Urban Foraging 101

A Joyful Welcome...

The idea of beginning a shared journal of food and community exploration can seem at this moment in time superfluous.  Even as I write - as if to echo my sentiments an email notification sounds - another alarm bell, another outrage.  

And then I remember, that the essence of health for me is a gathering of community - a celebration of something that honors our heritage, our nourishment, our connection to sensory delights, our varied experiences.  

All of these ideas land firmly in the world of cooking and breaking bread, tortillas, biscuits, naan together.   My experiences with food as entry point to connection began as a child in the Philippines sharing Fiesta day feasts with my neighbors.  The generosity, care, and delight in creating a festive meal cemented my sense of belonging despite my outsider status.  Without effort, I remember cones of spices, dried chilies, dried fish and frogs, the sounds of food hawkers competing with the visual overload.  Now, I only need to travel a few minutes away to a local Latin, Armenian, or Asian market to feel the same sense of delight and wonder.   

 I began documenting my experiences of community through food over a year ago.  I noticed that when asking a store owner, customer, or clerk about the uses of a then unknown food ingredient, they would light up and  barriers would fall away.  These conversations have led to meals created together, teachable moments for me, and yet another reminder that cooking is craft -- a form of mastery that is designed to nourish and engage us individually and communally.  

I welcome you to join me in this exploration...a form of foraging that extends beyond field and forest to my community.  

When drawn in concentric circles from my home, the foraging begins on the gorgeously food-rich Washington Boulevard in Pasadena and moves outward through Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley, and the east side of Los Angeles.  The journey is purposely honoring of lesser traveled neighborhoods, where the smallness of a store may be easily overlooked, where a recipe has been handed down to us through the generations, and where the ingredients are truly a mystery.  I look forward to our learning together. 

Family History Part I

During the lull between the winter holidays and New Years, I used the quiet to unpack some of my  recipe collections.  The one that stopped me in my tracks was a small 3x5 scotch plaid patterned box holding my dad and stepmother's well used recipe cards.  My dad's almost illegible handwriting, a folded page of carefully typed Tuna Pancake instructions -- the food stains evidencing the popularity of this dish.  Despite sounding horrible, the pancakes (or tortillas) were quite delicious. Each recipe carried with it a memory more specific than the ingredients.  

Like a cultural anthropologist on steroids, I began to dissect these cards noticing the common use of rich, but pedestrian ingredients.  Most dishes were casseroles, stews and soups requiring simple pantry ingredients and slow cooking. The names of these dishes evoke a different time, Western Meal in One, Rumanian Cabbage Soup, Swedish Meatballs.  The reference to "foreign" foods (Rumanian and Swedish)  echo the very different demographics of Los Angeles at that time.  Based on the 1960 census, we were a county of about 6 million people of which more than 5 million were white, largely suburban, and "middle class."  Our understanding of authentic, culturally diverse eating was constrained by our inexperience, access and naiveté.  Descriptors like the "Far East" referenced a framing of our known experience as central both geographically and psychically.   

"Everybody is ethnic though nobody will call a French restaurant that. But those guys are as ethnic as anybody else.”  Jonathan Gold

These eating "adventures" were just a faint echo of the food and eating revolution that was to come.  We, lucky ones who now live in Los Angeles County, are part of 10 million. Latinos represent nearly 50%, followed by whites, and then ethnicities whose descriptions reference a growing understanding of identity, culture and community.  With this distinctiveness and connection comes a brilliant authenticity in food ingredients, sources, and evolving tastes.  

Artist plate by Steve Wong.

For your eating pleasure and dive into Los Angeles food history here is the original Tuna Pancake recipe circa 1960.  As a side by side, I include the ever brilliant home cook Mario Rodriguez' queso fundido.  While ingredients, heat level, and cultures seem to have little in common, they actually are neatly paired by the great trifecta of dairy, protein, and starch underscoring our enduring love of comfort food.  Both fill the bill beautifully.  Enjoy! 

Click here for Tuna Pancakes and Queso Fundido

Family History Part II

Date Pie and the Question of Ephemera

e·phem·er·a      əˈfem(ə)rə/ , noun

1. things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time.

   • items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed ones, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.

Mecca, Thermal, La Quinta, Thousand Palms.  Date farms and shops have dotted the desert highways in and around the Coachella Valley since the early 1920's, the towns' names indicating the extremes of this environment (survival, beauty, intense heat, and its particular crop - date palms).  I particularly love the name La Quinta - meaning "The Fifth" - the fifth what?  By some accounts, it used to mean a stop along the way after a long journey.  So, these dates, these towns, became intermittent oases of welcome and nourishment in what had been a huge, largely uninhabitable stretch of the Coachella Valley. 

Dates too are a staple of various Middle Eastern countries whose climates echo our own deserts' intensity. These  sweet nuggets have found their way into multiple home cooks' repertoires including my stepmom Margie's Date Pie. Her recipe stands out to me as one that was far removed from the extremes of its origin.  Instead, it was a well loved Thanksgiving alternative to pumpkin pie.  Less sweet, more dense in texture, with an incredibly complex set of flavors as nearly all of its essence is extracted from this sturdy little miracle fruit.  It became one of the most anticipated winter desserts, usually served after a family camping trip to Joshua Tree.  

Now the question of ephemera. Patric Kuh, restaurant critic for Los Angeles Magazine, described drawing inspiration for his recent publication, Finding the Flavors We Lost, from the Huntington Library's recently acquired  Anne Cranston American Regional and Charitable Cookbook Collection. (Yes there is such a collection-4,400 items.  Be still my beating heart!). While the various ingredients, tastes, food making techniques have changed- the Jello mold dulled by  sour cream or marshmallow fluff and speckled with canned fruit as a comical example-the Cranston collection holds more tenacious truths. In a recent lecture at the Huntington, Kuh described Ms. Cranston's capacity to find value in rapidly written directions on the backs of bank statements, envelopes, and scribbled-over pages of books, as "a testament to what we don't throw away."  And so, are these many scraps and formerly loved flavors ephemera, or part of a long and sometimes delicious cultural history? 

" I think of recipes in a different way...they are signs of curiosity, sales tools, ways of belonging, a means of organization...great historical markers..."

 Patric Kuh

I so prefer the poetry of his definition. Although the individual card, envelope, and plastic comb bound book, often are considered ephemera, their impact on the meaning of these larger ideas of culture remain. For your poetic and eating enjoyment, alongside the Date Pie Recipe, aka way of belonging, sales tool, and historical marker, I include the Ma'amoul Cookie, aka great historical marker, a way of belonging and for me a sign of curiosity-a Lebanese date filled dessert eaten at Ramadan through Eid, and at Easter.  Time to try something new, Easter (April 16) and Ramadan (May 26-June 25) are upon us! 

Recipe for Ma'amoul and its creator, Ashkgyn

Do you have a food making or eating experience that goes well beyond a series of directions? 

Preschool Gourmet

My four-year old grandchild, Alex, provides a font of observations for me. I watch Alex play, but as a food aficionado, I watch with deeper interest his developing taste. There are innumerable articles and books about children at play; but little about children eating.  One of the more memorable exceptions is the Margaret Mead film, Four Families, in which the anthropologist documented how parents from India, Canada, France and Japan fed their babies.  For some reason, the French mother's style continues to resonate with me 30 years later.   Despite my skepticism about Ms. Mead's habit of extrapolating whole cultural norms from an individual example-  I remember thinking-that this mother's form of feeding nourishes more than the body. Meal time was a moment of connection--sharing the mashed potatoes with her little boy and his older brother while laughing and playing.   Eating, even at his early age, held the potential for delight  and communion rather than being a hurried chore.

Above: Scenes from Four Families,  a documentary by Margaret Mead.

Beginning at two, Alex would eat almost everything.  Rather than editing his food repertoire, he has emerged as an adventurous 'try - er."  He loves fresh fruit, especially the spring bounty of strawberries. His emerging vocabulary is most proficient in describing a growing list of favorite foods: oranges, apples, strawberries, biscuits, chocolate cookies, cake, scrambled eggs and most recently the rather pungent homemade pickles I make. I have never dumbed down his food. He eats what we do.  His latest description is “hot” when something has a bit too much spice. My garlicky vinaigrette is “hot.”

When he likes something, it is obvious. He eats with complete concentration, often pronouncing the food as “yummy.”  If he loves something, it joins an ongoing series of eclectic food requests: pork bun from our favorite dim sum restaurant and most recently home made gefilte fish. (Really!) 

The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Older brother Anthony set the tone for eating with enjoyment. Breakfast with grandpa; home-made sausages in the foreground. 

Chinatown plates by Steve Wong. 

He also knows that eating means sitting down and “conversing” while he speaks. His love of food means asking for more (often before he is done) and learning to respond with a thank you when served.

I realize in watching him that great experiences with food are similar to great experiences in general. We learn when something is deeply felt. And the learning within a sensory rich environment is multi-faceted. He is socializing, he is tasting, he is creating preferences, he is waiting, he is expressing his desires and he is enjoying himself.

When I cook, I invite him into the kitchen. He has learned that the stove surface is another kind of hot. He has whisked meringues for me, stirred a sauce, shaped a meat ball and torn lettuce leaves. He now knows that food does not magically appear.  It is the end of a process added to by his participation.  When he sees the table set, he scrambles onto his seat proclaiming loudly, “let's eat!” 

His twelve year old brother Anthony is becoming a proficient cook, so much so, that I invite him into the kitchen as a sous chef whenever possible.  He is a more than competent right hand guy when making jam and marmalade with me and is now the breakfast cook whenever he sleeps over.  No one has the patience to make scrambled eggs the way he does, slowly on low heat after first melting a generous amount of butter in the pan.  He grates some parmesan cheese on top as a finishing touch.  

Today, for your eating pleasure are three of Alex's favorites:  Orange Almond Cake, a custardy dessert made with whole cooked oranges, almond flour and a generous number of eggs along with his big brother Anthony's Scrambled Eggs with Parmesan Cheese.  To round out these eggy delights is the bright and seasonal home made Strawberry Jam, surprisingly easy and a great recipe to share with budding cooks and gourmets.    

And for your reading pleasure two of my favorite poems about food. 

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

A Newborn Girl at Passover  

Nan Cohen

Consider one apricot in a basket of them.

It is very much like all the other apricots--

an individual already, skin and seed.

Now think of this day.  One you will probably forget.

The next breath you take, a long drink of air.

Holiday or not, it doesn't matter.

A child is born and doesn't know what day it is.

The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine.

The taste of apricots is in store for her.

Alex, now 4, still enjoys mealtime.  Fruit salad with fresh mint he helped prepare. 

A Baker's Life

Whole grains ready for milling.

Last year, I think my obsession with learning about the real work of baking hit a new high or low depending on how you feel about early morning waking.  For one month, every Wednesday, at 4:15 a.m., the alarm on my phone routed me out of bed where I drove to SEED Bakery in Pasadena to help and watch Joseph Abrakjian, master baker at work. The following is a snapshot of my experience and Seed's evolution from new business to community treasure.

I learned the old fashioned way, doing the same task over and over again-nothing fancy- just hard labor, scraping cold dough out of tubs, cutting and weighing it for the bake  and sometimes trying bread shaping. My experience was at the tail end of the process which began 24 hours prior with the leavening being made-flour, water, and time.  It thickens and ferments slowly and then various flours are added, each one ground out of whole heritage grains-rye, whole wheat, spelt and white depending on the finished bread. 

Joseph’s practice as a master bread baker reminds me of a confident artist maintaining a discipline, but forever learning and experimenting.  He knows how to create a stronger and more flavorful dough–patience as the first requirement, a slow fermentation, not over mixing, and adding salt to the mix after another waiting time called “the autolyse.”  He knows that each dough has a different character depending on the type of flour. Some are robust and can take my tentative shaping while others are truly fussy–the pastry, baguette and ciabatta dough. 

Joseph’s practice as a master bread baker reminds me of a confident artist-maintaining a discipline, but forever learning and experimenting.

From about 5 tp 7 in the morning–it is quiet concentration.  Restaurant chefs come to order bread in the early morning and supplies are delivered.  He manages to keep a number of processes in order, dough that is about to be baked, pastry cream to be made, shaping, and holding.   At times the bread does not come out of the oven until 8:30 while customers begin to sneak in around 7:45 before opening time.  Pastries are baked to hold the demand back for bread and for the breakfast crowd.  And then the bread shows up-olive, walnut wheat, spelt, baguettes, rustic country, ciabatta.  

Ingredients are sourced with care from the za'atar seasoning his dad brought here from Lebanon to organic eggs, vegetables, fruits and ethically raised meat. The food is gorgeous, fresh and generous.  The customers are returning,  are becoming regulars while the word spreads and a community is forming.  

Joseph Abrakjian and Pam Watanabe of SEED Bakery, Photography by Ann Cutting 

Joseph’s calling is clear–make beautiful food, help others appreciate it.  But the commitment is something I did not realize until I made my own 3-hour weekly promise to come and help and learn.

Seed is experiencing growing pains–more success than they expected–and a need for good counter people and baking support.  I realize that the world of a high quality, small business is like the beautiful and fragile bowl of many, promising non-profits I have worked with–something that needs to be held with care.  Grow while maintaining quality–don’t grow so quickly that the work becomes punishing, stay in the moment while planning the next step, don’t lose sight of the vision/joy.  

