By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

FRANKFORT, Ky. — For those interested in buying and consuming local foods and those who are avid collectors of recipes, the two are about to come together by way of a partnership between University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service and the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.

The initiative, known as Plate It Up, Kentucky Proud will launch during this year’s Kentucky State Fair.

“The goal is to get consumers to buy, prepare and preserve more locally-grown Kentucky Proud products,” said Janet Johnson, Allen County Cooperative Extension agent for family and consumer sciences. “By developing delicious new recipes each season that focus on the freshest commodities, consumers can sample the benefits provided by plating up the best of Kentucky foods.”

Johnson, who has been instrumental in getting the program off the ground, also said the project has been in a pilot and development phase for about a year and a half where by recipe ideas were collected for modification from a variety of sources through family and consumer sciences extension agents all across Kentucky.

The recipes were then sent to nutrition and food science students in the UK College of Agriculture’s School of Human Environmental Sciences where they were modified to make them healthier while still maintaining taste.

The recipes were then put through a series of taste tests where eventually the ones selected will end up on recipe cards to be distributed through each county extension office and on a website (www. kyproud.com/recipes) designed just for this project.
Johnson said recipe cards weren’t exactly a new thing and in years pass they had been handed out at farmers’ markets, but in many cases the recipes were outdated. The idea with this project was to continually develop new recipes. Johnson noted that when asking for recipes, they requested ones utilizing commodities for a particular season, for instance, recipes for the fall season would include those with such foods as apples, pumpkins and perhaps turnip greens.

When working with the UK students, Johnson said there were certain criteria that had to be met, the first being flavor.
“That was the number one criterion we were looking for; that it was flavorful and colorful and people would enjoy this recipe using this commodity,” she said. “Then we wanted them to look at costs and availability of the recipe components. If people can’t access it or they don’t know what it is or it’s too expensive, they won’t use the recipe.”

Another thing that students were instructed to do was to look at the time aspect of completing the recipe.

“It can not be a recipe that takes all day to do. It has to be something that people would pick up and say, ‘I can do that,’” Johnson said.

Of course the health factor was another consideration but it had to meet the other three factors, as well.

At this point the students have had four semesters to work on the project therefore being able to look at previous samples, but it has made for a challenge to include all the conditions of a selected recipe.

Once a new recipe was created, the county agents that collected the pre-modified recipes were brought in to do a blind taste test comparing the original to the new. Johnson said in 90 percent of the cases the new recipes were selected. The final test is to send the recipes back to agents to conduct their own taste tests. That being the case, a recipe is actually tested three times before a decision is made to put it into resource development.

That’s the stage where money is actually put into creating the recipe cards and mass producing them. To help pay for that, the project was funded by using a portion of a federal grant obtained by KDA which is assisting in developing the educational resources, marketing, and has developed and maintains the Kentucky Proud recipe database, according to information from the agency.
Johnson noted that the web site will contain much more information than what will be able to be printed on cards and as the unveiling of the program approaches, that site is ready to go.
The process to get just the right recipe is very thorough so much so that in order to stay in season with the recipes, work has to begin at least six months ahead to time to go through the many steps involved in making a final selection.

In fact, ideas for next summer’s recipes are already being collected as classes begin at UK this week.

For those visiting the fair, the first recipes will be showcased during the opening day’s commodities breakfast. Recipes will also be featured at the Gourmet Garden demonstrations held noon daily at the Kentucky Beef Council’s stage in the south wing of the Kentucky Exposition Center, according to the KDA. Information and cards will also be available at he UK College of Agriculture’s exhibit located in the west hall lobby and in KDA’s exhibit in the south wing.