On November 29, at the Partnership for a Healthier America’s Building a Healthier Future Summit in Washington, D.C., James Beard Award-winning chefs Holly Smith, Maria Hines, Tom Colicchio and Ming Tsai will participate in the Great American Family Dinner challenge, where they will to compete to cook a healthy dinner for two real families on a SNAP (food stamp) budget.

The chefs will pair off,  and have 30 minutes and $10 to create the meal in front of summit attendees. The meals will be judged by two families who won a sweepstakes sponsored by Parents and Ser Padres magazines. Chef Holly Smith will compete with chef Ming Tsai and chef Maria Hines with chef Tom Collicchio.

White House Assistant Chef Sam Kass will emcee the competition and prior to the competition, summit attendees will experience their own meal prepared by James Beard Award winners and nominees chefs José Andres, Floyd Cardoz, Koren Grieveson and Anne Quatrano who will cook a healthy, three-course meal – using only $4.50-worth of ingredients per person – for all of the summit participants.  Four dollars and fifty cents is an approximation of what the average American spends on dinner.

For more information on the Summit, click here.

On Tuesday, November 29, Cafe Juanita chef and James Beard Award winner Holly Smith and three other James Beard Award-winning chefs from around the country will converge on Washington D.C. to show off their talents for a White House crowd as part of The Great American Family Dinner Challenge.

As part of Michelle Obama’s Partnership for a Healthier America, Smith will team up with celeb chef Marcus Samuelsson to cook a healthy dinner in less than 30 minutes for an audience of business owners, advocacy groups, key opinion leaders, and members of the press.

Smith and Samuelsson will be challenged to create a two-course meal—dinner and dessert—for a family of four in an average kitchen (a conventional oven, microwave, toaster, blender, and a modest assortment of pots and pans will be provided) that meets nutritional guidelines, and they’ll be limited to a budget of just $10.

White House chef Sam Kass will be emceeing the event, and judges will be two typical American families selected from a sweepstakes sponsored by Parents and Ser Padres magazines.

For more information about Holly Smith, visit cafejuanita.com.

Cafe Juanita’s Holly Smith won Best of Beast at Tamara Murphy’s fourth annual Burning Beast at Smoke Farm on Sunday, July 17 with her spit roasted billy goat with rosemary, garlic and Moscato vinegar baste.

The braised legs were served with Piemontese polenta and fried rosemary and the rest, including the loin was served with moscato vinegar reduction and fried rosemary.

Burning Beast is a carnivorous benefit event for Smoke Farm, a project of the Rubicon Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and featured many of Seattle’s top chef’s doing their delicious thing with ethically raised animals and sustainably harvested fish using fire as their method of cooking.

On January 15, as part of Michael Pollan’s lecture at Benaroya Hall called “In Defense of Food: The Omnivore’s Solution,” Holly Smith of Cafe Juanita, along with Chefs Tamara Murphy, Christine Keff and Maria Hines will each contribute a wine-paired course using local, sustainable and seasonal produce. This dinner will benefit the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance, and $130 of the ticket price is a tax-deductible contribution to the NFMA. More information and tickets for this powerhouse event are available here.