NEW YORK— The crowd waits for Andrea Beaman, a natural foods chef featured on Bravo’s “Top Chef,” to begin the 20-minute cooking competition at The Great GoogaMooga Festival in Prospect Park on Saturday.
Beaman waves a bloody glove and says her sous-chef might have to take her place. She just sliced two fingers as she was racing the clock with an unfamiliar knife.
She decides to keep going. “That’s the way chefs roll, I still have 8 more fingers,” Beaman joked.
The Just Food cooking competition consists of 10 types of vegetables, oil, seasoning, and 20 minutes to cook everything.
The competition is inspired by the community-supported agriculture group CSA. The group supports a model of food delivery whereby local farmers bring freshly harvested produce boxes to selected recipients every week, for six months out of the year. Consumers are challenged to use up all of the healthy food in the boxes they receive before the next delivery.
Just Food is a nonprofit organization that aligns local farmers, food producers, and CSA organizers with the community.
Since 1995, Just Food has pioneered and helped the growth of sustainable food programs, such as CSAs, community-run farmers’ markets, and farm-to-food pantry programs.
