youth farm and market project

This past Sunday night, if you had walked into the ballroom on the third-floor of Solera Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, the first thing you would have seen was meat. Four kinds of meat, to be precise – coppa, dry cured ham, black-pepper sausage, and fennel sausage – all made by Mike Phillips of Three Sons Butchers in Northeast Minneapolis. An entire table of meat, enough to feed the several hundred people who had turned out for the second-annual Farm in the Cities benefit dinner. And after the meat, the next thing you would have seen would have been the chefs, many decked out in their whites, ringing the table and joking around as they arranged the twenty-something butcher boards of charcuterie.

This weekend, a collection of all-star Twin Cities chefs and farmers will be coming together for a good cause. Spearheaded by Jorge Guzman, the executive chef at Solera Restaurant, the second-annual Farm in the Cities event highlights the true meaning of farm-to-table dining, all while benefiting a good cause.

When the folks at Simple, Good, and Tasty decided to host our first annual pig roast and potluck last year, we weren’t at all that sure of what to expect. Would anyone come eat with us? Would people bring potluck dishes that reflected our values, or boxes of Twinkies? Would we have enough food?

This year we’re a little bit wiser, and we feel a little bit more confident that we know what to expect. But what about you, dear readers? Do you know what to expect? This information should help.

Why Are We Having a Pig Roast and Potluck?

Youth Farm and Market Project, a Twin Cities community treasure since 1995, has lofty goals. These include:

The program focuses on kids ages 9 - 18, and uses a hands on approach to urban agriculture and gardening to teach life lessons. Started in 1995, the Youth Farm program now teaches more than 500 Twin Cities youth every single year.