Procedure:

In a medium sized stock pot, combine vegetable stock and lemongrass. Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer and cover.

In a large high-sided skillet, heat 2T olive oil over medium high heat.  Sautee mushrooms in batches, until golden brown. Remove from heat and set aside.

Reduce heat to medium and in the same skillet, add remaining 2T olive oil. Add shallot and ginger to pan and cook until shallots become translucent, about 2-3 minutes.  Add faro to pan and toast for 1-2.  Pour wine into pan and stir continually until faro absorbs completely.  Add 1c of stock to faro at a time, stir until all liquid is absorbed before adding another cup. Once faro is cooked al dente, reduce heat to low and add lime juice and soy sauce. Stir vigorously to build the starchiness, which gives risotto its creamy texture. Finally add mushrooms, peas and cilantro to faroto. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy. 

Peter began volunteering at KIPP SHINE in 2012.

A decade earlier, while studying at the University of Texas at Austin, he first found his passion for healthy living as a member of the university's marathon team. Later, while helping to organize the Houston Marathon, he often passed by undeveloped land along the first few miles of the course and dreamed about planting orchards and gardens there for kids attending the nearby schools. Lack of horticultural know-how and a busy schedule building information systems and streamlining accounting processes for an oil and gas company kept that dream on the backburner. 

When his company was acquired, Peter took advantage of a lull in his workload to embrace an alternate version of his dream. He discovered Recipe for Success Foundation and their efforts to build gardens and teach kids about gardening and cooking, giving them a foundation of healthy choices to benefit them for the rest of their lives.

On the Fridays when he volunteers at KIPP SHINE, an early childhood and elementary school, Peter gets to help second graders build that healthy foundation and enjoys seeing the refreshing way with which they approach life. Meeting and learning from instructors, chefs, and others who are passionate about healthy living has benefits, too. 

At home, Peter's one-pot meals are tastier than ever thanks to spices and techniques he picked up at RFS, and his balcony is now full of greenery, including most of the ingredients for an occasional romantic dinner.

Besides volunteering, Peter enjoys running and swimming. He travels occasionally, too, including back to his birthplace, Taiwan, where he enjoys the abundant fresh local produce and street food.

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If you are interested in volunteering with Recipe for Success, email our volunteer coordinator Kristen, [email protected]. 

 Amy Anton joined the Recipe for Success Board at its inception. From hosting Pizza Parties to Co-chairing the 2007 We're cooking Now! A Gala in Small Bites, Amy has played a big part in making things happen for the organization. She also volunteered on a monthly basis for years at MacGregor Elementary.

"I remember back in the beginning at MacGregor, it was on two chefs: Randy Evans and Monica Pope," says Amy. "The kids were impressed that a real chef would come to their class. How amazing that a chef with a well-known restaurant in Houston takes the time once a week to teach elementary school kids? That speaks volumes about the organization."

"From the beginning, Amy rolled up her sleeves and jumped in, initially and for many years volunteering every month in the classroom," says Gracie Cavnar, Founder & CEO of Recipe for Success Foundation. "She and Drew have hosted several fundraising events for us and she actively works to get her friends involved--raising thousands of dollars. Amy helped us design the RecipeHouse concept and sent her own kids to our first classes there and she still contributes to our blog. As a hands-on mother of three active boys, Amy has brought a great perspective to our planning and content development through the years. It's fair to say, we wouldn't be the same organization we are today without her influence and energy."

Beyond her three beautiful boys, and husband, Drew, Amy's favorite things in life are food and travel. Houston native, Amy went to St. John's School and received her degree in journalism at Washington & Lee University before returning to secure her MBA from Rice University in 1999.

Food is her passion and Amy loves to cook. After having her children, she realized how important good nutrition is as well as the importance of the family table. In the spirit of passing on family traditions and healthy eating, she has taught her boys the art of cooking since they could stand at the counter.

Her family has long been engaged in philanthropy and community service in Houston and set a high bar example of the importance of giving back. Amy maintains a position on the Boards of the Nature Conservancy and the Friends of Child Advocates for which she served as President in 2005. With her children now attending her own alma mater, she has also become a very active volunteer in their school.

In December 2008, Amy published first children's picture book, "Ina the Octopus" about a young octopus who helps a diver bring artifacts up from the bottom of the sea so they can be put in a museum. The proceeds from her book go to the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

Amy continues to commit her time to our mission. During 2014 she once again engaged St. John's School in the VegOut! Challenge and our Earth Day Garden Haiku Contest. She also blogged during VegOut! 2014 and scribed a blog post on a favorite soup this past winter.

