I've been a food & restaurant consultant for 30 years. I still don't know what a blog is or if it's contagious. But I've got a big mouth and a lot to say. Read, enjoy, discuss and sound off!
From the blog: Food, Farms, and Community: Rural America's Local Food Renaissance at Sterling College:
With dimming light and cooling air, we listened to the soulful strains of Mayfly outside of one of Sterling's residence halls and reflected on a very full day of events. I am honestly awed by the energy of our 50 or so participants and the interactions and conversations among us all.
Some highlights this afternoon and evening (other than the delicious Local Foods Banquet!):
From a session on Saint Lawrence University's blossoming farm program, in response to concerns about farmers resorting to food stamps--and not eating the food they produce themselves--Saint Lawrence's Sustainability Coordinator, Louise Gava, said, "Sometimes I think we should pay farmers more than they are asking" in order to maintain and support vibrant local economic and food networks.
In a talk on religion's influence on food choices, Kate Holbrook, a Ph.D. candidate at BU, offered that "People have been going back to the land since before they left it."
Ulla Kjarval and Annie Connolle highlighted strategies for farmers to use social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs to communicate, collaborate and monetize their operations with little to no overhead (except time). I'd have to agree with Annie's candid assertion that, well, "blogging is awesome!"
Some key moments from Clark Wolf's keynote:
"Time's up. Food is the most important thing in the world."
"I don't believe in training. I believe in education."
"Calling food 'conventionally grown' is lying -- it's industrially grown."
Growing quality healthy food "is not brain surgery. It's common sense."
"It takes a village. It takes a zucchini. It takes a third grade class. It takes dirt."
"All Earth is public trust."
"It's great for food to be a metaphor. It's more important for it to be lunch."
"Men and women in their early 20s want to *do* something. I suggest farming."
There are no "producers" and "consumers" in a healthy food system. There are just people in a relationship with one another.
Ok, so I was rescued by circus folk and referred to as "foodie crack". It was a lovely couple of days in Northern Vermont.
I was there, at Sterling College - perhaps the nation's only Liberal Arts four year with specialties in Sustainable Agriculture, Ecological Studies and Permaculture Studies. (look it up) - to speak at their Second Annual Rural Heritage Institute.
My general topic was how restaurants and other food businesses connect with farms, food makers and farmers, and how the communities and press are now and likely to be viewing these things, foods and folks in the coming months and years.
I had an hour to rat ta tat tat a chunk of my hit list of related topics about which I'm intensely passionate: little things like how food is the most important thing in the world, how anyone who teaches about and or works with the earth, air, water is dealing with a public trust, how I asked my big question. What do you think is impossible? It's what I always want to know. And there are always amazing answers to share.
It could have been a whole conference of it's own except for the silo of other powerful, relevant, critical, moving and fascinating topics also being explored, examined and shared that week. But I guess they found the talk as stimulating as I had. A young woman perched on a rope swing outside the hall gave me a big smile and said "Mister, you're foodie crack..."
I will not be sharing that with Whitney Houston.
After a stellar meal in the school's dining hall we re-gathered and I got to have a public conversation with some well connected - rurally speaking - popular locals: A restaurateur and a couple of chefs.
It was extraordinary and wonderful to hear the clarity of their thinking and the simple honesty of their words. We all learned a lot we'd thought we already knew. I used to say that I like to work with chefs in their "post-jerk phase..." but these three seem to have totally avoided the messes of that mud puddle in toto.
And speaking of mud, and toto too, I suppose I may as well admit that I'd decided to use Google Maps to find the most 'local' country back-way road from Glover, where we stayed, to Craftsbury and the College.
Pavement turned to gravel turned to dirt and then, after a begin puddle or two, what looked to be a wet patch I found unthreatening. Oooops. Rental car stuck in the mud in the middle of a cell phone tower free zone.
We abandoned the taupe Kia (clearly, a poor choice of transport) and, after dunking my Prada shoes down in and up above to my Prada jeans we explored the pleasures of a sunny country walk. Oy. Where's a cab or a cop when you need 'em??
Cut to a borrowed phone and a call to the College and advice from a local to hitch a ride in any "safe looking car or truck" and we were soon ensconced in the tiny back of a tiny green car zipping down a tiny country lane.
