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A farm-to-table dinner comes to life

The Aspen TREE Free community meal tomorrow tonight is aimed to help raise awareness about where your food comes from, and what types you are putting in your body. But before you get to the prepared plates, you have to first gather and prepare the food.

 

Reporters often find themselves in odd places. For example, in an industrial refrigerator eating an apple with caterer, Francis Stuckens.

 

And it was a Colorado apple. Smaller than the ones in the grocery store because they were picked for their holistic value. Not just their looks, size and shape. Their value as healthy, local fruits. That’s the entire goal of the free community meal that Aspen TREE is putting on tomorrow night.

 

Francis has been involved in preparing these dinners for about five years now. From when they were in the high school cafeteria, to their new location in the Hotel Jerome. He loves the effort of trying to find food that is healthy, and is environmentally conscious. Sometimes, finding it poses a challenge.

 

“Well can I just grab some curry powder off the shelf?" says Stuckens. "No, it has to be locally sourced. The closest thing we could get was fennel..and garlic.”

 

He had to experiment with recipes until the volunteers helping to cook for the event came up with something sustainable, and delicious.

 

What’s on the menu? A chutney with onions and apples. 150 pounds of them. Well, maybe a little less now that I’ve sampled the batch. That will be served with poultry. Either turkey, duck or chicken.

 

And no healthy dinner would be complete without braised kale and other greens.

 

Lots of chopping, cutting, tossing, ripping and marinating has to go into preparing a meal for about a 1,000 people. And according to Francis, there is a lot of room to make the country a healthier place.

 

“There’s definitely an industry to be created and exploited here, and it’s for the benefit of everyone that eats."