There's no satisfaction quite like cutting into a perfectly succulent, marbled piece of steak.  But how does that cut of deliciousness get from farm to plate?  In his critically acclaimed documentary Steak (R)Evolution, director Franck Ribière takes viewers around the world with farmers, chefs, butchers, and food journalists to uncover the art of red meat. 

Ribière's goal is not only to find the best steak out there, but also to decipher what differentiates the best steaks and makes them notable, and how the shift to smaller-scale farming organizations is affecting the beef industry.  Highlights of his scrumptious steak odyssey include the Angus country of Scotland, the Kobe beef ranches in Japan, and some of New York City's most revered butcher shops and steakhouses.

Recipe for Success is co-sponsoring a screening of Steak (R)Evolution at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Friday, October 9^th, at 7pm, and a panel and Q&A with Glen Boudreaux from Jolie Vue Farms will immediately follow the screening.  We will also be collecting stories for our Dinner Conversations project.  If you cannot make the Friday night screening and panel, there will be one additional screening of the film on Saturday, October 10^th, at 7pm.  Watch the trailer here!

WE GIVE YOU INSPIRING RECIPES--YOU SEND US YOUR FAVORITES!

Chef Justin Kouri, our new Culinary Coordinator, is kicking off a fun recipe exchange featuring his tantalizng dishes from RecipeHouse along with his picks of those submitted by our readers, followers, and fans-that's YOU! What are you doing to ban lunch box boredom and jazz up your back-to-school lunch routine? Send your yummiest recipe - it can be super simple or a four-course meal - for a packed lunch to [email protected] and you could win the August Challenge and be included in next year's VEGOUT! COOKBOOK. Veggie Panini

We are thilled to be launching our Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ at West U Elementary -- the largest elementary school in Houston ISD.

West University parent Kristen Berger first got to know Recipe for Success Foundation after Arvia Few invited her to attend the past few year's Blue Plate Special Luncheons. She later visited a Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ classroom at MacGregor Elementary. This year, Berger is chairing the November 18 Blue Plate Special Luncheon with Arvia Few. 

"When I visited the classroom at MacGregor Elementary, I was so impressed by the many benefits beyond teaching the kids about where the food comes from and eating healthy," says Berger. "I saw how it inspired kids for their future. One boy said he wanted grow up to be like his chef instructor Monica Pope. My favorite part was hearing a girl say 'I take the recipes home and make them with my Dad.' It's wonderful how it permeates through the family unit." 

Berger also talked to the fourth grade teacher whose class she observed. I asked the teacher if the Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program takes away anything from her required teaching for the STAAR test compliance. The teacher said, "no it helps me teach essential lessons on deeper level."

After her visit to the Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ classroom at MacGregor Elementary, Houston mom Kristen Berger immediately started working on getting the engaging and empowering nutrition program into West University Elementary, which is currently the largest elementary school in Houston ISD with students in K-5^th grade. With the growth of the area and the student population the school has had to focus its resources and programming strictly on core curriculum. Berger started with the PTO and got the ball rolling for the school to adopt the program.

"The school had an after-school garden club program that was not living up to its potential, so I talked to administration, who liked the idea of the program, but had trouble finding room during the school day to fit it in," says Berger. She explains that after multiple teachers spoke up for the program and the enrichment value it would bring to the students, a solution was reached to convert the existing after-school garden club, which met twice a week, into an after-school Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program.

Starting this fall, West U. Elementary plans to rotate all grades through the program over the course of the school year. "This is a big reason that Recipe for Success' Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program shines - it is adaptable to any situation, any circumstances," says Berger. The entire school will be encouraged to participate in Recipe for Success Foundation's additional, free, auxiliary programs, such as Farmers MarKIDS in the fall, essay and poetry writing contests, a health fair, and the annual VegOut! during March.

"The after-school program at West U will be a small, but steady start, just planting the seed of enrichment for the school. It's about much more than gardening and cooking, which are so important, but the program teaches kids about culture, working well with others, teamwork, and more. And another beautiful thing: the school garden is located in a central focal point of the school, so reviving the garden will be an inspiration to the entire campus," says Berger.

Schools from California to South Texas and an ever-increasing number in Houston are adopting Recipe for Success Foundation's award-winning Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ to achieve measurable change in children's eating habits with the organization's unique chef-designed curriculum that makes healthy food fun and tasty. "Why reinvent the wheel?" says Juan Gonzalez, Principal at Patterson Elementary in Houston. "When Recipe for Success has spent millions designing and testing a flexible nutrition curriculum that complements our regular school day and supports critical learning objectives to boot."

