Susan's Savour-It!: Food Revolution

Exactly two years ago tonight (posting October 6th, 2018), Jamie Oliver was in town talking with TO Food Revolution ambassadors about a healthier Canada. Although I am no longer an ambassador on my own terms (I was for 4 years), I continue to carry that torch🗽- championing real food, food education, and inspiring people of all ages to cook in my every day work and passion for teaching culinary in schools and the community. I am Forever Grateful to you and for our global like-minded family @jamieoliver!💕🙏 See my post Jamie Talking Food Change In Canada for more.

With Jamie Oliver at Jamie's Italian at Yorkdale Mall.

With my great friend Chef Dimitra Konstantakou.

Food Revolution 2017 was celebrated with a Kids Can Cook Brunch. However, the official Food Revolution Day on a global scale has been postponed until later this year. The UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, called a snap general election to take place on June 8th, just two weeks after our intended Food Revolution Day. For many political and press reasons, we know this timing isn’t right to have the impact we (ambassadors) want and for Jamie Oliver to make big noise about child obesity policies that best benefit children's health. As our Food Revolution campaign is year-round, many of us still held events while postponing some others until we get the new date. This year, I'm deferring a few school events and held a kids cooking session with my three young boys and their cousins. They did everything from washing, prepping, slicing, chopping, and cooking for the most part with us parents supervising. We made brunch with recipes inspired by Jamie Oliver-- blueberry pancakes and customized omelets. Instead of fruit juice or vitamin water which are loaded with sugar and other stuff, we made real fruit-infused water for a refreshing drink.

See my Food Revolution Kids Can Cook Brunch

Resharing from Food Revolution Toronto:

Happy New Year from the Food Revolution Toronto team! Our #bestnine2016 represents a wonderful year of home cooking from our Ambassadors, a visit from @jamieoliver himself and supporting great community organisations like @aplaceforfood . We're hoping 2017 brings more of all this! Vive la #foodrevolution !

Photo Credit: Food Revolution Toronto

The Food Revolution Toronto team was honoured to spend some time with Jamie Oliver on October 6th, 2016 chatting about how "Canada has the potential to become a world leader in the fight against obesity and diet-related disease". It was a pivotal moment for many of us to chat with Jamie voicing our concerns and the challenges we face as "we march to the beat of the good food fight" as long-time ambassador Denise Livotti puts it. As we are advocating the same real food and food education messages in our own communities, Jamie came here to help tackle some of the major health problems that is affecting Canadians. He really cares. And he was here to fight for us. Won't we as Canadians do our rightful bit? For more read my post: Jamie Talking Food Change in Canada.

This year's 5th Annual Food Revolution Day (FRD 2016) champions the Power of Cooking. Jamie Oliver has defined 10 recipes which he will be asking people everywhere to join him and cook. This will be centred around ten delicious, nutritionally balanced recipes, which has been defined as the “Starter Pack of Cooking”, each covering a different skill and technique that can give anyone the confidence to cook good, real, healthy meals for themselves and their families, for now and the future. Jamie has spoken about the idea of ten recipes to save your life since his TED talk in 2010.

So much excitement celebrating Food Revolution Day May 20th with Real Food for Real Kids (RFRK)-- see my post for more on their incredible company, Northview Heights Secondary High School- their culinary program is a poster child for everything Food Revolution stands for (they held my last year's massive event of 1500 participants with Jamie Oliver joining in via video-conf), and a visit to a hands-on kids tasting workshop with The Rainbow Plate. The CHERRY on top, is that I have been featured on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution News-- Yay! For the wrap up of my Toronto food events, please see: http://susanssavourit.blogspot.ca/2016/05/happy-food-revolution-day-in-toronto.html

For one week RFRK and I have collaborated in a "Cook for your Life" themed week for ‪#‎FoodRevolution‬ Day! Each day, mini-interviews were conducted with health industry influencers and advocates to build awareness about joining the ‪#‎RealFoodRevolution‬. Here are the complete interviews in this post.

Join Toronto Food Revolution Ambassadors to celebrate FRD in our community with local cooking events-- a parent-child cooking class and a mystery box cooking challenge. For more see: Jamie's Food Revolution Community Events in Toronto.

