Put a Fork In It!

About Ashley Moulton

Ashley Moulton is a NYC-based tech entrepreneur working on Nomster Chef.

She has worked in kids’ educational media for 8 years: on a preschool TV show on Nickelodeon called “Team Umizoomi” and on apps at YouTube Kids and PlaySquare. She is a 2015 graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Education’s “Learning, Design, and Technology” program. Nomster Chef was developed as Ashley’s master’s program project at Stanford, and recently completed a fellowship in the University of Pennsylvania’s Education School’s Education Design Studio EdTech incubator. She’s been an avid home cook and foodie ever since moving to New York City opened her eyes to the wonders of food, and hopes to share this love with as many kids as possible!

Get in touch with Ashley: Email

About Nomster Chef

Nomster Chef is on a mission to raise a healthier generation of kids and a happier generation of parents by helping families cook together. Nomster Chef is a digital library of step-by-step illustrated recipes led by the friendly Nomster Monster character, and is designed to help kids age 2-12 feel like expert chefs. Cooking with Nomster Chef is the ultimate parenting hack: meal prep, family bonding, a healthy habit, and an educational experience all in one. Nomster Chef: Making mealtime family fun time.

Learn more about Nomster: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest

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Our Conversation

This is Ashley’s third time on PAFII. We follow up with her on her entrepreneurial journey, kickstarter campaign and launching the app. Check out her first episode here and her second one here.

Note that this show was recorded in 2018 and is being released in 2019 due to an hiatus in the podcast. It does not represent Ashley’s current status with Nomster.

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About Jamie Levato

Jamie Levato, Education Director of Poughkeepsie Farm Project, is a certified teacher with a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Education from SUNY New Paltz. Jamie has developed curriculum for, trained educators in, and led youth in, hands-on farm and garden-based learning. Under Jamies direction since 2010, PFPs education department provides enriching educational experiences for several thousand children, teens, and adults each year. Jamie has been gardening, cooking, and loving food since childhood and enjoys every opportunity to share her passions with like-minded individuals.

 

About Poughkeepsie Farm Project:

Poughkeepsie Farm Project is a member supported farm in the City of Poughkeepsie. They are on a mission to cultivate a just and sustainable food system in the Mid-Hudson Valley. They grow fresh vegetables and fruit for the CSA, train future farmers, provide hands-on educational programs, and improve access to healthy locally-grown food.

Poughkeepsie Farm Project began in 1999 as a small community farm with a commitment to education and food justice. During the first season, 15 CSA shareholders enjoyed produce from 3 acres of reawakened farmland leased from Vassar College.

Sixteen years later they have expanded to 12 acres and over 500 households take part in our CSA. They are leaders in cutting edge practices in today’s sustainable agriculture. They harvested 183,366 pounds of produce in 2015 and donated 34,555 pounds of it to those in need in our community. In addition to the work they do to bring our crops to harvest, we train and educate the community on healthy growing and eating practices year round.

Learn more about Poughkeepsie Farm Project – Website

Our Conversation:

We discuss:

What is the Poughkeepsie Farm Project?

Jamie’s background growing up and how it influenced her career

The beauty of community gardening

How does community gardening work?

Why “scripted” curriculums are inadequate for learning

“Garden clubs” – what are they and how they could work

What is the Poughkeepsie Urban Farming Initiative?

The motivation behind having and participating in agricultural programs in Poughkeepsie

What you can learn in agricultural programs

Improving Poughkeepsie’s potential for healthier food businesses and meaningful wage work.

What is the Farm-to-School Project ?

and so much more!

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About Omari Washington

Omari Washington is an Executive Director (Interim) and Program Coordinator, and an urbanist with a passion for building strong equitable communities through inclusive local food projects.

Over the past decade, he has been involved in the management of various environmental initiatives in New York City and the Hudson Valley, including MillionTreesNYC, and he has consulted with national organizations, such as National Wildlife Federation and National Urban League.

