Savoring Kentucky » Food Media

Lots To Consider on the Food Table

Rona — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:11:43 +0000

Like the gardens and farms in Kentucky, food news grows so fast it can be hard to take it all in. Here are nine servings of local and national news about food and policy. Recipes too – if you persist to the final luscious story about butterscotch. Please let me know if you plan to make butterscotch ANYthing and I’ll come on over.

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Sav’s West African Grill, 304 S. Limestone Street in Lexington, has installed a 50-inch screen for all of us interested in following the first World Cup in Africa. Ordering hints: Try the Attiéké Salad (pronounced pretty much “uh-KAY-kay”) and any of the richly flavorful, ample “bowls.” Each features a large rice serving topped with a delicious handmade stew; stew choices include peanut-laced and vegetarian options. Or branch out and try the peanut-goat bowl. Enjoy with international beers and grapefruit or ginger sodas. Be amazed at the affordability and fun and deliciousness of it all.

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While you wait: Superlative Coffee Roasters, from the Lowell’s Independent Automotive blog: Downtown Lexington institution Lowell’s Independent Automotive welcomes a fine-smelling new neighbor to the unfolding food world that is Lexington’s North Limestone and nearby streets.

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To Market, To Market: 10 Top Summer Cookbooks, from National Public Radio. Read the descriptions of cookbooks aimed primarily at making good use of farmers’ market products. Salivate. Anticipate. Salivate again. _____________

Pork industry wants sizzle in new slogan, from the Des Moines Register. “The other white meat” isn’t resonating any more, and mass produced pork, bred to be low-fat, has proven tasteless to many eaters. The pork industry could follow the lead of Kentucky’s Stone Cross Farm and Heritage Hill Farm (heritage breeds) – beautiful, tasty local pork, all the cuts. That’s happening in a small way in New York, where 344 new pork farms launched between 2002 and 2007, according to the following story.

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In New York, Local Meat is Easier to Find, from the New York Times. What happens in New York (and California, and other foodie havens) often happens in other parts of the country, too. Options at the Lexington Farmers Market have expanded this year, and now include multiple producers of locally sourced beef, pork, lamb, and sausage.

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Small changes steer kids toward smarter school lunch choices, from the Washington Post. Oh, let this be true! Presenting good, fresh foods in attractive ways, at attractive spots in the school lunch line, and adding some verbal encouragement — ” Want an apple with that?” — amount to small nudges that make a positive difference in what children choose and then eat, at least in some situations. The United States Department of Agriculture is spending a crumb of money, $2 Million, to fund some more research on “how behavioral economics can improve federal food policy.” I know some Kentucky schools and researchers have experimented with different presentations of healthy school lunch foods, too, but I don’t know details.

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Learning by cooking, from philly.com. In a small private school in Mt. Airy, Pennsylvania, children, starting in kindergarten, learn cooking at the same time they work through more traditional academic subjects. Although its access to students is not as constant as in the Mt. Airy private school, Seedleaf offers versions of these experiences to children at several schools in Lexington — and often adds engaging the students in growing the raw ingredients in school- or neighborhood-based gardens.

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Crying Over Raw Milk, from a New York Times opinion piece by NPR quiz show host Michael Feldman. Offering a lemonade-out-of-lemons look at Wisconsin Governor James Doyle’s unexpected veto of a measure that would allow controlled sales of fresh, tested milk direct from farms to consumers, Feldman says it ain’t over yet: “In fact, while this round of the raw milk fight may be over, it has left behind a nascent political movement — call it the Teat Party.” (Good one!) (Hat tip: JG)

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Creamy butterscotch full of flavor for desserts and so much more, from post-gazette.com (Pittsburgh). If you want to know the difference between caramel and butterscotch, look here. And imagine, along with me, the tantalizing tastes if we made the recipes included here for hot butterscotch sauce, butterscotch pudding, and butterscotch sweet rolls.

These Stories Have Caught My Eye

Rona — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:15:50 +0000

These stories have interested me in recent days.

How restaurants, including servers, are organizing quickly to raise fund to help in Haiti: New York Times Diner’s Journal: Help for Haiti

Advice about foods as medicines, from a chef/doc: Six Foods That Fight Flu

Anya Fernald, who helped produce the first Slow Food Nation (San Francisco, 2008) has put together a most intriguing way to make a living, cook, advocate with cooks and chefs to patronize local producers all over the world, and generally act in ways that inspire me (and make her a style icon for the New York Times’ s T Magazine). Anya Fernald, Food Consultant

From the ever-reasonable and delightful Canadians, ways to locate and enjoy wine with reasonable levels of alcohol (I personally think 12 percent is plenty high — else why not just drink Scotch…um, excuse me….I’m supposed to say Kentucky Bourbon!). You may have noticed that many producers seem headed for the “hot” tasting, bad-acting 16 percent stratosphere: How to Dodge High-Calorie Booze Bombs. Tip: Old World, northern climes, acidy-fresh whites: Some Rieslings, some New York state whites, grapes from cool locations, plus Portuguese vinho verde, all wonderful with most food, especially the good, daily meals you cook at home yourself.

