Main Street Farmers Market will be serving up an Ugly Dinner Saturday night – and it’s going to fabulous, says market manager Holly Martin.
“It’s nothing unsafe to eat,” she says of the food. “It’s just cosmetically not as pretty.”
Grocery stores don’t put out disfigured food, because it won’t sell, she says. So that perfectly good food goes in the trash.
Main Street Farmers Market wants to raise awareness that those ugly foods are still fine to eat. Organizers have two aims: to stop unwanted but still nutritious food from being discarded in landfills and to raise money toward finding a permanent location.
The $50 dinner is scheduled from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Syrup and Eggs in St. Elmo. At press time, only a few tickets remained at www.EventBrite.com.
Martin says chefs from around the city will help with the effort. They’ll prepare a four-course meal with food that likely would have been discarded from supermarkets because it has blemishes. The participating chefs are Shane Stone of High Haute Foods, Dane Frazier of St. John’s, Chris Babb-Chesnut of Blue Fox Cheese and Megan Lewis.
Proceeds go toward an online ordering platform for people to order food from the market, a convenience option for time-strapped consumers.
The market also wants a permanent location on or near Main Street. It needs to be covered to protect vendors from the weather and have cooking space, bathrooms and a teaching kitchen.
The goal, says Martin is “just kind of connecting the whole community with the importance of buying directly from your farmer and knowing where your food comes from.”
Contact Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.