Ingredient - A Documentary Film

On September 28 last year I went to the screening of “Ingredients: A Documentary Film” which was filmed largely in Portland with mostly Portland foodie stars like:

• Chef and Owner of Higgins Restaurant, Greg Higgins,
• Alan Sprints of Hair of the Dog Brewery, and
• Laura Masterson, farmer and owner of 47th Ave. Farm.

And non-Portland foodie stars like:

• Joan Gussow, matriarch of the food movement
• Alice Waters, owner and founder of Chez Panisse

It was a great documentary chalk full of interviews about the power of good quality ingredients, especially focusing on the new trends where people are starting to recognize the desire for good ingredients and for knowing where their ingredients are coming from.

I also felt like it was a great to hear about so many food people I didn’t know about before (I may be a foodie, but I haven’t been around in the food movement as long as a lot of the people in the movie). I remember watching it and wanting to find out more about Joan Gussow, but all I could remember was “grows all her own veggies, has carrot earrings”. See the blog post about Joan.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with a CSA Farmer (“Farmer C”) I had the week before, about how people don't appreciate CSA food because they don't know what to do with food that isn't processed, unless they can eat to fresh, people have lost touch with processing food. She said that the sustainability food movement has as much to do with farming as it has to do with a sharp knife and a cast iron pan.

The film was good, but it was too pretty, focused on the raw ingredients, like if we can just get enough farmers growing and enough consumers that know where their food comes from, and know how much more flavorful and nutritious local food is, then our problems will be solved.

There is still a big gap, not just in knowing that your food comes from water, soil and sun, but knowing how (and valuing) to prepare and eat unprocessed food...and the movie didn’t explore how that transition is going to happen.

People are so out of the habit of preparing their foods, that they think they are cooking even when they combine prepared ingredients (e.g. making bread using commodified wheat and yeast).

There's a big different between "cooking" fresh veggies and processing/preparing all other foods that make up the modern diet (crackers, ice creams, salsas, sauces, dressings, etc).

After I asked a question of the panel about consumers relearning how to process foods, another PSU student approached me to talk about community kitchens, and ask about my graduate program. I promised to send her info about CSS SySc sustainability discussion, and gave her my email address.

There are a lot of processes that can be done, but you have to want to eat them too (changing your own tastes and making foods that you honestly enjoy)

All in all, the movie left me wanting to make my own salsa, which I did a week after seeing the movie, with fire roasted tomatoes and chilies with fresh onions and cilantro, sautéed garlic.
___

I also bought the movie and had my own screening with a group of friends in my living room, with a local food potluck (including Burgerville fries and milkshakes).

Italy and Food

Under the Tuscan Sun / The Reluctant Tuscan

Okay, okay, I know these books have a bad rap, just another bunch of rich Americans falling in love with Italy, buying broken down farm houses and writing about their cultural appropriation experiences, but...

Actually reading these books, the authors didn’t come across as preachy, it was much more about their own experiences of visiting and living in Italy.

I’m planning a trip to Italy next year, and these books make me even more excited about wandering around the countryside eating good food and good wine, and maybe even pass as fratelli (brothers), not always stanieri (foreigners).

Under the Tuscan Sun is full of descriptions of discovery in another country, and how far you can go with a sense of adventure and curiosity to experience life. Many parts are related to food, but many others remind me a lot of my own experiences getting to know where I live, even if it’s just in my backyard, and having a sense of awe and wonder, like you were searching for treasure and found it. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

We hauled histories and guides and wildflower books and novels in and out of rented houses and hotels. Always we asked local people where they liked to eat and headed to restaurants our many guidebooks never mentioned. We both have an insatiable curiosity about each jagged castle ruin on the hillside. My idea of heaven still is to drive the gravel farm roads of Umbria and Tuscany, very pleasantly lost. (p. 8)

and

People travel for as many reasons as they don’t travel. ‘I’m so glad I went to London, a friend told me in college, ‘Now I don’t ever have to go again.’ At the opposite end of the spectrum is my friend Charlotte who crossed China in the back of a truck, an alternate route to Tibet...Once in a place, that journey to the far interior of the psyche begins or it doesn’t. Something must make it yours, that ineffable something no book can capture. It can be so simple, like the light I saw on the faces of the three women walking with their arms linked when the afternoon sun slanted into the Rugapiana. That light seemed to fall like a benison on everyone beneath it. I, too, wanted to soak my skin under such a sun. (p. 145)

The Reluctant Tuscan is refreshing because it doesn’t start off by describing the wonders and glories of Italy, or make it sound like all foodies should pick up and move to Italy. Duran doesn’t hate Italy and then come to love it, there’s a more subtle transition to mutual appreciation that happens. There are a few sharply authentic experiences he has at first, mixed in with all of the other hilarity of living in a foreign country, and he slowly comes to recognize, crave, and embrace the Italian way of life the more time he spends there (the authentic beautiful parts as well as the crazy driving and boisterous attitudes of his italian friends and associates).