Maybe you will order zucchini seed after all, if you listen to Deborah Madison about ways to bring out its real (some? any?) flavor: A Sophisticated Makeover for Ubiquitous Zucchini.

The Flowering

Rona — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:49:17 +0000

Add to the abundance of edibles already appearing this spring a generous flowering of events about food, food systems, farming and agriculture of the sort intended to sustain Kentuckians from now on.

Two food summits will take place soon in neighboring cities. These may be the first Kentucky food summits. Certainly the idea of a food summit is new to me, and promising.

Community Farm Alliance invites us to “Everybody Eats!” From the Ground Up: First Annual Louisville Food Summit this Saturday, April 11 —- well, perhaps not. Their event is sold out. Good for them!

Berea College kicks off its April 16-17 Food Summit with the irrepressible, inimitable Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm leading a convocation and speaking at a local foods dinner. Meet Joel in 97 seconds here, or spend eight minutes with him here as talks about forgiveness as a farming principle. Several of the Food Summit events are open to the public.

Next week in Lexington, the Gaines Center for the Humanities at the University of Kentucky brings Will Allen to a public forum at the Central Library, 140 East Main Street, Monday night, April 13, 6:00 PM. Allen founded Growing Power in Milwaukee, and received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2008.

I am eager for a different type of event that takes place this Saturday, April 11: the first day outdoors in 2009 for the Lexington Farmers Market. This year the outdoor Market moves to a new location on the west side of the old Fayette County Courthouse along Cheapside Park, between Main and Short Streets, and along Short as well. Opening day outside means a lot more growers come to the Market. They will bring with them new green things to eat (green garlic for sure, thanks to Blue Moon) and other tasty bits I can hardly imagine!

Stems and All

Rona — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:33:51 +0000

One fine thing about the world of food: Always, always there are new tastes and experiences to keep me interested. The surprise is how much of what seems new turns out to be timeless.

In 2008, I tasted several timeless foods for the first time, amazed less by their goodness than by my ignorance of their goodness, given that they had surrounded me all my life. Mulberries and pawpaws, for instance: both these grew a short distance from my home in beautiful Wayne County, but I never tasted them there.

Just this week, I learned from a young friend that serviceberries are edible, even tasty. A serviceberry tree, also called “sarviceberry” in south central Kentucky, grew in my childhood backyard, but I have no memory of the fruits.

I thought we were adventurous eaters, with kohlrabi in the garden, gooseberries in the backyard, and a successful stretch of mushroom foraging that went beyond the treasured morels. Mother did the mushroom fact-checking and most of the gathering. Dad made the memorable pronouncement: “Anything’s good cooked in browned butter.”

In addition to eating new foods, learning to eat more from the Eden that surrounds me involves another timeless challenge: As people have always done, learning to eat — and like — those formerly disposable parts of foods, the bits I’ve usually discarded. It may as well be fun.

To paraphrase Tara Duggan’s recent San Francisco Chronicle column, “Scrap Artistry,” which is about using the whole plant and animal, anything’s good layered in bechamel sauce and gratinéed. Yes, I can learn to like the stems of Swiss chard cooked that way. Probably. And maybe the year after next, I’ll learn to like those stems just as they are, crunchy, beautiful, and — if I can find the tastebuds — delicious.

Photo Credit: AtWag – Thank you!

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Make Mine Local (dot com)

Rona — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:52:13 +0000

After a recent post about local sources of lamb and goat, one of Kentucky small farms’ finest champions wrote me:

“I just got a lamb from Larry Swartz in Lancaster, KY. I buy one from him every year and I think they are wonderful. He is such a good farmer. He doesn’t sell at farmer’s markets, but just markets lamb and beef to individuals.”

I asked for contact information, and got it.

“‘Larry Swartz and Genia McKee have Windhover Farm at 4010 Poor Ridge, Lancaster, KY. 40444, phone number 859-792-9660. They have a portable sawmill and produce quality lumber; they have Percheron horses and farm in many of the old ways. Their food products are Cheviot sheep, freezer beef and dairy goats. Both really have a passion for the land and are good sustainable farmers.”

I am so glad to know about Larry and Genia – and I bet you are, too. We need them, and they need us. So how do we find out people like them, except by accident? How do we learn about the growers near us, and how do they find us?

