One of the things I'll miss about my workplace is something that I can only hope will exist in my new one, in my own place. It's one of those things that I would say makes a place successful. While my current restaurant was never "critically acclaimed" on a level like others, it is still a place that I'm proud of and will say is successful on a level that many places, critically acclaimed or not, aren't or may never be. That thing that I'm referring to doesn't really have a name or a definition and can't be summed-up in a sentence, that is unless a general term like "special" is used. But special is a somewhat general term, it's so general that it doesn't really capture the essence of what I'm referring to. The other day I tried describing umami to a co-worker and it's not easy to do even when you know exactly what it is. I believe that a good restaurant or bar is like umami in that it has a certain quality that is there that makes it special, that makes it satisfying, that you can't really explain. I guess that quality is the one that fosters conviviality among patrons, that feeling of ease and comfort people get when talking to the staff or to each other, or a certain energy that is sparked among patrons that may have a particular interest in common. Every restaurant has certain obvious qualities like good food, atmosphere, entertainment, good service. Some restaurants are hot, some leave a sour taste in your mouth, some have salty service and some have sweet service The bottom line is, there is no perfect place but there are special places.
If a restaurant or bar has umami, it has this underlying energy that satisfies its customers in a way that others wihout it, cannot. A good dish may naturally have umami just as a restaurant or bar may. So how does it get there? Well, the very reason that I'm writing this means that I don't have the answer. If we're talking about a dish, umami could get there with a few shakes of the msg bottle or just naturally be there in the food itself. I do have some thoughts about how it gets there and those thoughts have to do mostly with people. Obviously, every restaurant and bar needs people to fulfill their function as a bar or restaurant. But how do those people feel in your restaurant, how do they function in it and with each other within it and how do you, as someone who works within the restaurant, interact with them. It sounds simple and to many people, restaurants and bars are just places, places where you sell something and I buy it. But to many people who patronize them and work within them, there's something special about them. There's no umami without you and, uh, "mi" and um, ma, which could mean mom, so maybe this special restaurant thing I'm getting at has something to do with you and me and ma and pop. On a separate note, the "pop" will be extrapolated on later and will hopefully, literally, be something that we and/or you and your friends can all get together over while hashing out our plans to change the world. What a stretch-both the word play and my visions of grandeur! But that's what happens when you try to explain something that's "just there" or not.
The term “artisan” is used a lot in the food world. An artisan is simply defined as a skilled craftsman. It could also be a descriptor for something produced by a fine craftsman. It also seems as if the term is relegated to producers of high quality products and the products themselves. For example, certain cheeses are considered to be artisan cheeses while their crafters are also known as artisans. Beef, pork and chicken can also be considered to be of artisan quality. Whether it’s beef or cheese, cabinets or shoes, wine or whiskey terms like quality and scale are very relevant to any discussion about artisan production. But what does artisan really mean? Who is an artisan? Does artisan production have to be done on a small scale? Who buys artisan products? How do you learn about artisan products?
Size is always an issue when discussing artisan. Ironically, while writing this an ad for Sam Adams beer just came on touting that their company emphasizes quality over quantity. Specifically, Sam Adams comprises less than 1% of the “mahket” the beer makers say in Bostonian English. Sam Adams makes up less than 1% of the beer market. 1% of the market doesn’t seem like a lot but I think they produce about 1,400,000 barrels of beer. In fact, now that Anheuser-Busch, which dominates 56% of the market, is owned by a European company, Sam Adams is America’s largest brewery. Sam Adams advertising campaign that claims smaller is better could be an example of today’s popular opinion which is heavy on conserving resources, cutting the fat and not being wasteful. In the grand scheme of the beer world, technically, Sam Adams is pretty small. Are they an artisan beer simply because they are smaller? Some say yes and others say no.
Who is an artisan? A while back I sketched out a built-in cabinetry installation and had a carpenter/mill-worker friend properly design, build and install it. Eventually, he came up with a workable design based upon my concept, gathered materials, fabricated them with many different features and details that hadn’t even crossed my mind, delivered the unit in pieces, re-measured my space on site, made some final changes to the pieces, installed and polished them to produce a finished piece. I stepped back and looked at the finished job and said, Ken, you are a true artisan. He looked at his son who helped him on the job and said, did you hear that, he called me an artisan. I chuckled, he chuckled. I knew that most people probably don’t call him an artisan and the fact is, the term carries a slight bit of pretension. Ken does what he does and he does it really well. My dad is a bricklayer and stonemason. He does what he does really well. I’d call him an artisan but I might regret it. In all seriousness, he knows he’s an artisan it just doesn’t do him any good to run around town telling everybody.