Environmental education has been a core component of Omari’s work since he travelled to Alaska during college for a 40-day backpacking and canoeing trip above the Arctic Circle with the National Outdoor Leadership School. This trip provided unequivocal proof of environmental degradation of our planet and happened to coincide with the release of Al Gore’s book,An Inconvenient Truth, which together created a clear imperative to help conserve our natural resources and processes.

In December 2016, Omari graduated from Pratt Institute with a Master’s degree in Sustainable Environmental Systems.

 

Learn more about:

Hudson Valley Seed – Website

Our Conversation:

We discuss:

What is Hudson Valley Seed?

What is the “Open Space Idea”?

The beauty of having varying experiences

The impact of Boys Scouts on Omari’s Life

Traveling Abroad

Inspiration of Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth”

Omari’s experiences in Alaska

How we as a society develop an “environmental ethic” over time?

Creating opportunities

New York Restoration Project

Applying different academic disciplines to the environment

Omari’s teaching classes

and so much more!

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About Mike Lee

Mike Lee is the founder of The Future Market, a futurist food lab that explores what our food system could look like in the next 10-25 years through pop-up experiences and conceptual product prototypes.

Mike is also co-founder of Alpha Food Labs, an Innovation Lab for next-gen food startups and corporations building products that are better for by People, Planet, and Profit. 

Mike’s experience in food design & innovation has covered a wide range over the past 10 years. Prior to Studio Industries & The Future Market, Mike led product development initiatives on the Innovation & New Ventures team at Chobani.

Mike also founded the Studiofeast underground supper club, a sister organization to Studio Industries. Studiofeast creates unique dining experiences that use food as a medium to design experiences that range from the artful, to the educational, to the hedonistic. 

Mike is a frequent and influential speaker on food innovation and has been featured in numerous publications and conferences such as Esca Bona, PSFK, SXSW, Seeds & Chips, EXPO 2015 Milano, Fancy Food Show, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, FastCo Exist, CNBC, Edible Brooklyn, Food Navigator, and more. He has spoken at and worked with companies such as Thermomix, Cargill Protein Group, Barilla, Baldor, PepsiCo, Virginia Dare, Coca-Cola, the Chobani Food Incubator, the James Beard Foundation, Google, Applegate, Chipotle, Batali+Bastianich Hospitality Group, Food+Tech Connect, AccelFoods, the National Turkey Federation, the USA Rice Federation, Puratos, and the Food+Tech Summit & Expo Mexico City and Buenos Aires.

 

Learn more about:

Future Market – Website

Studio Industries – Website 

Mike Lee – LinkedIn

Visit the Future Market at the Summer Fancy Food Show at Javit’s Center in NYC, June 30-July 2, 2018.

Our Conversation:

I first met Mike at the International Association of Culinary Professional’s conference in February 2018 after he spoke on a keynote panel about the future of food. I was absolutely fascinated. I knew he definitely needed to come on the show. Luckily, he was game!

Our conversation is winding and covers many topics, not just his background, but also talking about how he sees the future of food and innovation in the food industry and food systems, as they relate to health, technology and sustainability.

We discuss:

What is the Future Market and why is it worth paying attention to?

How Mike became inspired by the Auto Industry

What is a supper club and how is it a unique playground for innovation?

The power of innovation and why it’s needed

Why the packaged foods sector needs improvement

Dangers associated with lack of innovation

Understanding “the consumer’s journey” – particularly as it relates to food

Bringing the tech hackathon concept to food

How hackathons can help with food safety, rules, and regulations

The future of holistic health technology (The Fitbit of the future)

What is “AnalyzeMe?” and how would it help us?

Lab grown meat? Are we there yet and what are the ramifications?

and so much more!

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About Shira Reback

Shira Reback, photo by Caylena Cahill / Co:Create

Shira Reback is a multi-trepreneur whose focus is total body health and wellness. Shira is a Certified NASM Personal Trainer, Dental hygienist, co-owner ST3 Kickboxing, and Network Marketing Professional.

