Professor Lonnie Gamble | ArtisanFoodSlowFood / Marissas Blog

"Terrior isn't only about sun and rain, but love and balance." - A Good Year

Professonal Chef Food Blog:

Laura Stec is a San Fransisco chef, health educator, and environmental advocate.

�Most people don�t go to environmental events, half of the people in the US don�t even vote but people vote at least three times a day by choosing what to put in their mouths. Most people probably would never use a CO2 calculator to guide their lives. However they can all relate to food. Food, what it is, how it is grown, and how it gets to our dining tables, has a great impact on global warming.

For every meal, you choose fresh vs. packaged, organic vs. conventional, local vs. shipped around the world, home cooked on reusable plates vs. store bought in clam shell containers, meat vs. vegetarian, etc., etc. Subconsciously 300 million Americans are making these choices at least three times a day. The industrialized food industry tries to influence people�s choices everyday by advertising in all available space. So it is high time for Americans to hear how to nurture their bodies and along the way nurture the planet." - Laura Stec

The more I learn about food and the food industry, the more I realize it is a civil right's issue. I agree with Laura that we all vote by what we eat but we need to consider the people who can't afford organic, who don't have the resources to organic, and who don't even about organic. I strongly advocate the education and promotion of organic local food - good, clean, and fair. Many individuals and communities aren't exposed to organic and local food. Our culture is bombarded with large-scale industries' advertising, and many children these days grow up singing the jingle to McDonald's instead of going out and experiencing how to glean or harvest. I am passionate about helping educate the global population about good, clean, and fair food.

Field Trip to Kalona Dairy, Co-op, and Wilson's: Going to the dairy was enlightening, and a competitive and contrasting experience to Radiance Dairy. I thought their general system of receiving dairy from small Mennonite farms was a good econonic system for supporting the community. The general system of production was fair. However it felt so sterile at the dairy and egg production places. Obviously it's necessary to comply with health codes, however I guess I have an idealized and traditional idea of what a dairy production should be � without face masks and white plastic everywhere. Also I never realized how much I respect and value the relationship aspect of food production. The workers in the Kalona dairy seemed to enjoy their work, but it was still so industrial. To me, you can't beat a family operated facility where all generations are learning and working with love...I really enjoy the yoghurt and cheese products (sometimes) made from the Kalona dairy however I think the fact that the dairy products have to travel all the way to Wisconsin and sometimes the products aren't even comprised of the Kalona dairy is unfortunate. The egg production facility was unpleasant simply because of the stench and I couldn't seem to get past that. It seemed like a pretty productive system though. The New Pioneer Co-op is a great place and one of the places I try to consistently support in Iowa City/Coralville. I think the whole idea of co-ops is an efficient and economically viable system. It was fun touring the bakery and seeing the industrial size equipment they use to supply good bread to Iowa City and to us in Fairfield. It made me feel strongly that we should have a local bakery in our town. Wilson's Orchard is a good example of a family owned and operated place. Chuck seems to have a clear perception of where he is and where he is going with the orchard and I think that modesty is an integral part of a successful business.

Letter to the Editor: Dear Rachel Ray, I enjoy reading your articles and watching your cooking show � your exuberance over food is intoxicating! I'm a college student studying sustainable living and am currently taking an artisan food course where we're learning about gastronomy in terms of balancing the art of pleasurable eating with environmental awareness and fair trade. I'm writing you to ask if you'll consider putting more attention on the health of the planet in your magazine and cooking show. Awareness needs to be brought out on the importance of organic and local food and the evolutionary effects on the people, planet, and economy. Being such a popular figure you could have a great influence and help uplift the direction of our food system. Thank you! All the best, Marissa Markowitz

Field Trip to Devotay and Paul's Winery: Devotay and Kurt Friese are great role models for the restaurant industry today. Hearing KF's entire viewpoint of food, the food industry, and the restaurant business was inspiring and made me appreciate the food I had eaten more in depth. It also made me want to support his restaurant � it had the effect of overriding my constant desire for an Iowa City sushi meal for a full experience of gastronomy at Devotay. The stories, the relationship, the quality, and the ambiance all make a full experience. I was too cold at Paul's winery to fully hear what he was saying and I don't think I really have a deep interest in the process of winemaking in general.

Case Studies and References for Group Project Restaurant Certification:

http://konsortium.typepad.com/konsortium/2007/06/green-restauran.html

http://www.greenmycuisine.com/about.php

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_3786.cfm

Book Report: I really didn't get to delve into this book, however I got to read the beginning chapters. The Unprejudiced Palate was a passionate memoir by an Italian immigrant. Pellegrini's deep love for good food resembled that of Carlo Petrini's. He actually had an artistic obsession with cook books, recipes (strange ones!) and cooking. Food to him was the holy grail and beyond. I couldn't relate to some of his opinions (on food that I don't associate with) but I did appreciate his fire that all food should be of artisan quality.

