Baltimore Green Week Restaurant Tour-Local Is Very Tasty!

What a way to cap off Baltimore Green Week! The Local Is As Local Does local food tour on Friday was a brilliant twist on a tasting event — a progressive tasting tour that stopped at four of Baltimore’s committed-to-local restaurants for a chat with the chefs and, of course, yummy food. I think it might be cruel to regale you with the lovely details of each stop . . . but I’ll hit some highlights anyway, in case you need motivation to sign up for this right away the next time Baltimore Greenworks and the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance (CSBA) do this. (I’m sure they will do it again – the tour sold out in about two hours of being announced – and the 33 lucky folks who took every seat on the bus definitely got their money’s worth!)

So, let’s see:

three different varieties of cultured oysters from the Chesapeake Bay, house-corned beef tongue and the last of the winter’s house-made sauerkraut, a selection of local cheeses with poached rhubarb and gelled apple cider bites at Woodberry Kitchen, after chef-owner Spike Gjerde gave us one of the first public glimpses of his new preservation kitchen;

the season’s first Virginia asparagus with a Mornay-inspired sauce and Chapelle cheese from Maryland’s Eastern Shore from the kitchen of chef-owner Galen Sampson at reopened Dogwood;

at Gertrude’s, along with local wines, shrimp pate using crustaceans from Maryland’s Marvesta Shrimp Farm, asparagus frittata, and arugula pesto, all recipes from Lucie Snodgrass’ new book, Dishing Up Maryland, for which chef-owner John Shields wrote the forward;

finally, pate of chicken livers from Rumbleway Farm with local honey, house-made and cured saucisson, and mixed greens grown four blocks away at Hamilton Crop Circle (plus a personal visit from Crop Circle farmer Arthur Morgan) at Clementine, served by co-owners Cristin and Winston Blick.

Mind you, these are just highlights, there was even more than I had room to detail here. What really made this tour unique was that it began and ended at Real Food Farm, one of the many impressive urban agriculture programs flourishing in Baltimore. This one currently consists of three large hoop houses in which both educational and commercial agriculture project are taking place. In fact, greens and radishes from Real Food Farm were on our plates at a couple of our restaurant stops.

Although I’m told the idea was a last-minute brainstorm, the event came off very well. Other restaurants have already been calling Baltimore Greenworks and CSBA to be included on future events. Many folks who attended this time around would sign up again at the drop of a napkin, and there were plenty of people who were turned away and would love another chance. So I doubt we’ve heard the last of Local Is As Local Does food tours, which is very good news.

You’ll Eat Well Whether You Want To or Not!

That headline’s not meant to conjure up unpleasant childhood memories, although I guess there are some people out there for whom that would be an unpleasant thought even in adulthood. No, I used it because it’s actually happening all over the country and most people don’t even know it. I’m talking about the half-million people who eat burritos and salads at the 1000 Chipotle restaurants every day, 95 percent of whom have no idea they are supporting sustainable and, in more and more cases, local food systems.

According to Phil Petrilli, northeast regional director for Chipotle, it’s a point of pride that these customers are “playing a part in affecting change, whether they know it or not.” The reason they come to Chipotle is for great-tasting food, which was the first goal of Chipotle’s founder, Culinary Institute of America-trained Steve Ells. But they get much more than that. It started with Niman Ranch pork several years ago, and has progressed to the point where today, in the mid-Atlantic region, chickens come from Pennsylvania’s Bell & Evans, and the pork at the Charlottesville Chipotle famously comes from Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm. That came about because Petrilli was personally a member of the Polyface buying club. When you’ve got folks like Ells and Petrilli in decision-making positions, good things will happen.