I realize that the world of a high quality, small business is like the beautiful and fragile bowl of many, promising non-profits I have worked with–something that needs to be held with care.

Joseph's beautiful bread, straight out of the oven.

Bread baking tools--Bannetons for proofing and dough scraper

Postscript, May 2017 

Seed is flourishing, having recently expanded into the retail space next door. Joseph and Pam now employ 9  people including a second bread baker, a pastry chef and 2 cooks.  Joseph still arrives at 3:00 a.m. as the demand  for bread and pastries continues unabated and his commitment to quality holds.  But now the bread comes out well before the customers arrive. 

DIY

 If you are interested in learning more about bread baking,  Los Angeles provides a treasure trove of resources.  Novice and advanced bakers are welcomed by Los Angeles Bread Bakers, an active Meet Up group organized by Eric Knutzen.  Their introductory classes are fun, inexpensive and a great way to enter the world of healthy, delicious bread baking.  They also sell excellent quality organic flour in bulk at extremely reasonable prices and at times offer specialized workshops for advanced bakers.  The Institute of Domestic Technology, Joseph Shuldiner's brain child, often runs Food Crafting 101, which includes bread baking among its "basics."  King's Roost, a retail store in Silver Lake,  sells milling and bread making equipment and offers classes on a regular basis.  

For those wishing to enter the pinnacle of bread making, a number of artisan bread baking pioneers have shared their secrets.  The bible for these committed souls appears to be Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson.  Almost every serious bread baker I know owns a flour dusted copy.   

As I am a believer in the adage that the perfect can be the enemy of the good, my go to recipe for bread baking is the Twenty-One Hour Boule. The recipe's ease has made it a standard part of my food making repertoire and this beautiful, fragrant boule embodies the idea of nourishment in all of its glory.  Give it a try and please share any of your favorite bread baking experiences here.  

A Definition of Nourishment: A Baker's Life Part II

nour·ish·ment - ˈnəriSHmənt/ . noun

1. the food or other substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition.

2. the action of nourishing someone or something.

Many of us have heard the discouraging statistics about American's food quality, the loss of crop diversity, the subsidizing of corn to the detriment of any other produce and the destructive impact of our food industry's "efficiencies."   National Geographic reported that 94% of the world's vegetable seeds circa 1903 are now missing from the earth. A recently aired documentary, SEED: The Untold Story, is a richly documented adventure story of world wide seed savers determined to hold and cherish our planet's bio diversity. These seed savers literally comb the earth for food varieties that were once common and are now rare.  

Taking this possibly overwhelming issue to the local and more "digestible" level moves me to my food purchasing choices, a consideration of value and the prohibitive cost of some high quality food products.   Local Pasadena baker Joseph Abrakjian attempts to balance the reality of his cost of running an ethical business with consumer access.  But the question of value continues to dog Joseph, who at times feels personally affronted when a customer questions the $7 dollar price for a loaf of bread.  On the other hand, he has been counseled by artisan food making peers that his products are under priced.  But, he has said with feeling, "good bread should not be a luxury."

Joseph Abrakjian at Seed Bakery removing those loaves fresh from the bread oven. 

Bread samples by volume and by the ounce.

While I always lead with taste and quality of ingredients as a criteria for value, many families on restricted budgets can not. So I conducted a little experiment by purchasing 3 loaves of bread.  Rustic Country Pan Loaf at Seed Bakery and two commercially produced loaves, Nature's Harvest Whole Grain and the ubiquitous Wonder Bread, at my local Von's Supermarket. On an ounce by ounce basis, Joseph's bread, while more expensive than two store bought loaves, is actually closer in price than is first understood.  Each slice of his Rustic Country weighs more than twice as much as a slice of Wonder Bread or Harvest Whole Grain.  

And then there are the ingredient comparisons.  There is nothing to be written here other than--wow! 

Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

Michael Pollan, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual.

And then there is taste.  While one of my childhood memories includes the deep satisfaction that compressing a slice of Wonder Bread into a tiny, dense ball gave me, this particular delight has worn off. Joseph's Rustic Country has a gorgeous texture and just a slight tang of sour dough. There is no mystery to his ingredients.  They are heirloom grains milled by Joseph, water and sea salt. 

How can a nation be great if their bread tastes like Kleenex?   

Julia Child

Roger Thomas, Egg farmer and owner of Thomas Farms.

And then if we want to go even more deeply into the question of nourishment as value, consider for a moment the story of one of Seed's many food purveyors. Roger Thomas, single dad of four boys and owner of the ten acre Thomas Farms in Twenty-Nine Palms. His Rhode Island Red hens are pasture raised and lay their eggs in a large barn where they are free to come and go as they please.

And there are Seed's nine employees who know the regulars and are clearly pretty happy as there has been little or no turnover since the early days.  

And there is the community around Seed, where we receive so much more than simple food nourishment.  

And then there is the link between our little weekly action and the world's food supply. Who knew that we could support biodiversity, by investing a bit more on a loaf of bread?  

A recipe that connects the dots between good nutrition, delicious taste and very low cost comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 a Day by Leanne Brown.  This is a revelatory book that began with the consideration of the daily SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) allowance as one of its "design" challenges along with self-financing its publication through Kickstarter.  In her introduction, Leanne writes, "Kitchen skill, not budget, is the key to great food. This cookbook is a celebration of the many delicious meals available to those on even the most strict of budgets."  I would add that all of these recipes are created from wholesome, easily found ingredients and draw their flavor profiles from the cultural richness of our various communities. As proof, try her Roti recipe.  In remembering my days as a young, single mother running a non-profit, time was an equally precious resource.  This Roti recipe required 10 minutes of active cooking time and yielded 16 delicious rounds of hot, puffed flatbread ready to be filled with scrambled eggs or dipped into soups, curries or stews.  

And as usual, some poetic musings, this time on bread and its unenending forms of nourishment. 

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.  

M.F.K. Fischer

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

Pablo Neruda

Above, Alex, our favorite preschool gourmet, relishing some of Joesph's Rustic Country Pan Loaf. His pronouncement: This is really yummy. 

Neighborhood Foraging as Entry to Community

Pasadena and Altadena's seasonal indicators are different than what we have come to know from most other places as fall, winter, spring, and summer.  Our seasons enter our consciousness more through taste, color, and smell than temperature.  They slide into one another without distinct fanfare until suddenly it is too hot to think or do. Winter into spring is heralded by the distinct combination of orange and green as citrus fruits ripen and fill our trees. Spring into early summer is a purple time: our Jacaranda trees come alive with bloom that eventually turn whole sidewalks into a softening carpet of blossoms.  And then summer into fall when night blooming jasmine perfumes our evenings; a scent that takes me back to my childhood and awakens my four-year old grandson's wonder--what is that Grandma? 

In the time between winter and spring, my foraging instinct led me to what could only be described as the sweetest way to enter my new neighborhood--through sharing this abundance. I noted tree after tree loaded with citrus fruit, most of it unpicked, just beckoning me to turn what might be wasted into marmalades and candied citrus from newly discovered fruit varieties. Through the neighborhood website, I made a pitch for harvesting anyone's excess fruit and gifting in return a large jar or two of marmalade.  

In less than a week, my message box was full of generous offers. Three of these exchanges became longer visits that led to a sense of my community knitting even more firmly together. Pasadena and Altadena bear little resemblance to New York, but the words of Jane Jacobs,  tireless warrior for her city's soul resonate never the less.   

While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.

The first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson no one learns by being told. It is learned from the experience of having other people without ties of kinship or close friendship or formal responsibility...

New York, Altadena and Pasadena are places with character and complexity, with layers worth excavating.  In this case, I began with the search for oranges. 

Elizabeth is a retired professor of Linguistics and Archeology at Occidental College who has lived in this area most of her life as her father was a mathematics professor at Cal Tech.  Her memories are vivid because she continues to live what she loved as a child. "My parents had very little money," she says, " and so took up cooking and folk dancing as forms of affordable recreation. I remember they had a large cold storage area for our home canned fruits where I would help my mother and grandmother wipe the jar tops and take them down there. I was probably three or four."  

The Waylands, Elizabeth's parents in the early 1950s. The Rangpur Lime marmalade tradition began here. 

Like her parents, she exhibits a resourcefulness that transforms a problem or scarcity to opportunity.  Her scholarly focus on the lesser known contributions of "women's" work from the bronze age forward is a testament to resiliency and imagination. Although a stretch, I believe her family's creation of a delicious marmalade out of an intensely sour fruit whose origins are Northern India is a sure sign that adventurousness runs in her family.  

Kate Sullivan and Ed Verreaux with the "old orange tree" and picker.  

The cryptic message said, "Come and pick from your old orange trees, Kate."  I noted the street as the same as a former home of mine without making a connection until I spoke with Kate.  Fifteen years ago, Kate and husband Ed's home had been a glorious nest for my daughter and me.  "My" old orange tree had survived and thrived under their care.  

I picked a generous portion of navel oranges with the very picker I had  given them those many years ago and then took a tour.  The waves of sadness and memory I felt were bound up in knowing that our houses have lives that extend beyond our own. 

Martha holding a jar of her father-in-law Victor Jaramillo's honey. 

This generous and beautiful jar of honey was given to me in exchange for marmalade by Martha Jaramillo, manager of my daughter and son-in-law's apartment in Pasadena.  She and I like to talk food and ingredients, which led to a discussion about my marmalade bonanza.  Talk turned to her father-in-law, Victor, a venerable bee keeper living in nearby El Sereno.  

Victor Jaramillo at his honey stand next door to the El Sereno Library. 

I visited Victor at his home and honey stand on a busy stretch of street between the El Sereno Library and a church.  Describing himself as the "oldest beekeeper in the world," Victor will be 94 on June 28th.  He has been keeping bees his entire life. As a 15-month old in Zacatecas, Mexico, he experienced his first honey harvest riding on his father's back.  He had a talent for finding bee swarms even as a young child. 

His bees rest at night in a jumble of hives scattered around the front and side of his old wood frame house and "work" during the day in various nearby locales: the hills of El Sereno and Bouquet Canyon and the gardens and hillsides in South Pasadena. Earliest to rise, latest to rest, along with some honey every day is his recipe for longevity.  

Victor sells his honey every Saturday and some Mondays during daylight hours.  It is, as he says, "the best honey in the world." 

Navel and blood oranges from my generous neighbors.

As tangible delights from my adventures, here are this week's recipes: Orange Marmalade with a  Rangpur Lime variation, Candied Orange Peel, Eric's Anasazi Beans with Honey and Rumi Mahmood's Jhal Gosht Curry with Rangpur Lime Marmalade as a bracing condiment. 

For those of you wishing to try your hand at foraging, a bit of advice.  Don't be afraid to stop if you see something interesting: a small stand of fruit, someone selling their own baked goods, or even a mysterious food in a store.  I am an inveterate question asker and have found that my inquires usually evoke delight and the beginning of connection.  For those of you who live on the east side of Los Angeles, I recommend Lily and Steve's Porch Market in Altadena, an occasional celebration of carefully crafted and grown foods complete with free coffee and baked good samples.  

I leave you as well with a poem that reminds me of the reason I forage.  Not so much for any particular orange, but where that first small connection can lead.  In this case to people with histories and lives worth knowing and honoring. 

Oranges by Roisin Kelly 

I’ll choose for myself next time                                                                                               who I’ll reach out and take                                                                                                     as mine, in the way                                                                                                                 I might stand at a fruit stall...

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​Refrigerator Foraging as Micro-Activism

It has been a bad week for home organizing.  Too many last-minute “crises” to solve and a lot of eating on the run. The refrigerator is now a mash up of past-their-prime mushrooms, half an avocado, multiple containers of lovingly packaged leftovers, and some standbys–eggs (hard boiled and not), mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, a large jar of anchovies and a small ball of fresh mozzarella from Roma Market bought a few days ago in a moment of inspiration. 

Why? I don’t know.  I happened to be in the neighborhood, needed a quick lunch on the run and was distracted by Roma’s delights. 

On my kitchen counter, two once-nice Yukon gold potatoes are just beginning to sprout eyes; there are multiple heads of garlic, a couple of shallots and a lot of lemons.  

Salade Composé made after my refrigerator foraging. Never the same, always delicious.  Photo by Ann Cutting.

Poached eggs--a basic food preparation technique dressed up with glorious leftovers. Artist plate by Steve Wong.

What to do? An answer to this particular dilemma lies in this week's food offerings--all of which are designed to transform those crazy quilt bits of this and that into something delicious.  These offerings are not recipes; rather they are guides designed to give you unlimited opportunities to make gold out of dross. They reference what many describe as technique, which is how our grandmothers cooked--basic know how combined with economy and a scarcity of ingredients rather than a recipe dictated run to the supermarket. 

Besides cleaning out my refrigerator without waste, I may have entered the very satisfying world of micro-activism.  But first a bit of context with thanks to my good friend Hope Schneider, who began by instructing me on the etymology of the word economics.  

 /ɛkəˈnɑːmɪks/, /ikəˈnɑːmɪks/

From economy, from Latin oeconomia, from Ancient Greek oixovuia (oikonomia, "management of a household) from lidos (oikos - house) + view (memo, distribute, allocate).  

I was gratified to learn that the word economics, which I understood to be large scale systems applied to whole countries, began as a description of a single home's stewarding of assets and resources.  

And now onto micro-activism.  How then does my simple desire to treat food as a finite resource connect to whole system change?  I turned to several local heroes moving from the individual to whole systems change makers in considering the tradeoffs around small "e" economics in both our personal and our society's values. Values that often place efficiency and convenience over the stewardship of our food resources.  