"The only thing better would have been if we'd been rescued by circus clowns" I joked.
"Well", said the boy up front, "as it happens..." Yup, the driver was a trapeze artist in town to teach at Circus Camp and his fellow traveler the Camp chef!!!
Circus and Cookery Folk, a winning combination if ever there was one.
We saw a huge moose in the road, went to Parker's Pies and had other adventures too many to recount. Imagine if we'd stayed a third day!
Why do I love Hardwick, Vermont so much? Visibly, it's little more than a crossroads, where the quick blip from 15 (the roads have these clever names) to 14 leads to 16, which we take into Glover, where we stay.
It's a sweet, tight community that works together and gathers for good reason. I'm here to do an event - actually several - to promote my book, American Cheeses - to support a wonderful independent book store - Galaxy Bookstore - and a CSR - that's Community Supported Restaurant - called Claire's.
Tasting first of some really stellar Vermont cheeses (and a few California faves) then a talk at the store followed by our total inability to contain ourselves at the sight of the local/regionally/seasonally based menu. It reads fine but the taste! I'm still full.
Today we go to Sterling College - a four year school for Sustainable Agriculture, Environmental Studies and Circumpolar (look it up) Studies.
I'm going to talk about how farms actually do or can or might connect with restaurants and other folks and moderate a panel of local chefs on how it works for them.
This thoughtful farming for good food in ways best for the world thing is really catching on!
Frank Bruni’s going to be wrapping up his stint as the New York Times restaurant critic later this Summer so there’s been a lot of chatter about who should come next. Maybe Ruth Reichl and Alice Waters should form a committee…
Truth is, these are interesting times that call for thoughtful criticism and a whole lot of knowledge. Too many bloggers are out there without the benefit of editing – let’s face it, they’re mostly hoping for a real job or practicing, practicing, practicing, which is fine – and newspapers are in a fairly terrible way so the crop of available writers has morphed into something else again. Or maybe not.
The Times seems to like to hire stars or soon-to-be stars and writing skills are top ‘o their list. Bruni, a gay man who lived in Rome for three years, probably started out with as much quelle que chose as anyone ever up for the job (and more knowledge of life at the table than most Americans) but now it’s time for a whole lot more than flair. (although I’m happy to say, I never found a mistake in his work and the writing has always been engaging, fun and smart).
By that I mean, did you read his blog about the Obamas going to dinner at Blue Hill? He seemed to be complaining that it was too ‘correct’ and obvious a choice – like having a President who makes good and reasoned decisions isn’t sufficiently amusing or crunchy enough grist for his rarified mill. Spare me.
So now we may need to race backwards, to someone with experience, knowledge and authority. Buzz has it that Times reporter Julia Moskin’s on the list. Very good writer. Knows food and cooking. Isn’t afraid to stick her neck out but doesn’t light her hair on fire to get attention. Nice.
Michael Bauer from the SF Chron? Please. He’s busy saving his newspaper from extinction.
I’m sure there are other good talents out there. Just please, Times folks, don’t go the Biff Grimes (William S.) route again. Wonderful writer, nice guy and excellent cultural analyst but seems to have hated to leave Queens, didn’t like rooms full of people and was rather iffy about eating. He actually wrote a piece about not understanding this stuff about romantic dinners followed by, uh, romance. TMI times ten. (and Biff, if a chicken eats brand name cat food it cannot be organic…)
Food is, arguably, the most important thing in the world. Without it we’re dead. It gives great pleasure, connects us and if we pay attention will help us avoid oblivion – air, earth and water end up as food, folks. Keep ‘em clean and don’t debate reality!!
So pick a good writer who knows a lot and cares a lot about the world we live in and how the growing and cooking and sharing of food fits into our complex lives and how we might strike a balance between the many competing forces that pull us out and around. Like the food writers of old. Like the “first” restaurant critic at the Times, that original Queer Eye for the Straight Guys and Southern gentleman of style and taste, Craig Claiborne or that other brilliant world traveler, New York and West Coast boy who was the real father (and auntie) of American cookery, James Beard. Or perhaps another legend in the making.
