Posted Dec 14, 2010
A Miami Beach mom is bringing the “local food” movement to the city through a group-buying club and nutrition education program for kids.
Cindy Hill’s Wholesome Grocer brings fresh produce, meat, and raw dairy products to Miami Beach from farms around South Florida every two weeks. Customers place their orders and pay online a few days before, then pick up the food at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.
Hill believes that people across the country choosing to go local because they are become more cautious and aware of their surrounding environment. “People want to support the local economy, they want to leave a smaller carbon footprint and most of all it gives them a stronger sense of community.”
For Hill, who has worked in the food and beverage industry, the idea came with a personal revelation.
“After we all came back from summer vacation, the girls had gotten fat,” she said. She realized that parents and children don’t know how to eat right.
She started Once Upon a Carrot, a nonprofit program designed to teach elementary and middle school kids to eat vegetables and free-range meat.
Hill’s classes are taught at some middle and high school in Miami Beach and include lessons on organic and natural cooking, gardening, communal eating and sustainable living. Each week Hill cooks a new recipe for the children to try in their classrooms. “The kids receive a recipe card that tells them what I made for the day and by the end of the class they have their own recipe book,” Hill said.
“My hope is that when I teach students how to eat right and introduce them to new vegetables and recipes they will go home and teach their parents,” said Hill, who has a 13-year-old daughter and volunteers with the Girl Scouts.
She started Once Upon a Carrot in October 2008 and added the Wholesome Grocer a year later.
Health coach Ibis Romero of Miami drives over from the Biscayne Boulevard area to pick up produce from Hill.
People are beginning to understand they need to eat locally and avoid processed foods and sugars, he said. “We have great local food in Florida that people don’t know about … Thanks to Cindy’s company, we have a good venue to get them from.”
Hill offers a variety of produce, meats, milk, and cheese — including fresh milk ($8 a gallon) and Amish raw milk organic cheese, $6 for an 8-oz. package.
She gets free-range whole chickens for $6 a pound; beef burger patties for $9; ground beef for $6; brisket for $10; French cut lamb racks for $15; ground buffalo for $7; wild flounder for $15; rock shrimp for $14, and more — all from Florida ranchers.
All of Hill’s suppliers are not certified organic — a long and expensive process. But they all practice “the right practices”. Their animals roam freely and they don’t use pesticides or manure to fertilize their crops.
Mr. Green Dean’s Beans in West Perrine supplies unusual vegetables, like purple carrots, black radishes and Bright Lights Swiss Chard, which comes in five neon colors. He grows the produce off the ground, fertilizing with Starbuck’s coffee grinds and seaweed.
Hill gets produce, such as individual or mixed lettuce ($5 for a 1-pound baby), baby rainbow Swiss chard ($7 a bag), purple haze carrots ($7), red and green long beans ($5 a pound), baby red giant mustard greens ($5) and a handful of other exotic locally grown produce.
The Florida climate greatly influences what foods can be grown locally. If Hill can’t fill her orders in South Florida, she will go up to 100 miles away.
Mr. Green Dean’s owner Dean Richardson said he struggles to find plants that will thrive in the extreme heat. But he believes more people will start buying food grown closer to home.
“When you look the farmer in the eyes and see what his is doing, it is a peace-of-mind feeling that you just can’t get at the store,” he said.
Hill gets produce such as individual or mixed lettuce (1lbs bag is $5), baby rainbow swiss chard ($7 a bag), purple haze carrots ($7), red and green long beans (1lbs. bunch is $5), baby red giant mustard greens (1lbs. bag is $5) and a handful of other exotic locally grown produce.
Hill also shops for fruits and vegetables at the Roots in the City community gardens in Overtown that are maintained by volunteers. “You get whatever is growing at the time. You never really know. Today tomatoes, lettuce, and longbeans,” said Hill.
Hill has about 20 customers. She’d like to grow to 50.
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Copyright © 2010, The Miami Herald
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