Guest Post: Foraging Serviceberries
This week, Farm Manager and Educator Daniel Macphee teaches us about New England’s summer gift of the serviceberry, where to find it on the Yale campus, and how best to enjoy it. Coming up in the next weeks, look out for posts from our six new summer interns!
For both joy and duty, our urban acre is thick with tasty and culturally important heirloom vegetables. Traditional Italian chicories grow alongside Austrian lettuces, Japanese radishes, Mexican herbs, and many unique crop varieties developed by generations of American agrarians before us–each pepper, eggplant, melon, and tomato with a story as rich and particular as its flavor. Though, sometimes our (understandable) infatuation with exotic crops and cultures leads us to forget the hardscrabble things that manage to grow and provide bounty in New England naturally… like the serviceberry. Unlike a tomato that we might coax early in a greenhouse in order to stretch the bounds of our climate, foraged foods anchor us more concretely to place and season—they are ready when they are ready, and we too, as part of the cycle, must be ready.
Serviceberries are a delicious native tree fruit of the rose family (like apples and pears). Their fragrant white flowers burst open around the time that shad run in New England streams, and their plump purplish-red berries ripen in late June, hence their other common names ‘shadblow’ and ‘juneberry.’ Birds and squirrels love the sweet blueberry-like fruits with nutty seeds, but, fortunately, Yale’s urban landscaping is so full of these trees there is plenty of fruit for people too.
After checking with Grounds Maintenance to make sure the trees are not sprayed, the farm crew set off Friday afternoon to experience the pleasures (and quizzical stares) of urban foraging. Over the course of an hour I talked to at least 15 curious passersby and still managed to bag more than 8 cups of fruit along York Street. The berries are delicious fresh, but can also be frozen or dried for later use. Try them in pies, muffins, scones, or by the handful on yogurt or ice cream. Serviceberries are also a great fruit to experiment with in jams because they thicken up nicely with their own naturally occurring pectin. This time I made two very simple jams to preserve the bounty: serviceberry-rhubarb and serviceberry-orange/lemon. To make your own: mash and simmer roughly equal parts of serviceberry and rhubarb, and a little less sugar, until it gets thick. Or: grate the rind of any citrus of your choice (we had half a lemon and an orange), grind the remaining pulp and add it to your mashed serviceberries, simmer until it thickens. You can add some spices if you like (try cinnamon, clove, cardamom, ginger, etc…) or just let the fruits speak for themselves.
So, next time you’re waiting for the shuttle on York Street, reach up and enjoy a tasty snack. Or, better yet, miss the bus and gather enough to take home and share.
If you’ve ever stepped on the Yale Farm, then you’ve met Daniel. He works closely with our student farm manager and our volunteers alike, making sure the Farm is beautiful and healthy. Today, Daniel welcomes our six summer farm interns.
As spring slips leisurely into summer, everything accelerates in the garden. Our perennial beds are exploding with vibrant blooms and busy insects, warm-season weeds are breaking dormancy to harass our early carrots and salad greens, and, most importantly, our new crop of summer interns embark today upon a season of labor and learning on the Yale Farm. With their arrival, we release the clutch and take off into the summer growing season. From day one, they will be learning by doing — clearing the hoophouses of early spring greens to plant tomatoes and grain, hilling potatoes, harvesting for market, propagating seedlings, and defending our urban acre from the weeds that never seem to rest. In addition to farm work, they will have a weekly seminar, field trips to local farms, and cooking lessons.
We will be taking a break from volunteer workdays while the new interns get settled in, but starting June 17th, we encourage you all to join us for our summer drop-in volunteer days anytime between 9:00 am–4:00 pm on Thursdays and Fridays. If weekdays don’t work for your schedule — please come visit us at the Wooster Square Farmers’ Market on Saturdays 9:00 am–1:00 pm, or join us Sunday, June 20, for our next Community Farm Day.
Also, for those of you with gardens at home, we will be giving away extra seedlings this Friday from 11:00 am–4:00 pm under the pavilion at the farm. There will be tomatoes, squash, cucumber, herbs, lettuce, flowers, and more…
Hope to see you on the farm!
–Daniel
It was just two weeks ago that we finally celebrated the Third Annual Jack Hitt Annual Last Day of Classes Pig Roast at the Yale Farm — it feels like much longer! In celebration of a year of learning about food as a community, over 500 visitors came to the farm to help shape plant beds for the summer season, to hear some great music, and not least, to eat delicious sustainable treats! We served cornbread, collard greens, coleslaw, black-eyed peas, and pecan pie in addition to pulled pork, all cooked by YSFP student interns and their friends.
