As the daughter of two Italian chefs, Alice Bendinelli has been around food and recipe books for most of her life. It is in her parents’ kitchens that she learned the importance of sourcing local and seasonal ingredients for her own cooking. Her mother, Liana, was one of the founding members of the Slow Food movement, an international enogastronomical organization dedicated to promoting local food and traditional cooking, while her father left a successful city restaurant to pursue the dream of an agriturismo, where farm to table would be the motto. Alice traded the olive groves and vineyards of Italy for the wheat and corn fields of Kansas, where she is a literature professor at Southwestern College in Winfield. She shares her passion for cooking from scratch with her students and friends and at the local farmers’ market, where she sells freshly handmade pasta. EcoFeast, a collaboration with the Bartlett Arboretum for Arb to Table, is truly a return to her roots and a celebration of Italian cooking as well as locally sourced Kansan ingredients.

Katie Schmidt is the grounds manager and horticulturist at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston, KS. Before her time at the Dyck Arboretum, she worked at The Kauffman Museum, in the greenhouse industry, and for the USGS. She graduated from Bethel College with a degree in Natural Sciences, her core studies concerning plant life and prairie ecosystems. She is a lifelong Kansas resident.