The New Farm To Table

I’ve MOVED!! Come on over, the water is just fine!

HERE

Fat Japanese?

There are none. This guy doesn’t count.

Bill the Butcher

one night, during the younger Bill’s term rushing ingredients around a hotel kitchen for a battalion of short-tempered French, Swiss, and German cooks, the kitchen ran out of veal scallops. (It’s an outmoded cut, but used be central in Continental cooking.) The whole place went ballistic until a thick, German assistant to the chef grabbed Bill by the elbow and wrangled him down to the basement butchery room. There, the assistant lifted a veal hindquarter from its rail, and “deftly boned, seamed, and sliced it into beautiful thin scallops,” which Bill scrambled to platter as neatly as the man had butchered them.

A great story about the loss of our artisinal skills.

What the heck is a scape?

find out here…

Dining Out

With Food Allergies

your relationship to your dinner changes when it can kill you

From Poor and Rural, To Locavore Mecca

The future of food, I’ve been told, may be found in a hardscrabble town of 3,200 in northern Vermont. But as I walk down the main street of Hardwick, a former granite-quarrying town, there is nothing that would indicate this is the new food utopia heralded by The New York Times. I pass the Chinese take-out joint, catch the charred whiff of a burned-out building and finally stop catty-corner from the laundromat and police station. Then I spot it: a cheery pumpkin-colored building with floor-to-ceiling windows and etched on the glass: “Claire’s: Local ingredients. Open to the world.” I step through the restaurant door, and I am immediately transported.

Read the whole thing

The ProFood Movement Has Arrived

The below post was written by Rob Smart, a friend, entrepreneur and fellow blogger at Every Kitchen Table

What if I told you that America’s food system is broken? What would you say?

Would you defend it by pointing out the abundance of choices offered in today’s average supermarket, estimated to be over 45,000 items? Would you cite that per capita spending on food has dropped significantly over the last 50 years, freeing up incomes to improve quality of life? Would you talk about how American innovation is not only feeding our citizens, but is also feeding the world? Or would you quietly ask what a food system is?

While perhaps it’s not “broken,” America’s industrial food system, which dominates food sales, has developed side effects that are accelerating in severity, especially diet-related health (e.g., obesity, diabetes, asthma, allergies) and environmental (e.g., chemical toxins, soil degradation, carbon emissions) issues that can no longer be ignored.

The food industry’s insatiable drive toward cheaper, more convenient products has also disrupted the simple pleasures of cooking, eating and/or sharing meals with family and friends, turning food into an accessory, a lofty drop from once being an intimate part of our daily lives.

The good news is there is an increasingly vocal ground swell of advocates and experts working to reverse the downsides of industrial food, with the high-profile personalities becoming lightning rods for the powerful, entrenched corporate interests being challenged, which commonly label them as “elitist” or “anti-ag.” Such claims, both untrue and unfair, are designed to minimize any impact these knowledgeable voices have on public opinion and consumer spending. Look no further than industrial food’s aggressive reactions to the Food, Inc. documentary to see it in action.

One thing is clear, we can no longer allow industry to control the dialog, but fighting fire with fire, especially the use of fear to influence consumer behavior, doesn’t sit well, and would probably be less effective than other approaches. To that end I’ve attempted to define the concept of “Pro Food” based on a set of core principles that get at the heart of why I and others are dedicated to driving these principles into mainstream culture through communications and alternative food systems.