Seed-To-Plate Nutrition Education™ prepares children with knowledge and skills they need to make healthy eating decisions for a lifetime. Evaluations show that kids participating in the Seed-To-Plate Nutrition Education™ classes eat as much as 30% more veggies after just one year and take their new skills and knowledge home to cook healthy meals with their families.

The Foundation welcomes a number of new schools as Affiliate Partners in Houston and nationwide for Fall 2015. In Petaluma, California, Meadow School fifth grade teachers have selected the program's Marco Polo themed unit of twenty gardening and culinary classes for their students, which was inspired by the explorer's travels through Europe and Asia. The curriculum's extra worksheets in history, geography and social studies along with math and science will thoroughly engage their students and help inspire a culture of health on this Sonoma County campus in the heart of the wine country.

In the Foundation's home base of Houston, Texas, 31 schools across the city now offer the signature curriculum that integrates hands-on gardening and culinary classes with complementary worksheets in math science, language arts and other core learning objectives. The program is gaining popularity among charter schools. Four schools featuring the program this fall: KIPP Shine, KIPP Zenith Academy and KIPP Legacy and Yes Prep West Preparatory School. West University Elementary, the largest elementary school in HISD with more than 1,200 students, begins offering Seed-To-Plate Nutrition Education™ for PreK-fifth graders in an after-school format this fall. "This is a big reason that Recipe for Success' Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program shines - it is adaptable to any situation, any circumstances," says West U Elementary parent Kristen Berger.

In South Texas, Santa Gertrudis Elementary School, in Kingsville is building gardens with the help of The King Ranch and will launch the Seed- to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program this fall forthe school's 2^nd and 3^rd grade classes. "It is so important to change the thinking of our children when they are young and then they can help teach their families -- this is the best way to change for our future. It is my hope that other schools learn about our program and want to pursue it with their campuses," says Mary Springs, Superintendent, Santa Gertrudis ISD.

Become a Recipe for Success Foundation Affiliate Partner
With fall classes around the corner, schools and community groups who are concerned about student health are signing up to become Recipe for Success Foundation Affiliate Partners to gain access to the group's proven-effective curriculum. Affiliate Partners send their own employees--typically teachers--through the Foundation's online S2P Instructor training program to become certified. All certified S2P Instructors of licensed Affiliate Partners enjoy direct support from the Recipe for Success Foundation Home Team with an extensive online library of 400 Common Core aligned lesson plans for pre-K through fifth grade, support materials, training videos, access to garden and culinary experts, professional development and a forum to share best practices with fellow S2P Instructors across the country.

"We're pleased to provide an inexpensive way to replicate our success in changing children's eating behaviors," says Gracie Cavnar, founder and CEO of Recipe for Success Foundation. "We accept applications from any interested school or community center willing to implement our program with integrity."

Introductory participation rates are very appealing: The $500 annual Affiliate Partner fee and $250 per person for two teachers to train and certify as S2P Instructors, brings the first year investment to just $1,000 per campus. Click here for more Information and application forms or by call us at 713-520-0443. 

Time to say goodbye to summer trends and say hello to fall fashion! Please join us on Wednesday, September 2, to kickoff our 10th Anniversary season. The party, which includes light bites by PESKA Seafood Culture, and takes place at Elaine Turner Boutique in glamorous BLVD Place. This festive shopping party kicks off the Foundation's 10th year of pursuing its mission of combatting childhood obesity. This year's Dress for Dinner fashion series is chaired by noteworthy fashion blogger Carrie Colbert. CLICK HERE to RSVP and find more on our upcoming events!

The Dinner Conversation is a new dialogue that we are starting Houston to honor our tenth anniversary, designed to celebrate our vision of a world where healthy eating is the norm and a culture where nutritious food is shared, appreciated, and celebrated.  It will be a multi-media project of personal essays, written, recorded and video interviews and photography that we will collect throughout the year.

We have plans to capture Houstonians from every neighborhood and walk of life sharing their most powerful food memories, life changing meals and fondest family food traditions, which will be honored for posterity in an electronic book.  There will be some special sections including, A Taste of Home, where we ask immigrants to divulge where in Houston they find that special ingredient, and Food of Our Grandmothers--multiple generations remembering their family food traditions creating an oral and written history of life around their dinner table.  And on one special night, we will ask all Houstonians to take a group photo at dinner, capturing a moment in time in our diverse city for social media.  Pull up to our table and dig in!