I’m thinking that being an artisan comes with a little bit of humility. Being an artisan comes with years and years of practice, figuring things out the hard way, learning from previous generations and mentors, repeating techniques over and over again to perfect them, honing skills, doing things the right way. The romanticizing of the artisan happens when people like myself put my Dad’s masonry, Ken’s carpentry, Chelsea’s uncle’s leather work on a pedestal. While I think that it’s important to recognize and even romanticize these craftspeople for what they do, I also think that it’s important to see that what they do is very real. You could say that my Dad does real brickwork, Ken does real custom mill-work, Chelsea’s uncle does real leather-work. Ok, so if what they do is real, what could we say is not real when it comes to these things? To some degree “real” is a figure of speech. A brick is a brick, wood is wood, leather is leather, right? True, but a real bricklayer, a real mill-worker, a real leather-worker will be able to mold their entire project, by hand, from conception to completion with “real” materials. If you were to look really close, you may find some insignificant imperfections that are the signs of handiwork, signs that the work was made by the human hand, signs that environment may have even had an effect upon the final product. An artisan product feels, tastes and looks authentic.
Figuratively speaking, at the end of the day, an artisan product is more real than a non-artisan product because, we could argue that, that’s how they are supposed to be made. I’ll bet that if 9 out of 10 people were exposed to the “real-deal” they would say, “that’s how it’s done, or wow, that’s how it’s supposed to taste!” Take for instance a frozen hamburger puck and compare it to a fresh ground hamburger from meat that was raised, fed and slaughtered on the same farm to determine which one tastes better. Surely you’ll choose the latter and it’s no surprise to me that the farmer who raised that beef is a real artisan. Tasting the difference between artisan and the “other” is about as real as you can get.
Who buys artisan? What’s interesting to me about the artisan is that its survival is very dependent on your appreciation of it. If the artisan is not appreciated, he or she can be motivated to eschew their talents and to do things the “easy” way. Ironically, the non-artisan way of doing things could be argued to be the easy way. Don’t get me wrong, commodity production is a modern wonder of science and technology, engineering and mechanization and it should be celebrated for all of the good that it has done. One of my previous employers said to me once, “Art, the key is to figure out how to make money in your sleep.” I took that to mean that it is wise to figure out a way to create a system of production that will work for you while you are hypothetically sleeping. Well, industry has accomplished that goal. From the outside, it would seem to be running itself. But keep in mind, industry runs on fuel and people run on passion and a need to survive, fuel is mostly non-renewable and passion is sustainable. Machines break down, get rebuilt and continue to do their jobs, artisans die and with them so do their skills. The only way to sustain the artisan is to value him and by doing so they pass their skills on to another generation. Fuel the artisan’s passion with your interest and your dollar and the artisan will continue to provide us with real choices.
Where can you find an artisan or an artisan product? You may find an artisan if you can’t find something pre-made to suit your needs. An artisan could build you a custom built-in, something you could never find “in a box.” A lot times, you find an artisan based on a word of mouth referral. You can find edible artisan products at your grocery store, farmer’s market or specialty market. Sam Adams is most likely at your grocery store and chances are that there may be an artisan cheese section with choices like Humboldt Fog goat cheese, Neal’s Yard cheddar or Salemville gorgonzola, all products that will make you say, “wow, now that’s a real cheese” after you taste them.
Meats like poultry, beef and pork are artisan products that you’ve got to dig a little deeper for. Artisan meat production accounts for less than ten percent of the total meat market and it is hard to find them in your grocery store. Increasingly, these products are becoming accessible to the home market through online sources like the aptly named artisan beef institute or Tallgrass Meats. Joining a local co-op or visiting a farmer’s market is a sure way to find artisan meats. Your town may even have an artisan meat company right under your nose and you may not know it. John’s Custom meats is an artisan meat producer and butcher shop that I know about because of the internet. I follow the husband and wife, butcher and rancher team on twitter and you can also purchase their product on the Artisan Beef Institute website. But if you’re lucky enough to live within driving distance, stop by and let me know how their meat is, I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be “the real deal.”
@ruhlman's answer and comments by "artisanal" butchers:
"Uh-O, Spaghetti-O's!" Campbell's 15 million lbs. spaghetti and meatball recall (that rhymes) makes me think of the "oil crisis." There are people who believe that the current scale of meat production is detrimental to the environment and that much of the product ends up being used in things with little value. The oil spill is obviously damaging our environment right now and there are many people who believe that the current scale of oil consumption is detrimental to the environment. We will most likely continue to raise meat and burn oil, so what's the point of my banter? Well, most of the time we don't realize the scale of our production, consumption and demand. When 15 million lbs. of meat product is recalled, which means it will be destroyed, we can assume that thousands of animals were harvested, slaughtered and put through the processing system. If there wasn't a recall we might not think about the many animals that ended up in those cans.
