever noticed the taste of tomato off the vine vs. from the grocery store? A ripe tomato has approximately a one week shelf life. The tomatoes in the grocery store were picked when green and ripened with ethylene gas. Kimball Farm has 61 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. “Heirloom” means the seeds were unaltered in over 50 years.
As Keith puts it;
“Many farmers aren’t aware of the chefs who want their products. Many chef’s aren’t aware of the farms that sit just miles from where they are located. And many people aren’t aware of the amazing stories that lie in the soils of the hardworking farmers who till their fields.
That’s when it occurred to me, why not bring people, farmers and chefs together to educate, inspire and enjoy really good food. See, The Farmers Dinner does just that. You meet Local Farmers and Local Chefs in beautiful settings while enjoying fresh from the farm food.”
You can find out much more about The Farmers Dinner at https://www.facebook.com/TheFarmersDinner/ and at http://www.thefarmersdinner.com/.