In case you missed out, please click below to view a slideshow of the day’s events!
And if you ever wanted to know what it’s like to cook 60 pounds of beans and 180 pounds of pork, here’s a breakdown of the preparations for the Pig Roast from Margaret and I — it was quite an undertaking!
The Pig-Roaster’s View – Nozlee Samadzadeh:
Though the sustainable food movement often encourages folks to eat less meat, when we do indulge, we make sure to purchase from a local farmer we believe in and eat the whole animal. In that light, our annual Pig Roast is as much about coming together to celebrate the end of classes as it is to remind us of the benefits of snout-to-tail eating.
For the first time, this year we roasted two pigs! Both pigs, one 60 lb and one 120 lb, came from Four Mile River Farm in nearby Old Lyme, CT where they were fed on grain and raised organically. Have you ever seen a whole pig, split from neck to tail? It’s impressive. With everything set up under our Pavilion, I started a fire in the pizza oven to get a few logs ready and the pigs were in the smoker and ready to go at about 8:00 pm. We added charcoal and logs to the pigs, lying on their backs side by side, and waited for the temperature in the smoker to reach about 220°F. The pigs were regularly marinated with a “mop” (a marinade) of apple cider vinegar, sugar, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice at the recommendation of Jack Hitt. (It’s called a mop that because of the tool traditionally used to apply it, but we just used a rag!)
We maintained that 220°F temperature all night, adding logs to the pizza oven to incinerate into wood coals before dropping them into the smoker. Steamy aluminum pans of water in the bottom of the smoker kept the meat from drying out. It was a long and cold night – adding wood to the smoker would drop its temperature, but we had to open it to add in the wood that would maintain its temperature! Taking turns, we napped while the other watched the pigs. Two friends visited in the wee hours of the night.
Eventually the sun rose, and ever so kindly, Jack Hitt brought us much-needed coffee at 6:00 am. The pigs had been smoking for 10 hours at this point! Around 10:00 am or so the meat reached the desired “done” temperature of about 165°F, and all we had to do was keep it warm and smoky until we pulled the pork. Other food preparations kept us busy, but finally at about 2:30 pm – over 16 hours after it was started – three of us hauled the heavier pig from the smoker to a table, where we preceded to pull every last bit of meat from every bone.
I couldn’t help but nibble as I pulled the pork. It was incredible. Aside from knowing that the meat was responsibly and ethically raised, and aside from all those hours of hard work, it was still the best meat I’d ever tasted. Real tears came to my eyes when I got a big bite of the amazing fatty meat from the cheek of the animal – it was that tender and flavorful.
It took three of us almost two hours to transform two pigs into a pile of bones and a crowd of happy eaters. The savory, crispy skin was an unexpected favorite with our guests, and every last bite of our delicious pulled pork was eaten. In the days after the Pig Roast, the bones were used to make delicious stocks and stews, proving that you can (and should!) use the resources of whole animal. The night I stayed up with the pigs will always be special to me – but next year, can we fit three pigs into a smoker?
The Bean-Counter’s View – Margaret Tung:
It’s 6:00 pm, I have 21 hours until the official start of the Pig Roast, and I am the black-eyed pea queen. Here’s my to-do list: pick up extra pasta-pots, maple syrup, and mustard for the black-eyed pea recipe on my way to my off-campus kitchen station, finish up any prep work, and start cooking! I’ve been stressed out for the last four hours because a helper has had to pull out, but at the last minute I recruit two of my do-or-die best friends to accompany me for my first hour in the kitchen. Luckily, one of them is both very kitchen-savvy and has arms that are ten times stronger than mine. I say luckily because when I get on site, I am immediately confronted by a huge plastic storage vat of soaking black-eyed peas, plus a silver catering tray full of them. Those 20 pounds of dried beans have fattened to a hefty 60 pounds, and I have no idea what to do with them. I’ve only eaten black-eyed peas twice in my life!
In the kitchen I also find a neatly packed kit of aluminum pans for the cooked beans, canned organic tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt, and 10 pounds of carrots each the size of a sweet potato. Fortunately, in the fridge are 10 pounds of onions that have already been diced thanks to the work of other interns. I devise a game plan: one of my friends helps me peel the carrots while the other chops them into a medium dice. I mince the garlic. Then I arrange four pasta pots on the stove, drizzle olive oil into each, and start caramelizing the onions and carrots. The tub of soaking beans is too heavy to lift, so we make do with a tricky combination of straining the beans with a colander while using cups to empty out the liquid from the tub. Into each pot goes half a can of organic tomatoes, a teaspoon of salt, around two tablespoons of mustard, two tablespoons of maple syrup, some cayenne pepper for kick, as many beans as will fit, and water to cover.