Slow Food: The Case for Taste, by Carlo Petrini

Another reason to love Italy is that the Slow Food Movement started there, after McDonalds dared to put a branch in near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Carlo Petrini, a founding member, protested with others, and formed Slow Food to work to “counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”

Sometimes the Slow Food movement seems too academic to me, it’s more about the ideas and less about people’s actual food experiences, as if everyone MUST be perfectly mindful at every meal and only eat heritage, or most authentic varieties of foods, not just something you humbly grew in your yard, it’s like bourgeoise home grown.

But it’s a heck of a lot better than McDonalds and the like taking over our food experience. I always want/hope that Slow Food will focus more on how people get adopt, to really feel the Slow Food experience, and not just talk about it. I think for Italians they probably just get it already, because of their food culture and implicit understanding of Terroir (Look for a future blog post about French Terrior, by Amy Trubeck). But for most food consumers in the United States, they/we need to learn or relearn the experience of food, so it would be good to know how we learn and relearn to have deep, authentic experiences of food.

Slow Food International is mostly involved in encouraging producers to grow (and people to eat) more diverse and traditional, and locally relevant varieties of foods (such as Barbara Kingsolver’s heritage turkeys) that are at risk of extinction, through their “Ark of Taste” program.

Gastronomica’s Rooster Comb Soup

I read this article in the Summer 2009 issue of Gastronomica (see this blog post) about a soup that was such a regional specialty that the American author’s Italian friends had never heard or tasted it, and couldn’t identify the ingredients until the waiter told them they were eating Rooster Comb (you know, the part that flops around on the top of the rooster’s head). For this soup, the comb is cleaned and the tough leathery cover is peeled away to reveal a rubbery gelatinous, but evidentially full of chicken-y goodness flavor.

It’s articles like this that make me even more curious about visiting Italy. The experience of tasting delicious food that’s so specific to a region that it’s unknown outside of it seems so utterly un-American-Industrial-Food-System. There’s no reason that we can’t have our own regional specialties, but we certainly don’t have that kind of strong terroir like Italians (or French, or various other European cultures).

Barbara Kingsolver in Italy

In her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (see upcoming blog post), Barbara Kingsolver takes a break from her year of urban homesteading to go to Italy. Her brief descriptions made me want to go to Italy even more! My favorite parts of her journey included:

• Stopping by a roadside produce stand, buying a crazy looking melon for the seeds, convincing the hotel staff to let her cut it open in their kitchen, and spending most of the rest of the trip drying the seeds in various hotel rooms and then packing them up in a towel to move them to the next hotel room on her trip.
• Descriptions of watching Italian men’s slow (and intensely serious) savoring of their food (and her Husband’s adoption of Italian food savoring practices), and her warning (or promise?) to travelers to be ready for spending most of their time in Italy slowly eating their multi-course meals.

Around the Tuscan Table

This delightful ethnography of a multigenerational Italian family gives a glimpse into Italian food culture ranging in time from peasant life in the early 1900s all the way to modern food traditions with women struggling to provide good food for their families while keeping up a more busy (and potentially employed) life, and younger men expressing apathy towards traditional italian foods. Despite many Italian’s transition to “modern” living, all the members of the family still talked in great length about their food practices and food culture, something that might embarrass or confuse food consumers from the U.S. The author described how some of her study participants (especially the older ones) seemed disconcerted that she wanted to hear about their food experiences as children, when they were very poor, as if they thought it should be very obvious what it was like to cure their own olives or go hunting for rabbits, but, nonetheless, they were happy to tell the author about their experiences, since she explained that she really didn’t share their knowledge and experiences. It was almost as if the older participants couldn’t believe that someone could become an adult and not know these (to them) basic food practices. As mentioned above, it would certainly be possible for Americans to talk about their food experiences with the same honesty as Italians, but so often we either don’t know how to talk about food, or want to talk about food in an elitist, overly verbose way (see the future post on The Taste of Place by Trubek).

Needless to say, I’m very! excited about traveling to Italy to eat, explore, and become pleasantly lost.

Future Farmers of America in Edible Portland - Kids and Food

In the Winter 2010 Issue of Edible Portland there was a great article about Future Farmers of America, describing the renewed interest in farming skills. There may be hope for agriculture and animal husbandry after all! The program doesn’t exactly teach sustainable farming or animal raising practices, but it does provide kids with small business skills as well as technical / trade skills related to food, like butchering and small scale farming (it’s not just for hippies anymore!). The culture of the organization seems like something I wouldn’t really fit in with (fairly conservative), but it seems like an organization that is leaning towards common ground of real people making good real food. I’m considering trying to study some of these kids for my dissertation, to explore their experiences of food from a more conservative perspective than my current study subjects, urban farmers.