The first time Gracie met Glen Boudreaux, he approached her after a presentation about her vision for a new organization called Recipe for Success, which included the idea of Hope Farms to bring fresh produce into underserved Houston neighborhoods.  At the time, the term food desert had yet to appear in the national conversation.  He said, "Gracie, I know all about non-profit farming; what can I do to help?" A new partnership was born on the spot!  Since that day, Honi & Glen Boudreaux have worked with Gracie to bring the vision of Hope Farms to reality. Now thanks to a substantial grant from Wells Fargo Foundation, a sizeable gift of land in Houston's Sunnyside neighborhood plus initial capital and operating gifts from the Simmons and Brown Foundations, Hope Farms is about to sprout as a showcase urban farm where we will train displaced veterans to become urban agri-entrepreneurs, while we grow and distribute affordable fresh produce for our neighbors and friends.
 
Glen and Honi are committed to expanding the farm belt around Houston and to building a sustainable urban farm system inside the city to help alleviate access issues in our city's poorest neighborhoods. We can't even add up the hours that they have spent over years with Gracie in meetings to plan, layout and negotiate a site for Hope Farms, which has suffered fits and starts through the years as one real estate deal after another fell through. No one gave up. In the meantime, these founding members of the Recipe for Success Board of Directors have contributed endless energy and re¬sources to encourage healthier diets among Houstonians and created a model of ag¬ricultural best practices at their Jolie Vue Farms near Brenham. They co-founded the Rice University Farmers Market and launched the first home delivery of farm-raised products in Houston.

The Boudreauxs were our Champions of Food Justice in 2013 and will are excited to honor them again this year as founding board members at the Blue Plate Special Lunch on November 18.  But the best day of the year will be when Honi and Glen can wander out into the fields of Hope Farms, pick a piece of fruit right off the vine and hand it to someone for their dinner!

Let us know if you want to help us build the barn, train the farmers and plant the fields at Hope Farms with either time or treasure.

We were delighted when Ruben Dominguez of FOX 26 showed up to feature our Eat This! Summer camp on their morning news program!  Ruben reported on our final camp session for the season anda gave us the opportunity to tell viewers about our mission and other programs. 

Check out the video featuring Chef Paola and some talented Summer Camp chefs! Thanks again to Ruben and FOX 26!

August 5, 2015.  Today is Recipe for Success Foundation's tenth birthday, when the new non-profit I registered with the Secretary of State was officially acknowledged and our work could commence.  When I received that stamped document, I had a list in my hand of the projects I wanted to execute with this new foundation: teach kids to cook and garden, publish cookbooks for kids, create an urban farm in Houston and produce a kids cooking television show.  It was a lot, but I am a headstrong Gemini; I was confident in my vision, fueled by my passion and enabled by a generous grant from my husband, the support of my kids, the enthusiasm of my friends and the ability to work for free.

Ten years and 30,000+ kids later we are commencing today on a yearlong celebration of our roots while we plant the seeds of our future.  Throughout the year, we will be celebrating all those folks--family, friends, chefs, volunteers and patrons who have helped turn my dream into a reality. Before the year is out, we will have checked the box on each of those original projects--with some having grown to a national footprint beyond my wildest dreams, and we have added a few more to the list.  We aren't pausing, satisfied that our work is done, but we are taking the moment to reflect on that original vision and all that has gone into turning it into a real Recipe for Success!

By that summer of 2005, I had already been dancing around the edges of getting proactive for years after discovering to my horror the breathtaking rates of childhood obesity, especially in Texas.  I first worked to get soda machines removed from our elementary schools, and then I created the Recipe for Success initiative of our family foundation to launch informal talks among stakeholders in Houston to map out a possible solution plan that captured synergies.  There was lots of handwringing, plenty of ideas, not a lot of collaborative action.  I realized that I would need to be more than a yenta; I would have to jump in and do something.  That ignited my insatiable study of how other communities--at home and abroad--were addressing this issue and what the global experts and researchers were saying was at the root of the problem. I got my hands on Slow Food's Terre Madre curriculum for Italian children and Jamie Oliver's lesson plans for his London project and the Minister of Culture's outreach materials for French schoolchildren and I looked at Alice Water's nascent project in Berkley.  I read research studies and white papers like novels, including Robert Wood Johnson's comprehensive community action plan, developed with a national advisory group and the American Public Health Association and published in 2003.  It became my bible.

I didn't have a personal dog in the hunt, what I did have was a lot of time on my hands after retiring from decades of workaholic behavior, a personal passion for cooking, local food and gardening and the pleasure of seeing family and friends regularly around my dining table.   And after many years in the hospitality industry, I enjoyed friendships with loads of great chefs.  If I was going to get into this fight to make a difference, I knew that I had to connect my work to my passion.  When I discovered that of all the causes of childhood obesity--and there are many, the predominant, underlying issues were the changes in the food we eat and the way we eat it.  Cooking fresh food from scratch and sharing it around the table with family and friends--this was a campaign I could get behind and I knew just the group to add some spice to my efforts.