Sadly, my friends had to leave, but a couple more came along just as the first batch of beans were finishing up. I wanted to save the extra liquid from each pot in order to serve as a stock for the next batch of beans, so together we strained each pot of beans into a colander sitting in an aluminum pan, put the beans in one of the final serving pans, and dumped the liquid back into the pot along with all the ingredients for a new batch. We repeated this ten times – all in all it only took about five hours to cook it all! And I have to say, the black-eyed peas were amazing.
Notorious P.I.G. ft. Black Eyed Peas
Next Friday, April 23, is going to be my last day of classes at Yale, ever. I don’t really know how I feel about it. I’m probably in denial that my undergraduate career is over. But anxious or not, I am going to celebrate in style at the 3rd Annual Jack Hitt Last Day of Classes Pig Roast. Last year’s roast was such a big hit at the Farm that this year, we’re roasting two pigs in order to make sure everyone who wants some gets some on their plates. In addition, we’re making enough cornbread, pecan pie, black eyed peas, and collard greens to feed at least 300 people. As the person in charge of making the black eyed peas, that means my team and I will be making 60 lbs. of food next Thursday evening!!!! Our southern spread reminded me of Scott Peacock’s visit to Yale last week.
For those who don’t know who Scott Peacock is (I certainly didn’t until I looked him up), his fried chicken recipe earned him fame as one of the most celebrated chefs in Southern cuisine today. Until recently, he was the executive chef at Watershed, in Decatur, Georgia, which has been lauded as one of the best Southern restaurants in America by a whole slew of reviews. He was close friends with the late Edna Lewis, who was an amazingly talented woman and authority on Southern cooking. Together, they wrote a book, The Gift of Southern Cooking (Knopf, 2003), sharing not only their recipes, but also the stories behind those recipes with readers. For someone who is accomplished as he is, Scott is incredibly humble, funny, and light-hearted.
Over dinner a few fellow YSFP interns and I mentioned to Scott that we would be making southern dishes to accompany our pulled pork at the pig roast. He lit up when we asked him for his black eyed peas and collard greens recipes. One of Scott’s favorite black eyed pea dishes was one of Edna Lewis’ favorites as well, and is actually vegetarian, featuring: black eyed peas, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and parsley–how easy is that? Our version next week is going to be slightly different, but is going to be incredibly tasty: black-eyed peas, onions, carrots, tomatoes, maple syrup, and mustard. Sugar and zing! As for the collards, Scott loves traditional slow-cooked greens made with a ham hock. Since we’re making our side dishes as vegetarian as possible to accommodate those who want other dishes besides pork, ours won’t feature a ham hock, but they will taste delicious all the same.
So come out to the Yale Farm after all your classes are over next Friday! There will be live music (TUIB, Plume Giant, and Wailing Wall), wonderful people, food, and beautiful weather. Be sure to check out our photostream from last year’s P.I.G. Roast.
Better Know a Pizza Maker: Isabel Polon ’11
Pizza maker extraordinaire Isabel Polon has worked on a goat farm, managed a bevy of students with off-campus kitchens to make apple pie and collard greens for 300 at last year’s pig roast, and is not afraid to tell you to stop munching on the pizza toppings.
Isabel Polon, Silliman ’11, English and Art
What made you want to be a pizza maker?
I go to a farm every summer with my family in northern California that is equipped with its very own pizza oven. When I was informed that Yale’s farm had one too, I knew it must be fate.
What’s your favorite vegetable?
Baby broccoli.
What’s your favorite dish to cook?
Chicken Kiev.
What fruit or veggie best typifies you?
Beets!
Describe a fun/hard/exceptional story from working at the Farm.
When the YSFP’s advisory board met a few weeks ago, the Atlantic Monthly’s food editor Corby Kummer told us, “This pizza was delicious – not a word I use often.”
What’s your favorite food cause? Why?
For me, the best way to help with all “food causes” is by buying and eating the freshest around, because it reminds me that even though dealing with the problems of our food system can be hard, there are positively delicious rewards pending.
Tell us about other work you’ve done in the world of food and farming.
I have spent time working on several other organic farms on the west coast including a vineyard and a goat farm.
