Sustainable Cuisine
What’s sustainable about the food we serve?
In serving the people who attend the various programs at IslandWood,
we offer varying styles of food. Our four-day school programs feature
kid-friendly meals that help our students to feel comfortable here. For
community programs, we offer more sophisticated meals. But all of our
meals are served with the common goal of promoting safe,
environmentally friendly foods that are nourishing and delicious.
We like to serve food that has been produced in a way that has the least
harmful impact on the environment. We think of the environment as
both our natural and our cultural surroundings. We strive to use organic,
locally raised vegetables, meat and dairy whenever possible.
“Smaller independently managed farms using environmentally sound
agricultural practices are far more productive and efficient in the use of
scarce land than are corporate factory farms,” writes Bainbridge –
islander David Korten in Yes! Magazine. “Intercropping methods used by
small farms guarantee more biodiversity and do less environmental
damage than do large monoculture crops. Localizing food production
means fresher, more nutritious food, more jobs, major energy savings,
and a healthier environment.”
Serving locally grown healthy food helps keep small farmers thriving and
contributes to the enduring green belt of agriculture that surrounds our
urban centers. Sharing these foods at the table helps us appreciate that
we are connected to the land on which we live.
We serve all our meals family style. That means that platters of food are
brought to the table to be shared. Instead of walking through a cafeteria
line, children and adults who share the IslandWood dining hall pass food
round the table and take as much or as little as they want. This
minimizes food waste and allows active involvement in the dining
experience. We like to hope that it also encourages conversation about
the food and enhances the conscious experience of eating. Studies in
France and elsewhere reveal that a meal shared with others at a table
promotes healthy digestion and allows us to use more of the nutrients in
our food. Certainly, a meal shared together promotes socialization.
During four-day school programs, all the food waste is weighed so that
students gain an understanding of how much food is wasted. Typically,
table waste is reduced by more than half once the children grasp the
concept of taking only what they will actually eat. Compost is sent to
the garden and other garbage is sorted for recycling. We also use
unbleached recycled paper napkins. For clean up, we use phosphate-free
dish soap that is completely biodegradable and instead of harsh chlorine
bleach, we use environmentally friendly oxygen bleach.
IslandWood’s Four-Day School Program Dinner Menus
Often the ingredients we use are more expensive than the ingredients
found in prepackaged prepared foods but because we use minimally
processed foods and make everything from scratch, including bread for
the sandwiches, dressing for the salads, and cookies for the snacks, we
keep our food costs in line with other
children’s programs.
*This is a sample menu meant to represent the general style of our
weekly meals. The menu invariably changes to accommodate for the
season, chef’s creativity and to sustain the teaching staff’s interest in
the food.
Dinner 1 –Penne Pasta & Sauce
Dinner 2 – Roast Turkey & Rice
Dinner 3 – “Pizza Night”
 Homemade cheese pizza (made with Muir Glenn organic tomato
sauce and Washington grown organic flour; tofu topped pizza for
the dairy free and wheat-free pizza is available for those with
special dietary needs)
 Organically grown Romaine lettuce with IslandWood ranch
dressing
 Vanilla ice cream with our own chocolate sauce (organic
strawberry sorbet is available for the dairy-free)
Breakfasts include scrambled Washington grown eggs, homemade
granola (made with organic oats, maple syrup, and honey), organic
yogurt, fresh-baked breads and Niman Ranch sustainably raised bacon.
All of the dinners at our Four-Day School Programs include ice water and
Organic Valley 2% milk..
Culinary Programs
In addition to feeding the people who come onto our campus to attend
other programs, we offer cooking classes and development dinners. At
these events, we try to offer people an extraordinary experience. The
goal of these events is primarily to generate funds to support the fourday school program. Sometimes, our own chef instructs the classes and
cooks the dinners; other times, we invite professional chefs and cooking
instructors to conduct the classes.
Our cooking classes are designed to help home cooks make food choices
that support a clean environment, a healthy body, and a vital local
economy. In keeping with the original vision of “science, technology,
and the arts”, or classes cover the natural history of ingredients, the
chemical changes that take place in foods when they are cooked and
combined with other foods, and the aesthetics of plate-presentation and
service.
Development dinners are great opportunities to help people feel at
home at IslandWood. Most of these dinners include a tour of the campus.
They provide guests and board members an opportunity to exchange
insights and ideas about our programs around a convivial table.
Unlike the community program meals, food served at these dinners and
at our cooking classes is not served family style. Still, everyone is eating
the same thing, entering a shared experience that promotes
understanding. Typically, these events include written handouts –
recipes at the cooking classes and menus at the dinner – that prompt
discussion and contemplation of ingredients and preparation techniques
that exemplify our shared concerns for the environment and for our
culture.
Here are some good example of cooking classes and dinners that
promote our goals:
 A demonstration by Jonathan Sundstrom from Earth & Ocean
restaurant that featured the use of wild foods in every course
 A cooking class by Jerry Traunfeld from The Herbfarm promoting
the use of homegrown herbs
 A Development dinner featuring Tom Douglas who helped
generate the concept of a “Pacific Northwest Cuisine” that
features local ingredients and incorporates the cooking styles of
various ethnic groups who settled here
 A Development dinner featuring Cooper River Salmon and Oregon
Pinot Noir, a culinary combo that has become universally
recognized as a quintessential pairing, along with various seasonal
foods produced in the Northwest including rhubarb, Asian-style
pea vines, and wild morel mushrooms
Culinary programs at IslandWood have been among the most successful
community programs we have ever offered, and efforts to promote these
events have been considerable. There has been some concerned
expressed that “IslandWood is becoming a cooking school”. This is not
the case. IslandWood is an environmental learning center and our
culinary programs helps further our overall goals by attracting the
attentions and support of a broad stripe of the public who might not
otherwise become interested in what we do here. Not everyone has an
interest in all of our programs but everyone eats and through interest in
our culinary programs, we have an unparallel opportunity to attract
supported from the community at-large.