During World War II, it was considered patriotic to avoid food waste.  Rationing was a part of life and somehow we survived. 

Beverly LaFontaine in her herb garden.                               Mattie Brown, Beverly's mother 

Beverly LaFontaine, a poet and reliable sage about most things, is unimpressed with her very simple take on managing her meals probably because there is nothing difficult or unusual about it. She lives alone and her priorities center on writing, creating jewelry, exploring visual art and scheduled time with her grandchildren. There is no preciousness to her cooking style, but it is rooted in her own mother's way of conserving both time and resources for what matters. She does not waste anything.  Vegetables about to turn are frozen for later use to be added to her delicious Chicken and Vegetable Soup made once every two weeks. And despite this apparent indifference to fussing, she is committed to eating something that is both healthy and delicious everyday. 

Carolyn Bennett's luncheon of beautiful bits and pieces many of which are pickles--a food that can be stored for many months.  

Carolyn Bennet lives in the agriculturally rich area of Ojai.  She maintains a fruit orchard, hosts a beekeeper's hives and neighbor's grape vines, and manages a rotating plot of herbs and vegetables, including last year's bumper crop of artichokes. Her commitment to food sourcing and preparing is well outside the norm, but Carolyn's prodigious energy and interest in sharing a community table are central to her being. She invites all to pick and share. Her lunch of bits and pieces came together in moments, but the time to pickle and preserve was an exercise in planning, stewarding and storing the abundance of summer's harvest.  

Therese Brummel of Transition Pasadena

Therese Brummel, one of the founders of Transition Pasadena, described as "a movement of communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world," began this work after a severe injury forced her to quit nursing.  She describes herself as "always an organizer," and the move from the institutional setting of a hospital to community was surprisingly seamless.  Projects range from building sustainable gardens in public spaces such as the 8,000 square foot "food forest" at Throop Church and the native plant garden at the Jackie Robinson Post Office to establishing the Repair Cafe.  As of now, the Cafe has a surfeit of volunteers ready and willing to add new life to household goods and is on the look out for larger indoor space to hold its roving free events.   

Rick Nahmias of Food Forward

Rick Nahmias, Founder and Director of Food Forward, began his activism as a documentary photographer.  Food Forward allowed him to move from what he described as a "two dimensional" career to one that is "four dimensional"--living rather than recording the story.  Food Forward's website is a model of economy in describing its work as:  "Harvest Food, Fight Hunger, Build Community."  Every week, through volunteer picking events and institutional partnerships, 300,000 pounds of surplus produce is rescued and reused from fruit trees in individual and community yards, farmers markets and the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market and donated to direct service agencies including youth programs, shelters, food pantries and senior centers.  

The scale of these fruit "rescues" ranges from one person to massive group efforts requiring pallets to transport the yield.  More than anything I could write, Rick's description of Food Forward's work reinforces the impact of micro activism on our community.  "Any individual from 8 to 80 can harvest fruit and immediately change a person's life. Because of the sturdiness of that fruit, it will last a couple of days. You take an orange off a tree and give it to someone in need.  At its core, Food Forward is about sharing abundance. This is about a gifting community, not a bartering system. There is something quite beautiful about giving without thought of return. We need this sense of positive impact and generosity more than ever."  

Now moving from micro, to community to country and to the world, the connection between our individual patterns and choice is never more evident.  

A very, very ripe tomato and avocado caught in the nick of time with fresh mozzarella. 

Just consider Adam Chandler's 2016 article in The Atlantic,  which states "...roughly 50 percent of all produce in the United States is thrown away—some 60 million tons (or $160 billion) worth of produce annually. Wasted food is also the single biggest occupant in American landfills. What causes this? A major reason is that food is cheaper in the United States than nearly anywhere else in the world. But the great American squandering of produce appears to be a cultural dynamic as well, enabled in large part by a national obsession with the aesthetic quality of food." 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that, each year, one-third of all food produced for human consumption in the world (around 1.3 billion tons) is lost or wasted. If food waste were a country, it would rank behind only the US and China for greenhouse gas emissions.  

Ross Chainey, World Economic Forum, August 2015

Take heart! The first step to micro-activism is awareness that leads to a drive for internal change.  Here to fortify that desire to become a diligent refrigerator forager and possible community activist are a collection of  "the basics" of food preparation techniques and a link to more heroic efforts in reducing food waste now underway throughout the world.  

Last, but not least are the words of Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of Network and the leader of the Nuns on the Bus Movement.  

"We are a hungry nation, in every sense of the word.  Many are hungry for physical nourishment; all of us are hungry for good words, and hungry for knowledge that we are not alone.  We are so hungry for community, to know we have each other's back, to know that we are together in this nation." 

Sister Simone Campbell of Network. Photo by Dennis Keeley.

Tools for Quiet

As an avid reader of food writers, I place Bill Buford’s book Heat at the top of my list of informative, insightful and sometimes hysterically funny reads. Within the nesting doll stories about the restaurant, Babbo, his experience as an apprentice line cook and Italian food and its future lies my favorite anecdote. During a stint in a tiny restaurant in Panzano, Italy, where he was charged with stirring the ragu for eight hours, Bill worried a lot about dumping the hard-won sauce on the floor, about his very long apron catching on fire as the pot was suspended from a gas ring on the floor and of course disappointing his chef.  The ring of fire, the slow cooking ragu, the apron locked around his waist by a tight knot and his desire to prove himself.  And then the apron does catch on fire--described as an inferno—and he and the chef Dario wrestle mightily to untie its strings. 

Illustration by Simone Rein

I remembered this story differently as an example of the meditative possibilities of cooking; its repetition of movement without encumbrance of typically racing thoughts and a desire for the “efficiencies” of multi-tasking. What I now understand in re-reading Bill’s story, is that his mind was racing so much so, that he did not realize that he was literally on fire.  Rather than destroying my thesis--that the repetition of handwork, the simplest of tools, the discipline to create internal quiet and the external demands of something that will not be rushed are actually akin to the precepts of meditation--I am feeling even more certain. 

My way to calm down has little to do with physical stillness.  I make jam, and it is now high season for the seemingly endless repetition of cutting fruit into smallish pieces, macerating it in sugar and lemon juice and cooking until the alchemy occurs –gel point! 

Pasqual and his Santa Rosa plums at the Pasadena farmers market

There is a certain irony to today’s post in that the food offerings are all slow-mo cooking requiring extended time with a stove top or oven. 

But the season’s yield of fruit just keeps coming with encouraging and sometimes desperate little messages from friends, “I have 1,000 apricots, really! Is it time to make jam?” “We have more Rangpur limes. I hate to see them wasted.” 

There is the rare opportunity of stumbling upon Pasqual at the Saturday farmers market selling the impossible to find Santa Rosa plums, many bruised and thus perfect for jam. I cleaned him out and promised him a jar. And there are my memories of Southeast Asia where we ate food that matched the day’s scorching heat as sweating was a part of cooling. 

There is another irony in that the perception of food making, a deeply centering activity for me and most serous cooks, has been hijacked by media as intense, competitive and requiring supernatural speed to the finish line.

So here we go…a slow down for our overheated times.

I wondered if anyone else found inner quiet through the rhythm of activity instead of physical stillness.  Here from some of my hyper-productive friends is a beautiful secret--they are actually able to find the most precious of quietness through their hands, their senses and extended times alone.  The physical beauty of strawberries, of almost purple, dried hominy for blue corn masa, taking joy in a beautiful knife and its precision when chopping, the scent of pozole cooking slowly can win the battle between a distracted mind and a centered body.

Blue corn and blue corn masa from El Mercado in Boyle Heights.

My favorite very hard working knife. 

Mario Rodriguez' pozole. Photo by Ann Cutting.

Some of the most effective worker bees are so, because they enter the zone seemingly effortlessly.  What I find truly delightful as a person who has waded into and stayed in the deepest end of the arts pond and am now doing the same with food, is that there are so many similarities between cooks/chefs and artists, especially when they enter what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as flow. 

First Observation:

After speaking with even the busiest chefs and artists, I realize that every single one of them does something essential for their souls and their creative spirits. They find time to be alone.

Sumi Chang of Europane Bakery with one of her favorite baking tools, an offset spatula.

Sumi arrives at her bakery by two in the morning for the quiet that allows her to stop thinking.  “No one is around. I am just kind of focused and nothing bothers me…whether I have employee problems, or whatever at that moment. When I focus, I don’t think about them, I think about taste, flavors and textures. I lose track of time.”

Second Observation:

In the case of serious cooks and chefs, there is a reverence for the simplest of tools, which act as an extension of their hand, body, history, palate and spirit: a simple spoon, a knife, a 70-year old mortar and pestle (molcajete) passed down from grandmother to mother, a rolling pin. For some, there is almost a superstitious belief in the tool’s essential role in assuring their proficiency, much like a baseball player’s special bat.   

Grant Yegiazaryan of Su-Beoreg and Monta Factory rolling the dough that frames cheese and herbs for his wife Evelina’s beoreg, a family recipe.  The rolling pin, described as irreplaceable, is an extension of his arms. “No other rolling pin will make this dough.” Photos by Ann Cutting.

Mario Rodriguez holding his mother’s molcajete, passed down from his grandmother. The patina created by traces of ground spice is a part of its beauty. Photo by Ann Cutting.

Steve Brown, executive chef and former teacher at the New School for Cooking and his special spoon with his name engraved on the handle, a gift from a sous chef. 

 Third Observation

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

In the case of artists and cooks, chance favors an attentive spirit – resilient, observant, trusting of senses and understanding the dialectic between intent and awareness of possibility.

Ann Cutting leading and being led in the formation of a stoneware bowl. As a researcher, a photographer, a teacher and ceramicist, she, too, describes being unaware of time and ceding control by allowing for surprise within four exacting disciplines. 

The bringing of the clay into a spinning, unwobbling pivot, which will then be 'free to take innumerable shapes as potter and clay press against each other. The firm, tender, sensitive pressure which yields as much as it asserts. It is like a handclasp between two living hands, receiving the greeting at the very moment that they give it. It is this speech between the hand and the clay that makes me think of dialogue. And it is a language far more interesting than the spoken vocabulary which tries to describe it, for it is spoken not by the tongue and lips but by the whole body, by the whole person, speaking and listening. And with listening too, it seems to me, it is not the ear that hear.It is not the physical organ that performs that act of inner receptivity.

Mary Caroline Richards from Centering, in Pottery Poetry and the Person

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Francesca Mallus, teacher and chef, kneading pasta dough.

Fourth Observation

The confluence of time standing still, of being led by senses as well as mind, of quietness can change our perception of experience. 

For Mario, the molcajete is a physical link to a grandmother long dead.  For Sumi, the memory of the scent of roasting chiles at the Santa Fe farmer’s market is the identifier rather than a calendar for the fall season.  And for Dennis Keeley, friend and photographer, his apricot jam is a link to the memory of its making.

Photo by Dennis Keeley

“So… I can’t even begin to express how much this day has meant to me.  To have real friends that can talk, laugh, teach, make mistakes, work together, create, transform, process and just be a little more human is nothing short of a miracle in these difficult and complex times. It is so spiritually healing to be able to produce something of such exquisite beauty from a place that most people just call the backyard. It is a great reminder that special beauty does begin at home, but is not limited to just your own home.  I won’t soon forget what we made in your kitchen, how we made it, and every time I put apricot jam on bread, I know I won’t just be thinking back to this day, but it will be a flood of all these incredible feelings into that moment…”

To encourage your own experiences with slowing down, I offer Mario Rodriguez’ Pozole, Stone Fruit Jam for plums and apricots and a take on Bill Buford’s Very Slow Cooked Polenta. 

Roads to Mastery

Looking up the word mastery proved revealing.  Most of the entries had a huckster’s tone to them –assuring us that mastery could be achieved in 10 easy steps and lead to unlimited success in arenas unimagined.  What I know of the experience of attempting mastery is that it involves a serious question about identity as well as inner fortitude, single mindedness, wonder, humility, patience for failure and patience for waiting.

Easter Cake, Angel Cookies, Orange Almond Cake, Maria Denhoff’s Wet Chocolate Cake all baked by me. The beautiful product of a great deal of behind the scenes labor. Photo by Ann Cutting

For me, mastery means an internal shift from hobbyist to serious cook.

I have mastered the smaller things--making jam very, very well, becoming a prolific and imaginative cookie baker, even pulling together the family’s annual Passover dinner. I understand that the easiest journeys to accomplish are the ones that are without divergence and have a conceivable end in sight. After a 20-week course of pro-cooking instruction, my journey is just beginning. 

What I have is a road map that indicates a never ending, larger goal: the commitment to mastering something without an obvious stopping point.  

Why do these masterful folk keep on walking? Janna Malamud Smith, author of An Absorbing Errand, answers the question in this way:

“…pursuing any practice seriously is a generative, hardy way to live in the world. I posit that life is better when you possess a sustaining practice that holds your desire, demands your attention, and requires effort; a plot of ground that gratifies the wish to labor and create—and by doing so, to rule over an imagined world of your own.” 

Sheep in the road, Illustration by Simone Rein

She describes the obstacles to mastery as a herd of obdurate sheep on a metaphoric road that must be “outwitted, dispersed, befriended or herded…”

So in outwitting these obstacles aka sheep to mastery, I look again to chefs and artists who not only persevere, but take joy in this challenge.