Better Know a Pizza Maker: Lee West ’10
In today’s interview, we learn why Lee West is a pizza maker instead of a cider presser.
Lee West, Saybrook ’10, English major
What made you want to be a pizza maker?
I was working in the YSFP office and saw how much fun they were having, and I decided I wanted to be outside too!
What’s your favorite vegetable?
Spinach — or sun-gold tomatos.
What’s your favorite dish to cook?
I like to steam a lot of bitter greens with garlic.
What fruit or veggie best typifies you?
I’m versatile, like spinach.
Describe a fun/hard/exceptional story from working at the Farm.
At Harvest festival this fall, I was in charge of the cider press, but I had no idea how to use it. I now know that you’re supposed to pulverize the apples before putting them into the press, so that it’s easier to get the juice out, but I only sliced them. Because of this, cranking the cider press took way more effort than was reasonable for the few drops of cider coming out of the bottom.
At about the moment that I realized this cider-pressing thing wasn’t going to work out, a little boy about seven or eight years old walked up with his mother. “Can I try?” Of course he could try — who would say no to that? With a little help, he pulled the lever for ten or twelve cranks, until he’d gathered a crowd that included a few other kids about his age. “Me next!” one said. Of course you next. Never mind that it was taking about ten minutes to fill a dixie cup halfway with cider. The next guy cranked his little heart out. Soon enough there was a waiting list, a miniature workforce that would have been far too young for any working papers. They kept at it, with only a little help from Mom and Dad, for the rest of the afternoon.
Nobody drank much cider that day. But by the end of the afternoon, it was clear that that hadn’t been the point.
What’s your favorite food cause? Why?
I think it’s important to think about food access in impoverished communities. Lots of communities (including, now that Shaw’s is closing, a good chunk of New Haven) don’t have reasonable access to nutritious food of any sort, let alone sustainable food, and that’s a moral problem and a market failure which the sustainable food movement should try to correct.
Tell us about other work you’ve done in the world of food and farming.
I’ve worked in the office of the YSFP and blogged a bit, and this summer I’ll likely be working with a community investment institution that studies, among other things, food access in Philadelphia.
Better Know a Pizza Maker: Josh Evans ’12
Today in our pizza maker series we have Josh Evans, who hails from Canada and compares himself to pomegranates.
Josh Evans, Calhoun ’12, Humanities and Psychology
What made you want to be a pizza maker?
Getting to work outside, and blending work on the farm with cooking and preparing food for the farm community. As a pizza maker, it’s very gratifying to be able to manifest the connection between caring for the earth and nourishing ourselves, and to use food as a way to bring people together.
What’s your favorite vegetable?
Hmm, that’s hard. I really like pretty much everything. Though it’s more of a fruit, I’d say avocado is pretty up there. And Japanese pumpkin. And kale.
What’s your favorite dish to cook?
Such hard questions! I have to confess I love just going into the fridge and making a big yum salad out of whatever is in there, and getting creative in the moment. That said, I think one of my all time favourite things to make is nut butter. It is SO easy, and so cheap compared to the store, and it is so good for you, and it is delicious. Protein, minerals, unsaturated oils – and it is good on anything, even by itself, and you can make it with practically any nut or seed. It’s like one of the least known secrets of nature and that is not ok because everyone should know about it and make it all the time and revel in how beautiful it is.
What fruit or veggie best typifies you?
Pomegranate.
Describe a fun/hard/exceptional story from working at the Farm.
The Lazarus Dedication last fall was pretty special. We made got to make pizzas with all the beautiful late fall ingredients, and it stayed light till late, with the lights up on the pavilion, and we got to speak with the Lazarus’, whose contribution to the project made the pavilion possible, which is a huge deal considering how it has become the social hub at the farm.
What’s your favorite food cause? Why?
Movements for alternative food lifestyles. Vegetarianism, Veganism, Raw Foodism, Locavorism, and other ways of interacting with food have been getting a lot of attention recently, and I’m excited to see that because I am convinced that rethinking about how we interact with food every day has the biggest potential to positively impact our health and well-being, the health of our communities, social justice, and the environment, all at the same time. It is such a powerful vehicle for translating personal action into large-scale change in policy and general opinion, so I am really hopeful for the future, if for nothing else than that people are starting to recognise how crucial food is the major concerns of our world today. Everybody eats, and as one of the few facts of humanity that are truly, undeniably universal, it strikes me as something extremely worthwhile to spend my life working for.
Tell us about other work you’ve done in the world of food and farming.