PRO FOOD IS…

• Inclusive – Everybody is part of Pro Food, since everyone can gain from its success.
• Pro Farm – Fresh, healthy, and sustainable food starts with the farmers who grow it. Without their dedication, stewardship of the land and tireless labor it is difficult to envision Pro Food getting out of the gate.
• Pro Consumer – Today’s conventional food system has invested billions of dollars in constructing a food infrastructure designed to do one thing: sell as much food as possible, as quickly and cheaply as possible. This strategy has been good for bottom lines, bad for waistlines and even worse for personal healthcare costs. Pro Food envisions bringing farm and plate together in innovative retail experiences that go beyond convenience to embrace flavor, taste, seasonal rhythms, community and health.
• Pro Cooking – Where would we be without cooking? Unfortunately for the last few generations, cooking has been left by the wayside in exchange for cheap, convenient substitutes as people became increasingly squeezed for time and energy. In many ways, Pro Food is based in the home kitchen, the best place to ensure we eat sustainably every day.
• Pro Eating – The only thing possibly more important than cooking is eating. And while Pro Food places an emphasis on awakening America’s home kitchens, it also recognizes that many institutions (schools, hospitals, corporate cafeterias) and restaurants are doing their part in bringing the same healthy, flavorful and sustainable food on to every plate they serve.
• Community-Oriented – Pro Food recognizes the simple pleasure of bringing people together around food. Information is shared, bonds are strengthened and friendships are made. It also appreciates the economic benefits it can bring to regional food economies. Sustainable food can be imported (in the absence of local options), but increasing demand being met through local channels, there will be incentive for farms and processors to participate, as well as for existing providers to transition to sustainable production. Keeping money circulating longer within regional economies is key to Pro Food efforts.
• Entrepreneurial – Building a meaningful Pro Food presence in a food system dominated by massive conventional players with deeply entrenched interests (and reach) will take a lot of hard work, innovation and old fashioned luck. Fortunately we can leverage America’s entrepreneurial spirit in systematically building the ever-broader foundation needed to move Pro Food forward.

What Pro Food ultimately becomes is up to those who recognize and embrace its ideal of healthy, sustainable food systems and make it their own. For it is up to all of us, from farmers to eaters, and everyone else who cares about the food they eat, to carry Pro Food forward and make its vision, its values a reality.

In some very interesting ways, Pro Food draws parallels with the early years of the Internet, when it was still isolated from the mainstream in government and university labs. People, especially entrepreneurs, were starting to eye the Internet as something that could revolutionize communications and collaboration, that could democratize things long centralized. At first, they had no idea what was going to stick, but began applying time, energy and money in search of winning formulas.

This is where I see Pro Food today, which makes it financially exciting for those with solutions to the problems we face. I look forward to joining them and others on this exciting journey.

Rob Smart is a food entrepreneur focusing on sustainable food, regional food systems and consumer retail experiences. He blogs on alternative food systems on Huffington Post, Civil Eats and Every Kitchen Table blogs, and micro-blogs on Twitter as Jambutter.

The People Around Me Part 2

The People Around Me show me just how much work I have ahead of me. I am a full blown local food evangelist and advocate now, and because of that, I sometimes struggle seeing the big picture. I occasionally forget how easy it is to be complacent when it comes to the food we eat, the habits we develop, even the arrogance we cultivate about ourselves and our food choices. So it is crucial to my knowledge process that I continue to talk with as many people, from as many different professions, backgrounds, political orientations, genders, races, income levels etc. It is often hard to write about conversations I’ve had, but the little anecdotes I receive when I actually stop talking and listen for a while open up whole new avenues for idea generation. So what have I learned from The People Around Me: People realize there are some serious problems with food in this country. These same people very infrequently realize how their personal choices feed into the problems as a whole. It reminds me about the quip about congress. How everyone knows that Congress is corrupt, but its never the fault of their Congressman. The problem lies elsewhere.