I believe that anyone engaged in a sense- filled journey to mastery is continuously energized by metaphoric rest stops on the way made up of textures, colors, tastes and sounds. 

“If I see seasonal foods and vegetables then I say 'Oh-now I have to do something.' For this year, all the fruits are just bursting with flavors.”

Sumi Chang of Europane Bakery

Light glowing through fettuccine on the drying rack. 

Sini Monta, a meat filled pastry, in process at Su Beoreg and Monta Factory in Pasadena. Photo by Ann Cutting

Pasqual, source of all the gorgeous Santa Rosa plums for this season’s canning holding my gift of jam, saying with complete delight, “It’s so pretty!”

There is an inner self-confidence and curiosity that overrides most fear and self-doubt.   

Sumi Chang left a high paying profession as an ICU nurse after an inspiring three-month pastry course to become a minimum wage earning prep cook at a local restaurant. She showed up more than once during the early days of Nancy Silverton’s La Brea Bakery hoping to work there. After being told twice that there were no positions, she volunteered on the two days she was off from her restaurant job. Within two weeks, she was hired and began a five-year tenure that ended as breakfast chef at Campanile Restaurant. She applied her knowledge, skill and confidence to open Europane Bakery more than 20 years ago. 

Sumi Chang, right, with Maria Rodriguez, Pastry Chef at Europane Bakery.

The desire for learning takes precedence over the shame of not knowing or a lack of proficiency.

The Beginner’s Mind or Shoshin of Zen Buddhism is a natural state for children but at nearly 65 years old, attempting to enter and remain in Shosin has been revealing and frustrating.  In my cooking classes, I find myself mystified at my lack of competency as my mind shuts down and anxiety runs amok. I have super-heated oil to nearly 400 degrees by forgetting to remove the outer sleeve on a thermometer, placed a hot pan on a plastic cutting board and in making kimchee exchanged one well known vegetable for another.  I knew I was in trouble when the jelly I undercooked became a strange, unappetizing slurry instead of my imagined perfection. This was really crazy.  I know how to do this! Yet in fact, by coming to the course armed with just enough knowledge to derail humility, I am struggling.

These drawings of seedpods were created over a six-month period by an 8 year old whose journey began by not knowing and a lack of shame for what she did not know. 

Repetition of a task lends itself to developing habits of tenacity that lead to mastery.

Alex, my four-year old grandchild works on a challenging puzzle. There was a clear desire for an achievable “small” mastery as the puzzle was dumped out and restarted again and again.    

Husband Eric working to become a Master Caster. He describes the process as re-programming muscle memory combined with psyching himself out.

Repetition—doing something over and over and over again—makes you get good at it, and as a cook that is what our lives are about. It’s about that repetition—going to work every day and doing the same thing; it’s not always something new.

Thomas Keller on one road to becoming a chef. 

And the recipes this time? They are designed to engage us in what I call reasonable mastery—achievable through attentiveness and patience and some skill:

Gougères, exquisite cheesy puff appetizers, husband Eric's favorite pie crust recipe and his pie baking tips  and one way to roast a red pepper. 

Take time, be kind to yourself and you will be amply and deliciously rewarded. 

Less is More – A Camping Manifesto

For me, camping is the pinnacle of negotiating our relationship between essentials and extras, with quiet and extreme beauty often increasing proportionally to a campsite’s remoteness--and the necessity to pare down. At its best, living with less can be a form of creative integrity, allowing us to consider how we are actually going to use an object, be it decorative or practical, before we make psychic or physical space for it.

 At one time during our years overseas, my family lived in this Nipa house in the Philippines. No windows, no electricity, Coleman lanterns and gecko lizards at night. 

As a Peace Corps “brat,” I accompanied my family on a number of dislocations that required my parents to shed most of their material goods as what we carried to future postings had to fit neatly into a wooden shipping crate. I have often thought since of the westward journeys of pioneers holding their family histories in one carefully packed trunk. But the time overseas did not represent sacrifice, as the trade-off of immersing myself for years rather than days in other cultures more than offset any loss of material goods. I took my clothes, a record player, the size of my algebra book, and a few records--the latter necessities for this 13-year old.

As an inveterate fusser, I have never found a small backpack and light as a feather mummy bag to work for me even though the rewards of roughing it have been richly described by intrepid aesthetes, poets and even my husband, who once slept partially suspended on the rock face of Mt. Owen in the Grand Tetons.

Leaves scarcely breathing

in the black breeze;

the flickering swallow

draws circles in the dusk.

 

In my loving

dying heart

a twilight is coming,

a last ray, gently reproaching

 

And over the evening forest

the bronze moon climbs to its place.

Why has the music stopped?

Why is there such silence?

From Stone:24 by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin

Instead, I am a car camper because I love to cook here as at home and feel the smug satisfaction of reverse engineering all of my meals to leave nary a scrap behind when returning home. I love a campsite’s slowness that allows for simple, one pot meals made on a one-or two-burner camp stove and even the hiss of propane. And I love extracting the most from very little, knowing that ice will melt, food cannot be stored indefinitely, and my counter space is an 8x12 cutting board. Every object in our kitchen in a box represents the spare history of our camping adventures: the same speckled plates, aging red-checked oil cloth and red plastic coffee cone that yields such morning delight.

Our Kitchen in a Box. Photograph by Simone Rein. 

When we return home, these essentials are washed and packed away. We return to living with more, with the accumulation from earlier generations--my parents' Rosenthal dishes, Aunt Beanie's celadon-tinted Havilland along with our own habit of unfettered book purchasing.

Through one long car trip home, we seem to have jumped eons in human development from nomadic hunter gatherers to settled accumulators.

There is nothing new about this pleasure in simplicity, well described by Thoreau and others. And so, I looked to more recent examples of individuals who negotiate the question of need and want with great dexterity.

Stepmom Margie resting with some camping gear behind her, circa 1958. 

Neighbor Elizabeth Barber's wall of essentials. I love the pattern of the objects against the wall. 

Brother-in-law David's kitchen with essence of ship galley. Only the necessities for his cooking style. Photograph by David Callow.

The nexus between doing with less and delight is often found in the creation of the simplest of foods, easily created, whose enjoyment is heightened by circumstance.

Here for you to explore are recipes that do not stint on taste despite their death of ingredients and ease of preparation: Eric’s Dutch Oven Biscuit Techniques, Crèpes, Pan Fried Grilled Cheese Sandwich and what I like to call All Purpose Pesto. All of these can be more easily made in your home kitchen, but taste so much better at a campsite--or through the patina of memory. 

Here, as well, are two evocative food histories, the first a description of a first memory of a meal that intertwines love, warmth and nourishment during a time of intense deprivation. The second is from my good friend Toti, who began cooking as a child in Italy and whose description of the discipline and magic of that faraway kitchen echo her later experience as a dancer and artist. 

I was born in 1940 in Germany. The Second World War was over in 1945. We lived from potatoes and we had no heat. My grandmother would get up very early in the morning and put some wood and coal in the stove to cook the potato. When I woke up, she would have a boiled potato ready. I remember, she would put a potato in my hand and make sure it was not too hot but warming for my hands, cut it open and put salt in it. And I would spoon it out, absolutely delicious—so simple. Thinking of it—it has a lot of meaning to me.

Rainer Shildknecht, Architect

I had to develop faith: through the apparent stillness a metamorphosis would happen. Sure, like the sun in the sky, like tomorrow, like summer. Later, I have practiced the same philosophical virtue while beating egg whites. It is the same process: you sweat steadily for about 20 minutes, while nothing happens. When you are ready to give up, the fork finds a pleasant resistance. One more minute, and the slimy fluid becomes foam. You can shape it into self-standing mountaintops. It holds the fork if you drop it. Just the opposite of an iceberg melting, but equally impressive.

Toti O’Brien, Artist, from Notes from a Culinary Education

And finally, two more reasons for finding time and space for less. Happy camping!

Night sky photograph by Dennis Keeley, from the Cerro Alto camp site in Atascadero. 

The floor, moonlit, the moon behind you, is not enclosed by walls; a patch of sky is hidden by distant trees. But a patch of floor is itself hidden by the sky’s legs, standing on it, and this cannot be the opportunity for useless thoughts.

The Legs of the Sky by René Magritte translated by Jo Levy

On the Road

Left: Rumi Mahmood showing off his newest knife and cooking accessory. Right: Mario Rodriguez with his mother's molcajete. Photo by Ann Cutting.

"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."

Jonathan Swift

For the next few weeks, I return to my favorite of all activities--urban food foraging--to remind myself of the extraordinary delights that can be partaken by entering fully and with energy into the great sprawling complex of our Los Angeles food culture. To begin my travels, I checked in with two home chefs, Mario Rodriguez and Rumi Mahmood, whose skills in the creation of great food are well beyond the norm.

Mario is a food ingredient maven, rarely entering any community without “eyes on the side of his head” --the quintessential hunter-gatherer looking for something interesting, authentic, and unknown. He has deconstructed multiple varieties of sausages, red beans, and the dried shrimp made for an Easter-time favorite, Tortitas de Camarón.

And every year in December, he hosts what might be the most rarified tamale making session known and invites his friend and well known chef David Féau to join him. Their experiments include duck confit tamales with foie gras enriched masa along with Piccolo Fiore Al Tartufo cheese filled tamales surrounded by truffle infused masa.

Mario knows that the baker at Panaderia Delicia in Highland Park is good because he learned from a brother, the long-time baker at Dos Aguilas, on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles. How? Because Mario recognized a similar baking style and quality of their pan dulce apple empanadas.

Rumi, a Bangladeshi native, experienced a number of cultures as a child and young teen because of his father’s career as a diplomat. After a short posting in Manila, where Rumi attended an American International School, his parents sent him to live with his older, college bound brother in St. Louis to continue his high school education. Necessity being the mother of invention, Rumi figured out how to recreate the family’s dishes. He has since moved well beyond these first dishes in expertise and imagination. A good friend and very fine chef, Onil Chibàs, first introduced me to Rumi and I have been a very fortunate guest at his table more than once.

"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart."

Cesar Chavez

The common table is a favorite metaphor as it means so much of value to me: gathering, sharing, tasting, learning. This short post is an invitation to us all to enter the cooking and eating traditions that are so amply represented in our community’s common table, but unknown to us. The list is long and somewhat rambling, reflecting a desire for what I call intentional wanderings.

Join me if you wish and let me know how you have fared. And if you have some favorite spots, don't hesitate to share them with us all.  

Back in a month!

Your Urban Forager

Map of markets and food resources from Mario and Rumi. Illustration by Simone Rein

1. Best Buy Meat - 7108 Crenshaw Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90043
2. Bhanu Indian Spices - 7246 Rosemead Blvd, San Gabriel, CA 91775
3. Claro's Deli - 19 E Huntington Dr, Arcadia, CA 91006
4. Deshi Restaurant and Groceries - 3723 W 3rd St, Los Angeles, CA 90020
5. Expression Oaxaquena - 3301 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019
6. Gardena Marukai - 1740 Artesia Blvd, Gardena, CA 90248
7. India Food and Spices - 2221 Huntington Dr, Duarte, CA 91010
8. La Espanola Harbor City - 25020 Doble Ave, Harbor City, CA 90710
9. La Princesita Tortilleria - 3432 East Cesar E Chavez Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90063
10. Little Tokyo Marukai - 123 Astronaut E S Onizuka St #105, Los Angeles, CA 90012
11. Los Cinco Puntos - 3300 East Cesar E Chavez Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90063
12. Panaderia Delicias - 5567 N Figueroa St, Highland Park, CA 90042
13. Panaderia Dos Aguilás - 5945 Whittier Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90022
14. Papa Cristo's - 2771 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90006
15. Rincon Argentino - 1375 E Colorado St, Glendale, CA 91205
16. Schreiner's - 3417 Ocean View Blvd, Glendale, CA 91208
17. Spain Restaurant Los Angeles - 1866 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026
18. Super A - 5250 York Blvd, Highland Park, CA 90042
19. Super King Market - 2260 Lincoln Ave, Altadena, CA 91001
20. The Mercado - 3425 E 1st St, Los Angeles, CA 90063
21. The Punjab Store - 1300 E Main St #101, Alhambra, CA 91801
22. The Truffle Brothers - 4073 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018

Mario shopping at The El Mercado De Los Angeles. Photo by Ann Cutting.

Rumi in his kitchen. Photo by Ann Cutting.

Comfort Food Redux – A Field Report

“Pastrami was our madeleine.”

Marilyn Brass, cook and cookbook author of Baking with the Brass Sisters.

At what point do we identify something as comfort food, and what makes it so?

By definition, comfort food is designed to trigger memories that take us to a time of safety and familiarity, nourishing both body and spirit.

But for me, fortunate inhabitant of the vast county of Los Angeles, comfort food is continuously re-defined expansively and often surprisingly so as one of the more exquisite and tangible consequences of immigration.

Eating places are embedded in neighborhoods; some of these venture out into more mainstream communities, followed or led by the food suppliers--from corner stores to super markets--specializing in  particular ingredients that create a sense of comfort and by extension home.

In my mind and heart, the idea of comfort food is not a fixed memory of a particular dish such as my grandmother’s schav, a cold sorrel soup that provided such relief on a hot Chicago summer’s day. Any taste experience, no matter what the source or time frame, can land easily in my comfort food column.

