I am especially appreciative of the time, money, effort and materials contributed by our sponsors and Sourcerers in order to participate. Their passion and enthusiasm made the event the success it was, and it was clear that the kids and families who attended the event got a chance to experience something very wonderful and unique.

The event exceeded our wildest expectations, allowing kids and their families an intimate understanding of food through the fabulous range of hands-on activities that were the fruit of our collaborations. Looking out over the crowd, it was clear that they were completely immersed in what they were doing, and stayed that way the entire day.

From the Google side, the event was considered to be a great success! The Google Culinary team contributed over 150 volunteers to the event and very much enjoyed getting to work with all of you. We were especially appreciative of the “model sourcerers” who contributed both their time and their products to the event. A special shout out goes to:

• Barefoot Coffee Roasters
• Bassian Farms
• Charles Chocolates
• Clean Fish
• Earl’s Organic Produce
• Greenleaf Produce
• Interactive Parenting Media
• Kaiser Permanente
• King of Mushrooms
• Monterey Bay Aquarium
• Monterey Fish
• Nick Sciabica & Sons
• Obentec
• Planet Organics
• Second Harvest Food Bank
• 4H Youth Development
• Straus Family Creamery
• Sunset Scavenger

We’d also like to thank ALL of you for contributing the time and effort that it took to make our dream-event a reality. Here at Google, the culinary team is used to feeding large crowds for all sorts of reasons - from everyday lunch to large-scale celebrations and fundraisers.

This event was different, though.

At DooF-a-Palooza, the chefs were not simply the help, but the main attraction, along with all of you!

That made the work all that more enjoyable and the end result was tangibly magical.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!

We hope to see you all again at the next DooF-a-Palooza.

Mike, Mirit and the entire DooF-a-Palooza Team

(Download the DooF-a-Palooza 2008 Digest)

DooF-a-Palooza was an amazing success, from this humble photographer’s eye.

There was so much to see, and everywhere I looked, adults and children alike were engrossed in various activities presented by the numerous “Sourcerers” on hand, as well as trying out all the scrumptious food!

There was a huge lounge area where visitors saw videos of themselves taken around the campus in what must have been minutes (or maybe 10’s of minutes) before.

In one of the campus’s cafe was a makeshift studio, where celebrity chef Joey Altman held his Kitchen Sink Cook Off, a friendly competition between teams of kids to see which team put together the best tasting pasta salad — all caught on video and recorded onto DVD for the participants.  How cool was that!

Here are some teaser photos from the day:

See the full set of photos in our Photo Gallery

Things are coming together quickly.

Please note that there will be NO physical tickets if you are registering online. Simply come to the will-call area with your name (and ID), and you should be good to go.

We’re very excited about what we’ve cooked up, and hope you will be as well!

See you all then!

DooF-a-Palooza is nearly upon us. The fact that it is ‘a thing’ that has meaning to people is one of the more exciting aspects of our development and, in many ways, a crucial catalyst to the success of the DooF television show. But what is DooF-a-Palooza and why has it caught on so so fast?

A Bit of History

A fortuitous introduction to Mirit Cohen (Thanks, Barry!) — one of the chefs in Google’s amazing employee food service program and a force of nature in her own right — led to an invitation to do a fundraising event on the Google campus last year. This became our First Annual DooF-a-Palooza.

It seemed our mission to share the magic of good food with children struck a chord with Google’s own commitment to sustainable food practices. We thought, why not invite food purveyors to come up with activities that enable children and adults to participate in and understand how they create their very special food products? Add a dash of Google magic and the opportunity to participate in the creation of DooF and you’ve got DooF-a-Palooza.

DooF-a-Palooza Facts

• Kids are much more willing to try different foods when they make them themselves
• Many adults (including me) have no idea how much of what we eat gets here
• A Sourcerer is someone who creates a fun hands-on activity that involves kids in the process of bringing good food from source to table
• DooF-a-Palooza activities involve a ‘making’ component and an ‘eating’ component
• DooF-a-Palooza activites underscore the unique nature of what our Sourcerers do
• DooF-a-Palooza will include nearly forty hands-on activities, each one paired with one of Google’s amazing cafes
• The DooF-a-Palooza stage will include live music, performance, a raffle and our now-famous food backwards spelling bee
• DooF-a-Palooza will also feature a roving DooF film crew and the opportunity to audition for DooF by telling a funny food story