Petrilli spoke about all this on Saturday during a panel I chaired called Farm to Table: Moving Toward the Mainstream at Les Dames d’Escoffier DC Chapter’s Salute to Women in Gastronomy. As we talked with the audience about Wal-Mart’s move into local foods, there was a fairly general agreement that if we truly believe eating well should be available to all, we need to applaud Wal-Mart’s initiative. But there concern Wal-Mart not be allowed to browbeat farmers through sheer force of volume in a way that is at odds with what this movement really stands for. Petrilli pointed out that Wal-Mart can also choose to use its power for good by influencing the structure of distribution networks, which right now represent one of the largest obstacles for small farmers trying to work with retailers on any scale.

What Petrilli emphasized is that sustainable and local sourcing is an ongoing process that Chipotle has taken step-by-step. ”We have the highest food costs” for a quickservice establishment, he told me proudly, yet growth continues at a sustainable pace. Chipotle vets its local sources, then works with its distributors to get those farms and producers into the logistical pipeline. He said that for sourcing animal products, “humane is key” to their definition of sustainability. In 2009, they got 35 percent of their produce from local sources in season, and he expects that to be more than 50 percent in 2010. He remarked that it’s not unusual to see chefs at farmers markets, but would you expect fast-food chefs? “The chefs from our Dupont Circle store go to the market on Sundays,” he said. Sometimes they may come back with nothing, but other days the same locally grown serrano pepper, lettuce or tomato on the salad at a high-end restaurant around the corner may also be stuffed in a burrito at Chipotle. Whether you know it or not.

Can “local” get too mainstream?

I’m going to chair a panel this Saturday called “Farm-to-Table: Moving Toward the Mainstream” at the DC Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier’s Salute to Women in Gastronomy Symposium. I had already planned to ask the panelists and the audience what they thought about things like Walmart having a local foods forager in our region (I met him at the MD Governor’s Buy Local Challenge Cook-off last summer). Then this link came through my email from the Slow Food DC listserve, courtesy of the tireless online town crier, Marsha Weiner: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/walmart-local-produce. Atlantic writer Corby Kummer is advised by a staffer at the Environmental Defense Fund whose been studying Walmart’s agricultural programs, “It’s getting harder and harder to hate Walmart.” Kummer sets out to learn why.

It’s an important article and an important idea. The folks on my panel this Saturday will include Kati Gimes of Slow Food DC, along with Phil Petrilli of Chipotle and Louise Mitchell of Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment. While the work Slow Food’s work, especially in the U.S., is reaching out to the mainstream one person at a time, Mitchell is working with hospitals to get local produce, meats and dairy onto their campuses, through cafeterias, farmers markets, CSAs and other channels. Petrilli is in charge of Mid-Atlantic operations for Chipotle and was responsible for the much-applauded deal to get Polyface meats into their restaurants.

When truly local and sustainable products are available to the masses, whether they know they are eating them or not, is this a good thing? I’m looking forward to hearing what our seminar attendees will have to say about this on Saturday. Just a few years ago, purists were decrying the proliferation of organics, but there were actual standards and regulations that many felt had been undermined by corporate interests. Even where the terms were not disputed, there seemed to be a little bit of regret at the loss of the insider-ness of the organic community. Maybe we are on the cusp of that with local and sustainable as well. But that kind of exclusivity seems rather at odds with the concept of eating local and supporting our local economies. Read the Walmart piece–it’s eye-opening. Even if I don’t shop at Walmart, I don’t see why the folks who do shouldn’t have access to better food and why the farmers who sell to them shouldn’t have access to that market. What do you think?

Women + Food = Leadership

There is a wonderful book by Laura Schenone called 1000 Years Behind a Hot Stove. After telling the story of women in American history through their interaction with food and cooking, which has been complicated over the years, she comes to this conclusion:

“What really matters, I have come to believe, is not so much the food itself but the act of cooking and the act of caring for others.

“The most important thing we can do is believe in food – not only in how it tastes in our own mouths but also in the larger sense. By caring about the act of cooking itself, by believing in it, we give food a higher meaning. Once we value food and cooking, from there other good things follow. We make good choices. We care about the animals and earth and other human beings involved in our food chain. We find nourishment. We take care of others, ourselves, and the planet.