I wondered why some of us can make the psychic and palate leap from Cream of Wheat to congee, from bologna to andouille -- and some cannot? There is mounting understanding that fear of anything new--food neophobia--is influenced by genetics and early survival instincts. "Avoid the untried as it is probably dangerous." And then there is the middle of the arc, those who moderate somewhere between Jonathan Gold and the folks who eat nothing more than buttered noodles. For the somewhat cautious, but willing to place toe in the water before swimming, this week’s post is dedicated to you.

An excerpt from a Finnish study on pickiness (food neophobia), which gives you an idea of how involved this subject is.

Back to the Beginner’s Mind and the Story of the Spider

"Too much comfort is like a spider whose web is both a home and a trap.”

Hirokazu Kosaka

And so, I push myself into food markets where 90 percent of what I see is a mystery. In a recent foraging expedition, my puzzled face became an invitation for acts of kindness and welcome in every store I entered. Without fail, I was approached by a variation on the Nona/Grandma, whose knowledge of a particular food culture was as deep as her desire to teach. As an enthusiastic learner, I was ready for any tidbit that came my way.

I learned that:

• Masa made on the premises is better than the dried packaged stuff.
• To make a better salsa, it is best to blacken the jalapenos first.
• A salsa can be made mild, medium or scorching depending upon the ratio of chilies to tomatoes and onions.
• The pre-made masalas are not as good as making a masala from whole spices that roasted first and then ground.
• Indian stores are treasure troves of choices for ghee (clarified butter), lentils and chai.
• Certain brands of oyster sauce are exceedingly better than others. (I have the good stuff now.)
• The mystery greens in Asian markets are used to flavor soups and stews or can be stir fried. When very young, they can be eaten uncooked in a dressed salad.

In so many cases, there is the similar food “cousin” that acts as a bridge to the unfamiliar ingredient.

The sweet, Chinese sausage so much like pepperoni (but even more delicious); bitter greens that are interchangeable with kale or arugula; a fat slice of Oaxacan egg-infused bread spread with butter and sugar that is equivalent to a brioche; a tiny dollop of tamarind paste that could double as dried apricots or plums and adds umami to a chicken marinade or baked winter squash.

My pantry is now bulging with new ingredients after a month of foraging. I have gorgeous saffron and a small package of tamarind paste purchased from the Punjab Grocery; smoky colored cellophane noodles made out of sweet potato, delicate chrysanthemum greens and oyster sauce from 168 Market; and from La Mayordomia, a bottle-green colored bowl-shaped mortar designed for grinding chiles. 

Marina Lopez at La Mayordomia buying family feast ingredients; chorizo and morcilla. Her husband was carrying a 10-pound bag of fresh masa. On the spot, she invited me to come and help cook and learn. I plan to. I am holding the packaged tortillas – wrong!

Clerk at Punjab grocery who gave me a tour of all of the spice variations;, whole, ground, and already combined into pre-packaged masalas. He advocated for homemade.

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From left to right: The beautiful vegetables at 168 are impossible to resist: cucumbers, Japanese eggplant, zucchini and bottle gourd. Middle: Wrapped piloncillo at Mayordomio, a solid brown sugar that tastes delicious when grated over hot milk or toast. Right: Jack fruit looking disturbingly like beached sea lions at 168 have no food cousin. Therefore they are challenging, even to me.

Baby Steps

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Two young brothers make one of the quintessentially comforting breakfasts of all time, buttered bread and chocolate milk in François Truffaut's film, Small Change. 

To make the move to the unknown irresistible, I turn now to a sampling of children’s comfort foods from around the world. Predictably, they are amply represented by the trifecta of starch, fat and sweet, and nearly all of them depend upon a slice of something to hold the yum. After a sampling by two tasters, the hands down favorite was from Spain --toast with broiled olive oil, chocolate and salt--followed closely by a family favorite of mine, peanut butter sprinkled generously with sugar and then broiled to a caramelized deliciousness.

Next time, we go swimming into more challenging waters. Enjoy!

Nutella on bread. Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

Various comfort toasts. Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

Cousins, Learning Together and Extending Welcome: Comfort Food Revisited

Far right: Photo by Dennis Keeley.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. 

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Recently I have been carried back to my family’s past by an unexpected connection from a possibly long-lost relative living in London. We spoke by phone, attempting to retie the threads that have been loosened by time, war and relocation. For both of our sakes, I pulled out a large and unruly pile of family photographs, interleaving the 20th and 21st centuries, and allowing me to recognize a fleeting resemblance among many of us. The most striking is what appears to be an engagement picture of my grandparents, rumored to be first, second or maybe third (is there such a thing?) cousins.  They appear to be shaking hands in a form of chaste romanticism. They both own the full lips that are a part of my daughter’s beauty. The strong features that contributed to my grandfather’s dandy handsomeness and a self-conscious homeliness in my grandmother are there as well. Similar, but different; their roots in a common parentage a generation or so prior, and then diverging.

And with this idea of similar, but different--the reinforcing and effacing of distinguishing characteristics-- my thoughts turn to the focus of so many of my considerations, food. Today’s post is propelled by the end game of encouraging all of us to take on the mantle of food explorer and to wade into unfamiliar waters. But, never fear; I have provided three sturdy guides to motivate and encourage.

The comfort of the familiar as surprising cousin to the unknown.

The comfort of community and learning together.

The comfort of welcome.

Illustrations by Simone Rein.

Food Cousins: The Origins of Fish Sauce

Ketchup and Fish Sauce are surprising food cousins. Fish sauce made its first appearance more than 500 years ago when sailors from Fujian Province in China transported barrels of the flavoring with them to ports near and far. For some reason, British sailors, who usually favored  the bland and boring, developed a taste for this pungent sauce when they arrived in Southeast Asia in the 1600’s. Soon thereafter, they began exporting it home, where its transformation into today’s most ubiquitous condiment--ketchup--began.

Ke-tchup Etymology and History – an abbreviated version

Ke-tchup/Fish Sauce              Vietnamese Nuoc Cham Fish Sauce              Thai Naam Pla Fish Sauce

• Tchup =  Hokkien for sauce
• Originated in Fujian Province, China
• Fujian settlers take ke-tchup to Indonesia, Siam, and Malaysia and points beyond
• Exported to Britain
• Mushrooms added
• Tomatoes added
• Anchovies and mushrooms dropped
• Sugar added for preservation

Perhaps more important, is the consideration of fish sauce as your friend and reliable condiment in the kitchen. For this, we turn to its deconstruction: it is made up primarily of anchovies fermented by salt and time. I offer you three recipes that are given verve and delight by this flavor profile of salty, fishy umami: Caesar dressing, Italian Meatballs and Vietnamese Chicken with Cucumber Pickles and Fried Shallot. This collection represents the wide-ranging cultures of Mexico, Italy and Vietnam, proof of fish sauce’s versatility. And as a bonus, there is Mujetdereh, an Armenian soup/stew. Its connection to the others is revealed through the recipe.

Learning Together

Many hands make light work.

John Heywood (c. 1497 – c. 1580), English poet and playwright

How we first experienced food can be a strong indicator of what level of comfort we now feel in the kitchen.

There are the self-taught “survivalists,” whose developing knowledge is a defense against their family’s uninspiring to inedible fare. Yet, many others can point to food mentors--a grandma, nona, bubbe or aunt--who welcomed the emerging cook into their kitchens.

From the author's notebook learning to use banana leaves and squash blossoms as tamale wrappers. 

My husband’s proficiency with pie baking traces its beginnings to his Aunt Beanie’s instruction. These techniques, skill-based and often requiring time and repetition, also lend themselves to communal work--the creation of food as quilting bee or barn raising--an added benefit in my mind.

Barn raising from the film, Witness.

Lately, I have been insinuating myself into a number of food mentors homes where we cook side by side. I have learned that what matters more than precision with ingredients is understanding technique. My growing confidence has led me to transfer these skills to other food lexicons, much like learning a foreign language lends proficiency with others.

Rumi Mahmoud has taught me patience while cooking. “A very important thing in Indian cooking is to braise the spices; otherwise they are very raw tasting. Test by taste and color and never add water until the flavors are consolidated.”

Right: Photo by Sally Krueger Wyman

Chef Francesca Mallus has taught me about different characteristics of pasta dough and which works for filled and unfilled versions.  Pasta, like jam making, has grabbed me through its gorgeous simplicity (salt, water, flour, and sometimes eggs) and its unending sculptural variations.

Chef Steve Brown would answer my question, “Is it done?” with the answer, “I don’t know. Why don’t you go check?” In other words, use senses as a guide more so than time.  

Extending Welcome

Armenian proverb

Last, but definitely not least are the circumstances that allow us to try something new. For those of us with a cooking mentor, we already know that food making is a source of nourishment for body and soul. But for others without this history, holding the metaphoric hand of a friendly host who demonstrates love through care is hands down the best way to feel safe enough to try something new.

The Pattern Language of Soup

Travelling overseas for a few days captures the invisible—the very structure of our lives made visible by the sheer displacement of one pattern with another. My internal clock is wrestling with an eight-hour time change but curiosity and the compression of a short, few days’ visit to Paris force my body to move when I should be tucked in. And without much conscious thought, my traveling companion and I are eating the French way--simple bread, butter, cheese, coffee in the morning; an expansive lunch with wine; more cheese, bread, fruit and paté for late dinner. Staying in an apartment in  the 13th Arrondissement adds another layer of easy familiarity. This is a neighborhood filled with more local inhabitants than tourists, and so the bakery is a bakery without the frills of a café au lait on the side. In the morning, we take our warm packages of pain traditionnel and brioche home. We remember in the evening to buy another loaf and carry it home, just like so many other folk—a common silhouette for day’s end.

The Pattern of Breakfast, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3

The nature of patterns is made even more explicit by Pattern Language, a homey looking book first published in 1977 by Christopher Alexander and colleagues as a guide to considerations of architectural planning that go well beyond a single edifice. In a vast and organized list, they break down planning into 253 considerations that place built structure within the syntax of community and personal habit. There is a utopian sense about the list, as it urges us to consider ideas made real through the built environment:

A Pattern Language

10. Magic of the City

28. Eccentric Nucleus

40. Old People Everywhere

46. Market of Many Shops

63. Dancing in the Streets

107. Wings of Light

The book is a liberating kit of breathtakingly thoughtful parts, allowing even the novice to pay attention to architectural elements that are often invisible, but do so much to shape our sense of well-being.

There appears to be a natural impulse toward pattern that holds a gentle and persistent presence even in the midst of one of our most distracting contexts, the city. 

Parisian vegetables placed carefully in rows--the pattern of visual repetition.

Grandson Alex asleep with his red boots toothbrush holder and Little Golden Book of Daddy Stories--the pattern of habit.

Luxembourg Gardens--the pattern of public and private spaces. Photo on the left by Noriko Gamblin.

At home on the weekends, whenever possible, I cook for the week. This is different than what my time pressed parents did--making a raft of casseroles to be frozen and stored. Before leaving for work, my mother removed one such block of potential nutrition to defrost for the day. By evening, we did enjoy something relatively healthy and often good tasting along with salad and hot bread: Sunset Magazine’s Western Meal in One, my dad’s Black Bean Soup and the provenance unknown “Swedish” Meatballs.

My pattern is to create recipe building blocks similar to Pattern Language’s kit of parts to encourage us to eat well and deliciously for the week. These are made as “instant” food to be used when needed and a counter to the sense of ennui that leads us all to the ready-made.

Above, a package of freshly grated cheese at the ready. Below, a salad with roasted almonds. Photo by Ann Cutting.

I roast almonds to be chopped into salads or added to hot cereal. I bake muffins or a quick bread as well as my go to bread for the week, the 21-Hour Boule often served with melted cheese in the morning or in the evening after a long day. I often make crème fraiche or Goat’s Cheese requiring only a bit of planning and barely any hands-on time. And I wash and dry many, many vegetables so that the idea of salad means a simple meditative act of tearing lettuce and chopping a bit of something.

Without fail, in the fall and winter, I make soup—the king or queen of what I call the Pattern Recipe.

• Melt a generous knob of butter or a tablespoon of olive oil in a large pot
• Caramelize onions with salt and seasonings (perhaps a bit of sugar for extra sweetness)
• Add vegetables
• Add broth
• Cook for awhile
• Blend
• Serve with crème fraîche or sour cream or pesto 

The challenge of capturing pattern as a lifestyle is amply displayed by my internet search --over ten pages of assistance and exhortations. This is the tenth page on the subject.

My suggestion is less complicated-and tasty too. Make soup! Here to help you on your way is the “Pattern Language of Soup” with its many kits of parts. Till next time.  

72 Small Seasons —72 Small Celebrations

A bright autumn moon…

         in the shadow of

         each grass

An insect chirping

                                             Issa

Between last week and this, we have finally entered Pasadena’s fall equinox, decidedly later than the actual date of September 22nd. The welcome dip in temperature by more than 30 degrees, the dampness turning to drizzle and then to rain, the change in light from blinding to oblique, all of which culminates in Halloween.

Halloween, the morning after at the Callow's. Photo by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

I contend that October 31st should be our new equinox—a later date with a nod to our new normal. Hotter, longer summers and a feeling of hosanna when the air turns dewy.

We have been fooled before, a cool day here and there, only to be disappointed by another week of heat-stroke inducing temperatures. But now we are in it for the long haul and my favorite time of year, fall.