As for oil, it is an everyday topic, regardless of the spill. But the tens of of thousands of barrels worth of oil that are spewing into the gulf has probably made many people aware that if that oil were harvested, it would probably account for only two minutes of energy usage per day for the United States. When I think of oil, I think, do we need to use all of that oil, if so, why and for what? Can we substitute that oil with something else? I know it would be a difficult task but hypothetically, experts could go down the list of all the things we use oil for and put a value on them. They could also theorize about how we could use other forms of energy in place of oil. I believe we could do the same for beef. We could question the value of spaghetti-o's and theorize about how we could deliver virtually the same product with less "inputs" if you will. If spaghetti-o's is really about delivering fuel to your body in a tasty and fun way, maybe that's the real value. I would go out on a limb and say that, even I, a trained chef, could create a non-beef meatball that could mimic the taste and texture of the "meat" meatball in a can of spaghetti-o's. Is this theorizing on my part about putting a dent in beef production? Or an attempt to fool the consumer? Not at all. I love beef, I love food, I support beef farmers and I love America dammit. But if I were to compare a can of spaghetti o's to a fresh meatball, I would value the fresh meatball over the canned meatball product. Slightly off topic, I don't necessarily believe that a dent in beef production should equate with less jobs for farmers. My perception of the beef industry is that there is more value placed on the operations that produce the animals (ranchers) than those that farm the animals from production to processing. In other words, it is not worth it for a farmer to "finish" and sell the meat from his animals. Change that system and money is redistributed rather than "lost" but I digress. My personal opinion is that if you are going to raise and kill an animal for food, it will be worth the effort if you put that meat into a fresh meatball. If you put that meat into a can of spaghetti-o's it is not worth the effort and the meat. My question is very simple--do we need beef in spaghetti-o's with meatballs? I wish I were confident enough to dumb down my perception of oil in the same way that I look at beef in this situation but do we need oil in everything that we use it for?
"Unwrapped" Premise: A lighthearted look at how some of America's favorite foods are processed and packaged.
I'm interested in not only what and how much is behind those wrappers once they're peeled off, which is usually thousands of tons of factory farmed foods and empty calories but what kind of role they play in our diets.
Is eating these foods similar to playing the lottery in the sense that we pay for the pretty cards, get excited at the possibility of a payoff, scratch them and then walk away only to do it again the next day? Do we get the same feeling scratching a lottery ticket as we do scratching our appetites when they start to itch? What are we left with after we scratch? A dollar less and still hungry. Is it just a coincidence that lottery tickets and candy are sold at the same counter? How do we decide what we need and what we don't need? Certainly we can look at the nutrition charts. If it's not on on there, it's not really food.
Unwrapped was one of those shows that immediately got switched off as soon as I saw it or the channel was completely ignored if I knew it was on. But one night, I got sucked-in. The machines, the hoppers, the spray hoses, the poundages, the facts, the figures! It was too much! I was hooked! I was blown away! I was mesmorized by the consumption, the confounding amounts of ingredients underneath those wrappers. Here's a list of some of the things that I remember:
Cracker barrel chicken and dumplings: Uses something like 14 million pounds of chicken per year. That's just one dish on their menu.
Popeyes: Sells something like 3 million pieces of chicken per day. Or nearly 1 billion pieces per year.
Pepperidge Farms: Hires something like an extra 5000 people just for the holidays to keep up with the demands of their processed beef salami and cheese.
Candy canes: During the limited months of production, one candy cane company uses 4 million pounds of high fructose corn syrup.
Ramen noodles: Those ramen noodles in the packet actually consist of one continuous strand of noodle. The factory makes enough of these noodles in one day to go from here to the moon, back again, around the world 4 times, to mars, back to the moon...you get the idea.
These figures are just off the top of my head. I could be off. In fact, I know that the ramen noodle figure may be slightly exaggerated.
I've seen other products on this show like tortilla chips that are green and taste like guacamole and some sort of flavored sugar (dextrose I believe) that kids are supposed eat, straight (kind of like pixie sticks) that a girl invented in her dorm room or something. I've also seen how those tiny plastic jugs of "juice" candy are made--you know the blue, red and green ones where you bite the top off and drink the "juice."
Man, I must sound like I'm the most un-fun person in the world. Marc Summers should just slime me Double Dare style and hope that I choke and die. My intention is not to sound un-fun or to beat Michael Pollan's dead horse but to understand why things are the way they are so that I and others with similar goals can plot our courses. In fact, I think candy is fun and I used to eat it. If I had kids, I'd let them eat candy in moderation too. Cracker Barrel chicken and dumplings? That's another story.
Here are some of the the questions that I'm left with after studying our appetites:
Which came first? Fun or factory farms?
Is fun possible without factory farms?
If our appetites are insatiable is it ridiculous to think they can ever be satiated?
Who eats candy peanuts?
Do we cut corners or do what we do the way we do it because it is makes for a cheaper product and puts more money in the pockets of a few?