“If we believe food is important, then we as women also become aware of how powerful we are – not only on a personal level but also when we go to the grocery store and take out our wallets. . . .

“Sometimes it makes me annoyed that on top of everything women have done and must do, we still must be in charge of worrying about what everyone eats. . . . But if we don’t do it, who will?”

I was reminded about this while on a conference call this week in preparation for a panel I’ll be sitting on February 18  at the University of Virginia Women In Leadership Conference. Tanya Deckla Cobb, the moderator of the panel, was taking us through some questions about how women are taking on leadership roles in the sustainable foods movement, and where leadership opportunities are emerging for women. There are, of course, both men and women leading the good work that is being done around local and sustainable foods.  But Schenone’s words about the power of women that comes from caring for, nurturing, cooking for, feeding and educating our families and our communities about food brought to mind all the incredible women I have met over these past few years. I’m talking about women who are passionate and committed, women who are not only doing what they believe in but who are taking risks, challenging assumptions, and stepping forward to make it possible for others to participate in the local and sustainable food movement as well.

So at the risk of leaving someone deserving out, which I’m sure I will but it’s not deliberate, here’s a list (in no particular order) of some of these women, local women who are leading the charge in ways large and small. If you don’t know who they are, look them up and learn about their work. And feel free to let me know who I’ve left out so we can celebrate what all of us women in the movement are doing!

Joan Norman, One Straw Farm
Liz Reitzig, Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association
Stephanie Ritchie, National Agricultural Library and Future Harvest – CASA
Louise Mitchell, Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment
Carrie Witkop, school lunch activist
Christine Bergmark, Southern Maryland Agricultural Commission
Rana Koll-Mandel, Bethesda Green Sustainable Foods Working Group Coordinator
Sandy Lerner, Ayrshire Farm
Ann Yonkers and Bernie Prince, FRESHFARM Markets
Janet Terry, Olney Farmers Market
Crystal Lal, Cheverly Community Market
Bev Sell, Five Points Community Farm Market
Tanya Deckla Cobb, Virginia Food Systems Council
Kate Collier, Local Food Hub
Dana Smith, UVa student community garden manager
Robin Shuster, Markets and More
Rita Calvert, food educator and Bay preservation activist
Liz Falk, Common Good City Farm
Ginger Myers, Maryland Dept of Agriculture
Michelle Klein, Maryland Organic Food and Farming Association
Holly Heintz Budd, Maryland Organic Food and Farming Association
Jane Black, The Washington Post

The Difference Between Me and Michael Pollan . . .

. . . and Alice Waters and Ruth Reichl and every other great foodie writer or chef I like to read and try to emulate is not so much that they have access to food that I can’t get or kitchen skills that I don’t have. It’s not that they know more about sourcing than I do or love cooking any more than I do. It all boils down to this: they have help with the cleaning.

This is the bit that never gets addressed in the witty eater’s diaries or cookbooks or food philosophy treatises. Although these folks very possibly do their own shopping and may do their own prep, I really doubt they are doing all the clean-up every day after these fabulous meals. (I love the way Lidia Bastianich sticks the dirty bowls on a shelf under her counter as she moves on to her next step. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Jacques Pepin makes his daughter Claudine clean up after their shows!) Even if the celebs clean up after their own meals, I’m sure they at least have someone who comes in once a week to mop the floor, polish the copper pots and top up the salt cellars. Maybe they even clean the bathrooms and do the laundry. Amazing how much more cooking of your own french fries and other junk food (Pollan’s rule #39) you can do when you don’t have to fold laundry.

For the most part they also don’t have children for whom they are responsible every day, most of the day. The lack of children is the equivalent of having a full-time housekeeping assistant by virtue of the messes that don’t get made and the attention that doesn’t get diverted from the highly enjoyable tasks involved in planning, shopping for, preparing, eating and writing or talking about delicious meals from locally sourced sustainable foods.

