Manitou's Local Food Initiative - Phase 2

Last summer, Manitou’s chef, Alex, started a Farm-to-Table initiative that drew national headlines and rave reviews from campers and staff. The idea was to incorporate ingredients from local farms into the salad bar and have a featured “Farm Meal” one day each week made with all local ingredients.

After a full year of planning menus and sourcing ingredients from local Maine farms, Phase 2 has exploded into a culinary extravaganza of home grown herbs, seasonal vegetables, Maine dairy, and locally grown meats. Meals are built from scratch with nutrition and the various Manitou taste palettes in mind. The mouth-watering Visiting Day menu is a true representation of the thought that goes into each meal, and the resources we call on to provide the best ingredients we can find. Chilled Strawberry Mint soup features mint grown right in our Manitou herb garden. Meatball sliders are constructed from Milkhouse Farm’s ground beef. Organic pulled pork is smoked for 18 hours after it arrives from Treble Ridge Farm in Whitefield, Maine.

While we are still working on educating and involving the campers in the new camp food philosophy, it has been great to see this movement pick up momentum. A camp’s active lifestyle should be supported by healthy food. Even if “healthy” sometimes means organic milk with our bedtime cookies.