Should those people who believe in truly, minimally processed foods, in organic and free-range meats, in garden fresh vegetables, expect to be able to make changes on this kind of scale? Is it even possible?
Can small farmers supply Popeye's with 300,000 whole chickens per day?
Is reasonable to think that most people care enough to change their habits when it comes to eating and purchasing foods?
Pretty daunting, no matter which way you unwrap this. My thought is for professionals to continue to believe in what they feel is right. The second step is to act on what they believe is right. That means the grower is growing how and what he believes in, individuals are getting those growers products to receptive markets, the chef is purchasing and cooking those products that he or she believes in, the customer is choosing to eat what he or she believes in. Hopefully, these products will all have had considerably less impact on the environment and on our bodies than some of those "unwrapped" products do.
While Unwrapped help to educate me about our grotesque calorie consumption, much of it empty calories, I hope that we make great advances in the way we educate our kids in school about food. That means, unwrapping REAL food. By unwrapping the mystery of real food food we will not only teach the differences between real and ultra processed food, we will teach about where the food comes from, how to grow it and how to prepare it. Armed with this knowledge, the kids that we grow and the kids that they grow and so on will become saavier and healthier food consumers and smarter Capitalists.
Must be the brew that I was sippin! At DCS-Fisher Paykel! Maybe it was the crisp techno break-beat mix playing in between Kohler's stage shows. Speaking of Kohler, I'm not sure if they're still running their "build me something around this" ad campaign but I can't help but think the The Kitchen and Bath Industry Show was built around Kohler's booth. Seriously though, I don't need to be plied with modern dance and free cups of beer and finger foods to get me excited about the annual KBIS show held at Chicago's McCormick place convention center. As a self-taught designer I look forward to scoping out the latest trends and fixtures in anything that has anything to do with kitchen and bath technology.
One reason why a show like KBIS is so fresh is because it gets me inspired with countless ideas. Behind all those products is a whole lot of innovation, vision, passion and inspiration. This time around I was fortunate to meet the president and founder of Wood Stone ovens, Keith Carpenter. As a professionally trained chef I know the Wood Stone name well. Recently, Wood Stone has decided to bring their product into the home market in the form of a neat little pizza oven that will surely be blazing in many a cooking enthusiast's high-end residential kitchen. While I've admired their equipment for a long time, I realized, after listening to Keith I didn't really know most of the technicalities of the product. I found out some details like the fact that the deck of the oven itself is heated and thermostatically controlled and even though most people run them mostly on gas, you can burn wood in them too.
While I walked away from our conversation with some useful technical information, I feel like I gained something much more valuable. Keith told me a little about some of Wood Stone's other innovations that they are working on right now and that are on their horizon. After a while, we were talking about rethinking the traditional commercial kitchen layout through new technology that will end up saving time, energy and space which was particularly au courant as KBIS 2010's theme was "Conservation." This idea resonated with me because I'm constantly tweaking my current commercial kitchen to run more efficiently and to save space and keep the cooks operating within it, comfortable. Design-wise I applied much of the same principles that are important in a commercial kitchen to my home kitchen which happens to be modern and minimal. The sleek, modern design of my kitchen works for my compact urban condominium and naturally lends itself to space maximization but packs a repertoire of punches when it comes to fire-power and an efficient work triangle.
As a chef I think about how residential kitchen design takes inspiration from commercial kitchens (think stainless steel work-surfaces and commercial appliances) but also observe how the commercial kitchen is taking cues from the residential kitchen. If we look at the commercial kitchen layout a little differently we can start to find ways to conserve energy consumption as well as human energy and to save space, both through the implementation of new cooking technology and configurations. Modern kitchens are starting to use such techniques as sous-vide cooking, plancha cooking and a combination of steam and conventional oven cooking which in addition to assisting the chef in producing exquisite cuisine, can result in a more relaxed and cooler kitchen. Although we don't tend to use these cutting-edge cooking methods at home, we do value comfort while cooking at home. But don't be surprised when these technologies begin poking their nose into residential kitchen design. In fact, there is already one sous-vide machine designed for the home on the market and another that may be debuting in the near future. And one of my favorite manufacturers who unfortunately did not make a presence at KBIS this year, Gaggenau, has an amazing steam oven for the home kitchen. The exchange of ideas between the residential and commercial world is never-ending so I when I look for fresh ideas at KBIS I never know which one of those worlds that I've got each foot planted in will end up being inspired.
Kitchens are obviously only one half of KBIS. While we nourish ourselves and our loved ones in the kitchen we could say that we "freshen-up" and replenish ourselves and our loved ones in the bathroom. Like the kitchen world, a stroll through the big names in bathrooms like Kohler and Toto will also prove that some of the things we typically associate with commercial facilities, are being adapted for use in the home. Fixtures like urinals and automated hand dryers are making their way into the residential market. These things are trendy right now but they do make sense, just ask a guy, and if energy and water conservation is more than just a trendy catch phrase then these things may become standards in new residential construction and rehabs rather than trends.