Photos of Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden in Pasadena by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

In Japan, a country known for a depth of observation and celebration of the physical world, there are 72 micro-seasons -- Shichijuni-kou 七十二候 -- aligned to earlier customs and patterns that fit neatly into 24 sub-sections. These 72 are so much more fulsome than our miserly four seasons, dependent more upon haiku-like observations of phenomena than an inflexible calendar date.

Azola Plant at the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden in Pasadena. Photo by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

And there is a slower, almost imperceptible slide into each next stage.These delineations inaugurating the Fall equinox and ending with the beginning of Winter are felt as well as visualized:

Thunder ceases

Insects hole up underground

Wild geese return

Crickets chirp around the door

Light rains sometimes fall

Maple leaves and ivy turn yellow

I searched and found my mother’s worn and well used book of Japanese Haiku, containing poems that track in four short lines of verse and metered syllables the same subtle journey of the year’s unfolding.

Bold brash Autumn blast

         blundered into

         the bamboos…

Then the grove fell still

                                                      Basho

November sunrise…

         Uncertain the storks

         still stand…

Bare sticks in water

                                             Kakei                                   

Inspired by this poetic sense filled calendar, I have created my own micro-seasons for summer’s last gasp and the relief of fall. Food, as usual, takes a central role.

The Urban Forager’s Suggested Micro-Seasons, with apologies to the elegance of the Haiku form.

Berry fruit jam

     A distant memory…

Marmalade returns!

Photos of jams by Ann Cutting. Jamtone ©2017, All rights reserved.

Quick breads of overripe fruit 

      Persimmons become pulp

as we forget again…

Photo by Ann Cutting.

Caramel, caramel, caramel

     and that apple

stickiness lingers…

Grandchild Alex at preschool about to try his first caramel apple. 

Night darkens early…

     Walk quickly home

Skulls are everywhere

Annual skull cake baking, a Halloween tradition, with grandson Anthony.

Too many pomegranates!

         harden in a bowl…

Strange tools sometimes

Table set for Halloween dinner. 

And

Long walking, slow cooking

     Cold days…

Warming bowls in hand

Vegetable stock on its way. Photo by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

The Tea House at the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden. Photo by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

Another delight in dividing our year into 72 micro seasons is the explicit reminder to stop and notice as a form of open-ended codifying of experience. If there are 72 moments to collectively remark upon, my guess is that some of them are quite intimate in scope.

A case in point was a recent walk post-Halloween to record my neighborhood’s response to this celebration of night, identity change and wholesale gorging. Instead of documenting squashed pumpkins and faux grave yards, I participated in a completely satisfying micro-drama unfolding as three neighbors and I helped reunite Molly, the dog, with her owner. One woman held the goofball on a leash; the other posted a notice on our neighborhood blog and called animal control. I intercepted a worried looking woman walk/running down the street by yelling out, “Is that your dog?”  just as animal control arrived.

And so, I end with one last micro-season notation that has resonance for the entire year without the brevity of the Haiku form.

“Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life must grow.”

Jane Jacobs, Tireless activist and advocate for the value of urban life.

And the recipes this week?  Warming, seasonal delights:

Christiana's Chocolate Beet Cake

Quick Persimmon Bread

Citrus Marmalade

And many, many uses of pomegranate besides covering yourself in a plastic table cloth and eating the seeds.

And one last image...echoes of Edgar Allan Poe. Photo by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

A Seasonal Guide to Slowing

Many years ago, the artist Tim Hawkinson occupied the entire gallery space at Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts, including the little used storage closet in the rear of the gallery. He brushed latex onto its lozenge-shaped black interior and inflated a giant balloon in the main gallery space, where it wheezed to its fullness via a homely, visible pump and then deflated slightly. Hawkinson’s work has always been the apex of transparency, as it illuminates the actual gears and levers of how something works.  And yet his work remains magical, maybe because we are privy to something never seen or thought of before.

Tim Hawkinson, Spin Sink (1 Rev./100 Years) (1995) Gears, metal, plywood, foam, plastic, corduroy, toy motor.

He even tried his hand at visualizing time through a series of wheels, the first turning maniacally on a tiny gear train at 1400 rpm, the last on a gear train so large that its rotation would not be completed within our lifetimes – 100 years or so. The wheels turning at different speeds, fast to imperceptibly slow, reminded me that a great deal of activity or progress is not visible. There is a form of hidden momentum in slow moving change that hovers somewhere in the background. The thought often calmed me when I felt overwhelmed by the relentless demands of running a non-profit.

As we enter the holiday season, I have noticed two schools of coping as the wheel of requirements begin to spin merrily and madly. The first is to soldier on, the most competent of us having organized our gift purchases, e-cards, food ideas and party planning well before we are safely out of the extended heat spell called Summer/Early Fall. The other school withdraws, going out of town, eating take out Chinese, ignoring the whole thing altogether. I find this latter group quite self-disciplined, as the reminders of our next big seasonal milestone are everywhere.

Little Tokyo Window

South Pasadena Street Sign

Ubiquitous Orange Table Setting. Photo by Jeanette Stramat

Today’s post is an attempt to moderate between a seasonal speed that cannot be sustained (or at least enjoyed) and complete stasis. The recipes are all ones that require very little “active time.” Rather, they simmer, roast, pickle or separate into curds and whey while you are otherwise occupied and sometimes happily tucked in, dreaming.

Goat Cheese, with thanks to the Institute of Domestic Technology for its many doors to food exploration. 

Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese Sauce

Lisa’s Famous Turkey Breast

Margie’s Cucumber Pickles

But First--What We Know About How We Spend Our Time, with Thanks to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

What an amazing site this is for data geeks like me! It identifies how we as Americans spend our time. From what I can see of the 2016 data, we spend a good deal of time on sleeping/personal care and working. Coming up a distant third is recreation, with screen time our most consistent recreational pal.

Household Activities in 2016

"Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time (2.7 hours per day), accounting for just over half of leisure time, on average, for those ages 15 and over. The amount of time people spent watching TV varied by age. Those ages 15 to 44 spent the least amount of time watching TV, averaging around 2.0 hours per day, and those ages 65 and over spent the most time watching TV, averaging over 4.0 hours per day." Bureau of Labor Statistics

While I admire precision in classifications, I disagree with the notion that housekeeping (which includes cooking) should remain a separate category from those of self-care or recreation. I make my case below:

A “Two-Fer” is so Much More Fulfilling than Multi-Tasking

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”

William Morris

Going regularly to your local Farmers Market expands the idea of required task into recreation and self-care. If in a slo-mo frame of mind, I allow all manner of conversations and connection. There is a sense of a commons engendered by consistency of relationships between buyer and seller, neighbors and friends, and even the vaguely familiar faces of the regulars.

16th century Spanish market.

 For Alex, the four-year old grandson and cook in training, there is an emerging respect for food. He is learning to handle more fragile produce carefully, and asks before he touches.
 
There is the sense that despite slightly higher costs, you are actively supporting local farmers and ethical farming practices, and sustaining a variety of food types and sources. (And as the food is fresher, it lasts longer and less is wasted.)
 
As the grower is often there, you can find out what an unknown product is for. They are happy to teach.
 
And did I mention quality and taste?
 
Something must be working, as farmer’s markets now number more than 8,000 nationally, up from 2,000 in 1994.

Alex then 3 at the Pasadena Saturday Farmers Market, enjoying the entertainment.

Anna Thomas and Meanwhile Cooking

In her twenties, Anna Thomas had the hubris to write a cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure, while in film school at UCLA. Her dual life, one of screenwriter and faculty member at the American Film Institute, the other as prolific cookbook writer is proof of her prodigious energy and, for the rest of us mortals, the human necessity to move with some regularity from head to hand work.

Anna Thomas' first cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure.

“…a friend of mine calls this ’meanwhile cooking.’ Get up and go to your kitchen, and cut a few vegetables to put into the pot and do whatever, to start it cooking. Meanwhile, as it is simmering, you can answer a few emails — and you feel refreshed. You are only doing one thing at a time, but you vary your routine. You are not looking at a screen. You are doing something tactile and pleasant and it brings you back to yourself. It is a great kind of experience to work into your life.” 

Anna Thomas

Anna Thomas beginning her Fuyu Persimmon Salsa in my kitchen. (The persimmons were “foraged” from her neighbor’s tree.)

Try Fail Succeed

“If you grow up with cooking, it is like a language. It is immersion. It is part of the texture of your life.” 

Anna Thomas

Surprisingly, using “convenience” foods saves only a negligible amount of time when compared to a meal cooked from scratch. The barrier to home cooking, it seems, has more to do with a lack of confidence leading to a rigid adherence to a recipe rather than a fluency that comes from understanding interchangeable flavors and basic techniques.

Instead of thinking of recipes as open ended guides, we shackle ourselves to lists of ingredients requiring yet another dash to the store. Try looking in your refrigerator or pantry for a flavor cousin for inspiration: chard for spinach, shallot for onion, carrots for parsnips, Parmesan for Manchego.

You will waste less food and begin your own recipes, made from a bit of confidence and what you have on hand. At times, the food will be less than sterling. So be it. As we all know, meals are ephemeral at their best or worst.

Average Hands-On Dinner Time, From a favorite book in my library, Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century.

For more recipes that are based on scraps and ingenuity, I suggest from the Urban Forager Archives, Refrigerator Foraging as Micro-Activism and The Pattern Language of Soup.

Sweet Dreams!

Handwork

While growing up in sunny California I experienced the drama of the seasons by reading the literature of places in the world where the cold forced a quasi-hibernation. In my imagined world, all outdoor work ceased other than to feed those ever present horses by holding on with one hand to a rope tied securely between home and barn while carrying a pail of oats in the other. The world turned white; everything growing was buried, but inside the cottage all was snug and dry.

Left: Heidi with the Alm Uncle; Right: Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters

I chose to imagine an industrious scene where handwork was the order of the season. My mind’s eye summoned Heidi rather than Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters. This was the season of sweater knitting, blade sharpening, net and clothes mending, and carving--activities that ranged from maintenance to creative expression and, as I believed, kept those snug inhabitants from going stir crazy. I love the rhythm of seasonally based tasks. But here in Southern California the structure of what we do and when we do it is at times self-imposed. There are many who maintain a practice of handwork even while the sun is shining and the coldest temperature is in the high 40’s.

hand·work

ˈhan(d)wərk/

noun

1.     work done with the hands.

What a broad definition! We could easily identify a bundle of sub-categories, from fine art to bean counting. For this week’s post, I winnow down the description to those that straddle creative expressiveness and utility. And within the question of utility, a whole nesting doll set of questions around efficiency and ethics.

Top right: photo by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

Ophelia Vallecillo making masa.

Frau Fiber’s activity archive. Craft and Folk Art Museum, 2013 | Carole Frances Lung

We Can Be Stewards 

Frau Fiber, seamstress and artist 

Carole Frances Lung was born in San Francisco and grew up in Huntington Beach of working class parents with little resources for the kind of clothing that would allow her to fit the teen culture requirements of a fairly affluent area. So Carole took to a sewing machine at the age of 11, making most of her clothes, and in doing so, entered a lifetime of investigating the meaning and value of labor, first through the “lived experience in the fashion industry sitting behind a sewing machine for hours and having my job off-shored in the early aughts,” and now, as director of a storefront studio/hive of activity, The Institute 4 Labor Generosity and Uniforms in Long Beach, its name a tribute to the International Women’s Garment Union—the ILGWU.

The Institute and her alternative identity, Frau Fiber, grew out of Carole’s experience hosting a store front shop in graduate school at the Bauhaus University of Art and Design in Weimer, Germany. Frau Fiber and Carole, despite distances of geography and culture, represent a similar commitment to independence from consumerism. “They” host the Sewing Rebellion, a monthly participatory mend and making event where an “army” of faux fraus are inducted into the service of handwork through a series of workshops.

Frau Fiber at her sewing table with the Wheel of Wages

Carole/Frau Fiber leads with humor but finishes with something more lasting. Her more recent ventures are a series of “tailor-made” pop-up shops, where customers bring garments for altering or repair. Displayed prominently in the shop is the Wheel of Wages. With a quick spin, a customer can determine the hourly payment for the work completed, ranging from Cambodia’s 45 cents to France’s $11.03. 

When a friend and I met her at her recent pop-up hosted by Santa Monica’s Camera Obscura Art Lab as an alternative to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Frau Fiber was tackling the seam of a well-worn costume owned by one of her customers. Taking out the old seam is a labor intensive process that assures a flatter finish. The time invested in this action was certainly more costly than the garment itself. But this was not the point. Behind her, a blackboard of customer orders indicated that this performance piece had transitioned into service for the community.

Image of peach from Ted Talk by Nikiko Masumoto

Mas Masumoto, farmer and writer 

I met Mas more than 10 years ago at his farm in Del Rey, California. Even more than the grand sweep of the 80 acre farm, I remember his removing peaches from the branches of the trees. It was April, when the peaches were hard, greenish-yellow in color, and the size of golf balls. In other words, not ready to be picked. All of them looked the same to me, and it seemed wasteful to lose so many.  He explained that too many peaches on the branch would stress the tree and the quality of the remaining fruit. A choice had to be made: fewer peaches in order to grow exquisitely delicious fruit.

Mas Masumoto, farmer and writer

This story leads me to consider even more metaphoric and endless possibilities in Mas’ fertile mind and farm. He has taken the lessons learned from his and his family’s decision to save their fussy, hard to grow heirloom peach trees as a form of reverse engineering.

