By Analiese Paik

Well, it’s about time. How many years have we watched the site adjacent to Home Depot that once was home to the Handy & Harman metals-processing factory being remediated and negotiated over in preparation for the construction of a Whole Foods Market? I think my son was in the toddler truck phase because we’d park and watch the huge vacuums on the back of hazardous waste management trucks suck up the contaminated ground water to clean it up off site. He’s now reading The Hardy Boys.

Don't miss these cooking demos with James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur and social entrepreneur Michel Nischan, who is the founder & CEO of Wholesome Wave.

Let’s shake off the wait with a party. Pack your $10 coupon flyer and head over on Friday, June 3, for the opening day festivities which begin at 8:30 am with a bread breaking ceremony. Be sure to make your way to the Cooking Fairfield department located smack in the middle of the bulk aisle at 11:30 or 5:00 for cooking demos with James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur, and  founder and CEO of Wholesome Wave, Michel Nischan. At both 1:00 and 6:15 Nischan will be signing his latest cookbook, Sustainably Delicious, which includes seasonal recipes from and inspired by his restaurant, the Dressing Room, in Westport.

Today I was treated, along with many others from the local media, to lunch from the Whole Foods food truck and an insider’s tour of the store. There are many wonderful surprises here that will delight you. I call them my Top 10 Reasons to Love Whole Foods Market Fairfield. Here they are:

1) 5% of opening day sales benefit Michel’s Nischan’s Wholesome Wave foundation, an organization succeeding in making fresh fruit and vegetables both accessible and affordable to underserved populations throughout the nation. This is a fantastic opportunity to give generously which costs you nothing.

2) Three full-time food educators dedicated to teaching shoppers about healthy eating: Cooking Coach Michelle Ryan, located in the bulk aisle at the Cooking Fairfield in-store cooking department, the first of its kind in the area; Healthy Eating Specialist Jill McKinnesss located across from Cooking Fairfield in the bulk aisle, who is dedicated to helping guide shoppers with special dietary needs to appropriate products; and Culinary Demo Specialist Jeffrey Sherman who will be stationed throughout the store demonstrating a wide variety of products and holding adult and children’s cooking classes.

Cooking Fairfield is an educational cooking department located in the bulk aisle where you will find Cooking Coach Michelle Ryan between 11 am and 7 pm 5 days a week.

Cooking Coach Michelle Ryan and Team Leader Nate Beaudry, who is coming over from the Milford store.

3) The first Whole Foods Market in the Northeast to have partnered with Amanda Hesser’s social media food hub, Food 52, to “create online resources for people to get back in the kitchen cooking” according to Hesser. Hesser spoke at today’s event about the rich online experience available to registered users on the Food 52 site her team built for the Whole Foods Market Fairifeld community, http://fairfield.wholefoodsmarketcooking.com, which goes live on Friday morning. Users will be able to continue to interact with Cooking Coach Michelle Ryan, but they’ll also have the opportunity to dialog and share recipes and food intelligence with others. Every two weeks Whole Foods Market Fairfield will hold a recipe contest on the site, and winners will receive gift certificates or win store merchandise.

4) More bulk items than any other store (think varieties of rice and beans you’ve never heard of, but taste great).

5) Fresh mozzarella made in-store from Hudson Valley milk curd each Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

6) Farmstand Fishery, an outdoor fish market that cuts your seafood to order.

Meat carries a 5 Step Animal Welfare Rating seal from the Global Animal Partnership

Local meat is sourced from family farms within a 100 mile radius.

7) Local (tri-state area) and sustainably raised meat, poultry, and seafood. Meat carries a 5 Step Animal Welfare Rating seal from the Global Animal Partnership and wild seafood carries a green, yellow or red sustainability rating created by partners Blue Ocean Institute and Monterey Bay Aquarium.

8) The Whole Foods Market food truck which will be making regular and pop-up stops in town, including the Greenfield Hill farmers’ market, where they will demo recipes made with food from farm vendors.

9) An upcoming farm-to-table prepared foods program (details TBA).

10) Did I mention the free adult and kids’ cooking classes? Okay, how about the vegan salad bar?

Big Bonus: All 365 Everyday Value products are GMO free and many other products carry the Non-GMO Project Verified seal, the sole organization providing independent verification of testing of GM contamination in products in the U.S. and Canada.

Follow our Tweets (@GreenFoodGal) for the Whole Foods Market food truck's daily location around town, including the Greenfield Hill Farmers' Market on Hillside Road.

The Whole Foods Market food truck, to my knowledge the first food truck in Fairfield County, will be offering tastings and vending in Fairfield until mid-June, then will make its way to other Whole Foods Markets and the neighborhoods they serve in Fairfield County. Follow our Tweets for  the food truck’s daily locations (@GreenFoodGal) around town, including the Greenfield Hill Farmers’ Market on Hillside Road.

Amanda Hesser will hold a signing of her latest book, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, on June 11 while Cooking Coach Michelle Ryan demonstrates a recipe from the cookbook. Be sure to pick up June and July in-store event calendars on opening day so you can mark your calendar.