I’m not begrudging any of these folks the amazing things they do or the wonderful things they teach us about food and eating. But I am cutting myself some slack, and encourage real people who eat local to do the same. Sure I do make apple cider donuts from scratch every couple of months. But I also had a bowl of Cheerios to tide me over this afternoon (with Trickling Springs milk though!) while braising the grass-fed roast from Clagett Farm for dinner. Pollan was good explaining his Food Rules on Oprah this afternoon, but Oprah was equally emphatic to her viewers about “leaning in” to new ways of eating rather than feeling you have to change everything all at once. I think they both gave good advice, at least until I can find ways to leverage my skills enough to reduce the difference in the help factor that exists between me and Michael Pollan.

Local Food Moving Toward the Mainstream

On Tuesday, I’ll be a guest speaker at the Virginia Harvest Wine Dinner at Wildfire Restaurant in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. This is the East Coast outpost of a successful Chicago-based group of restaurants that trade in big steaks, lobster tails and 40s-era ambience. The location in Tyson’s Galleria mall can seat hundreds of people at a time. It’s not the mom-and-pop chef-owned 40- or 50-seat restaurant we often identify with farm-to-table cuisine. But, thanks to an inspired chef and a management team willing to take a chance, Wildfire is taking a small step toward bringing local food to the mainstream of American eating.

Executive Chef Steven Lukis was on board from the word “go” last summer when the idea of a Virginia harvest wine dinner first came up. James Roth of the fab wine and gourmet shop Red, White & Bleu in Falls Church brought his extensive knowledge of wines in general, and of Virginia wines in particular, to the table, literally. I helped make some local connections for items like beef tenderloin, peaches and local cheeses. James and I talked about the food and wine in-between courses at the sold-out four-course dinner that introduced some of Wildfire’s regular diners to the concept of local, seasonal eating. It was such a hit that the folks in Chicago did a harvest dinner at one of their hometown restaurants. Chef Lukis was ready to another one and when I suggested there was plenty of bounty available to do a winter dinner, it was a done deal.

So on Tuesday we’ll be dining on the following incredible menu:

Reception
Jumbo Lump Crab
herb roasted cottage fry, lemon mustard aioli
Kluge Estate Sparkling Blanc de Blancs 2004, Charlottesville, VA

First Course
Braised Rockfish
saffron blue crab claw risotto, lobster au jus
Rapidan River Dry Riesling, Leon, VA. ‘08

Second Course
Barbecue Virginia Country Ribs
ultimate white cheddar macaroni & cheese
Tarara Winery «Long Bomb » Cabernet Sauvignon, Loudoun County, VA. ‘06

Third Course
Selection of Artisan Cheeses
Prince Michel Cabernet Franc, Leon, VA. ‘07

Dessert
German Chocolate Molten cake
Barboursville Vineyards Cabernet Franc Reserve, Barboursville, VA. ‘06

There are still apparently a few tickets left (a steal at $60!), so contact Michelle Bringham at (703) 442-9110 if you want to join us.

What’s really cool about this is how Chef Lukis has extended his commitment to local food beyond these special dinners. He’s been looking for a way to have all the eggs for weekend brunch come from local farms. I put him in touch with Oren Molovinsky at Mie N Yu in Georgetown, who has set up a delivery network connecting Virginia farms and DC-area restaurants, so I’m hopeful Wildfire will soon be home to a local egg brunch. I totally admire the restaurateurs like Todd Gray and Nora Pouillon and Rob Weland in DC, Spike Gjerde and John Shields and Galen Sampson in Baltimore, Cathal Armstrong and Tom Przystawik and Tony Chittum in Alexandria, who have been way out in front as champions of small, local farms and seasonal bounty before it was such a part of the national conversation. But it’s important that chefs and restaurateurs like Steven Lukis and Oren Molovinsky also get on board, to whatever extent they can given the logistics and challenges of the quantities they serve. This is bringing the message to a wider audience through great food on the plate and helping to increase demand in ways that will encourage more small farmers to get into the game. Everybody wins!