I joined a tour with Chef Dimitra K. and her Northview Heights high school culinary students at Durham College's new Centre For Food (CFF) last week-- State-of-the-art culinary college you got to see to believe! Northview Heights is joining forces yet another year ‪#‎foodrevolution‬ day! Students will cook up their variation on Jamie's ten recipes defined as the Starter Package of cooking. The department will be taking photos and videos of students in action and sharing them on social media; these recipes will also be incorporated into their ongoing class curriculum. A selection of Jamie's key recipes will be made and served in the cafeteria for breakfast and/or lunch to celebrate the day! Yay! http://susanssavourit.blogspot.ca/2016/04/food-revolution-day-at-northview-heights.html

At Real Food For Real Kids (a TO children's catering company cooking fresh from scratch, they deliver healthy, delicious meals and snacks to 15,000 kids in the GTA every day at 30+ elementary schools and over 240 childcare centres), we plan a "Cook for your Life" themed week for ‪#‎FoodRevolution‬ Day! Our goal is to engage food industry individuals about their favourite go-to recipes and rally RFRK's Lunch Club Coaches to get kids excited about food. YAY! http://www.susanssavourit.blogspot.ca/2016/04/jamies-food-revolution-at-real-food-for.html

Clowning around with RFRK's Amazing Food and Production Crew.

Scroll down to the bottom for event updates:

I am a voluntary Food Revolution Super Ambassador for Canada and Food Revolution Toronto. Jamie Oliver's 4th Annual Food Revolution Day was May 15th taking part all over the world-- and this year it's all about fighting for food education. In summary, at the school level, we had an incredible 8,198 schools across 95 countries register to take part in this year's champion recipe- Jamie’s Squash-it Sandwich lesson, from a whopping 3,170 schools in the UK to two brilliant schools in Zimbabwe. As well, countless other kinds of activities and events took part around the world.To date, Jamie's global petition to get food education into the classrooms around the world has garnered over 1.5 million signatures (as of late May), and we still have until October to round up much, much more. Jamie will take his remarkable petition in November to the G20 summit in Turkey urging our world leaders to embrace food literacy in their school curriculum. www.foodrevolutionday.com

Food Revolution Day 2015

I have been an ambassador for over one year- in November 2014 I was the Ambassador of the Month. The following is part of an interview I had with the UK Food Revolution Team about my background on why I wanted to be part of the Revolution. For the entire article, please read here. This year, I was honoured to become a Super Ambassador for Canada along with fellow ambassador Mardi Michels. For more on this role read here.

Tell us Susan a little about why you wanted to get involved in the Food Revolution.

It is an honour to be part of the Food Revolution. It’s an amazing campaign that is directly connected to my mission of teaching people about the benefits of eating real food and of getting kids (no matter how old) immersed in cooking and food literacy.

I have always enjoyed and appreciated good food. Growing up, my mother always provided me with home-cooked meals, even with both my parents working regular jobs. I don’t know how she pulled it off, but my two siblings and I rarely ate anything that came out of a can or box.

These values were already instilled in me by the time I became a mom myself, and I have been committed to preparing from-scratch meals and passing my cooking skills on to my children. Processed food is ever more available and it’s staggering to read about how rarely people (especially kids) consume home-cooked meals nowadays. Many young people here in Ontario lack the skills to prepare a meal from scratch because they have never been taught how. They have become so used to food that comes out of a box and into a microwave, they rarely consider there is another – better – way to live. Cooking is an invaluable skill that’s being lost. Though this is a disappointing prospect, it is also a preventable trend.

I was thrilled to come across Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution around the time I started my blog on family meals. It was exactly what I was trying to do and it shaped my blog posts with defined purpose and meaning. If any of what I was doing with my own family resonated with someone and made a difference in how and what they were eating, I feel I’m getting this important message across … one family at a time!

How has the Ambassador Program helped you accomplish your goals?

The Ambassador Program has allowed me to connect with other like-minded, passionate individuals around the world and to be inspired by the amazing things other ambassadors are doing within their communities. It’s a platform through which we can support each other’s initiatives and exchange information and experiences. Being part of the Food Revolution has given me opportunities to engage in partnerships for my blog to spread our universal message for the Food Revolution across a wider audience. Instead of acting as one small voice, I am now part of a powerful, united front making a world of a difference.

communities.

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Here were posts I wrote leading up to Food Revolution Day and beyond to cover my activities celebrated with schools ( I had three school events-- from 40 participating students in one to over 1500 participants in another-- with Jamie himself connecting in to say hello to Canada), and some of my fellow ambassadors events in and out of schools.

Food Revolution Day 2015 Wrap Up… Here and Around the World

http://susanssavourit.blogspot.ca/2015/05/food-revolution-day-2015-wrap-up-here.html