February 2011 Archives

Dear Shoppers,

When my granddaughter was in elementary school in Winchester and I was volunteering in her classroom every Friday, I observed something new in the curriculum that I thought was a really great innovation. In both the 1st and 2nd grades, she was taught to notice and make “connections” in the world around her, in what she read and in what they talked about in class. And this thought process was encouraged all throughout the day when there seemed to be a “connection” to be made. I think that way anyway but realize that in many people that kind of thinking is not intuitive; but it is certainly a part of logical thinking and should be introduced if not taught at an early age.

I was reminded of that just this past week when a series of coincidences came together to make for a great story. Last Sunday, the son of our bakery owner was at Gainesville to sell, which was unusual in itself as his uncle normally comes to that site. Marko was all excited to have been invited to bake the bread for a fundraising dinner in honor of Edna Lewis, famed cook, restaurateur and cookbook author, as part of the celebration of Black History Month. Marko went on to tell me that Top Chef finalist Carla Hall would be cooking, and that they were all using recipes used by Edna Lewis herself.

Marko was challenged to bake for the first time in their facility a bread that called for lard, which is not widely available anymore, even for professional bakers. If it were available, it would not be the freshly rendered lard that Edna’s recipe had intended. By coincidence I had in my home at that moment a three-pound tub of freshly rendered lard from heritage-breed hogs that Nevin Hostetter, who comes to market with our Mennonite co-op Heritage Farm and Kitchen, had just given me the week before. Talk about a connection! As I am writing this on Thursday morning, this very evening Nevin’s lard will appear at the dinner in Marko’s bread. And the bread will be about as authentic as it can get!

But that’s not quite the end of it either. Maybe 20 years ago (I am not sure of the date) my sister was managing the “front of the house” at the Fearrington House restaurant outside of Chapel Hill, N.C. Her good friend was the chef when Edna Lewis was brought in to create a new menu and serve as head chef for a year. That’s how I know about her, and I have the cookbook that was developed from that partnership.

It turns out that connections can be as much a part of our everyday life as we make them by staying attuned to the possibility. When they kick in on their own or when we call them up, it can really make life interesting. Below is a brief description of the organization which will receive the money from tonight’s dinner. I thought this sounded like something worth connecting to also.

The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership is a nonprofit, four-state partnership dedicated to raising awareness of the unparalleled American heritage in a region running from Gettysburg, PA through Maryland and Harpers Ferry, WV to Jefferson’s Monticello in Albemarle County, VA. With more history than other region in the nation, the JTHG was recognized by Congress as a National Heritage Area and offers authentic heritage tourism programs and award-winning educational programs for students of all ages. Take the Journey to Where America Happened.

See you at the market!

Here’s what you’ll find if you stop by Smart Markets on the Prince William Campus of George Mason University this week, Thursday from 11:30am–2:30pm:

• Pulled pork and pulled chicken sandwiches, beef brisket sandwiches and grilled sausage with peppers on a bun from Uncle Fred’s BBQ

• Empanadas (beef, chicken, spinach and sweet corn); choripan (Argentinean sausage sandwich with chimichurri sauce); milanesa sandwiches; matambre sandwiches; and sodas

Dear Shopper,

I have been watching this commercial about “the government telling us what to buy” — which is being paid for by the soft drink industry, of course, because they are concerned about additional taxes on soft drinks. Something occurred to me that I thought I would throw out for discussion — not with me or our other shoppers necessarily, but for your own dinner-table diners.

When did we in this country begin to feel the need to have store-bought snacks, cookies, crackers and carbonated beverages in our homes all the time? This seems to be a given in our discourse about everything from childhood obesity to tax policy, but why is it a given, and when did it become one? I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, and we rarely had any of those items in our cabinets or pantry at home. As a kid in Cordele, Georgia, it was a great treat to walk to Buck Hunt’s General Store and buy a Coca-Cola or, better yet, a Nehi orange soda (they were bottled in Cordele) with our own money. Or even better to be able to order a Coca-Cola at the drugstore soda fountain — that too was a rare treat.

But we did not have soft drinks at home in the fridge. I remember we also saved bottle caps though I have no idea why — it took so long to accumulate them at home that we thought we had discovered gold when Buck would let us “rob” the little pocket under the bottle opener on the side of the soft drink cooler. We did have ginger ale or Upper 10, one of the original lemon-lime sodas, outside in the utility room that was attached to the newfangled “carport,” but that was for when you threw up, and to this day I cannot drink ginger ale or any similar soda.

And we did not have crackers unless my parents were hosting bridge that week, nor did we ever have store-bought cookies until Nabisco came out with Baronets when we were living in Atlanta — those were great cookies in a package! My mother was not a baker, so we also only had home-baked cookies when we were iced in, which was another rare occurrence in the South. Probably why we looked forward to our trips back to the Shenandoah Valley where Grandmommy would always have frosted sugar cookies in her pantry when we arrived. And then came the cookie dough that you bought and cut in quarters and baked yourself — the best thing about spend-the-night parties!

These were treats, and rare ones at that, and even my own son did not grow up in a house that had snacks and store-bought cookies and candy on hand all the time. No wonder our children are fighting the bulge at such a young age and dealing with the health consequences at way too young an age.

There was a recent article in The Washington Post about a family dealing with a son who developed early-onset diabetes, and the mother was writing about the challenges for the entire family. I was struck more than anything by her account of all of the food they had to get rid of — and stop shopping for — so that the son with diabetes would not be tempted. Why does it take a medical emergency to get us to do the right thing for our children? I didn’t mean to end up here again, but until we start putting food in its proper perspective, the fact that it is indeed cheaper than medicine is never going to have much traction in these discussions. As long as it’s a given that our homes are junk-food dispensers, nothing will change.

After working these past few months on the bill to encourage Virginia school systems to buy local as part of buying and serving healthier food to our children, I am learning why this is such an uphill battle. Our schools are feeding our children pretty much the same calorie-crammed foods that they eat at home, so where is the incentive to be incensed? Advocating for better foods in our schools will expose us all to what is in our own home kitchens. And who is ready to withstand that kind of scrutiny? Think about it — maybe for our own health we have to submit to those higher taxes on soft drinks for our own good. Maybe food needs to become as expensive as medicine to have the intended effect. It would still be better to be healthy.

See you at the market!