Panasonic's bathroom ventilation division was there. I stopped to take a look at some of their products and talked to the rep about their Whisper Green bathroom fan. This particular fan can operate at a very low and quiet speed, constantly, which is particularly relevant to those who live in multi-story residences where fumes and allergens (cigarette smoke) can find their way through ventilation fans in other units. What's great about the Whisper Green is that it has a motion sensor that will kick the fan into a higher speed when you are in the bathroom and a higher rate of extraction is necessary. Energy usage? Roughly $7 - $12 per year. I said, "that's pretty efficient." He said, "yes, it's probably less than what it would cost to run a nightlight." I said, "this is pretty green." He said something to the effect of, "we've always considered ourselves to be." I thought to myself, maybe this is why they will always be at a show like KBIS--their technology still seems fresh in any market. No matter what the economy, no matter what the trends, as long as we continue to need "stuff" for our homes, we're going to be interested in the stuff that matters the most to us at this particular time. To me, fresh ideas will always appeal to me, in any economy. Oh yeah, and it can be a lot of fun to look at the "concept cars" of the kitchen and bath world too and to imagine being able to incorporate them into your designs. "Sok" overflowing bathtub anyone? I'll couple that sale up with a waste-water reuse system too.
This fall, Chelsea and I had the opportunity to open our kitchen to Dwell magazine. I vividly remember getting the initial phone call on my cell phone. I stepped outside of the restaurant and was so curiously distracted by the call that I was walking up and down the sidewalk while talking to one of the editors. I leaned against the corner of a set of scaffolding in the middle of the sidewalk that was covered with plywood and continued to talk about my home kitchen when out of the sky a glass bottle exploded right next to my head on top of the scaffold. I stopped talking, walked away from the scaffold and flicked little pieces of glass out of my hair. My ear was ringing. I looked up at the workers hanging off the side of the building about 12 stories above me. When I told the editor that my life flashed before my eyes I was glad that he was still interested in continuing the conversation and didn't think I had gone cuckoo.
Between the great news and my potentially dangerous close encounter, my heart somehow managed to slow down and things went back to normal. This was one of those situations that demonstrates how some simple tweaks in timing and location can result in life-changing moments. I recall one moment several years ago where I was looking out of the restaurant towards the street and saw a Heineken bottle fall from the sky and shatter on the sidewalk between the parking zone sign and the edge of the patio furniture, a distance of 6'. Moments, actually seconds, later, a pedestrian passed through this space, stepping over the shattered glass which most likely came from a balcony 20 or more stories above.
Since then, I've though a lot about timing, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the right place at the right time, how many balconies, rooftops and open windows there are in the city and how much debris is blown off and thrown from them--coworkers have even witnessed a plant pot mysteriously fall from above and take out a stoplight on the corner. I also think about how many people there are in the city, underneath those windows and walking around below on the sidewalk and how many, narrowly avoid catastrophe by a matter of seconds. I guess, at the end of the day, there are millions of lucky people in Chicago.
Well, the stars and the scaffolding must have been aligned and in a few weeks I would be preparing dinner for the editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine. The photographer would arrive to capture our space and ourselves, doing what we love to do in the place that we designed with love, a few weeks after that.
The menu that Chel and I put together for the dinner was reflective of how we like to eat as well as a reflection of our holistic approach to food and company. The relatively short notice of the event which could be an issue for some people, was pretty much irrelevant to us. It was fall in Chicago and the farmer's market was still going strong which meant that the market would help us write our menu. Chel has always got some ideas that she is eager to engineer, working in her head, so she would book-end the meal with a ***cocktail inspired by our love for mezcal and our neighborhood market and the community we live in and a dessert that articulates the nostalgia of a childhood favorite but looks and tastes all grown-up.
The majority of the meal ingredients were sourced locally from The Green City Market and Fortune Fish Company: goat chops from Mint Creek Farm, cheese from Prairie Fruits Farm, Whitefish from Lake Superior, sweet corn from the side of the road, greens and produce from Nichol's Farm. Herbs and chili peppers from our balcony garden. I described the "philosophy" of this meal in a Pleasant House blog post entitled, "Our locavore meal of the moment." http://thepleasanthouse.com/2009/09/28/our-locavore-meal-of-the-moment-a-guide-to-a-peak-season-multi-course-locavore-menu/
We enjoyed having Sam as our guest and are happy that he enjoyed the meal and our visit. We are absolutely thrilled at the story that he wrote which captured his perspective of Chicago, it's architecture and culture and the incredible amount of hard work that Chelsea and I and my family and friends helped put into our place. I've been reading Dwell since the first issue came out nearly ten years ago, gathering inspiration from it. I'm so happy that the combination of being myself, (having a nice kitchen) and being lucky that certain moments went they way they did that I ended up being part of something that has inspired me for so many years.