Provisional List of Sourcerer Activities

• Apron Strings — Around the World to Vietnam
• Bassian Farms — “Best Burgers and Shakes”
• Blue Moon Organics — Berry Sampling & Sustainability
• Brown Sugar Kitchen — Healthy ‘Down Home’ Waffles
• Charles Chocolates — Chocolate Immersion
• Calfia Cafe & Market a Go Go — Book signings and Food Fun
• Chronicle Books — Author Signings
• CleanFish — Digging for Shrimp and Protecting the Ocean Floor
• DooF — Food Backwards Foragers Treasure Hunt
• Sunset Scavenger — Stinky Trash to Black Gold
• Earls Organic Produce — How to Cut Fruit and How to Choose Ripe Fruit
• Eat See India — Mix Your Own Bhelpuri Street Snacks in a Cone
• Google Master Gardener — Planting Demonstration and “H2O Infusion”
• Google Kitchen Tour
• Hippy Gourmet TV — Solar Baked Cookies
• Interactive Parenting Media — Food Face Painting
• Joey Altman — Kitchen Sink Cook Off
• Julia Myall “Cook it in a Cup” Potato baskets
• Kaiser Permanente — Mini-Farmer’s Market
• ’The Best Me’ stage performance
• King of Mushrooms — Informative Booth
• Kitchen on Fire — Crazy Food Science
• Lemon Ladies Orchard — When life gives you Lemons!
• Monterey Bay Aquarium — Seafood Watch
• Monterey Fish — Squishy Squid
• Nick Sciabica & Sons — What’s in the Olive Oil
• Obentec — Make Your Own Pretend Lunch
• Palo Alto Creamery — Build Your Own Sandwich
• Petit Appetit — Personalized Trail Mix
• Planet Organics — Organic Trivia Basketball
• Revolution Foods — Custom Quesadillas
• Slide Ranch — Awaken the Senses
• Straus Family Creamery — Making Butter by Kickin’ It (in a soccer ball)
• Urban Village Farmers’ Market Association — Stone Fruit Bingo
• Veritable Vegetable — “The Root Grow Down and the Plants Grow Up!”
• VW Nutrition — What Would Your Favorite Super Hero Eat for Breakfast?
• What’s Cooking and The Toddler Cafe — Happy Trails Mix – For You & Our Planet

Hope to see you there!

Registration: www.foodbackwards.com/doof-a-palooza/2008/

Check them out!

• DooF-a-Palooza Radio Spot
• DooF-a-Palooza Radio Spot (Spanish version)

We’re pleased to announce that our own media blitz for DooF-a-Palooza began today with ads in the the June Edition of Bay Area Parents. Please check out the latest issue and help spread the word.

Teaser in the DooFLetter

For those of you who are subscribed to our “DooFLetter”, you should have received a nifty-looking email teaser that looked like this:

The DooF-a-Palooza Landing Page (updated)

And, of course, for the rest of you who have subscribed to the Glob (this blog) itself in an RSS reader, well, I just want to say that registration has officially begun.

Check out the DooF-a-Palooza landing page at:

www.foodbackwards.com/doof-a-palooza/2008

where you can

• read more about some of the key events we have lined up so far
• purchase tickets
• volunteer
• see some of our sponsors

We hope you’re as excited about DooF-a-Palooza as we are.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

For info and updates go to:

http://www.foodbackwards.com/doof-a-palooza/2008/

Hope to see you there!

“Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” features the commentary of Dr. Anthony Iton, who is public health director for Alameda County. One of the key points in the documentary is that health, and life expectancy, is directly correlated with social circumstances. And it’s not just a matter of health care. One of the unusual things about Dr. Iton is his willingness to look at factors such as access to amenities and physical environment in his efforts to address the health of his constituents. Dr. Iton exemplifies an ability to address problems that appear insurmountable with fresh solutions that combine intervention with the natural motivation of people to better their own lives.

Dr. Iton and DooF

We first worked with Dr. Iton and his agency four years ago, in the early stages of DooF. He immediately supported the idea that a television show that got kids excited about good food could help mitigate the alarming levels of obesity he and other public health officials were seeing in underserved communities.

Children from these areas get most of their information about food from ads on television and have less access to stores that sell fresh, healthy food than children from better-off areas. Our first project with Alameda County was a school-intervention with second graders in the Oakland Unified School District.