Last year I was reviewing vendors for the Farmers Market at Portland State University in the Park Blocks for recruiting participants for my study, I came across a listing for Food Works:

"Food Works is a youth-run farm project based in North Portland that uses farming to support youth to develop their skills, engage in their community, and increase their leadership and involvement in the food system."

Which made me think about the movie Ingredients (see post in a few days), especially the part about taking kids to working farms to help reconnect kids with food. This is another angle to take, talking with urban kids before visiting the farm and after (and follow up). It might be interesting to study the transition that kids go thorough, but probably would be hard for kids to articulate change...but there ARE more programs, so it is still interesting...

I’m also thinking about studying a different population altogether, people who have never gardened before, have picked it up recently, and found unexpected benefits that compel them to continue, either in the context of garden programs in prisons (see the same Winter 2010 Issue for A Prison Garden) or for low income community gardeners. Talking with people about my project, both of these suggestions came up, since both groups have been used in some studies about gardening as therapy or as exercise, etc.

Gastronomica - the Journal of Food and Culture

There are lots of fantastic, thought provoking, and just downright tasty articles packed into each issue of this magazine! I was looking for a magazine to regularly read, that was stimulating, giving me new ideas about experiences of food, senses of place, and sustainability. Gastronomica has really hit the spot. Here’s a few of the articles that are my recent favorites, and I’ll be writing about more:

• Spring 2009 - On the Trail of Tilleul | Kelly Gibson
  French Linden Tree harvest, used for traditional herbal infusion
• Spring 2009 - memoir - What We Ate Back Then | Jimmye Hillman
• Summer 2009 - regional fare - Utica Greens: Central New York's Italian-American Specialty | Naomi Guttman and Roberta L. Krueger
• Summer 2009 - La Finanziera | Francine Segan
  Cock Comb Soup in Northern Italy
• Fall 2009 - libations - Perry | Cherry Ripe
  Traditional fermented pear libation
• Fall 2009 - at the movies - This Ain't Burger King | Vanessa Gregory
  Films for Southern Foodways Alliance by Joe York
• Fall 2009 - Book Reviews - Yquem | Tara Q. Thomas
  French dessert wine

Why study food? (Kitchen Literacy)

Anyone who's curious what I'm up to, locked away in my office, giving myself carpal tunnel this summer, have a look. I'm finally able to get my ideas more organized and write my dissertation research proposal (in the works). Here's one of my favorite authors ideas, that parallel some of my core background ideas for my research

Excerpts from Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis

Where we are right now

When we consider “connecting with nature,” we are more inclined to imagine gazing at a spectacular waterfall than to consider rows of crops on a farm, let alone the frozen-foods aisle. In one of those great modern ironies, food is rarely regarded as “natural” unless it has been so labeled.

Yet each time we eat a turkey sandwich or a bowl of cereal, we are dependent on land and water - we are fixed in food chains that link us to places that are surely embedded in ecological systems. Author Michael Pollan has recently described eating as “our most profound engagement with the natural world.” Indeed, through food, we are irrevocably attached to the natural environment. The odd thing is that, by habit, we rarely realize this, and collectively, our lack of awareness has given us a distorted view of our place as humans within the larger world. With the supermarket nearby, we live with a detached assurance that our stomachs will always be full, even as industrial farms severely degrade soils, consumer enormous amounts of fossil fuels, pollute waters with excess nitrogen and toxins, and inadvertently spur pests and microbes to alarming potencies.

How we got here

Ostensibly, city shoppers never actually chose to know less about where foods came from and how they were raised, but the importance of knowing stories about food’s origins had been overshadowed by other, more pressing matters a American urbanized industrialized and grew. In the face of urban squalor and increased understanding of germs at the turn of the century, shoppers had chosen hygienic and prepackaged foods. As the supply of servants shrank, homemakers more openly considered laborsaving methods, products, and appliances that eliminated unseemly work. In the wake of World War I induced scarcity, city dwellers yearning for the security promises by a modern food system.

Where we came from

Cooks and eaters had long chosen foods based on sight, smell, taste, and tough – senses that could discern a full spectrum of qualities from ripeness to rot and all sorts of distinctions in between. Now a panoply of made-foods confounded those senses. What had always been a direct, natural, sensuous relationship between eaters and food seemed to be at stake.

Where we are going? My research! How does the experience of being an urban gardener reconnect people with their food and with nature in a way that leads to sustainable consumption?

Enjoying Food

First, I just want to say that this posting is a thought experiment or exploration. That being said, please continue reading...

The cover of Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food, has a picture of a head of lettuce, with a label that says “EAT FOOD. NOT TOO MUCH. MOSTLY PLANTS.”

