“86 Hunger” with top Chicago chefs, winery turns garbage into great taste

Six Chicago chefs—including Rick Bayless—are teaming with with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to take hunger off the menu. You can join them. San Francisco’s tough composting laws are actually helping restaurants and winemakers.

The restaurant business is full of colorful terms. You only have to watch Hell’s Kitchen to hear some of the more colorful ones. Well, or hang around in my kitchen when things start to go wrong. But to “86” something lets the entire kitchen and restaurant staff know that a menu item is no longer available.

The Greater Chicago Food Depository wants to 86 Hunger: Take Hunger Off the Menu. To do it, they’re teaming up with six Chicago restaurants for a series of dinners in intimate settings, now through November 18. The series of dinners is being launched in a year when 35 percent more Chicagoans are turning to the Food Depository and its network of pantries, soup kitchens and shelters. Funds raised will benefit the Food Depository, which serves 500,000 men, women and children in Cook County every year.

Chef Rick Bayless kicks things off with a VIP event at his Frontera Grill on Wednesday, October 21. Dinner includes a visit to his home garden and a live cooking demonstration in the restaurant’s test kitchen. VIP tickets for the Frontera Grill dinner are $1,250 and include entry to four other dinners. Tickets for individual dinners are $150, and all proceeds benefit the Food Depository. Other participating restaurants include Red Light, Custom House, West Town Tavern, BOKA and Restaurant Michael. Seating is limited to about 100 attendees at each event. Information and tickets are available at www.lets86hunger.org.

The Greater Chicago Food Depository, Chicago’s food bank, is a nonprofit food distribution and training center providing food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in our community. Last year, they distributed 46 million pounds of nonperishable food and fresh produce, dairy products and meat—the equivalent of 95,000 meals every day. Further, their programs and services address the root causes of hunger. For more information, visit the Greater Chicago Food Depository website or call 773-247-FOOD.

San Francisco turns garbage into compost, great for the planet and for wine

News media just hate good news. San Francisco has passed what the NBC Nightly News called “the most aggressive composting law in the country.” Residents and businesses must put their food waste into separate bins; this organic waste is then composted and sold. One buyer of the compost is Kathleen Inman of Inman Family Wines. According to their website, the winery uses “only organic fertilizers in the vineyard. Among these is ‘Four-Course Compost,’ so named because it derives from table scraps discarded by high-end San Francisco restaurants and hotels.” Inman says her vines are thriving on it, receiving the right “balance of the minerals and nutrients needed to produce healthy grapes.”

This unprecedented recycling program has other benefits too. It keeps organic material out of landfills where it would cause methane gases that contribute to global warming. One restaurant owner has had his garbage collection bills reduced by $14,000. And it’s all part of a plan by San Francisco to have zero waste going to landfills in 10 years.

All this good news makes you wonder why NBC felt it necessary to gin up some controversy in this report. Do they really think we can’t take straight good news? I think we can. Watch this uplifting story and ignore the inane blather.