The New York Times Business Section piece (I forget the date) on the deep and perhaps deadly challenges of the San Francisco Chronicle's fight to stay afloat hit most of the hot spots of a complex and evolving situation but a couple of points the writer/editors missed stuck out like sore toes hanging ten.
Yes, it's a "quirky", column heavy rag with an odd Sporting Green sports secting that refers to the color of the section's print rather than it's astro turfed features or eco-policy profiles.
But there's little mention that Hearst, the Chron's current owners and former competitor (with the now freebee Examiner) failed to beat 'em until they bought 'em and most likely have a deep seated cultural desire to close 'em down.
Also, where the hicama was any mention of the Award Winning Food section, on the radar and web life of food pros all over the country, not to mention the nation's first and only weekly newspaper with a free standing Wine section??
This would be the loss of a many layered, multicultural enterprise that fairly recently boasted speakers of nearly a dozen languages, a roof top urban garden and an actual, functioning test kitchen.
It's a collection of writers often seen as a critical launching pad for major national careers. It's a Section that draws from one of the largest talent pools in the country and eats from a locavore's dreamland countryside.
The newspaper itself is often silly and embarrassing, self involved and charmlessly provincial - other publications reflect the general gestalt so much better - but those Food and Wine pages really do stand up - even internationally - and would be a huge loss.
So I guess this is a bit of a rant and rave in one.
Clark Wolf is a 2008 recipient of the Food Arts Silver spoon Award and a 2009 James Beard Foundation Who's Who of Food and Beverage inductee.
Smaller restaurants, run by real people and making real food.
Pizza - with everything good from the Farmers Market across the street on top, or from whatever’s left over in the fridge. Random pork works too.
Markets, Farmers and Otherwise. Turns out selling fresh fruit from the back of a pushcart is a timeless and useful skill set.
Even more attention to even better coffee, but maybe with a few hundred less unnecessary calories heaped on or whipped in.
Good (as in, better than just “drinkable”) and affordable wine from all over the world.
Food and Agriculture Policy is center of the plate. As in, Very Important. Let the battle between industrial farming and real food begin in earnest.
If Spring really is coming, let’s roll out the Gardens; School Gardens, Home Gardens, Chef’s Gardens, Victory Gardens -- Survival Gardens. Better get the seeds out now!
Homey, American foods. From a pot of turkey chili to comfy mac and cheese – yes, we have re-entered the mac and cheese economy.
Cooking at home with friends. Even more cost effective than gathering ‘round the DVR.
Which leads to bringing your lunch to work . Don’t forget the recycled disposables.
Breakfast at big name restaurants. Rent covers (24) hours, so let no paid for real estate got to waste.
The Library - yup, it’s a great place to borrow cookbooks and CD’s of cooking shows – when even a sale on Amazon seems like an unnecessary indulgence.
I don't care if it's New York in a tough economy, people who sell "Whole Foods" at serious prices need to be, at the very least, reasonably civil when they collect cash. There are too many manners-challenged check-out finks at the new location in TriBeCa.
The store itself makes virtually no sense, in layout and the way you're expected to move through the place, the take-out food is pretty awful and their idea of "local" is when a recipe for some prepared food came from Queens (and not the good kind).
But it's one mean cash natzie who really ticked me off when that mean girl refused to help some woman who just wanted to know if the 'on sale' reduction on her package of pricey meat had registered on the - yup - register. She didn't know, wasn't her job and, with a serious screw you attitude, basically told the woman she was on her own. Then she told me to take my food out of my basket.
Told me. Didn't ask. Not a request. Instructed, firmly. Ordered. I took a deep breath and unloaded my 6$ blueberries, some brilliant citrus, some organic walnuts and yes, just one critical beauty product.
When she crisply demanded I tell her what the orange things were (pixie tangerines) even though they had those annoying little stickers all over them I lost it. I wasn't paying top dollar to be her assistant slave when she was too lazy to look up a product number.
So I told her she might consider being a little nicer, have a better attitude at these prices. She told me her attitude was fine. I was not pleased. I told her that her attitude was awful and that she'd been really rude to that woman before me. She denied this vigorously and then repeated a totally fabricated rewrite of what had just transpired, moments before, right in front of me.