My first call very early on was to Monica Pope.  If I wanted to teach kids to cook, would you help me?  She likes to say now, that she really didn't think I would actually do anything, so it was easy to say yes.  But when I circled back in 2005 and said I was ready, she swung into action helping me convince other Houston chefs to join us.  Bob and I invited dozens of chefs and many of our friends to a Sunday brunch at our place, so I could tell everyone at once what our plan was.  Monica hosted a gathering in November at tafia for our new Houston First Lady, Andrea White's We Are All Neighbors outreach to Houston's community leaders to showcase Chefs in Schools™ the first project I planned to launch.  Monica, Claire Smith, Lance Fegan and Bryan Caswell prepared the lunch with food donated from Jolie Vue, Lowell Farms, Gunderson Farms, Bar N Ranch and Rio Grande Organics. Flat Creek Estate, Haak Vineyards and Texas Hills Vineyards poured their wines.

By December, fueled by those two gatherings, we had recruited a dozen folks to join our board of directors and twenty-five chefs to help: John Brock, Carolyn Carcassi, Bryan Caswell, Charles Clark, Louis Cressy, Robert del Grande, Randy Evans, Lance Fegan, Chris Garcia , Peter Garcia, Lauren Gockley, Jason Gould, Anita Jasinghani, Ouisie Jones, Al King, Sandra Mangini, Jim Manning, Veronica Ortiz, Monica Pope, Philippe Schmidt, John Sheely, Randy Rucker, Chris Shepherd, Claire Smith and Brendon Treanor.

All spring, while I worked with Linda Clarke--Mayor Bill White's Special Advisor for Education, to line up schools for our pilot program, we started raising money.  If Recipe for Success was going to be a public foundation, we needed 75% of our support to come from outside our family.  Cissy Segall Davis, jumped in to lend a hand with a series of special events I called We're Cooking Now, a gala in small bites.  The concept of a deconstructed gala made up of exquisite dinner parties in private homes was perhaps a reaction to the past decade during which Bob and I chaired and attended scores of galas, but it also exemplified the culture we wanted to promote and teach.  We produced a dozen small dinners individually hosted by Cathy Brock, Yvonne & Rufus Cormier, Franci Neely, Gayle & Mike DeGeurin, Sonny Garza, Phyllis Hand, Eileen & George Hricik, Karen & Mike Mayell, Phyllis Childress, Kim & Dan Tutcher, Andrea & Bill White and Bob & me, each featuring a headliner chef.  Two hundred donors came to dinner.  We finished that first year with money in the bank, a committed founding board of directors, dozens of chefs willing to help and a plan of action in hand.  It was the start of something big.

Big News! We're talkin' King Ranch big! Recipe for Success Foundation has partnered with the Santa Gertrudis School in Kingsville, Texas to offer its comprehensive Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education Program^™ to the school's 2^nd and 3^rd grade classes. The students will learn to plant and cultivate fruits and vegetables, learn about nutrition and learn to how to cook with the produce they harvest from their own garden. The school saw the Recipe for Success Seed to Plate Nutrition Education Program^™ as a key opportunity to increase student awareness about healthy eating, the food cycle, provide greater understanding of the farming culture, which has a rich heritage in their local community since the early days of the King Ranch during the mid-1800s.

"I am looking forward to watching the students learn about growing plants and how they contribute to a healthy lifestyle. Young children have such enthusiasm for learning and when new things are introduced it is motivating to everyone. It is so important to change the thinking of our children when they are young and then they can help teach their families. This is the best way to change for our future. It is my hope that other schools learn about our program and want to pursue it with their campuses. There is such a need in South Texas to help everyone learn about becoming healthier," said Mary Springs, Superintendent, Santa Gertrudis ISD.

Located on the grounds of the King Ranch in Kingsville, Santa Gertrudis School, originally was established for the families who work on the King Ranch, and the current school facility, which opened in 2010 and features historical displays honoring the heritage of the King Ranch. "In 2012, Gracie Cavnar introduced me to Recipe for Success and I wanted to incorporate this learning experience at Santa Gertrudis Elementary, said Robert J. Underbrink, President and CEO of King Ranch, Inc. "King Ranch has always had a belief that we need to take care of one another and teaching our children how to create healthy habits is the foundation for our future. Over the past several years, we have continued to educate and encourage our employees through our own wellness program. This is a great opportunity to now include the whole family. I look forward to hearing about the children helping their parents in the kitchen and making long lasting family memories."