Whole Foods Market Fairfield will open its doors to the community on Friday, June 3, 2011 at 8:30 am. Located at 350 Grasmere Avenue, this will be the grocer’s 8^th store in Connecticut. To celebrate opening day, Whole Foods Market will offer storewide tastings, vendor sampling, special sale items, cooking demonstrations, gift bags and more. Read the full press release.

April 19, 2010

Mr. Ken Flatto

First Selectman

Independence Hall

725 Old Post Road

Fairfield, CT  06824

Re:    The Fairfield Organic Teaching Farm

Dear Ken,

I have lived in Fairfield for 20 years with my wife Lori and our five children and truly love our town, both for its history and sense of community. It is in this spirit that I am writing you to convey my strong support for the establishment of the Fairfield Organic Teaching Farm.

As a local-sustainable food advocate, I urge the town of Fairfield to set aside suitable and accessible town-owned land for this important learning opportunity for Fairfield children and families. I am the chef/owner of The Dressing Room restaurant in Westport and President and CEO of Wholesome Wave Foundation, an organization which nourishes neighborhoods by supporting increased production and access to healthy, fresh and affordable locally grown food. I encourage you to look into our work by visiting our website at wholesomewave.org.

There is a growing movement throughout America, in towns just like Fairfield, to create a more healthful, organic and sustainable food future. As one of the first towns in America, Fairfield has a rich farming heritage, yet most of our farmland is gone. The Fairfield Organic Teaching Farm would enable us to preserve some of our agricultural history while also creating a vital, local food-production source, a center of sustainable food education, and a notable attraction in Fairfield County.

I strongly encourage town bodies to act quickly and decisively to make this unique and timely project a town priority for 2010. Please consider me an important source of guidance to the champions of this project as they generously donate their time and expertise to ensure that Fairfield is well positioned to become a shining example of what a sustainable community can look like.

Sincerely,

Michel Nischan

Whole Foods Market and Avon Theater have teamed up for a special Earth Month celebration and screening of two films. Proceeds will benefit Wholesome Wave.

Who: Avon Theaters and Whole Foods Market to benefit Wholesome Wave

What: “Retake Our Plates” film series: http://www.letsretakeourplates.com/

When:

Food Inc.:  Saturday April 17^th

Tapped:    Saturday April 24^th

^{Showtime @ 12:00pm}

^{Local and Natural Food Sampling @ 1:30pm}

Where: Avon Theater Film Center 272 Bedford Street, Stamford, CT 06901

Tickets: Members – $6 / Students & Seniors – $7 / Nonmembers – $10

These GREAT events will benefit Wholesome Wave Foundation. (http://wholesomewave.org/)

The Wholesome Wave Foundation, a Westport-based non-profit which is responsible for bringing farmers’ markets and other community-based sustainable food initiatives  to Fairfield County, has announced two job openings:

– Farm to Community Project Coordinator
-  Deputy Director, Charitable Ventures

The mission of Wholesome Wave is to “encourage and support increased production, availability and access to fresh, healthy, and affordable locally grown food for the benefit of all.” Interested? Please visit http://www.idealist.org/if/i/en/av/Org/181027-42 for full job descriptions and scroll to them bottom for “how to apply”.

This organization has caught the attention of the Fairfield County Community Foundation, which awarded the non-profit a $25,000 grant to purchase a refrigerated truck for their Park City Harvest Neighborhood Farm Stand Program.This farm-to-community program brings healthy, affordable produce to underserved communities in Bridgeport.

Park City Harvest, a project of the Wholesome Wave Foundation and the Healthy Bridgeport Alliance, is bringing healthy, farm-fresh food to the Bridgeport community.

As one of Wholesome Wave Foundation’s core programs under the “Nourishing Neighborhoods” campaign umbrella,  created by chef and sustainable food advocate Michel Nischan and Wholesome Wave Chairman Gus Schumacher, the Neighborhood Farm Stand Program brings farm stands deep within neighborhoods of underserved Bridgeport, Connecticut communities three days a week. The Park City Harvest farm stand pilot program, supported by the Double Value Coupon Program, sells healthy, locally grown produce from Connecticut farmers. Consumers have three locations to choose from:

• Wed. – Bridgeport Health Department, 752 East Main Street, 10-7
• Thurs. -Marina Village, Columbia Street and Ridge Avenue, 10-3
• Fri. – St. Vincent’s Medical Center, 2800 Main Street, 10-7

This “Nourishing Neighborhoods” program is a five-fold stimulus to:

1. create fresh produce availability in “food deserts”
2. develop local jobs to manage neighborhood “market” stands
3. improve well-being by offering healthier food choices to vulnerable families
4. provide income support to the farmers selling in these neighborhoods
5. serve as a solid investment in reducing future health care costs by decreasing the growing diabetes and obesity problem.

Market Box Nutrition Program

Launched at the Norwalk Community Health Center (NCHC) as another one of Wholesome Wave Foundation’s “Nourishing Neighborhoods” core programs, the Market Box Nutrition Program purchases surplus fruits and vegetables from the Westport farmers’ market, pack the produce into half-bushel boxes, then deliver the boxes at an affordable and subsidized cost to families that have little access to fresh food. Each box, a $20-25 value, may be purchased for $6 in Food Stamps or Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Farmers Market Nutrition vouchers. The program benefits families that want to purchase fresh, locally grown produce but do not have access to transportation or the economic means to shop at farmers’ markets.