Ok, I may have suggested that she's soon be out of work, or should be, and she assured me she was secure in her position, having worked there for two years (the store's been open about eleven months). I told her to keep her pricey produce and to count on my not returning, ever.
She was shocked! "You're not going to buy this stuff??" She really thought the argument was reasonable and her behavior within the acceptable norm.
Note to Whole Foods: see Starbuck's Retraining Manuel. Failing that, suck my tangerine.
An exhortation to taking action in the garden, on the plate
There's been a lot of talk in foodie circles lately about White House vegetable gardens and ad hoc committees to advise the first family about state dinner cookery. A lot of it is hooey—or wishful thinking—but much of it is heartwarming and sincere and a very good idea in these rather difficult times.
The chatter had Alice Waters forming an advisory group to suggest candidates for a new White House chef, even though the talented Cristeta Comerford, who now holds the position, is in no danger of being fired and has no plans to leave; in fact, she was confirmed in her post on Jan. 14. Those bandied about included Rick Bayless of Chicago's Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, where the Obamas have often supped, and the talented Southern chef Scott Peacock, much loved for his work with the late Edna Lewis (perhaps America's most celebrated African-American chef).
Those toques are all publicly committed to the local/regional/sustainable practices now at the top of our radar screens. The thing is, a significant focus on just this sort of good, first-family cookery and food policy has been in place since early in the Clinton years. Credit Hillary for a lot more than her famously good chocolate chip cookies; she had a kitchen garden (admittedly, mostly herbs and tomatoes) installed on the White House roof. Even Laura Bush is on record as requesting organic ingredients, for family and state meals, whenever possible. Waters and other passionate voices might wield more heft if they were connected to a bit more good homework and generous acknowledgement of some very real and underreported efforts of recent years.
(In fact, we should all feel free to send recipes, menu suggestions and maybe even some heirloom seeds suitable for garden harvest in the Washington, D.C., area to Michelle Obama, who will be in charge of White House food-related activities—which may or may not include resonant symbolism.)
Then there's the flap about the man nominated to be secretary of agriculture. Among those proposed for the spot by well-meaning but deeply uninformed advocates was the popular journalist Michael Pollan. Talk about fantasyland. Pollan writes intelligently and movingly about his thoughts and discoveries as a science reporter. He has virtually no interest in (or knowledge about) the workings of huge federal programs and has less than zero interest in leading an agency. He's effective and cozy just where he is, having even stated his intention to move on from food writing to other compelling topics. (Drat.)
New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristoff frames things another way. He says we ought to have a "secretary of food." Now you're talking. But still, there's an agency to run, if only to redirect it, and new ways of thinking to employ. It's refreshing common sense to read other voices proclaiming that air, earth and water purity are all part of food, and that agriculture is for the purpose of making food, not just business.
This integrated approach is certainly a top goal, so it does make sense to try to charge a former Iowa governor with bringing together old ways and new. Sure, his state sports plenty of post-'50s agribusiness, leading to empty calories, subsidy checks and the bespoiling of the earth. But the state also supports a significant collection of innovative small programs designed to help bring new life and health to family farming. Sounds like the front lines to me. His name is Tom Vilsack, but I like to call him Vlasick, like the pickle he's been in. Let's hope he's fair-minded and smart, and let's send our (intelligent, well-researched) suggestions to him.
All of this got me to thinking beyond our chorus of seasonal, locavoracious personal cheerleading about what might be good ways for us to focus our energies during these next critical months.
After all, if the great Golden State can lead the way in land preservation, emission controls and living wage practices, why can't we do the same, not just sporadically and locally, with national food and farming? Granted, we do a lot that's innovative and fresh, and we certainly lead stylistically and organically in all senses of the word but clearly, we could do oh so much more.
In many ways, central California is the new Middle West. It's where big business and federal financing—not to mention state- and region-supported irrigation—meet the American market basket. It's where huge, tasteless broccoli bumps up against old, organic walnut trees, both a source of sustenance and success.
