Increasing Fresh Foods Available to Students

Last Saturday, October 2, a dozen local volunteers gathered to celebrate Dover's annual Apple Harvest Day in a unique way--making apple sauce to ensure the city's students could enjoy this favorite fall treat. Volunteers from the Dover foodservice team, Slow Food UNH, and UNH's EcoGastronomy program peeled, sliced, and cooked their way through nine bushels of apples donated by local orchards and retailers, yielding upwards of 25 gallons of apple sauce. While some volunteers were seasoned apple sauce makers, others were learning for the first time how to preserve and enjoy their surplus produce, making it a beneficial project for the volunteers as well as the students. The apple sauce in question will be available to students across the Dover school district as part of the district's school lunch program in the coming weeks. This project, which was organized with the help of EcoGastronomy and the Dover foodservice team, is the first in a series of projects aimed at increasing the amount and variety of fresh foods available to students and we hope to see these projects blossom and expand in the coming months.
Thank you as well to our area apple donors: Saunders Produce, Applecrest Farm, Butternut Farm, and Philbrick's Fresh Market!

Post contributed by Matt Benham.