Thanks Chelsea, Dad, John, Mike, Mom, Porkchop, Laurie, Apartmenttherapy & community, Melissa, Julien, Nick, Ken, Midwestern farmers, fishermen and their produce, Sam, Aaron, Matthew (Dwell) and everyone who has given us nice feedback on the issue.
*** El Chingón by Chelsea Kalberloh Jackson
Yield: 2 cocktails
1 oz tequila reposado
1 oz mezcal
1/2 oz homemade chili tequila
2 oz fresh orange juice (Mandarin, if available)
1/2 oz fresh sour orange juice
1 tablespoon mezcal syrup
Place all ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake until chilled. Strain into chili-lime-rimmed martini glasses and garnish.
To make mezcal syrup, place 1/2 cup cold water and 1/2 cup sugar in a small but heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat just until sugar dissolves. Add a 1x2-inch piece of smoked mezcal (the smoked meat of the agave plant, available in some Mexican specialty markets) to the syrup and steep for at least 30 minutes. Cool completely. Will keep, covered, in refrigerator for a week.
To make homemade chili tequila, add a few of your favorite spicy, fresh chilies (plain or smoked) to a bottle of tequila. Allow the chilies to infuse the tequila for at least a few days before using.
Food people are making a lot of noise these days when it comes to the American school lunch system. Jamie Oliver, an accomplished food person and celebrity from across the pond, is also stirring the proverbial school lunch pot in the UK and in the US. I am also a dedicated food person, professional chef and all around real food advocate who has just realized that maybe I haven’t put nearly enough thought into the state of school lunches. I’ll be perfectly honest and say that even though I believe strongly in the idea of teaching kids to cook I haven’t focused much attention on school lunches and sort of thought, “what’s the big deal? It’s only one meal a day, what’s wrong with having a little fun in the form of a salty rectangle of sheet pan pizza or a corn dog?” Certainly, one meal per day in the cafeteria is not harming our kids, making them unhealthy and obese? Is it? I used to eat what us kids called “hot lunch” at least a few times per week when I was in school. I would get my dollar or whatever it was, or maybe my parents paid for credit that allowed me to get hot lunch any time I wanted to, I don’t really remember. I do remember having to pay for the little cartons of ice cold Oberweis milk that I used to slam multiples of. For me, hot lunch was about “pizza day” or “corn dog day” or “picnic day" and wasn't an everyday thing. Hot lunch wasn’t keeping me alive and I’m sure, it wasn’t killing me. Is this case for all students though, even the ones where a school lunch may be the only hot meal they mayl have to look forward to all day? My folks would pack a sack lunch for me most of the time. My typical lunch would consist of things like sugar free peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or cheese and sprout sandwiches always on whole wheat bread. Most of the time I had a banana or an apple in my lunch. My parents were into different health food fads growing up and kiwi fruit started to show up in my lunches when they started to appear in grocery stores (early 80’s). I had fun food like potato chips in my lunches too and even carrot chips. Looking back, my lunches seemed pretty gourmet and today, I can truly appreciate the effort that my parents went through not only to take the time to make my lunch but to make it with ingredients that they thought were good for my body and mind. Can I say that I appreciated their efforts back then? I have my regrets and one of those is not appreciating and thanking my parents as much as I should have—I’ll chalk it up to being a kid I guess. I also regret all the times that I was not considerate of my peer's differences or feelings. Interestingly, I also look back and realize that something as simple as my school lunch was so different than what the other kids' hot lunches or even their own sack lunches that I was being made fun of on a regular basis. Whole wheat bread, round hairy fruit, carrot chips were things that would make me stand out. I remember a teacher taking such interest in my carrot chips that she asked if she could take them to show all the teachers in the lounge—not quite the attention a little kid is craving in school. What I was eating made me feel very unpopular. When I read last night that Jamie Oliver won a prestigious TED 2010 award I decided to find out what he did to accomplish this honor. That was when I realized that this hip fellow, about my age, has been shouting from a soap box about fixing our kid’s school lunch program. Not only that, he believes wholeheartedly that the key to changing unhealthy eating habits in his country and ours is to teach our kids how to cook which is something that I myself have harped on about here: http://thepleasanthouse.com/2010/01/13/cultivating-new-american-eaters-the-importance-of-knowing-and-growing-real-food/ and in countless conversations about how to make real changes in dietary habits and our food culture. Jamie’s skills as a chef, his celebrity, his ability to raise funding and his dedication to real food by attempting to change the negative aspects of our food culture has allowed him to work towards the realization of his dream which is: “I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” Jamie believes his wish could come true if our kids knew how to cook. I too believe that