Shira’s background in healthcare and fitness provide her with a unique perspective on what works to keep clients and patients on a successful journey.

After multiple years in her dental practice, and in the fitness industry, Shira became frustrated by the lack of health solutions for her struggling patients and clients. She states, “In my dental practice, that I’ve been working over 20 years, I watched people slowly lose sight of their health, while adding medications that were directly correlated to the weight gain, due to poor nutritional habits and lack of nutritional knowledge.” 

While Shira made sound nutritional recommendations to her fitness clients, she often found the follow through and motivation to create a healthy attitude around nutrition challenging for them. The tools available were limited at addressing some core issues around what caused the unhealthy habits. Traditional programs do not deal with energy levels, lack of sleep, detoxification, sugar/salt addiction, time constraints for food prep, and lack of support. 

Shira’s discovery of nutritional cleansing was a huge game changer for her personal results, and as her clients started to notice changes in her, the program quickly took traction. The program addressed all of the above challenges, as well as healthy aging, muscle maintenance/building, energy, and sports performance, while using non-compromised ingredients. These products are Informed Sports Certified, and used by many professional athletes.

The amazing network of support has lead some of her clients to become leaders, and start motivating others to focus on their health goals as well. In this process, they have created a stream of residual income in the pockets of their time. This income has opened up many possibilities for those individuals. Shira coaches people across the country, and globally, to create physical and financial health for themselves.

Our Conversation:

 

We discuss:

How a career in dental hygiene led to a passion in total body health and wellness

Lifestyle diseases and learning to make better choices

Shira’s fitness journey

Why food has such a big impact on our health

Role of stress in health

Shira’s love for kickboxing and how it changed her life

What it’s like to own your own studio

The concept of “Energy”

The truth about Network Marketing

Dangers of unhealthy convenient food products

Supplements and health fitness products

Isagenix – what is it and why she loves it

and so much more!

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About Stephen Osborn

Stephen Osborn has worked for 35 years in the areas of bio-chemical and physical-chemical flavor production, specifically in the practices of winemaking and distilling. 

After completing studies in Biochemistry and Food Chemistry at Cornell University and Winemaking at UC Davis, he set about navigating his way towards a different practice of winemaking that would lead to a more accurate representation of the biochemical processes that create it’s flavors.

Currently the owner of Stoutridge Vineyard and Distillery in the New York’s Hudson Valley since 2003 with his wife Kimberly Wagner, he realized his dream of applying the principals he developed in natural winemaking toward distilling with the opening of Stoutridge Distillery in 2017.

Our Conversation:

 

We discuss:

How studying biochemistry led to a career in winemaking

What makes wine special versus other forms of alcohol

The beauty of mixing science with creativity and art

Learning to be introspective and self-aware

A little history about vineyards and wineries in the Hudson Valley, and the US in general

Analyzing the wine industry and changes that should be made

Science of wine flavors and its processes

Stephen’s journey discovering wine and finding land to build a vineyard

Stephen’s take on deception in the wine industry

What it takes to make natural wine, without additional processing or added ingredients, like sugar or sulfites

Why and how Stoutridge’s wine is a super local experience and can’t be had around the globe

The importance of “internal elegance” for living a fulfilled life

and so much more!

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About Noah Sheetz

Noah Sheetz is a chef, urban farmer, local food advocate and culinary consulting specialist. He is also the director of the Chefs’ Consortium.

Over the course of his career, Noah has worked in fine dining restaurants, owned a bakery, taught courses in culinary arts, and served as the Executive Chef at the Governor’s Mansion in Albany through four administrations.

Additionally, Noah worked with fresh-local, institutional, foodservice provider Cura Hospitality at Hudson Valley Hospital Center where he planned healthy, seasonal meals made with local ingredients and conducted cooking demonstrations at the hospital’s bi-monthly farmers’ market.