 “What would it mean if I maintained these trees? What would I need to do?” The answers have been compelling and meaningful enough that Mas and Marcy’s daughter Nikiko has returned to the farm from Berkeley with a degree in Women and Gender Studies. The context of the family farm holds enormous possibilities to test her values. “If she wanted to be the most radical, she would come back to one of the most conservative, most patriarchal of cultures and start to carve out a role for herself as revolutionary.”

One such action is the farm’s Adopt-a-Tree program. It, too, began as a way to finance the much more expensive heirloom peach cultivation and harvesting and has bloomed (sorry) into a powerful method for bridging the gap between consumer and farmer.  “They (the adopters) have to decide, is this the time to pick this peach? It is no longer a commodity exchange. One tree can yield 300 to 400 lbs. of fruit. And it opens the door to the whole relationship and network around food, how food is grown and shared.”

Tynesha Daniels, student and emerging poet  

A final example of stewardship was engendered by a young student’s deep immersion with nature through the Children Investigate the Environment program.  As I hike through Eaton and Las Flores Canyons, I am convinced I see former participants, now adults, continuing to enter nature with confidence and joy.

Never mistake motion for action.

Ernest Hemingway

And so, there is an emerging meaning of choice in how we conduct our lives. I began with the question of handwork, with its implicit and very real inefficiencies, and end with a sense that there are more reasons to do what we do than efficiency and financial gain. What does it mean to do something against the grain? What is the risk both personal and practical? There are numerous and growing examples of individuals who “reverse engineer” around values instead of finances–and in doing so understand the need to develop a larger army of stewards, rather than anonymous consumers.

For the holiday season, I promise not to lecture and hector (even though the impulse is mighty). As always, I leave you with alternative gifts for now and for the upcoming seasons of your life.

Make time for a real visit with someone who matters to you.

Tend to something that is broken.

Visit and support the many handworkers among us.

Cook with a friend. Recipes can add to your forays into handwork.

And in the summer, eat a peach that has ripened on the tree. At first glance, it may seem to cost more, but it actually does not. The taste and the delight it brings are priceless.

Photos above by Ann Cutting

The Urban Forager will be on holiday hiatus until the first of the year, busily preparing the gifts of handwork. If anyone is interested in learning to make marmalade, let me know. Till 2018.

Legacy Part I

To move freely you must be deeply rooted.

Bella Lewitzky

I’ve learned that change is a process that happens over time. Sometimes it seems to lie dormant, then it emerges, then it seems to stop, then it seems that all of a sudden—there it is.

Sue Kujawa

Retired director of Mother’s Club, now Families Forward. From Why Do You Do What You Do?,

published by the Durfee Foundation

In August of 2017, Sumi Chang sold Europane--a beloved Pasadena bakery and community center. Years ago, Sumi baked our wedding cake and delivered it personally. She welcomed a newly retired friend of mine as a volunteer baker into her kitchen. I saw her sweep the crumbs off the floor after a particularly rambunctious group of toddlers left; she treated her staff with unfailing kindness. With seeming effortlessness, she created a common table for us all. As the first to create beautifully crafted pastry and bread in this area, she paved the way for an exuberant and growing generation of local food makers. When telling friends about her decision, I heard many variations of what I would describe as the sound of loss: a deep intake of breath, then “oh no”, "why?" and "are you sure?” 

Ships Coffee Shop in west Los Angeles, circa 1980

My 90-year-old mother speaks about the closing of Ship’s Coffee Shop as a form of psychic homelessness. For many years she went to this spot daily for oatmeal, coffee and toast. She has always been a socially adept loner--a person who needs interaction, but in small doses. The coffee shop hit all the buttons for her as it does for many of us.

I understand from her and from Sumi Chang and the Europane community that certain places own a greater part of our souls than we might realize.

This week’s post found its form through a series of conversations about legacy, primarily with food makers whose common thread is a deeply personal commitment to the art and craft of what they do. What do they consider to be their work’s legacy? What do they believed is non-negotiable and how do they plan to steward this legacy?

Ficus Tree Root, Huntington Tropical Garden, Pasadena, California. Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

A Tao of Legacy

As described by:

Julie Campoy, owner of Julienne Restaurant, San Marino, daughter of Julienne's founder, Sue Campoy

Sumi Chang, formerly of Europane Bakery, Pasadena

Zenobia Ivory, co-owner, Bonnie B’s Smokin’ BBQ Heaven, Pasadena

David Mas Masumoto, farmer and writer, Masumoto Farm, Del Rey

And Claire Peeps, Executive Director, The Durfee Foundation, Santa Monica

Top Line:  Zenobia Ivory, Claire Peeps, Bottom Line: Sumi Chang, and Julie with long time chef, Marcelino Dominguez. Photos of Zenobia and Claire by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

Passion is Transferable:

Very few had planned to enter the work that has become so closely identified with them. The confluence of family responsibilities or chance evolved over time into a sense of creative opportunity. Mas left his father’s farm for UC Berkeley as quickly as he could, knowing from hard work in the summers what farm life meant. Zenobia, a nurse and nursing instructor, agreed, along with her son Michael, to take on her family’s 45 years of barbeque making when her sister-in-law’s health failed. The Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco put an end to Julie’s promised management position at a large hotel in San Francisco.

So, I went home, I was sitting at that table and my mom said, “help that person,” and you know what? I never went back. I had to make 75 salmon in filos.

Julie Campoy

As an exchange student in Japan, I became interested in my family, in the small village where my grandparents came from and loved the farm.  And the irony, while there, I wanted to work with my family.

Mas Masumoto

Continuity  

In a sector known for its poorly paid, transient workforce, the opposite is true for these businesses. Marcelino Dominguez, head chef at Julienne’s has been there for 30 years followed by many others of 20, 15 and 10 years.  When selling her business, Sumi advocated first for her employees, describing their experience and skill as core to Europane’s ongoing legacy as much so as her recipes. She waited for buyers with enough business acumen to assure continuity in her staff's employment. Mas is moving from seasonal clusters of workers to a regular team of three to four people who can be guaranteed ongoing work with decent compensation.

All relate to their customer community with specificity and affection. During interviews with Sumi, Zenobia and Julie, we were stopped continuously by friendly regulars. These regulars have scoped out particular tables and days, are known by name and carry with them a sense of belonging that rivals some families.

This community supported us when we were in dire straits as a family. We grew up here, our roots are deep. It has supported us—we are very grateful. Never take anything for granted.

Julie Campoy

Julie with Norm, a Julienne regular.

Mas’ connections extend from his ongoing and personal relationships with chefs--most notably Alice Waters--to a growing legion of peach and nectarine adopters who commit to paying for the care of trees and then harvesting their bounty; and to a  wider distribution to organic retail stores. Despite its relative smallness, the Masamoto farm is building a new model for food that is grown and shared.

An authentic path is rarely straight

The tenets of business--efficiency, cost savings, scalability--are challenged by the expressed values of passion, the process of “organic” growth and investment in employees. Peaches are picked when ripe; crops are grown without fungicide; a sauce is on slow simmer; the pastry is rolled by hand; growth is restrained by the requirements of quality.

I never had a business plan, I never mapped out that we were going to farm organically – partly that is the joy of it--you are following your interest.

David Mas Masumoto

You know what? It’s the sauce, the barbeque sauce. We actually make our own sauce back in the kitchen. We don’t put it in a pressure cooker; we are literally standing over the stove with our own ingredients for five or six hours.

Zenobia Ivory

I am most proud of the employees. It is a collective effort and key to our reputation for quality and consistency.

Julie Campoy

Work ethic first and foremost, doing what is right, no short cuts, a sense of the community.

Julie Campoy 

Ficus tree root, Huntington Tropical Garden. Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

A Tao of Letting Go   

I often whisper to myself, “This farm is going to kill me.”

David Mas Masumoto

from Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land

I do think the organizations with sturdy legacy have a strong heart and culture. The people remaining still love and revere their former leadership.

Claire Peeps in speaking about her experience with nonprofit leadership transition

For many I spoke with, the entrance into their life’s passion was more kismet than intention, but the sense of stewarding legacy is deeply felt by all and is based on a number of considerations; How do I leave? Is there someone to carry the “basket”? Are the qualities and essence of my legacy worthwhile, transferable and therefore enduring?

Julie ensures the continuity of her mother’s legacy by recognizing and exemplifying values that read like the mission of a nonprofit. She is balancing the commitment to tradition with careful expansion and additions to the restaurant.

Julienne values on the wall of the office.

Mural of Bonnie B’s family members beginning third from the left: Clarence Henderson, Bonnie Henderson, Dr. Geller (stepfather to Bonnie and Clarence), Moms/Joy Henderson Geller (mother of Bonne and Clarence, grandmother of Michael). Photo by Sally Kreuger-Wyman.

Sumi Chang in her civilian clothes and her favorite tools of the trade from her Europane days.

Six months after the sale of Europane, I received a note from Sumi.

We are in Dalat Vietnam. What beautiful people. I am enjoying their smiles and hospitality. Dalat’s weather is cool and breezy. We are going to visit a flower farm and a coffee farm. We love this city.

Yes, I will give you any recipe you want. I would love to share one of my favorite recipes with my dearest customers. I appreciated so much their loyalty. Also, one of my favorite kitchen tools is a mini spatula. 

P.S. I will be back in PASADENA on Feb. 6

xo, Sumi

Nikiko and Mas Masumoto at the Masumoto farm, photo courtesy of Valley Public Radio.

And Mas is now redefining succession as partnership and transition with his daughter Nikiko, also a graduate of UC Berkeley who returned to the farm after being given the choice to leave. They are involved in a delicate dance of relationships, father/daughter, partner/boss. The legacy of the Masumoto family lies in an understanding that continuity means welcoming change. Mas’ father took a chance on his son’s commitment to farming organically. Mas is welcoming Nikiko’s understanding of newer platforms for communication. Together, they are searching a balance between the physical demands of farming organically with a desire for a rational workload.

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

 Zadie Smith

For this week’s post, I leave you with some tangible forms of legacy.

Sumi did make good on her promise and generously provided me with some of her earliest and most loved recipes: Pear Cake and Bread Pudding. 

For more cooking pleasures, Celebrating with Julienne by Sue Campoy with Julie Campoy

and The Perfect Peach by Marcy, Nikiko and David Mas Masumoto

For a completely satisfying read:

Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land by Mas Masumoto

And last of all, Peter Drucker’s groundbreaking article, What Businesses Can Learn from Nonprofits

Like father, like son--pie bakers John and Eric Callow.

Legacy Part II -- The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings. 

From The Real Work, a poem by Wendall Berry

leg‧a‧cy1 /ˈleɡəsi/ ●○○ noun (plural legacies)  1 something that happens or exists as a result of things that happened at an earlier time.

I have always visualized the conferring of legacy as handing over a metaphoric basket of values, stories or experiences from one generation to another. The basket is held for just a few moments by two sets of hands and then once again by one set, when both are assured that the transfer is complete.  In some cases, there is a physical connection remaining, something that links one to the other.

In my case, legacy is revealed through my stepmother’s sewing machine, a Singer Featherweight, weighing no more than five pounds. It carries with it powerful memories of Margie, who as a young woman saved and waited and finally bought something that she used and cared for most of her life. When she became too old to care for it herself, I received it. Simply opening its case releases a scent of old leather, reveals dryness of threads and bobbins and a perfectly tuned machine—essence of Margie. It holds so much more than itself.

Amelia holding her Grandfather’s clippers. Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

Amelia McDonald holds a pair of clippers in her hands, owned and used for years by her grandfather, who began his life in this part of the world as an itinerant citrus picker. The tool is surprisingly small--a little workhorse that survived and was passed down despite years of seasonal travel between Redlands and San Bernardino and beyond.

Citrus legacy, McDonald Farm. Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

Amelia began her career as a trial lawyer, but after 20 years, she was done. The link to her grandfather’s past as a citrus worker materialized after his death. 

“My family grew this farm. My grandfather’s family picked citrus from camp to camp without a penny to spare. He became a mechanic at Norton Air Force Base and was industrious and successful enough to buy his own home, which he left to me."

She and her husband were able to buy a small house on a 1.8 acre tract of land in Altadena from this inheritance. McDonald Farm has been in existence three short years, and is described as a work in progress. Amelia is well aware that her investment in citrus is driven by a sense of legacy rather than practicality, but she balances out this expense by growing four seasons of crops, producing eggs, and raising meat birds and goats.

For others, past experiences themselves can be a form of legacy. I see them as synaptic hooks—the small but sufficiently memorable experiences that accumulate to send us on a new path.

For Michael Martinez, the work he now finds himself immersed in began many years ago as a first time teacher in Florida. A student asked him how to grow a Cheeto, prompting him to develop a small school garden comprised of six raised beds. The garden became the focus of his school community and a source of pride for his students. They not only understood where food came from, but became active participants in its production through the cycle of composting to soil, seeds, plants, food and back to composting.

Michael Martinez

Returning to Los Angeles, Michael’s idea of “telling the story of food” to a larger community revolved around the cyclical creation of compost. He and a small “army” of bike riding friends picked up food scraps from restaurants and juice bars to create compost to give away or sell at local farmers’ markets. The income supported school gardens, the first being Merced Elementary in West Covina, where Michael was once a student. In the first few months, the “army” collected more than 30,000 scraps of food, but the model was unsustainable. “Burnout was inevitable and what we learned was that the riders providing this service and the people receiving compost were still disconnected.”