I’ve worked for a couple summers at an organic farm back home in Victoria, BC, which I loved and was my first long-term exposure to the world of sustainable agriculture. I’ve also worked in a cool vegetarian restaurant back home, complete with a juice bar, a sister whole foods bakery, and a system of supporting local farms by sourcing from them as much of our produce as possible. This summer, I’m really excited because I’m going to be at an eco-lodge in the French alps, working primarily on starting a vegetable and herb garden to source the already very sustainable lodge with its own fresh produce.
Better Know a Pizza Maker: Kathryn Olivarius ’11
With the arrival spring’s warm weather, our pizza makers have returned to the Farm to bring us their delicious pies every Friday at our workdays. For the next five days, join us to learn a little more about the people behind the pizza oven we know and love. Today we have Kathryn Olivarius, one of our two new pizza makers this year.
Kathryn Olivarius, Branford 2011
What made you want to be a pizza maker?
I wanted to be a pizza maker because the Yale Farm is such a special place at Yale, a place where you can be outside, and use a whole set of different skills from what you do normally at Yale. Where else can you stoke a fire and make kindling?
What’s your favorite vegetable?
Broccoli is definitely my favorite vegetable, on pizza, or with a little garlic, salt, and olive oil.
What’s your favorite dish to cook?
Roasted pork loin with parsnips and apple sauce.
What fruit or veggie best typifies you?
I went though a mango craze in high school, and I went off them for a while, but now I am very much back on the band wagon. Thick skin, hard to eat, but totally delicious with a firm core.
Describe a fun/hard/exceptional story from working at the Farm.
Cold, rainy, November days are always the least fun to make pizza because the fire can take longer to get hot and not as many people come up. And the clean up can be unpleasant because you have to do it in the dark and doing the dishes makes your hands extremely cold. But it always impresses me how much fun it is regardless and how beautiful the farm is in any season. It’s those days that I find myself revering early Connecticut settlers.
What’s your favorite food cause? Why?
The local food movement is very cool. Local food simply tastes better, normally supports local farmers, and puts you in touch with the land, your environment, and community in a way you can’t compare to anything else. I really like hearing stories about people who only source their food from Connecticut and the Hudson Valley. It is possible! (except for wheat apparently). If you can add foraging onto that, I love it!
Tell us about other work you’ve done in the world of food and farming.
I lead canoe trips in northern Ontario and Quebec in the summer and I am very used to cooking over open fires. There is a two-week period there where blueberries and raspberries are everywhere and there is nothing that can match their taste. Wild grouse and lake trout can make some of the most magical and delicious dinners, and eating this food often makes me lament that I have never really been hunting. It is important for meat eaters to see where their food comes from and learn the anatomy of animals.
Also, once, I was making glazed donuts on the 56th parallel and a bear came into our campsite so I had to shout the ABCs very loud to scare it off as the oil flicked at me.
An Educational Afternoon
Today’s guest poster, Eliza Scheffler (PC 2012), shares a story about her afternoon at the Farm with a great group of kids from a Hamden synagogue.
In late February, a group of students from the congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden, CT, visited the Farm with their Rabbi, Alison Adler. This field trip was one of the many sessions of a class the students take at their synagogue on Judaism, food, and the environment. Though only in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade, the students were articulate, creative, and very curious. They were already familiar with words like “pesticide” and “organic” and showed a precocious disdain for the way their cafeteria over-cooked vegetables and served “mystery meat.”
Rabbi Adler had contacted me via a Rabbi at Yale about a visit to the Yale Farm because she thought it would be good for the students to learn about the YSFP. After introducing ourselves and saying what fruit or vegetable best represents us (I was a beet!), I told the students a brief history of the YSFP, and described what goes on in each of the four seasons at the farm. Visiting at the end of February meant that what they could see was a lot of soil patches, a few kale plants, and two large hoophouses, but their imaginations, along with some pictures in a YSFP booklet, gave the students enough of a taste for Spring that they were all excited to come back and volunteer.
No Jewish learning session is complete without a text study, and for this we read and discussed an excerpt that I discovered during a session with my own Jewish Food Fellowship group, run through Hillel by Rabbi Lauren. The text is from Avot D’Rabbi Natan, and states (more or less) “Rabbi Achia ben Yeshaya said: One who purchases grain the marketplace-to what may such a person be compared? To an infant who is cut off from his mother, and they pass him among wetnurses and (still) the baby is not satisfied. One who buys bread in the marketplace- to what may such a person be compared? It as if s/he is dead and buried. But one who eats from his own, (what one has grown or helped grow him/herself) is like an infant raised at his mother’s breasts.” The students had great insights about the literal and metaphorical meanings of the text and how we could apply it to our own lives. (“I think the part about being dead and buried is telling us about pesticides.”)
