Food and culinary professionals from all over the country gathered in southeastern Pennsylvania for the 5th annual Eat Retreat. They arrived ready to collaborate and inspire each other. Sharing happened throughout the day’s activities and at night around the campfire.
As experts in their craft, Eat Retreat attendees led skill-sharing workshops and guided tastings.
Budget Brick Oven
With 45 bricks, 8 cinder blocks, two sheets of metal and a bag of sand, Anthony Calleo built an oven and threw us a pizza party in the woods.
Citrus Tasting
Rick Nahmias traveled across the country with a box of California citrus for a fruit history lesson and blind tasting.
Gluten-free Baking
Baker Erica Fair led a session in baking with alternative flours, resulting in the ultimate breakfast treats.
Knife Sharpening
Sushi chef Erik Aplin taught us how to treat our knives and also demonstrated his fish butchery techniques on a whole bluefish.
Fermentation
Jeffrey de Picciotto and Chris O’Brien discussed fermentation techniques and traditions as we tasted ferments such as miso, koji, kimchi and kvass.
Community Building
In true collaborative spirit, Liz Martin, Liz Fitzgerald, Nadine Nelson, Rick Nahmias and Simran Jaising led a heart-felt session on developing meaningful partnerships and community engagement.
Eggsploration
From tiny quail eggs to the jumbo emu egg, Liz Martin led an investigative workshop all about eggs—included her own backyard chicken eggs.
Cruz de Asado Roast
With a whole pig donated from Stonybrook Meadow Farm, Laura del Campo organized a open-pit whole animal roast for the opening night of Eat Retreat.
Eat Retreaters brought a breadth of experience to our community building workshop. We described our successes and failures in engaging others in our work. Sharing best practices revealed how much common ground we have and how much there is to learn from each other.Rick Nahmias, Founder of Food Forward in Los Angeles
Bonds were built as Eat Retreaters huddled around a roaring campfire. We sandwiched toasted marshmallows between scratch-made graham crackers cut in the shape of Frederick von Chimpenheimer IV.
“OMG, are those MailChimp cookies?!”Overheard at the campfire
Thank you MailChimp for making it possible.Let’s collaborate again!