About 18 months ago I had a coffee shop epiphany (always possible at brilliant, sweet Third Street Stuff Cafe near my house). I realized that people interested in local food — as eaters, providers, and chefs – could build a cooperative, wiki-style website together to help each other find local sources of food, drink, and more – including music, art, dishes, table linens — most of what we need for living.

In 2001, Partners for Family Farms developed a Kentucky Grown Directory (PDF, 320KB) that chefs and growers are still using to find each other. The Kentucky Department of Agriculture has many helpful tools, including a directory of Kentucky Farmers Markets.

Yet it’s still hard for us to find each other. I have kept the early result of my epiphany up and running — or at least up and present in about one percent of its potential — but have not worked recently to get others to pitch in and raise this website together. We can if we want. It’s a tool available for use.

Go to Make Mine Local to get a sense of how it works, and how it could work. Let me know if you would like a personal tour so you can contribute to the website. I’ll arrange it.

Sun-based Food System = National Security

Rona — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:24:46 +0000

Last week journalist Michael Pollan wrote a letter to the President-Elect (whoever he may be) explaining how the next president’s role as farmer-in-chief affects our national security — a lot. If you don’t want to read those 8,000 words, you can listen to Pollan talk through the main points with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. Thank you to my beautiful hula-hooping, fire-spinning neighbor for the Fresh Air tip.

Michael Pollan often cites Kentucky writer/novelist/poet/essayist/farmer Wendell Berry as a guide to remaking agriculture and food production that will keep us safe and well fed. Yes. Wendell Berry’s lifetime of work articulating the virtues of careful farming, local economies, and mutually beneficial community ties used to seem retro. Now we recognize Mr. Berry as the visionary who saw a way forward that will sustain our great grandchildren in safety and plenty, if we take his advice.

As I noted briefly in a Nougat article on low mileage food some time ago, I happened to be with Wendell Berry and other Kentucky agriculture policy makers on September 12, 2001. What Wendell said that day pointed to investment in local food systems as a national security matter. My commitment to supporting local growers and local food systems deepened and clarified that day, and I saw a way to take action out of the grief and loss of dark day before.

Dear Farmer-in-Chief…

Rona — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:17:03 +0000

My circle of friends, colleagues, and loved ones is buzzing like a productive field of honeybees on a fine summer day – and it’s about Farmer in Chief, Michael Pollan’s fine, long piece in the October 12 New York Times Magazine’s annual Food Issue.

After a compact statement of the mess we’re in — something Pollan is becoming ever sharper in describing — the long list of fixes gloriously begins. The big umbrella: a sun-fueled food system.

The three big categories — each full of juicy specific ideas:

Resolarizing the American Farm
Reregionalizing the Food System
Rebuilding America’s Food Culture

Perhaps my most favorite new idea, because it made me laugh out loud: A School Lunch Corps program “that forgives federal student loans to culinary shool graduates in exchange for two years of service in the public-school lunch program.” That and the suggestion that the President Elect go ahead and dig up some of the South Lawn at the White House and plant a wonderful, visible, culture-changing First Garden.

Culinary Tourism in Iowa?

Rona — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:51:56 +0000

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman, usually quite down to earth, seems a bit bemused about whether to celebrate when places like Iowa begin to promote their local foods as reasons for travel. Since the tiniest, most rural places in Kentucky have always featured great gardeners, farmers, and cooks, I’m not at all bemused.

What’s new, seems to me, is the investment in promotion, carried out in Iowa by the state’s Arts Council, no less. Like Iowa — though I’d assert the Bluegrass State offers a more beautiful setting — Kentucky has ALL the ingredients to be a world food capital, attracting food tourists for repeat visits (and repeat dollars). Let’s go get ‘em.

Farmer John comes to Lexington

Rona — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:03:49 +0000

A terrific film, “The Real Dirt on Farmer John,” is coming to Lexington’s wonderful Kentucky Theater on February 21, and it’s going to be free!

Here’s a description of the film, which I have seen and recommend for its truthfulness and openness about both farming and life:

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005); United States; not rated: Taggart Siegel’s documentary looks at John Peterson, a Midwestern farmer who opened his land to a communal group of hippies and artists in the 1960s and, during the ensuing decades, survived numerous natural and economic crises to maintain his farm. 5 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21, Kentucky Theatre.

We owe this free showing to the wonderful One World Film Festival, a Lexington jewel, now nine years old, that keeps getting better and better. Check out the other excellent free offerings all through February, and I’ll see you at the movies.

Slow isn’t just for food any more.

Rona — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:59:51 +0000

The Slow Food movement is slowly (of course) influencing more spheres of life. See “The Slow Life Picks Up Speed.”

Two things about that. First, ongoing gratitude to the New York Times for reopening all its articles, all the time, for all the people. That openness in a commercial news outlet is a marvel.

And second, when do we get to “Slow Work?” That’s my big interest.