learning how to cook will provide our kids with the weaponry to battle bad diets. Teaching our kids to cook will instill in them ideas of what is good and bad about food. Involving them in the process will provide them with the ability to make choices when they grow up and need to shop for their own groceries and to cook for their own families. Teaching new generations of Americans to cook will build upon a disjointed food culture. Jamie says: “Every child should be taught to cook in school, not just talk about nutrition all day. Good food can be made in 15 minutes. This could be the first generation where the kids teach the parents.” – Jamie Oliver “This could be the first generation where the kids teach the parents.” If I met you Jamie, I would want to shake your hand. You’ve helped inspire me to more vigorously pursue what I believe in. Keep doing what you are doing and eventually, your job should become easier, because enough people will be working together to achieve a common goal. Last I checked, @jamie_oliver had nearly 304,000 twitter followers and I just became one today. So, if I believe in teaching kids what real food is all about, I too am going to have to flip the metaphorical cafeteria tables and make the junk that they serve on them the stuff to be laughed at, rather than the types of ingredients you would find in my unconventional sack lunch. Call it a personal vendetta but if I helped change the system to make school lunches as healthy as the ones that I used to bring, that would be some pretty sweet payback. It shouldn’t be that hard, after all, all we have to do is make abnormal, normal. By abnormal I mean, instead of hot dogs that a processor wouldn’t even serve his own kids, we could serve all-beef, nitrate-free hot dogs? Instead of serving canned fruits and vegetables, how about prepared fresh fruits and vegetables? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with “fun-food.” Let’s just make the fun-food healthier. My experience as a cook has been an interesting one. The hot dog story is a true one. I met the owner of a processing plant located in one of the Dakotas who makes hot dogs from frozen scraps of miscellaneous meat. I even met some consultants of his that were going to install giant microwaves to be used to thaw the scraps which would make up the hot dogs that were delivered across the country to a very popular big box store by the shipping container full. He told me that he literally would not feed the very hot dogs that he makes his living on to his own children. No doubt, those very hot dogs are served in our school system because the school system typically buys according to price—that being the cheapest possible. As a cook I’ve not only met people in most areas of the food production industry, I’ve also worked as a kind of “lunchlady/guy” myself. While working my way through college, I cooked at a local upscale restaurant at night and during the day, I helped carry out the restaurant’s role of foodservice provider for the area’s preschools. My job was very simple, look at the school’s calendar that had all the meals written down for that week, open the appropriate #10 cans and boxes of food, boil and/or bake the items, count and measure the appropriate portions for each school, fill and cover the 2” hotel pans and deliver them to the schools. Typical menus consisted of chicken nuggets, hot dogs, spaghetti, canned green beans, corn or peas, canned peaches or fruit cocktail. In a world where ketchup packets are considered a vegetable there was little room for innovation or freshness. There was in fact, no room for the local upscale restaurant to offer its knowledge of real food when it came to a government regulated meal program. I have believed that we can take advantage of this one meal per day opportunity to change the way our kids eat and how they perceive food. We can teach them how to cook their own food and to be part of the meal preparation and serving process. The culinary industry is one of the fastest growing in the US. Every year there are more and more young men and women graduating from professional cooking programs, something that is unprecedented in this country. Why not create opportunities within our education system for these culinary graduates to become qualified to teach cooking in our schools and to look at cafeteria programs from a chef’s perspective? Fine restaurants shouldn’t be the only places to experience good food. Is one school lunch per day going to kill our kids or make them obese? I don’t know. I can prove one thing though. What we grow up eating in the cafeteria and what we experience in that cafeteria during some of the most formative years of our lives stay with us forever. What we eat and what we experience can be as empty in calories as it is in cultural value or it can start to become life-changing and society changing for all the right reasons. In December 2009 Oliver was awarded the 2010 TED Prize for his campaigns to "create change on both the individual and governmental level" in order to "bring attention to the changes Englanders and now Americans need to make in their lifestyles and diet." [11 11. • ^ http://www.tedprize.org/jamie-oliver/ Related: “School Lunches--Now With More Processed Foods!” by John Linn http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/cleanplatecharlie/2009/07/school_lunch_nutrition_crazy_apple.php#218802
Photo credits: John Linn, "School Lunches--Now With More Processed Foods!"