Buyer-Grower Connections Increase Consumer Access

I dream of being able to buy local food products from responsible, sustainable farms in my region, no matter where I choose to shop – the farmers market, the co-op, the grocery store, a restaurant, even my kids’ school. Events like today’s Buyer-Grower Meeting in Annapolis are critical to bringing that dream closer to reality.

About 70 participants on each side came out for a basic meet-and-greet and maybe make-a-deal trade show.  The growers’ products included veggies and fruits; hydroponic lettuces; milk, cheeses, and yogurts; flour and grains; beef, bison, goat and other meats; oysters, Chesapeake bay blue crab and tilapia being raised in farms right here in Maryland. I saw many of the farmers who are staples at local farmers markets and on restaurant menus. But there were new growers looking for outlets as well, which is really encouraging. We need the supply of local food to continue to grow if we’re going to have access to more through all channels.

So it was also encouraging that there was real diversity on the buyer side. In addition to restaurants and caterers, the buyers from stores including My Organic Market, Whole Foods and small community stores were there. But so were buyers from Giant, Safeway, Wegmans. Several correctional institutions were represented as well. Disappointingly, only a small handful of school districts took part. The standard-bearer for doing the right thing with food in schools, Tony Geraci of the Baltimore City School District, was happy to hold forth to anyone who would listen (which was pretty much everyone) about his vision and the real changes he’s brought to schools in the last couple of years.

“We have to change the value system,” Geraci told a small group of us. He talked about recognizing the “value of service,” in other words, explaining his job not as putting food on plates in cafeterias, but as “putting healthy kids in front of educators ready to learn. That has value,” he said. He felt that school districts around the state were watching his work, now that they’ve seen it really pay dividends. And they see that “a real network is being formed, we’re willing to share information” so everyone can move forward with better sourcing for school food. After all, he said, “These are our kids!”

Here’s a link to another account of the day’s activities and a few photos at Michael Birchenall’s blog, Sauce on the Side. Michael takes much better photos than I do, and he also covers our local food community more from a trade insider’s perspective, so check it out.

The Future of Future Harvest

I’ve only been going to Future Harvest CASA conferences for the last three years, but in those three years, I’m sure the 2010 annual conference was the best yet, so I’m venturing to say this was the best Future Harvest CASA conference ever. About 250 people from Maryland, DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia attended the event at the serene and beautiful National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV. With five differently themed conference tracks and plenary sessions that featured an address by Deputy Secretary for Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan one day and Executive Director of the National Family Farm Coalition Kathy Ozer the next, the level of conversation throughout the conference was extremely well-informed and offered something of value for all attendees.

The conference also included a membership meeting and discussion of where the organization goes from this point. The leadership team headed by board president Stephanie Ritchie and Rob Schnabel held the first of four planned stakeholder “listening sessions” at the conference, to get input from members as they go through the process of updating the current strategic plan for the next five years. Other sessions are planned for Baltimore on January 28, Northern Virginia on February 18, and Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore the week of March 1, although the times and locations were not yet published. A handout on the sessions listed the following as the questions they’d like stakeholders to consider and comment on:

• Where are now?
• Where should we go?
• What do we need as support for Future Harvest?
• How can we improve our public image?
• What are the strengths of Future Harvest?
• What needs to change?
• What should Future Harvest’s mission be?
• What is our vision for the next 5 years?
• What should be our primary goals, objectives, and action items?
• How do we measure success?
• Who are important partners for Future Harvest?
• What are the major topics to be addressed by Future Harvest?
• What are the issues related to these topics?
• Who should be included as members of the organization? (organized groups or individuals?)

