"blue hill" news and stories

On one of the first gorgeous Saturdays of the spring, did Brooklyn foodies run to the park for picnic lunches or line the bars for springy cocktails?

Sure, some of 'em did. But 3,000 others, according to organizers, crammed the multicolored '70s-esque hallways of John Jay High School, aka P.S. 321, for a day of workshops, eats, panels and vendors called the Brooklyn Food Conference, promoting what a bright-yellow pamphlet trumpeted as "Local Action for Global Change."

Food world celebs roaming the halls included chef Dan Barber, speaker and TV host Anna Lappé and author-activist Raj Patel (whose classroom was so stuffed a volunteer had to turn fans away). Some attendees, all of whom attended for free, were a bit starry-eyed over certain sustainably-minded speakers. About Patel, local CSA organizer Meredith Modzelewski sighed, "I'm in love with him now."

Find out more and see photos after the jump.

TIME magazine recently featured a piece called "The Farm-to-Table Fetish," which profiles chef Dan Barber, of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and the movement that he and the restaurant/farm have come to embody. TIME's John Cloud follows Barber (right) out into the fields that produce much of the produce and meat that appear on Stone Barns' menu. One interesting detail is that the turkeys and Cornish chickens raised at Blue Hill are the same breast-heavy, fast-maturing varieties used by large-scale producers like Perdue. The birds raised at Blue Hill are pastured on grasses, however, as opposed to being penned and raised on grain and other feed. All in all, it's a pretty idyllic profile.