A COMMUNITY COOKS FEATURING MANY OF DALLAS’ ACCLAIMED CHEFS AND THEIR RECIPES OF FINE ORGANIC INGREDIENTS TO BE HOSTED ON APRIL 11 AT WE OVER ME FARM AT PAUL QUINN COLLEGE
DALLAS February 15, 2013 Bringing many of North Texas’ leading and premier culinary talent together to cook their signature recipes with some of the finest locally grown organic ingredients, A Community Cooks will be hosted for a third year at the WE Over Me Farm at Paul Quinn College. This year’s event will take place on Thursday, April 11 at 6 p.m.
The event features an open-air, springtime grand tasting experience at WE Over Me Farm, with acclaimed culinary leaders serving everyone food from their pop-up kitchens, and providing an immersion into the wild fire energy of the organic business that began in 2009. The WE Over Me Farm is on what was once a football field for Paul Quinn College.
Chef participants who will be cooking in pop-up kitchens on the former football sidelines include: Randall Copeland, AVA; Graham Dodds, Central 214; Jason Ferraro, Hibiscus; Jeff Harris, Bolsa; Chad Houser, Café Momentum; Orazio LaManna, Legends Hospitality/Dallas Cowboys Stadium; Dan Landsberg, Dragonfly; Jason Maddy, Oak; Janice Provost, Parigi; Anastacia Quiñones, Komali; Jim Severson, Sevy’s; Nathan Tate, Boulevardier; and Mark Wootton, Garden Café.
Other participating restaurants are FT33 and The Grape, with more Chef participant announcements in the coming weeks.
The menu for the event will include recipes of seasonal vegetables straight from the field, complemented by wine, beer, and farm-inspired specialty cocktails.
A Community Cooks attendees will also enjoy live entertainment, to be announced.
Tickets for the event are $75 per person. To purchase tickets, visit http://www.prekindle.com/venue/paulquinn. For more information, visit http://www.facebook.com/PQCACommunityCooks and www.weovermefarm.com.
Building a Community Connection
The WE Over Me Farm is on what was once a football field for Paul Quinn College and started in 2009 in an effort to address the food desert issue of Southern Dallas. A food desert, generally defined as any area with a high poverty rate and low access to affordable and healthy food, continues to exist in area surrounding Paul Quinn College and the Highland Hills neighborhood. The nearest grocery store is approximately four miles from the campus. When coupled with the transportation issues faced by low income neighborhoods, this results in significantly limited access to healthy food for the surrounding community. The WE Over Me Farm at Paul Quinn College (“The Farm”) is one solution.
The WE Over Me Farm features a greenhouse, donated and constructed by the Associate Leadership Council (ALC) of The Real Estate Council of Dallas. With this addition, the Farm can now harvest seeds from each season’s crop supply and grow plants from these seeds in the greenhouse in the colder winter months, leading to more abundant production in year-round growing seasons. PQC estimates that by adding the greenhouse, The Farm can produce three times as much food, therefore helping to sell more produce to the surrounding community and local restaurants.
The ALC also upgraded the irrigation system, allowing the Farm to be less wasteful by the use of a drip-irrigation system, eliminating hand-watering. A renovation of the storage/point of sale structure serves to be more storage efficient for The Farm workers and to allow for refrigeration of crops. Additionally, the former bleachers were removed and additional planter boxes were installed to provide substantially more production space.
ALC selected the WE Over Me Farm as its Legacy Project because The Farm will be improving the quality of life of all citizens of PQC and the surrounding communities that are affected by the food desert crisis.
About WE Over Me Farm
The WE Over Me Farm at Paul Quinn College is a dynamic and innovative project. The primary goals:
* Address the lack of affordable, healthy food options available to economically depressed areas in the City of Dallas. * Create a replicable model for achieving sustainable urban re-development built around providing safe food options to economically depressed communities. * Create a facility that will deliver preventative health care (that focuses on nutrition and exercise) to the underserved community surrounding the College.
Paul Quinn College’s WE Over Me Farm (pictured above) is providing beautiful, flavorful organic produce to the restaurant and dining industry through the work of students who learn an appreciation for horticulture and nutrition from carefully grown food.
Organic produce grown at WE Over Me Farm includes spinach, black Spanish radishes, watermelon radishes, arugula, lettuces, herbs and more. Over the past three years, the farm has produced over 10,000 pounds of food.
The Farm is located on the two acres of campus that at one time housed the College football program. The produce feeds students on the campus, restaurant-goers in Dallas, the Highland Hills/Paul Quinn College Community and young people from the southern sector of Dallas.
In addition to the food production, the College is building a Social Entrepreneurship curriculum around the Farm and using it as an agricultural lab. Students at the College will do everything from planting and harvesting crops to managing the business operation to running the PQC Farmers’ Market.
The WE Over Me Farm at Paul Quinn College is just another example of the difference a Paul Quinn education will make in a student’s life and in the community.
3837 Simpson Stuart Road, Dallas, TX 75241
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For more information, contact:
Fran Gallagher (A Community Cooks PR Committee Member and Volunteer) Praestar Public Relations fran@praestarpr.com 214-762-6193
Elizabeth Wattley
Director of Servant Leadership
Paul Quinn College ewattley@pqc.edu 214-379-5532