I won't go into why some smart people feel that the actual Midwest is all but lost to them. What I will say is that the big difference for us is that California's Central Valley is right down the road, filled with colleagues and neighbors, family and friends with whom we can talk and work and engage. We can help each other in so many real and immediate ways that it seems timely and prudent to focus some major time and energy on being local and regional, then going national—just as we do when we go shopping.
So here is my list for 2009 and beyond, designed to get a better dinner on the table, at home, around the corner, up and down the state and across the nation. Then we can talk about feeding—and better feeding—the world.
• Grow food. Out back, in a pot, on the windowsill. We can and must be personally connected to our food. It's delicious and often practically free. • Help with other gardens. School gardens, community gardens or your local town's victory garden. • Join community supported agriculture efforts. Try it once. Go in with friends. Invite neighbors. Learn the joys of kale and cardoons. • Shop at your local farmers market. I know I don't need to tell most people that, but it's the year-rounders that need the most support. Buy something in February. Visit other ones nearby. Take the kids. Make it an adventure. • Travel inland. Sacramento, Temecula, Livermore, Chico—there are wonderful farms there. This is certainly not the year for that trip to Paris or Barcelona, but we can certainly expand our horizons by exploring areas we take too much for granted. • Get involved! Sign a petition. Write a letter, send an email. But before you do, read a lot and do your homework. It's what we're wanting from our leaders on a lot of levels.
Isn't it nice that sound thinking, common sense and developed intelligence are back in fashion? Gobama!
Clark Wolf is the president of the Clark Wolf Company, specializing in food, restaurant and hospitality consulting and author of the recently published book, American Cheeses.
Originally published in the North Bay Bohemian, January 28, 2009.
I live from my kitchen window. It's over a big sink and piled high with colorful plates and bowls filled with fruits and vegetables and surrounded by flowers. Just coming into my cabin up in the woods and seeing my own personal groaning board makes me smile.
This time of year, some of the stars of my favorite still life are garden roses and hydrangea. It took me several years to realize that all of those amazing colors were familiar: those purple torpedo onions, that rainbow of heirloom tomatoes, the lusty, local crane melon, the heartbreaking strawberries—even the occasional avocado or random lemon cucumber. So fresh and inviting, they are clearly echoes of the spray of flowers all around them.
Turns out there is, as William Blake so colorfully wrote and drew, fearful symmetry in nature. And it all makes good sense—which is clearly something we need to develop when it comes to good, wholesome, nourishing and delicious food. If that construct of visible, physical, olfactory and palate-driven sensibilities is strong and clear, we have a better chance at a healthy life and a healthy world.
After World War II, the technology that created C-Rations to feed our troops added to a whole new manufactured food industry. In less than a quarter-century, we were eating Tater Tots and drinking Tang. We'd gone from delicious Victory Gardens to industrial dross, and nearly lost all flavor and culture. One result is that today way too many new "products," particularly in what they call the health drink category, come in weirdly shaped, plastic containers that often look more like they should be holding tennis or golf balls than antioxidant-rich juice drinks. Industrial manufacturers are messing with our sense and sensibilities and disengaging us from the natural connection we have with food, all the better to be able to influence our choices in ways that lead to higher profits for them and, it seems, worse health for us.
One of the more powerful ideas and activities to arise recently is the Edible Schoolyard. Based on an East Bay program championed by chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, it's an idea and a fledgling program being tested across the country. It's fairly budget-cut-proof—although you'd be surprised at how complicated school systems can make the simple act of planting and growing—and often associated with nutrition studies, which is fine, but it's only a small, if valuable, result of the bigger picture.
Not yet widely available to the public, Waters will soon offer a general release of a new book that tells the story and shares the snapshots of a school garden gone right. Edible Schoolyard will be published by Chronicle Books next spring, and is a delightful, easy-to-read and moving story of how bringing simple, good food to kids right at their school can have a hugely positive impact on our daily lives. The photographs run from lush black-and-white to vivid color so rich that at first I thought it was Photoshopped. Then I realized that gardens really are that diverse and colorful, vivid and delicious. Just like my kitchen window.
Clark Wolf is the president of the Clark Wolf Company, specializing in food, restaurant and hospitality consulting.
Originally published in the North Bay Bohemian, October 15, 2008.