Congratulations Jamie Oliver – 2010 TED Prize Winner Jamie Oliver’s Wish “I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” * Take Action * HELP GRANT THIS WISH The Plan Set up an organization to create a popular movement that will inspire people to change the way they eat. The movement will do this by establishing a network of community kitchens; launching a travelling food theater that will teach kids practical food and cooking skills in an entertaining way and provide basic training for parents and professionals; and bringing millions of people together through an online community to drive the fight against obesity. The grassroots movement must also challenge corporate America to support meaningful programs that will change the culture of junk food. The Needs * Help to establish the organization, with funding, office space and facilities. * Find partners to equip and run the community kitchens, and food suppliers to provide the fresh ingredients. * A partner to build and maintain a fleet of food theatre trucks. * Education experts, graphic designers, artists and writers to develop and produce creative, fun teaching materials. * Communications experts to create messaging for the movement. * Web designers and developers to create and build the website. * Establishment of a food line that generates a sustainable income for the movement. * Corporate partners to invest in cooking and food education for their customers and champion honest food labelling. * Your names added to the petition to challenge our leaders to make change now: www.jamiesfoodrevolution.c
om/petition About Jamie: “Every child should be taught to cook in school, not just talk about nutrition all day. Good food can be made in 15 minutes. This could be the first generation where the kids teach the parents.” – Jamie Oliver Jamie Oliver is transforming the way we feed our children, and ourselves. Jamie Oliver has been drawn to the restaurant kitchen since he was seven or eight. First working in his father’s pub-restaurant and then training in England and France, he not only displayed incredible culinary talent but also a passion for creating fresh, honest and delicious food. Although he is now one of the worlds top celebrity chef’s, his commitment to simple, unpretentious food remains and with it his drive to break people’s unhealthy eating habits and get them cooking again. With the obesity epidemic growing globally, Oliver is using his notoriety to bring attention to the changes Englanders and now Americans need to make in their lifestyles and diet. Campaigns such as School Dinners, Ministry of Food and Food Revolution USA combine Oliver’s culinary tools, cookbooks and television with more standard activism and community organizing to create change on both the individual and governmental level. Learn more about Jamie at jamieoliver.com.
"Would you like that shaken or stirred?" "Do I look like I give a damn?" Can Tradition Get in the Way of Getting the Job Done?
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 1:04pm
The line above is of course from James Bond, specifically, the remake of Casino Royale. I believe this could have been after Bond loses his first million dollar poker game and contemplates chasing down and ramming a Wedgewood butter knife into his nefarious nemesis. The bartender's etiquette in offering to shake or stir the martini reminds the audience that they are watching a James Bond movie. Bond's brash "f-you" to the bartender slaps the audience into the reality that this is not your traditional fancy-pants, cheeky Bond character. The powers that be have reverted to creating a different type of Bond character than what we've been accustomed to--traditionally. Theoretically though, it may be closer to the dark and serious character of Ian Fleming's literature. What prompts the shunning of tradition, the spinning of it on it's head, the throwing it for a loop in lieu of something drastically different I wonder? What is the shunning of tradition in lieu of another way of doing something but change? Change isn't always easy for people to take. It can make people uncomfortable, it can throw them for a loop. But why? What caused the change? I can relate this thought to the restaurant world. Traditionally, burgers and sandwiches are accompanied by the ubiquitous lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle. But why? Do most people like all of the above on their sandwiches? I don't think so. So I stopped putting tomato slices on the side unless they are requested. What have I accomplished by breaking this tradition? 1. I no longer purchase as many tomatoes out of season and I no longer purchase as many tomatoes--period. 2. I save money. 3. The tomatoes that are served are sliced at the moment and are as perfect as they can be. Generally speaking, the demand for sliced tomato is about 2%--if that is correct, where have the other 98% of my tomatoes been going? When Gourmet magazine closed I whined about it for a little while. Why? Honestly, it was because having a Gourmet on the coffee table was more about tradition that it was about the magazine itself. I couldn't tell you the last time I cooked something from one of its recipes. But some of my earliest cooking memories involved preparing food from grease-splattered copies of Gourmet. My subscription to Gourmet was a connection to that nostalgia. Guess what, I'm over the Gourmet thing now. But like other people out there, I believe that the title is so legendary that Gourmet could be revived into something entirely new--kind of like Bond. Maybe it will appeal to me, maybe not. But it will still be Gourmet and maybe the tradition will live on in a new kind of way. I'm not so sure that's the point. I think the point is, that with any product be it Bond, food or magazines, people just get used to the way it is, good, bad, quirky, viable/unviable, violent, dark, useful or unuseful. If things are going well and everyone seems to be happy then tradition doesn't seem to get in the way. But can embracing tradition for tradition's sake sometimes overshadow the things that are wrong with something? Tradition can bring comfort but with comfort comes complacency. And while tradition brings comfort for some, it can bring discomfort for others. Are we willing to overlook doing the things the wrong way, or unwilling to question the changing needs of an audience so that we can spoon feed them a version of what we think is keeping them happy? Can tradition get in the way of survival? Would James Bond really take a few moments to enlighten the bartender on the finer points of shaking a martini as opposed to stirring it whilst contemplating his next kill which he licensed to carry out? Not unless it was vital to his plan. Sometimes, a stiff drink is nothing more than a stiff drink.
