Edible Academy Family Garden Picnic Featuring Celebrity Chef Mario Batali

Chef Mario Batali gardening at NYBG's Ruth Rea Family Garden's new Edible Academy, children's vegetable garden

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) sent a media alert - asking me to share with my readers and garden audience.

It is my pleasure to tell you about two of my most favorite passions: locavore chefs and edible gardens.  

Never mind that Mario Batali is a celebrity chef - he is a committed homegrown chef and one of the featured chefs in my New York Homegrown Cookbook - next in the series, following on The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook.

Plus, I worked at NYBG and was honored to have had the opportunity to promote and tell the good food and garden news of the Ruth Rea Family Garden.  I loved the plant filled caterpillar that greeted guests at the entrance with its Hakone grass eyelashes... So sweet.

And I cherish the porcelain covered dish given to me by the Korean family gardeners who worked the cultural garden there... It is a constant reminder of a a beautiful sentiment  and edible education exchange.

There is joy and happiness that reigns in this garden. 

You can't miss this:

Join Chef and New York Botanical Garden Board Member Mario Batali on a culinary adventure on Monday, June 10, from 4–8 p.m., with a delicious picnic supper and activities, and watch him in action at a live cooking demonstration. All proceeds benefit the development of the Botanical Garden’s new Edible Academy, hub of the children’s vegetable gardening program.

The Edible Academy will be a dramatic expansion of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, creating a year-round learning center that will educate 80,000 children, teachers, families, and adults each year about the important connections between plants, gardening, nutrition, and health, expanding on the wonderful programs already in place at the Family Garden.

Tickets for Mario’s cooking demo and book signing start at $40 for adults, $15 for kids. For tickets and information, visit nybg.org/familypicnic, call 718.817.8773, or email cbalkonis@nybg.org.

WHO: Celebrity Chef and Garden Board Member Mario Batali
 Special Cooking Demo Guest Daphne Oz, Mario’s co-host on ABC’s The Chew.

WHEN: Monday, June 10, 2013, 4–8 p.m., rain or shine

This exciting culinary adventure begins with a delicious picnic supper designed personally by Mario. Enjoy your picnic on the beautiful Garden grounds, then dig in to some hands-on fun in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. Learn to harvest vegetables through engaging hands-on tutorials, compete in a corn-shucking contest, follow clues to Mario’s mystery ingredient, climb a giant oak tree, see a European eagle owl, make your own chef’s hat, harvest bags, seed pets, pickles, and more.

Schedule of Events

4–7 p.m. 5:30–6 p.m. 6–6:45 p.m. 7–8 p.m.

Garden Picnic and Activities
Book signing with Mario Batali
Cooking Demonstration featuring Mario Batali and Daphne Oz 
Cocktail Reception hosted by Mario Batali
and the Edible Academy Chairmen, supported by Whole Foods Market®

WHERE: The New York Botanical Garden Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden