PLEASE READ - Membership Equity Drive Event

[Mary]

We have talked about hosting a film festival and food tasting for this
event. I know, many of you are asking - Why a Food Tasting in April
before all the fresh products are available. I'll attempt to explain
my logic here. We want the co-op to be a year-round market and there
are many skeptics out there that say "What can you buy in the winter -
especially if they haven't been to the Northway Mall and seen the
great root veg's (and other products) that Alex brings each week. My
original idea was to ask the potential producers to dig into their
freezers and root cellars and see what they have that they can put
together a dish with. I was going to try and find a facility that had
a commercial kitchen and ask them to bring their donation down early
and cook it in the commercial kitchen and then stand at a table and
serve "tastings" to the public. I realize now that I'm asking them to
give up not only their product but their time for an entire day.

A suggestion was made to check out hiring a caterer and only asking
the producers to donate the ingredients to make a large or family/
group size of their favorite "winter-time" recipe; along with the
recipe card, and have someone else prepare it. It can be a soup,
stew, egg dish, fruit dish, or any combination. Then the producers
could come to the event and introduce themselves and maybe tell a
little about their farms.

We really need a lot of help pulling this together, starting with the
location. I've contacted a few places but it really depends on what
and how we are going to make our presentation. Klaus with Buy Alaska
has offered to help sponsor the event but I need some details to
present to him.

Please respond to this discussion with your suggestions and whether
you (as a producer or helper) are willing to participate in this
event.

We will be discussing the results of this posting at the next meeting
- this Thursday, 03/17/11 - 6:00pm at the Cooperative Extension - and
hopefully finalizing plans.

If you know of any place here in Anchorage that is big enough to host
a public event (at minimal or no cost), please include that
information too.

Thanks to everyone for your contributions.

[M Rooney]

I'm a farmer that wants to contribute this event -

Maybe it is too much to ask for people's time, but I was imagining
booths set up with producers offering their products. I'd be willing
to spend the time to prepare my own product for this. I think that the
face-time with producers is an important aspect of the event.