• Most people don’t cook, don’t see the value in it, or aren’t willing to sacrifice their time and energy to do it. But some very smart people have discovered that it all comes back to cooking. When we cook, we have to deal with an entirely different set of problems as opposed to eating packaged goods, take out meals or paying the check in a restaurant. Cooking means shopping. Shopping means choices. And in this country, shopping at a supermarket means A LOT of choices. Too many in fact. So why go through the headache of making all those choices when you can just order in, or go out, or drink a meal replacement thingamabobber. A lot of the people around me fall into this trap. But let’s go back to the choices issue…
• So now that we have all these choices and the bounty of modern agriculturral infrastructure is laid before us, we know have to shift gears into quality. Do YOU know what distinguishes a good onion from less preferable one? What about fruit? When every piece of fruit looks the same, smells the same and costs the same, how the heck are we supposed to know which fruit is gonna be right for our cobbler, or fruit salad. And what if the fruit isn’t ripe yet? Have we gone shopping days ahead of time to ensure that the fruit is ripe for when we plan on serving it?
• Cooking is a lot harder and much more intimidating than we all might imagine, yet it remains the single most important thing that will fix this country’s insane food practices. Cooking lends itself very well to the sustainable food movement. The more people cook, the more people will have to choose their foods. The more people making choices about WHAT to cook, the more people who will be interested in making good, delicious things, using the freshest and most in-season produce. It’s a really positive feedback loop (hehe).
• Cooking is more rewarding, and gets easier, when it is done often. You end up wasting less food and you learn a bit of Home Economics. Those expensive spices you bought for the dinner party you through 6 months ago can actually be USED again, huzzah. And cooking promotes a slower lifestyle. When cooking enters your life, it becomes a major event, and cooking means more time at home, with friends, family, lovers, roomates, all of the above even. Cooking means more time spent around real food: thinking about it, reading about it, valuing it. Cooking means making time to shop, to prep, to cook. To set the table. To NOT eat at a desk. To say a prayer (if that’s your thing, and it is quickly becoming mine). It means squeezing out some activities that we don’t really need, or necessarily want. Making time to cook by limiting other activities gets easier over time. And that is because the rewards are so vast and yet they appear so rapidly!

The people around me have showed me that cooking is at the center of everything. When people don’t cook, they fall prey to a lifestyle that is not sustainable, on a personal or societal level. And the great thing is that almost everyone I speak to wants to cook more. There is something primal in cooking something for yourself, and especially for other people. Serving people food that you shopped for, prepped and cooked is a whole lot more nourishing then picking up the tab at a restaurant. Though that is nice too. When we know how to cook for ourselves and when we actually do the deed, we are doing ourselves, our communities, our environment and society as a whole a great big favor. And the funny thing is, the people around me already know it. I’ve been listening after all.

The People Around Me Part 1

The single greatest resource I have as a writer, blogger and creator of quality content (ahem) are the people around me. I go to great lengths to surround myself with interesting, kind, thoughtful people with different strengths and weaknesses. I also go to great lengths to avoid people who are mired in the muck of cynicism, negativity, self-righteousness and greed, in all its forms.

As this blog has developed I’ve added multiple tools to my arsenal so that I can be fresh and stimulative. Book reviews, interviews and collaborations with other writers and bloggers. That is what I want to do most, provoke conversation, drill down to what Virginia Woolf called, “a nugget of truth,” in this amazing world around us. Why do this? So that my readers can leave the site and feel like they have taken something bright and shiny home with them.

I learn so much from the people around me. Aside from sharing their own perspectives,biases, hiccups and peccadillos, I learn a great deal about myself. So what have I learned lately:

1. I cannot influence people as much as I would like to.

• The truth is I have become something of an evangelist. Working on the Farm to Table blog and television show has taken me deeper into the philosophy and lexicon of the local sustainable movement. I am hooked. It is now my personal belief that a great deal of the reparations necessary to improve the character, culture and direction of this country hinge on whether we can sort out our insane food system. I know America will never be perfect, nor would I want it to be. I’ve always been wary of Utopian talk and I cringe at what I perceive as the naivete of people who seem to think a perfect world is but a few steps away. Personally, I appreciate a little bit of chaos, a little bit of privation, a little bit of pain and anger in the world. It makes me more grateful for what I have, and from that posture, I can work in small little ways to improve things. 
• I would love to get every single one of my close friends to understand how much power they have. Every dollar spent on food is a vote, either an affirmation of a food system gone haywire or a vote for an alternative food economy. The alternative food economy is made up of small, localized food systems of farms, farmers markets, CSA’s and market based restaurants and caterers. Spend your money at a King Kullen or a Kroger, or even an urban bodega, and you’re voting for a conventional food system that has failed us, our health, the health of our neighbors, the livestock in this country, our consciences and our morality. The conventional food system has failed so totally and completely that its shocking to me that there isn’t more outrage on a national level. And even though I would love to convince my friends that embracing a good food lifestyle, one where we have to think about the food we eat, spend more of our income on it then we are accustomed to, one that requires us to cook more and eat out less, I recognize that I do not have the power to do this. And the truth is I don’t even try. 
• Why don’t I try? Well because I want to keep my friends! I cannot think of a person I’d least like to be compared to than some obsessed, haranguing crank. But what I will do is cook them food using the best ingredients. I make them love my food. I educate, in short bursts, what the food is, where it came from, and why its so good. As Dan Barber says, Education Through Hedonism. Now that’s a philosophy I can get behind.

The Movement Is Growing….Faster Please

It’s a great pleasure to be able to submit this post to Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s Real Food Wednesdays!

It is undeniable that the progressive food movement has found its footing lately, and momentum is starting to build. It’s been a long time coming, but things are starting to coalesce. Here are some of the way’s I’ve identified as proof that the movement is getting close to reaching a critical level. The point of no return may still be quite far off, and yet I cannot quite shake the feeling that something big is about to happen.

Perhaps I am just too close to the situation, and perhaps I’ve lost what little objectivity I had left, but I do sense a giant wave building just beneath the surface. I think slowly but surely, Americans are waking up to the fact that our food system, our food culture, and our eating habits are completely unsustainable.

Is it due to the fact that we are in a prolonged recession? That our pride has been humbled? That we’re turning inwards to investigate the sources of our troubles? Are American’s capable of making the jump from our economic recession and our health recession?

I think they are. I have faith in America as an ideal, and I have faith in the American people. So where is this momentum coming from?

• Media: With the release of not one but two recent movies, Fresh and Food Inc., there is a whole other front in the campaign to attract eyes and ears of the American audience. Fresh and Food Inc. are huge achievements, different in style and tone, but with plenty of overlap in terms of narratives, profiles and intent. Film is the American medium is it not? The fact that there are now feature films devoted to sustainable agriculture and the negative effects of our current food infrastructure says a lot about how far the American audience has come. These are perfect addendums to the best selling books by authors like Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, Nina Plank, Alice Waters and the many other journalists, critics and activists who have been manning the barricades for quite some time now. Nick Kristof in the Times recently wrote a fantastic op-ed in which he said.

American agribusiness truly is wondrous. When I moved back to the United States after years of living in China, I remember visiting a supermarket and feeling a near-religious awe. Yet one consequence of this wondrous system is that unhealthy calories are cheaper than nutritious ones: think of the relative prices of Twinkies and broccoli. We even inflict unhealthy food on children in the school lunch program, and one in three Americans born after 2000 is expected to develop diabetes.

• Health and Safety Issues: The Swine Flu Pandemic, E. Coli in cookie dough for christ sake. I mean, the food industry is literally serving up softballs to us in the progressive food movements. And instead of being patient at the plate like we have in the past, journalists, bloggers, activists, busy moms (WHOEVER) are starting to smack these softballs all over the ball field. Industrialized agriculture and its defenders are on the run, and they can barely catch their breath. No matter how much money they spend, how much lobbying prowess they have, they are doomed. They know it, but they aren’t going down without a fight. I almost feel bad for them, because it is just an essential part of their business model that our food will be continue to be unsafe and unhealthy. And these outbreaks, food recalls will continue until the industry is dismantled and transitioned to a healthy, organic and sustainable process.