Traverse City Events: The annual Pigstock TC dinner is doing more than just bringing great food to the public this year. Not only will Pigstock TC house some of Northern Michigan's best restaurant chefs for an incredible gourmet meal, they will also donate a portion of ticket proceeds from the dinner to a new local foods endeavor aimed at providing fresh produce to Northern Michigan school children called 10 Cents a Meal for School Kids and Farms.
This exciting new fundraising initiative is a joint project of the Michigan Land Use Institute and Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District. It will help interested area schools with tight school budgets put healthy food on the plates of Northern Michigan school children by providing an extra 10 cents a meal for the schools to purchase locally grown fruits and vegetables, benefiting both the kids and the local farm economy. With enough donations, this farm to school program to build a 10 Cents a Meal pilot program could be in place this spring.
Cherry Capital Foods, a local foods distribution company and long-time sponsor of Michigan Land Use Institute's Taste the Local Difference, is graciously helping to kick off this fundraising campaign during its annual Pigstock event for professional and serious home chefs. The public is invited to a seven-course meal prepared by Northern Michigan restaurant chefs on October 23, 2012 at Hagerty Center in Traverse City, and Cherry Capital will donate $10 of every $75 ticket sold toward the program.
Featured chefs include: Myles Anton from Trattoria Stella, Paul Olson from Mission Table, Guillaume Hazaël-Massieux from Restaurant La Bécasse and Bistro Foufou, Eric Patterson from The Cooks’ House, Fred Laughlin from The Great Lakes Culinary Instutite, Coburn McNaughton from The Hagerty Center and John Dayton from Black Star Farms.
Each chef will prepare a small plate course “loosely inspired” by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman’s books, including their latest book, Salumi: The Craft of Italian Dry Curing. Polcyn and Ruhlman will be featured during the dinner where they will be interviewed, by Peter Payette from Interlochen Public Radio.
To order your Pigstock TC dinner tickets, click here.
For more ways to support the 10 Cents a Meal program, contact Diane Conners at diane@mlui.org.