73 Footsteps from Farm to Kitchen to Table

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Chew on this: make your own burritos, lasagna, pad thai, wild salmon with pesto! Kid-made peach-strawberry cobbler, maple granola, hummus, pickles, goat cheese, yogurt, ice cream, blueberry-watermelon popsicles…. Oy vey! This isn’t your standard camp food!

“This isn’t just good camp food… this is the best food I’ve ever had!” –Daniel K., 12

Healthy, delicious and kid-friendly

We are redefining camp food by bringing local, organic, farm-to-table values to every bite we eat. We source the highest quality ingredients from a variety of local, fair trade, and ethically-run businesses. Our ingredients are over 95% organic – that’s not just organic produce, but organic grains, spices, and every ingredient going into each meal. We prioritize relationships with our local producers and companies producing food in a sustainable way. Whenever available, we always choose local, organic, and fair-trade first. Go here for a list of our featured suppliers and many of our ingredients.

We’re committed to nurturing minds and bodies – and that includes providing kid-friendly food that campers will find both enjoyable and nourishing.

Meal time is a highlight of each day

Our campers taste the bounty of their farm harvests in three varied, tasty, nutritious, Kosher, and mostly vegetarian/pescatarian meals a day. They assist our creative chefs in preparing meals with love and care. At every meal, campers and staff gather around communal tables, either in our spacious dining hall or shaded outdoor dining area, and join in singing, giving thanks and sharing about the day’s events.

Campers are involved in every step of the journey from seed to banquet… and back to compost to nourish the soil. We supplement the organic produce from our farm — run in partnership with the Jewish Farm School —with organic produce from farmers right here in Putnam Valley.

Shabbat dinner is especially special. It’s a true feast, and campers have created part of it: fresh-baked challah, made from our own wheat and baked in our outdoor cob oven. Hand-squeezed grape juice. Flowers from our calendar garden. Ginger-wineberry crisp with berries gathered from the Wineberry Trail.

Once a week, the teen apprentices collaborate with the kitchen staff to offer an outdoor barbecue picnic with organic, kosher chicken or turkey, along with vegetarian barbecue creations.

Why do we serve so little meat?

Our mostly vegetarian diet aligns with Eden Village Camp’s core value of sustainability. Diet is one of the most significant ways we can reduce our resource consumption and carbon footprint. Each meal is planned to offer high-quality protein and other essential nutrients, so that each camper feels great and has plenty of energy for their full days!

Special Food Needs?

We richly accommodate most special food needs; please let us know about them in your application. We have had happy campers with nut, fish, dairy, and gluten allergies, and a host of other dietary needs. We offer satisfying alternatives, not just the salad bar: for example, when lunch includes grilled cheese and tomato soup, automatic options include gluten-free, vegan, and gluten-free-and-vegan grilled cheese, and vegan soup.

For picky eaters, we’ll work with you to make sure your camper is nourished at each meal. While we have a “try five bites” guideline to encourage our campers to try new foods and eat the main course, the most important thing is that each person is happy and fed, and we do keep simple alternatives on hand.

“I never liked zucchini but then I picked it myself and made it into zucchini bread, and yum!” – Jamie S., 10

What about kashrut?

Our full-time, live-in mashgiach (food supervisor) oversees our strictly Kosher kitchen as directed by the supervision of Rabbi Yisroel Finman of Chai Kosher. You may view our Kosher Certification here. If you have further questions, please feel free to call us.

Our Ingredients

We are committed to sustainable agriculture and ethical businesses, which means tracking our values through the entire food system, not just stopping with fresh farm products. We also keep things pure and simple, we hydrate with plain, pure, water; we avoid refined products; and things which are artificially white, processed, unnecessarily canned or frozen, and otherwise trending any way other than fresh, natural, and healthy. Here are some of the companies and products we serve in our dining hall:

Local and Sustainable Milk, Eggs, and Ice Cream

As farmers, we know how important and delightful it is to know where your food comes from and who produced it. This region produces delicious food, and we love supporting our neighbors and fellow farmers. Whenever we can, we choose high-quality local products. Our milk comes from Hudson Valley Fresh, a non-profit cooperative of dairy farmers who practice sustainable agriculture in the Hudson Valley, thus preserving 5,000 acres of open land. Their milk comes from within 20 miles of the processing plant and is never delivered beyond the local tri-state area.

Our ice cream comes from Adirondack Creamery, which is less than an hour from Eden Village. Adirondack uses milk only from local, hormone-free cows with the finest all-natural ingredients and no artificial additives. It is a hit with our campers!

We supplement the eggs from our flocks of chickens with eggs from Giving Nature Organic Foods, a local family farm committed to organic, sustainable agriculture.

Free-roaming, Ethically Raised Chicken

We’re lucky to have a formed a special partnership with Grow and Behold Foods, who provides us with their delicious line of Sara’s Spring Chicken. Unlike organic “free-range” or “free-roaming” chickens (which have access to the outdoors, but spend most of their lives inside), these chickens live outdoors in moveable pens and are moved out onto fresh pasture each day.

Raised about an hour’s drive from camp, they eat grass, fresh forage, and a small amount of GMO-free and soy-free feed. This means the healthiest and tastiest Kosher chicken for our campers and staff. We’re grateful to work with a new company whose mission is so closely aligned with our values. Grow and Behold graciously subsidized last summer’s chicken for our campers.

Local, Organic Produce

Beyond our farm’s daily supply of amazing fresh food, we keep our fresh food sources as local as possible. We purchase ten shares of the Common Ground Farm’s CSA (community-supported agriculture) in Beacon, NY, less than 15 miles from camp. Common Ground is an educational and socially-engaged farm committed to making fresh, organic produce available to everyone. Each week, Common Ground farmers bring their harvest to low-income neighborhoods and process payments with their food stamp machine.

You can find your local CSA with this website: http://www.localharvest.org/csa/.

And more of our suppliers!

• Arrowhead Mills Organic Flours, Grains, and Unsweetened cereals
• Bionaturae Organic Pastas
• Bread Alone Organic Bakery
• Eden Organics Beans, Grains, and Dry Goods
• Frontier Organic Spices
• Hepworth Farm: Milton, NY
• Lucky Dog Farm: Hamden, NY
• Muir Glen Organic Foods
• Natural by Nature Dairy
• Organic Valley Foods
• Raw, Local Honey
• Stonyfield Organic Yogurt
• Sunspire Organic & Fair-trade chocolate chips
• Taliaferro Farm: New Paltz, NY
• The Farm at Miller’s Crossing: Claverack, NY
• Wildwood Organics
• Wise Organic Meats
• Woodstock Farms Foods