Noah has worked as a cooking instructor at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville New York and SUNY Cobleskill where he taught beginning culinary arts students cooking fundamentals and the importance of working with local and seasonal ingredients. 

Noah travels throughout New York City, the Hudson Valley, and the Capital region where he conducts cooking demonstrations at farmers’ markets and school gardens and assists non-profit organizations and small and large businesses with sustainable foodservice solutions and with procurement systems that feature local ingredients.

Noah has a bachelor of science in Culinary Arts Management from the Culinary Institute of America and an MBA from the University of Albany.

Connect with Noah: Website

 

About Chefs’ Consortium:

Chefs’ Consortium is a collaboration of creative and talented chefs who are committed to promoting local agriculture. Chefs’ Consortium creates partnerships with other non-profit organizations, actively recruits new member-chefs, and coordinates farm-to-table events.

Our Conversation:

Noah and I first met several years ago when I was first dipping my feet into the waters of food photography. Since then, Noah and I have worked  together on a number of events with the Chef’s consortium – including dinners on a the Clearwater, on Bannerman’s Island and even a cook-off with the Food Pantry in Troy.

We discuss:

What exactly Is the Chefs’ Consortium and how they do local food in strange places

Bannerman’s Island – What it is and it’s history

Having fancy dinner events on an island with no running water and electricity, and how it works.

What it’s like to arrive on Bannerman’s Island

Chef’ing for a romantic dating contest on a sand dune

How to give cooking demos without knives

What it’s like to work in prisons and juvenile detention centers, from a food perspective

History of Chefs’ Consortium

What it was like to work for the George Pataki and Elliot Spitzer Administration at the NY Governor’s mansion

and so much more!

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About Dr. George Kessler

Dr. George Kessler is a graduate of Long Island University with the most diversified student award.

He completed his medical school training at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine and is board certified in family medicine and a diplomat in the American Academy of Pain Management.

Dr. Kessler is a clinical instructor of medicine at the Weill Cornell College of Medicine of Cornell University, an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital the Cornell campus and a consulting physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC.

He has authored The Bone Density Diet published by Ballantine books, and No More Knee Pain published by Berkley press, as well as the chapter on bone metabolism in the text book Integrative Medicine, Principles and Practice published by McGraw Hill.

Dr. Kessler maintains a consultative integrative medical practice in NYC.

Our Conversation:

Our discussion is wide ranging on various health and medical topics. We focus around the difference between osteopathic medicine and traditional doctors, as well as things like nutrition and cholesterol. It’s an interesting conversation for sure and we really dig in deep. I know I definitely learned a lot, so I hope you will too.

We discuss:

What exactly is osteopathic medicine?

Difference in Philosophy between Allopathic (MD) and Osteopathic (DO) medicine approaches.

What it is important to treat the whole human being, not just a disease on part of the body.

The importance of patient relationships and why its “80% of the healing process”.

The importance of teaching a healthy lifestyle, not just handing out prescriptions

Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, and why there needs to be a change in the medical industry.

Diet, stress reduction, and sleep.

Being informed properly about your health and seeking out physicians who are holistic or integrative.

Contemporary “alternative” approaches in medicine.

and so much more!

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About Emily Kessler

Chef Emily Kessler

Emily Kessler is a chef and owner of Emily Kessler Inc., a company specializing in medically collaborative cooking.

After receiving a B.A. in Psychology with a certificate in Child Development, she started her culinary journey at the Institute of Culinary Education where she graduated with a degree in culinary arts. She then went on to hone her culinary skills at Blue Hill at Stone Barns and other NYC establishments including the James Beard House and Foundation.

Emily was inspired to start this culinary journey by her father who loves food, and happens to also be an incredible holistically based osteopathic physician, as well as by her sister who suffers from food allergies. She saw the difficulty her sister had finding safe food that was inventive and tasty. Emily was witness to the struggles of diet from the patients’ and doctors’ perspectives.

Emily Kessler Inc. was born to solve these problems for both the patients and doctors, and to bridge the gap between refined culinary cuisine and medically based diets.

Emily now specializes is cooking for people with food allergies and patients undergoing cancer treatment or suffering from autoimmune diseases. She also works with mothers to be who want healthful food designed for their personal dietary needs during and after pregnancy. Emily Kessler Inc. serves clients in the New York City area and all of Long Island.

 

 

Get in Touch with Emily: email

 

About Emily Kessler Inc.

Emily Kessler Inc is a Manhattan based company providing culinary services and consulting to New York City and the surrounding areas.

Website: Emily Kessler

Our Conversation:

Emily reached out to me about being on the show after seeing a post in the Facebook Toklas group for women in the culinary industry. I was quite intrigued by her approach to food and business.

Emily is more than just a trained chef, she is also the daughter of an osteopathic physician who has been in his own practice throughout the last several decades. (Stay tuned for a future episode actually featuring him, as well.) 

This upbringing in a physicians family, as well as some other interesting experiences around culinary school, food allergies and more led Emily to launch her own business in personal chef’ing and consulting to doctors and nutritionists. She approaches food as medicine, and helps people use food to have a more holistic approach to disease prevention and management, as well as healing and enjoying food in spite of allergies. It’s an interesting conversation for sure and we really dig in deep into her background. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

We discuss:

How Emily’s osteopathic physician father influenced her love and passion for food and the human body.

The relationship between what we eat and it’s effects on the immune system.

Pregnancy, Nutrition, and taking the pressure off of families.

How travel influenced new cooking techniques and ingredients, and it’s application to alternative food needs.

Creating safe food programs for children with food allergies.

How her psychology background influenced her culinary approaches.

How bacteria can play a positive role in the human body.

The truth about soy products

Starting at the “grassroots”, building a great business from scratch.

and so much more!

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About Donna Williams

Donna Williams is the founder of Field Goods, a service that delivers small farm produce and artisan products to consumers at their workplace, schools and community locations.

Donna founded Field Goods in September 2010 after she completed agriculture economic development consulting work for the Greene County Industrial Development Agency in NY.  

Field Goods was an inevitable outgrowth of this work, her belief in the positive power of local food and small business, as well as her new venture experience in consumer health, e-commerce, and the natural food industry.

Donna has worked in a variety of industries, for companies that include Bankers Trust, Times Mirror, Mosby, BigStar.com and Sahale Snacks. Donna earned her MBA from Columbia Business School and BA in Economics from Mount Holyoke College.  Donna lives in Athens, NY.

Get in Touch with Donna: email

 

About Field Goods

FIELD GOODS®  is based in Athens, NY. The company delivers to over 4,000 customers at approximately 700 locations in 23 NY, CT, MA, and NJ counties. Field Goods has served over 14,000 customers and delivered over 250,000 produce bags. Field Goods has been awarded the 2016 Statewide National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a USDA Local Food Promotion Program Grant and New York State Economic Development Grant.

Website: Field Goods

Our Conversation:

Ever since I first heard about Field Goods, I knew I wanted to collaborate, and when I started the podcast, I knew I wanted to have on Donna. So, I’m super excited to finally share this episode!

Unlike many of the business owners I speak with on a regular basis, Donna came at business with a strong foundation in how to build a business, do marketing and create systems, but did not have as much experience in the particular industry she was going into. She saw an opportunity and seized it, using her background in business and lots of experimentation and research.

Our conversation focuses on a lot of the early stages, lessons and more.

We discuss:

What Field Goods Is and why it started

How Field Goods got started with a website, an old station wagon and a high school kid

Figuring out the systems to make Field Goods works and the pitfalls that were overcome

Surprising events that occurred as Field Goods developed into what it is today

The importance of having a varied background

The importance of understanding business fundamentals

Changing the way people eat

Price analyzing the food industry – where your money really goes

A throwback to en earlier episode with Ben Giardullo

and so much more!

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