The program combined the first DooF DVDs with direct participation in the creation of healthy snacks. Those DVDs eventually laid the groundwork for a DooF-inspired curriculum of food education for children that will accompany our television show.

Healthy Food Education

Many programs have brought healthy food to classrooms, but the results have been mixed. The difference, we believe, comes in combining the healthy food with an exciting narrative that allows children make their own associations. In the rapid transformation that Americans have experienced through industrialized society, we’ve lost our connection to the kinds of narratives that involve bringing food from source to table.

Health of Recent Immigrants

One of the alarming findings outlined by Dr. Iton in the documentary is that the most recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America, although poorer than those who have been in the country longer, are actually healthier. It turns out their reliance on a more traditional diet, and less fast food, has a lot to do with it. Recent scientific research, and writers like Michael Pollan, supports this conclusion.

The early support of Dr. Iton and the Alameda County Department of Public Health has been crucial in enabling DooF to expand its efforts to bring the story of good food to children. DooF celebrates the foods and practices of traditional cultures and the new wave of food purveyors that are inspired by them. When we exclude children from the excitement and fun involved in that process, we limit their potential for good health and a longer life.

For more information:

• see the Chronicle article on the documentary
• Documentary website - Unnatural Causes
• and check your local listings for show times

This Spring

• Pushing Towards Production - Public television stations around the country have expressed their enthusiastic support for the show and we’re moving toward the production of our first thirteen episodes this spring.
• Conversations with Food Experts - Also this spring, we’ll be conducting a series of conversations in the media with well-known food experts to fine-tune our message to kids.

This Summer

• DooF-a-Palooza - We’ll be collaborating again with Google on our second annual DooF-a-Palooza event at their Headquarters in Mountain View, a high profile extravaganza of hands-on food demonstrations attended this past Fall by over a thousand paid guests, including many of you. Stay tuned for more info.

New Way to Donate to DooF

• Tax-Deductible Donations - We’ve secured a new way to make a tax-deductible donation to DooF through our fiscal sponsor, the Center For Independent Documentary. Just click the link below and make sure you type “DooF” in the box where it asks for a designation.

http://www.networkforgood.org/pca/Badge.aspx?BadgeId=110493

Thanks so much for believing in us. See you on the air.

Summers during my Youth

During the school year we lived in Los Angeles, but every June we would pack up the Studebaker and later—as our family expanded—the Chevy station wagon, and drive the 400 miles up Highway 99. When we stepped out of the car at my grandparents’ house, and I could smell the red earth and the tarweed, I always felt at home.

Things to Do on the Farm

It was a place where I never lacked anything, not food, nor companionship—and certainly not things to do.

• Chores - My uncle and grandpa were in charge of the fruit orchards, the main occupation of the farm. But my grandma, mom and us kids took care of a lot of the rest. There were chickens to feed, eggs to collect, cattle to tend and weeds to hoe.
• Planting - We planted a huge vegetable garden and spent much of the summer canning corn, beans, tomatoes and other things that would be needed for the winter.
• Canning - The orchards provided mountains of cull fruit that we turned into gorgeous jars of applesauce, peaches, pears and apricots.

Sometimes, late in the afternoon when our chores were done, my older brother and I had time to hike down to the creek and try our luck catching the flashy and elusive rainbow trout.

Times in the Kitchen

The best times for me were in the kitchen, helping with the daily cooking, especially preparing the main meal, our midday dinner. I dutifully peeled potatoes, shucked corn and washed greens. But I really wanted to make desserts. Every once in a while my mom or grandma would take the time to teach me. Pies were my specialty. In the farm kitchen I learned to make first-rate pie dough, working quickly with a light touch and ice water to make sure it turned out tender and flaky. Lemon meringue was my masterpiece.

Somehow we never had to worry about healthy eating or whether we were getting our vitamins or enough exercise. The life of the farm took care of all that. When we went back to the city in the fall I would always ask my friends about their exotic trips to summer camp or family vacations. I never thought of our trip to the farm as a vacation; it was just part of everyday life.

The Call of DooF

My experience with food and togetherness taught me respect for the land and the people around me. And while most kids do not have a farm to come home to, by cooking with their families, and understanding that real, live people grow their food, they can discover practices and values to sustain them throughout their lives.

Shortly before I left Chez Panisse to move back to the farm, I heard about DooF. I couldn’t ignore the invitation to get involved. Food backwards, they said.

It seems more like food forward to me.