The highlight of the visit was definitely the last part — inside the hoophouse. After showing the students how to walk carefully so as not to stomp on any of the budding plants, we all bent down and sampled a leaf of spinach. The students then scooted around to the different patches, trying mustard greens, arugula, mizuna and many more. It was like “trick or treating” except healthier, and every taste brought surprise and delight, although some thought the mustard greens tasted like the horseradish they avoid eating on Passover!
The hour ended quickly and the students piled back in the car to head home, but I’m sure we’ll see some at volunteer workdays this spring. Everyone seemed to take away something meaningful from the session. One student thought his dad might be able to help him build a hoophouse, another wanted to tell her teacher about class visits to the Farm. What I loved the most was seeing kids 5 years younger than myself already becoming more conscious consumers, spiritual environmentalists, and developing the knowledge and values that will help them repair our broken food system and repair the world (Tikkun Olam).
Thank you YSFP for always having open gates and sharing your delicious greens with us!
Mark Bittman gave a talk on campus today at the Peabody Museum, hosted by the Rudd Center. Bittman compared the harmful effects of the soft-drink industry and soda on America’s health to those of cigarettes and the tobacco industry. A soda tax alone would curb consumption by 15% and raise billions of dollars that could potentially go towards improving school lunches or nutritional education in schools. His presentation was humorous and informative–one slide was a split screen of carrots and Cheetos cheese puffs, two foods which he said, one group of inner city kids had trouble distinguishing between–but Bittman was serious about the fact that Americans need to change they way they eat and view food.
One of the things he has chosen to focus on in his career is to encourage Americans to cook. And, to a certain extent, or at least, by certain standards, he and others have been somewhat successful at getting more families to enjoy meals together at home. Several surveys reported an increase in the number of respondents who say they prepare meals at home, but Bittman raised an interesting point: many of those surveyed considered heating up processed or packaged pre-made meals, like frozen pizza, “cooking.” Bittman jokingly mentioned that he once thought if he could get families to cook rice and beans at least once a week, his goals would be accomplished. Rice and beans were the subject of more serious talk later on when another person in the audience stated that the average American spends about $9 on food per day. A meatless, legume-protein-rich diet would cut that number down to about $6 dollars a day. The gentleman finished by adding that the notion many Americans have that healthy food costs more is not necessarily true. Trading in a few servings of meat for beans every week is just one example of something we can take the initiative to do to improve save money, our health, and the environment.
One of the other ways to improve public nutritional health that was discussed at the talk was to give inner-city bodegas incentives to stock fresh produce or more raw ingredients. Bittman mentioned Pennsylvania’s new-ish policy of subsidizing supermarkets in order to encourage them to open locations in poorer urban areas. I felt that these questions and answers are especially relevant to New Haven, where Bittman spent 25 years of his life, since Shaw’s closed this month.
Prior to this talk, I was skeptical that taxes on junk food, soda, and fast food would have any constructive effect on the American diet. When I brought it up with my dad over winter break, he didn’t think a 1 cent tax would keep him from buying 6-packs of soft drinks. But then again, my dad only buys things on sale, and also said that he wouldn’t buy Coke as frequently if it was full price. Presumably in Bittman’s ideal world, soda would not only be taxed, it would be permanently stricken from the list of “on-sale” items at supermarkets. And, as mentioned, studies have shown that it would reduce the consumption of “useless” liquids by 15%, raise billions of federal and state dollars, and reduce the risks of obesity and diabetes. Like many of the “converted,” I’m disgusted by the fact that a hamburger from a fast-food joint costs as much as a bunch of spinach or a pound of apples–and in America today, most are inclined to pick the hamburger because they see it as a value meal on two counts: calories and time.
In our culture, time is always of the essence. Most people who order take-out do it because they don’t have time to cook, don’t think they have time to cook, or don’t know how to cook. I thought Bittman’s suggestion of the establishment of a national cooking corps paid (presumably by the federal government) to teach working parents how to cook was actually really clever. In addition, in his conception of the cooking corps, the chefs would prepare meals for families where the parent(s) work multiple jobs or long hours. All in all, I thought the talk was really constructive in the sense that Bittman had a lot of good ideas about how food and social justice activists, researchers, and politicians, might all work together to change America’s relationship with and knowledge of the food system.
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Nozlee Samadzadeh