There seems to be energy and momentum behind figuring out how to get to the next level with this organization, including increasing staff to provide more member services and increasing outreach to consumers to support the organization’s goal of strengthening direct marketing channels to consumers. It feels like a coming-of-age transition for Future Harvest – it will be exciting to see how the group matures.

Future Harvest Day 2 – What’s Hot

The crowd at the Future Harvest – CASA conference was up and listening early today to the slate of speakers on very disparate tracks. One thing that I think is interesting about this conference is the emphasis on a wide range of stakeholders in the food and agriculture world – meaning, not just farmers, but consumers and activists and purchases and lots of others.  In addition to session tracks on Sustainable Fruit and Vegetable Production, Grass-based Systems and Adding Value to Your Farm, there is a Gardening and Urban Agriculture track and a Community Food Connections track (the one in which I’ll be speaking later today).

Both the morning sessions on Community Food Connections had full rooms of 40+ folks. Louise Mitchell led a panel at 8:30 a.m. on local food and farmers markets at hospitals. This is one of those no-brainer ideas that of course took a lot of time for folks to really wake up to. Louise Mitchell has been a force of nature through the Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment group and it’s really gaining traction.  It’s also nice how hospitals can use their programs to enhance community connections, as Roneet Mallin explained about the Farmers’ Market at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She said they deliberately chose a location that was not within any restricted zones of the campus so that anyone who happened to be in the vicinity of the hospital, not just faculty and patients, could stop and shop.

The second morning panel in the Community Food Connections track looked at the role food policy councils or coalitions can play in building local food systems. Nessa Richman, the local food activist and consultant who spearheaded the unsuccessful attempt to pass food policy council legislation in Maryland last session with Sen. Jamie Raskin’s office, pointed out that although there are no plans to reintroduce the legislation, “good things came from the process,” namely the formation of the Maryland Local Foods Consortium.

Jane Storrs, recently retired from the Maryland Department of Agriculture, followed up with some elaboration on how this consortium has established some cross-boundary communication among agencies in Maryland that have a stake in the issues surrounding access to food. The difference between a collaborative consortium and a high-level council, Storrs said, is that they looked at “who do we know at each of these agencies who is high enough to be able to get in and talk to the secretary, but low enough to know how things actually work.” Rather than seeking to influence policy directly at this time, the group works as a sounding board to help each agency understand how certain decisions or regulations they may put into effect will affect the work of the others and whether it helps or hinders the process of food getting from farms to consumers.

Merrigan Engages Future Harvest Audience

The farmers, food activists and policymakers convened at the sold-out Future Harvest – CASA annual conference this afternoon in Shepherdstown, WV were already appreciative that Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan would do a presentation on the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program. We all felt even more fortunate when she mentioned that she would not be able to attend the much larger and better-known PASA conference next month in Pennsylvania. Quite a coup for Future Harvest – kudos to the conference planning committee!

Merrigan’s presentation highlighted the somewhat astonishing variety of programs that already exist at USDA along with a few new ones that can help small farmers and local/regional food systems. She was very frank about the fact that it’s been difficult to ferret out the information on these programs and her agency needs to do a better job of making the funding accessible. She mentioned, for instance, that there is a set-aside for local and regional foods buried somewhere in the Business & Industry Loan Guarantee Program for which not one application was submitted last year. One of the measures by which she says her agency will measure the success of the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program would be the extent to which the funds available for these programs are actually being applied for and used.

Merrigan described folks on her staff at USDA “bubbling with enthusiasm” over the initiatives of Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, while acknowledging that it’s all still a work-in-progress. She referred to the “static and soon-to-be-improved website” for the program, and talked about other technology-based outreach programs, such as two webinars to be held next week on mobile slaughter. Overall, she said Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food is a high-priority at USDA. I asked her how the positive emphasis on Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food is being balanced on the other side, with any shifting of resources into big-ag subsidy programs. We didn’t really get an answer to that question, but I still came away feeling her commitment to these programs, her genuine understanding of many of the issues, and some hope that some changes are underway, however small and gradual they may be.