Continuing Education for Food, Nutrition, Health and Culinary Professionals

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do you limit the group size for most of your workshops?

In a nutshell: because it provides the greatest learning experience for attendees. Many of you have no doubt sat in those vast conference rooms and listened to fascinating presentations. At the end of the presentation, either you could not get your question asked, or someone dominated the Q&A, or you just didn’t want to ask it in front of everyone else but also couldn’t ask the speaker personally. We all have different learning needs when we come to an educational session. Our small group format allows you to get what you personally need from the learning experience. Our years of work developing and hosting programs in the U.S. and Europe have shown that this format is the preferred learning format for professionals who have attended them.

For the culinary component of your programs, do you have to have specific competencies or skill sets to be able to participate?

We have designed our programs to enable people of all skill levels to learn and benefit. If you are a novice or an enthusiastic cook, you can feel confident that you will neither be overwhelmed nor underwhelmed with the culinary experiences. We offer an environment of encouragement and support and one in which you can build on your knowledge base regardless of your level of culinary competence.

Our programs differ from recreational or professional level culinary programs in that they are specifically designed for the food and nutrition professional. You can expect to ask questions and learn about how to apply what you learn to your practice, client base or work setting. Our small groups allow this personal learning experience to take place.

I can’t decide between a one day program and the multi-day programs. Can you provide some insights on these experiences?

Our one day programs are designed to achieve a specific skill-set or learning experience during the course of one day. These are intensive learning experiences. You can expect to participate in hands-on learning, individual and group work and plenty of thought-provoking dialog. All one-day experiences provide you with a set of tools and plenty of food for thought.

Our multi-day experiences are modeled after the success of our international Exchange Forums. These are purposely very limited in size to enable every participant to have a very personal learning experience. Over the years, we have learned that large conference formats serve as excellent information dissemination mediums, however, rarely meet the individual learning needs of each and every participant. Your questions and solutions requirements are different from everyone else’s and in a large group scenario, rare is the opportunity to have your voice or question heard.

Our small group, multi-day programs allow deeper learning, networking, skill-building and personal enrichment. The multi-day format allows time to immerse yourself in the topic or issue at hand, build skills and knowledge and importantly, allows time for reflection over the course of several days. We choose one theme and build the entire program around that focus. There are no break outs and no general sessions. There is simply the topic and you. The multi-day programs are also destination education formats, often held in beautiful, unique settings that allow you to relax and enjoy as you learn.

Will Amanda Archibald be at every program?

Yes, Amanda is on site and present during every program hosted by Field to Plate. When she is not actively teaching, she is monitoring each and every session to ensure the quality of the learning experience for participants.

How do we dress for your workshops?

We specialize in seeing, touching, tasting and doing. You can expect to get your hands in food and even in the soil (for on-farm programs). We therefore encourage you to dress comfortably, casually, but with respect for others. No need to dress up for our U.S. programs. For programs with a significant culinary component, you will need to wear comfortable closed toe, rubber sole shoes.

For programs with a tour component (New Orleans and Santa Fe are examples), you will be meeting community leaders and people in the community. In this case, we ask that you again dress respectfully for those specific tour occasions.

Do you offer group discounts?

Yes we do for multiple registrations from one organization. Please contact us to discuss discounts for our programs

What programs are in the pipeline for 2009?

We get asked this question a lot! Before we schedule programming in any year, we evaluate the success of each and every one of our programs in the current year. Based on participant feedback, we will expand program offerings to other locations in the U.S.A. in 2009. In 2009, we plan to offer a similar combination of culinary retreats, multi-day workshops and one day skill-building workshops. Preliminary details of our 2009 programs will become available in the Fall, 2008.

In the international arena, we are working on an International Exchange Forum in Rome, Italy.