Book OCR, The Unprejudiced Palate:

I have a further reason for gathering my own wood, making my own wine, growing my own fruit and vegetables, and doing most of the family cooking. I enjoy it. My body is still young and strong. It de�lights in work that brings the beaded sweat to the brow. It loves the sun and wind and rain. After sev�eral hours in the garden, the forest, or the cellar, smelling of sweat and the good earth, I take it to the shower�or it takes me, depending on your meta�physical bias�and wash it clean. Then I sit it down and give it food and drink: meat and grass, bread and wine. On the morrow it leaps from its couch and veritably shouts, "Give me work to do!" If I were asked which I enjoy most, drinking wine or making it, growing and cooking food or eating it, I must confess that I would be on the horns of a dilemma. Such a disjunctive proposition would leave me speechless. I have achieved what I consider a happy synthesis of ends and means, a process that has been going on quietly for years below the level of awareness certainly not in obedience to a willful design. I do not find expediency, or practicality, or the precepts of dietitians impelling motives. There are very few things I do, or refrain from doing reluc�tantly, for the good of my body and soul at some future date. Of course, I cross the street with the necessary prudence, and refrain from calling an un�civil civil servant a son-of-a-something or other; not, however, because I would not enjoy being a little reckless in both situations, but for the controlling rea�son that I want to be up and about on the morrow. But in matters most significant in life, I behave as I do because both the behavior and its result are two aspects of the same pleasure. I do my daily work, both professional and recreational, as much for the 50

Bread and Wine in Perspective joy of it as for the value of the results it is reasonably expected to yield. Thanks to a constitution a little better than average, I am not obliged to refuse food I enjoy because its nutritional value does not measure up to specifications in the most recent dietetics. I stop eating and drinking when the pleasure of ingestion is exhausted, and not because I fear gout, or pay any attention to the sour-stomached neurotic who warned that man must leave the dinner table while still hungry. And so I continue to gather, make wine, till the soil, and cook the family dinner because, my good friends, it's a hell of a lot of fun no matter how you look at it. I shall venture a little higher in the scale of values and urge a further reason for what the sophisticated may term my "romantic" behavior. We are living in an age when man is rapidly losing his identity. There is everywhere a pervasive feeling of insignificance. The bewildering and unassimilated discoveries in technology and the natural sciences have reduced man to the dimensions of the mathematician's con�ception of a point�"that which has position without size." The agrarian values by which our ancestors lived, the values of the hearth, the family, the achieve�ment of solid, unambitious ends, are in disrepute in an age that is becoming dangerously quantitative in its fundamental orientation. Man's daily work, that should normally be his cen�tral, absorbing interest, is too frequently boring or exhausting or both. Everything most men do is but a minute and sometimes imperceptible contribution to some very complex process. They are thus denied the necessary joy of stepping back from the workbench to admire what their hands have produced. What automobile worker, to take a random example, can point to a spot on the car that daily threatens the life 51

The Unprejudiced Palate of each one of us, and say: This I did myself? Even professional and semiprofessional work is becoming increasingly so specialized that it makes one rather dubious of the value and identity of his accomplish�ments. I exclude, of course, as irrelevant to this thesis be�cause of their negligible, though important number, the great creative men of genius in the arts and specu�lative sciences. And yet it may not be altogether im�pertinent to ask: What great physicist�and I use the example advisedly�will dare say that he created the atomic bomb? The effect of all this upon the mood and temper of the age is unmistakable. To compensate for the loss of personal significance we have willingly submitted to the idea of quantity. Unless our accomplishments are materially great we feel that we have failed. While the philosophers are redefining "the quest for cer�tainty," the practical men are exhausting their ener�gies in the struggle for the market; and the only recre�ation that seems adequate after such an intense struggle is usually as violent and exhausting as the struggle itself. There is, certainly, no easy formula for the revitali-zation of a corroded faith. The cozy security and the confident stride of our ancestors cannot be recaptured by a simple act of will. We must accommodate to the new world we have discovered, and if the old values are no longer adequate to give significance to our lives, we must�and, across the centuries, we surely will�evolve a new credo. But meanwhile we must live in the world we have created, a world of acceleration, conflicts, and mass production. In this world, somehow, we must cushion, in whatever degree possible, the maddening vigor of the quantitative fallacy. Not by turning the clock back 52

Bread and Wine in Perspective to the days of the individual artisan, nor by following the misty-eyed Utopians back to the soil. While we respond to the exacting demands of the environment, we must attempt to rediscover, during what leisure we can wrest from the struggle, the value and the quality in little things. In the achievement of this, the experiences I have related may be instructive. The home offers numerous opportunities for creative effort if we are but willing to put flabby muscles and idle hands to work. Soon we shall learn to do with distinction, and therefore with joy, the little tasks normally delegated to hired hands. Is it not pitiful to see a man whose sedentary life is making his body a mass of pinkish blubber, call in a servant to tend his flower beds? Is it not, in a sense, a retreat from life? A lost opportunity to find real significance in little things? I am, I must confess, stubbornly reluctant to dele�gate to anyone labor that my own hands can do. To be sure, my early training has conditioned me to this attitude. Except for the peculiar and exacting cir�cumstances into which I was born, I should probably behave differently. But I cannot escape the conviction that what was once mere habit has been transmuted into volitional behavior of considerable personal sig�nificance. My home and the surrounding plot of ground reflect an attitude and a way of life; and the achievement of this harmony between myself and my dwelling has given my life a personal significance it would not otherwise possess. I have sought and found the significance latent in little things. Now, when I sit at the dinner table with my family and my friends, I can say with justifiable pride as I tug at a well-driven cork, "This product is the fruit of mine own labor. Enjoy it without stint, for there are barrels in the cellar." And as they accept my hos- 53