This is the secret to a healthy diet, translated as follows. First part:
Eat = consciously consume
Food = not foodlike substances, real food, mostly not processed

Not too much = only until you are full

Mostly Plants = less processed crap, more living plants (fruits, veggies, etc).

This is part of the larger movement of....well it might be too large of an idea to really have one name. It involves eating good food, enjoying every bite, and knowing and enjoying how it was grown, picked, and prepared for eating.

As you can imagine, it goes by many different names, and shows up in many other movements. Some call it Slow Food. Some called it Community Supported Agriculture. Some call themselves Foodies. Some call it Sustainable Agriculture, or just Gardening or Cooking or Baking.

So what’s the point?

I love food. I love growing it, picking it, cooking it, and especially eating good quality, full of flavor food.

Have you ever eaten a pomegranate? They are one of the most ridiculous pieces of fruit. You dig out these tiny little seeds, and then carefully pop them in your mouth, sucking out the juice and scrapping off the meat with your teeth. With pomegranates, you don’t get a lot of bang for your buck, but you get a divine experience, both tactile and flavorful.

The experience of eating a pomegranate is almost the antithesis of the Big Mac experience. Sure, Big Macs are flavorful, and texturally interesting, and after all, pomegranates are so much work, no one could live off of them. The big difference is in the intention and the awareness. When you eat a Big Mac, you are often in a hurry and pretty much just cramming food in your mouth. I’ve been really hungry before, and I’ve shoveled more than a few times.

So how would it be if you just slowed down and became really aware of what you were eating? Really slowed down enough to taste every ingredient, every texture, to enjoy it, to maybe think about it, where it came from, how it was cooked, who grew it, who cooked it, what your body thinks about it, how you feel after you eat some of it. Don’t you think that would really change your experience of your body and your food?

When I eat green beans in the middle of the summer, I eat them slowly, and I almost think I can feel my body being grateful for them.

But it’s not just about eating slowly, or being aware of what you’re eating, what you’re putting into your body. I can be very aware of a french fry, and still kind of enjoy it as I’m eating it. It’s also about eating mostly plants, and not mostly processed feed corn.

As two guys from the city found out in the documentary King Corn, feed corn is easy to grow, tastes terrible, and is in everything.

Including your hair. It turns out, what you eat can be detected in part by your hair. Different types of carbon isotopes indicate whether or not you have a diet rich in corn or corn-fed meat or animal products. And it turns out, a lot of the carbon in a lot of people’s hair (in the US) is from corn, and not just any corn, but highly processed corn.

This is very very bad for health.

So eat less corn (which is technically a plant, but more like a pure starch at this point) and eat more plants. Plants take less energy to produce than animal products, and we humans are meant to eat a lot of them, from the design of our teeth to the rest of our squishy digestive systems, we are made to eat a whole lotta plants.

For the past year, I’ve been cutting way back on refined anything, especially sweeteners and grains, and focusing on plant matter (with protein on the side). Our bodies get so much grain, especially corn and wheat, that they are really sick of it. For me, it’s mostly a way to balance my metabolism, keeping my blood sugar even. Grain and sugars are quick burning energy, so your blood sugar gets high quickly, the crashes. But with carbohydrates from plants, your body breaks down the food a little slower and more evenly, so you have more even energy.

So try eating 70% plant and 30% protein and see what happens. It’s sometimes called the “caveman diet” or “paleolithic diet”, because without grain, our diet is pre-agricultural. It’s worked pretty well for me so far, I feel much more healthy, and I know I won’t have to worry as much about diabetes in the future if I’m not abusing my body’s ability to manage my blood sugar.

Knowing chemicals in food but not our own neighborhoods

This month’s issue of Orion magazine has an article called Environmental Amnesia, which talks about how people in the US know about chemicals and other dangers in their consumer products and foods but not about the chemicals and dangers in their own neighborhoods. Maybe I should be impressed that US consumers are aware of so many of the dangers in consumer products and foods, like Bisphenol-A, mercury in fish, and the great salmonella tomato scare. But I’m not.

Having just moved, within Portland but to another neighborhood, I am trying to get to know my new surroundings. I’m now in the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood (see the map at the top of this page). But I’m having a little trouble figuring out how that helps me strengthen my sense of place. Thanks to a link in the Orion article, I know that in 2002, Multnomah Country (the one I’m in) ranked among the dirtist/worst 10% of all counties in the U.S. in terms of Toxic Chemicals released in the water water by industry. And I know that there are 5 superfund sites, “superfund” because of the large fund that was set up in the 1980s to deal with these toxic sites, that went bankrupt 5 years ago.

Not sure quite how I now feel more connected to the place I live, maybe I need to visit each superfund. Maybe I just need to notice my neighborhood more. So much changes in neighborhoods over time, strip malls are planned over playgrounds, your favorite field has cookie-cutter subdivisions built on it. Who wants to pay attention to those painful changes?