He framed a different question: “How do we empower and equip the community to take ownership of this material and not see it as waste or a disposable item, but as a resource?” Four years later, the idea has a name: LA Compost, Soil + People, and its big idea is played out through a model of community hubs, where composting is an additive and an essential part of the cycle of food development.

“Each hub reflects the community in which it is located, but they all serve the same purpose. They keep organics in the community and they create a shared space where individuals can come together to learn and ultimately be a part of something bigger than their individual selves.”

In the coming, year, LA Compost will open 10 more hubs.

“If your life's work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you're not thinking big enough.”

Wes Jackson, cofounder of The Land Institute

Beautiful vegetables growing in compost rich soil at the Elysian Valley Community Garden, one of LA Compost's hubs. 

Photo of the McDonald Farm. Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

My conversations with Amelia and Michael have led me to reconsider what I know about the characteristics and meaning of work and the connection to legacy. 

Photo by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

The idea of cost/benefit must include environmental sustainability. Amelia lives at her farm transporting her goods by electric golf cart to the Altadena farmer’s market less than one mile away. She teaches goat husbandry to 4H classes on site and conducts farm-to-table education and fundraising meals. A detailed ledger of expense and income is a necessary tool to understand and transform an “expensive hobby” into a business that is defined by the tenets of quality and ethical food production.

Growth as a requirement for success is no longer a given. L.A. Compost’s importance to others is additive. They do not manage the whole of anything; rather they add value to existing gardens. By ceding control, Michael can use resources more effectively and tailor what they do to each community hub. A new California state law, AB126, requires a phased in recycling of organic waste over the next few years. It is the stick to an idea that may be more fully embraced by the carrot of an engaged and growing community that understands the impact of turning the unwanted into something of value.

We control little, but through our choices of where we put our effort, we can inflect our idea of ourselves in small but crucial ways.

From An Absorbing Errand, by Janna Malamud Smith

For both Amelia and Michael, a memorable experience—a student’s question, the gift of a family farm—set them on a new path, one that diverged from more conventional careers as attorney and teacher.  And the particular endeavor they share—their participation in the emerging field of ethical food development—in turn bestows a legacy for future generations.

Charlotte McDonald standing on the compost pile. She is planting her own micro-garden of edible flowers and herbs and is a budding entomologist. 

And finally, a quote from one of my dad’s favorite writers:

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

From Working, an oral history by Studs Terkel

In the spirit of ethical food development, today’s food selections are purposely simple, constructed from a base ingredient that provides the beginning of many sources of nutrition and deliciousness, cream, masa and eggs. 

The variations come from leftover bits and pieces you can easily find in your refrigerator.  The cost savings from the creative use of your bits and pieces means more to invest in high quality, ethically produced ingredients.

The Unseen

When I was a young dancer, many, many years ago, I learned the well-known aphorism, “Don’t let them see you sweat.” In the ballet world, this is largely true. It is why I never sit too close to the stage. I, like many in the audience, want to allow myself a momentary suspension of disbelief: to imagine that this beauty emerges from magic, not grindingly, physical, relentless work.

As I dip my toe further into the world of food, cooks, chefs and purveyors, I am becoming more and more aware of the effort, care and experience behind the exquisite plate of deliciousness that I often devour in minutes. A growing media industry profiles the story of exceptional chefs, many of whom flame out in a few years. The gap between what is envisioned and what is possible is often too great to imagine or accept.

The back story is the front story in this week’s post. In this case, I discovered individuals who are able to balance the wobbly line between what is and what could be—lessons for us all.

A hike in Ojai

Early this year, shortly after the extraordinarily destructive Thomas Fire, Julia, a friend from Germany, and I travelled to Ojai. We were not there to gawk, as this was to be a restful few days planned well before the fires. We soldiered on, driving the back route that has always been my favored way into Ojai. In times past, this is a route to decompression, beginning in Santa Clarita, where highway 126 leads through California farm country and quiets even further at Santa Paula, where the 150 cuts off. But this year, the 150 was a moonscape: acres and acres of blackened trees, a wall or foundation, sometimes the only evidence of a home. The downtown area of Ojai was untouched. Other than the residual smell of smoke and the many banners expressing gratitude to the first responders, this epic story could be forgotten at least momentarily. 

Shelf Road Trail mini landslides, not visible unless we look carefully.

The Shelf Road Trail was open and despite the burn, offered the expansive, heart opening views that are Ojai. A small group of engineers and soils scientists from nearby Ventura were gathered at the trail’s mouth, assessing the damage and the potential danger of future rain storms. Julia and I had been looking out at the horizon and up at the sky, but not at our feet, where hopeful shoots of green were sprouting here and there through the bare earth. Dawn, one of the soil scientists, pointed out the various mini-slides and described the back story she carried as part of her deep knowledge. “Even though you think you see green stuff, there is a slide here a slide there. Our normal flow is loosened; our vegetation will never be the same again. It is a high risk for mud slides for seven years.” Our hike ended after a short mile, when the damage became increasingly noticeable.

This experience, while sobering, leaves me with a sense of gratitude to the people who choose to be extraordinarily aware and willing to see and act on what is hard to acknowledge. Dawn left us with an acceptable truth: “Stay on the trail please. We need these bits of green to grow and flourish.”

Mise en Place

This past week, I had the honor of watching one of our gifted East Side chefs Minh Phan prepare one of her signature dishes, porridge. I witnessed something far more layered and physically beautiful than any pre-conceived idea of this “homely dish.” The day began at Muir Ranch, a three-acre school garden located behind Muir High School in Pasadena. Minh wandered the rows of mustard greens, amaranth, fennel and chard, picking a few leaves or fronds of each. Her greatest find was the variegated leaves of geranium. Other than fennel, most of these “ingredients” seemed more at home in a vase than on the stove. I was wrong.

The next phase was Minh’s preparation of her mise en place. A quiet hour went by as she organized a food based still life that would challenge any Dutch Renaissance home maker. Along with her prepped ingredients, rose geranium pickled baby onions, Makrut lime compound butter and what she describes as Asian mirepoix—ginger, shallots and lemon grass—she placed at the ready edible flowers, vegetables and herbs, kumquats and habanero chilies, both as inspiration and reminder.

Minh Phan’s Mise en Place for Vegan Porridge. Photo by Ann Cutting.

Within the next hour or so, rice porridge was cooking slowly. Minh sources every ingredient with an eye to quality, saying, “People understand that a steak is worth $15, but to most a bowl of porridge –that’s hard.” But this food’s value is based on a commitment and ability to coax elusive and subtle flavors from personally foraged ingredients and carefully constructed mini-dishes. Minh describes her relationship to the food community--purveyors, makers and customers--as symbiotic: taking and giving back. She recently donated her time and food to a fundraiser for Muir Ranch. She frequents the Hollywood Market, as so many of her food suppliers from ranches and farms around Central and Southern California sell there regularly, including the source for so much of her inspiration, Koda Rice Farms. 

For those of us lucky enough to partake, Minh’s dishes are a form of exquisite alchemy--amaranth, so prevalent that it is considered by some a weed, becomes a delightfully light tempura and nettles, fennel and cilantro are blended with coconut milk for an earthy yet light green sauce.

The finished dish, “Vegan Porridge,” with pickled baby onions, negi (Japanese green onion) infused oil, green sauce of nettles, fennel, cilantro and coconut milk served with amaranth tempura –yum! Photo by Ann Cutting.

The Archeology of Mole

Benjamino Cano of Moles La Tia in East Los Angeles, mole maker for over 40 years and his El Pistachio mole. He cannot choose a favorite mole, saying they are like children, each different, but equally loved. Photos by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

And last, but certainly not least, is one of my most beloved food experiences and the inspiration for this post. Eating mole, a deceptively simple looking sauce originating in Pueblo and perfected in Oaxaca, is my idea of a beautiful journey filled with exciting discoveries. A typical mole is made up of more than 30 ingredients that somehow manage to remain distinctive and at the same time cohesive.

Some of the more than 30 ingredients in a mole. Photos by Sally Krueger-Wyman.

As I become more convinced that we live in one of the major food capitals in the world, I returned to Moles La Tia in East Los Angeles to deconstruct this dish with the help of chef Benjamino Cano and the restaurant’s long time manager, Alfonso Hererra.

Benjamino’s moles begin the night before. He toasts and soaks various chilies before grinding them along with seeds and nuts. There is broth, tortilla or bread, spices including cumin, and sometimes cinnamon infused chocolate for Mole Negro, considered the pinnacle of moles by many aficionados. I am a Pipianes type of gal, gladly trading the complexity of negro for the brightness and freshness of a pepian loaded mole. After about four hours of active work time, Benjamino’s Mole is done. He rotates making the various types on Moles La Tia's menu, to allow for time and for the tastes to meld. Day two or three is better than day one for mole.

Alfonso, who manages many of this family’s enterprises, is committed along with the owner to continuing mole despite its enormous time investment and consequent expense. The family runs a bakery and catering company, as tamales and other more quickly made food, help subsidize this true labor of love. During my visit, he insisted on treating me to one of his recommended moles, El Pistachio, a pistachio mole paired with grilled salmon. It was memorable enough to haunt me whenever my thoughts turn to mole.

My good friend and food making co-explorer, Desiree Zamorano and I made mole together, once. After eight hours and a champagne break, we were finished in more ways than one.

And to conclude --Is the Back Story the Magic?

I realize now, that knowing more about how something is formed creates its own kind of alchemy. There is something heroic and authentic in those who pursue complexity and challenge. Dawn watches out for those of us, who choose to live near some of the world's most dynamic mountain ranges. Minh leads us gently and persistently to consider the most humble growing things around us as a potential unlocked treasure and to honor and support the high-quality food makers in our state. And every day, in a simple dining room thanks to chef Benjamino, we can enjoy one of the world’s most rarified of foods. One taste and you know: it is magic. Thanks to you all.

 And for this week, instead of a recipe or two, I leave you with something equally delicious--a few moments from the revelatory film, In the Steps of Trisha Brown.

Our Springtime Ritual is Renewal

Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems.

Rainer Maria Rilke

This year, the confluence of Easter and Passover meant that many of us were gathered with family and friends, eating meals inspired both by metaphor and tradition. As someone who loves to cook, I re-entered my family’s heritage by beginning something we call “The Cousins Passover.” This tradition began over twenty-five years ago, and for the most part, my extended family and friends have met around a growing table every year. In the off years, like this one, I feel a sense of loss. For some reason, I kept track of the Seder dinner—what we served and who came—perhaps at first to critique the meal and as a way to improve upon it for the next year. These notes to myself changed over the years. They now tend to speak more about how it felt to be together and less about the food. The span of time chronicles our children’s maturation into adulthood and the aging and death of older generations.

Passover notes to myself.

Passover, Easter, and Ramadan are markers of early and late spring, physical and spiritual renewal, and connection. The Passover Seder is a particularly apt ritual for holding ideas in physical form. The food eaten is a vivid teacher as the contrast of salty and sweet, rich and bitter lead us through a series of emotions tied to one story of exodus. From a single family’s gathering around the symbols of exodus, the connection to other stories is seamless--an entry into larger communities and universal ideas.

The Seder plate’s symbolic foods: a lamb shank; sweet greens, bitter herbs--maror, a nut and fruit paste-haroset, and a boiled egg. Photos by Ann Cutting.

For this week’s post, I describe two such stories: The Conflict Kitchen and This Land, an extraordinary play written by Evangeline Ordaz and produced last year by the Company of Angels Theater.

Photo courtesy of The Conflict Kitchen.

The Conflict Kitchen, located in in Pittsburgh, was both restaurant and community organizing platform that served cuisine from countries “with which the United States is in conflict.” Its organizers understood how a common table’s comfort and intimacy could ease entry into discussions about countries, cultures, and people that are little known outside of polarizing rhetoric. Its restaurant served the cuisine of Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela, North Korea, Haudenosaunee or the Iroquois Confederacy, and Palestine.

Food is wrapped in colorful paper with the story of the maker, the culture, and the country.

Although the restaurant closed, the Conflict Kitchen plans to expand its educational work throughout the greater Pittsburgh region with the production of curriculum, performances, public events and publications in partnership with cultural institutions, community organizations, and schools.

Armando Molina, Artistic Director, Evangeline Ordaz, playwright, Company of Angels

This Land spans a 150-year period of stories emerging from four families. They all lived on a particular plot of Southern California land first known by the Native Americans who lived there--the Tongva, then Rancho La Tajauta, a Mexican land grant, and now Watts. The play shifts continuously between different time periods (the 1840’s, the 1940’s, the 1960’s, and the 1990’s) and in doing so, vividly describes the displacement, overlap, and intersection of these families through a montage of languages, characters, experience, and food.

“Stories can be epic and personal at the same time. This Land is the story of humanity. When we have these big conversations, we are not aware of historical context, but it informs how we relate to one other.

I have a close relationship with a family who I based some of the characters on. The food they eat was my introduction to Louisiana soul food. Louisiana had been under the Spanish crown and it went back and forth between the Spanish and French. Another connection between African-Americans and immigrant Latino cultures is that, as a result of oppression, they have experienced a great deal of poverty. So,they made do with what was thrown away by the rich--organ meat. We, Latinos eat chicharrones; African-Americans eat chitlins. I was sorting out the characters and food became a theme. What would we have in common with slight variations? At the end of the play, these cultures broke bread having a chitlin taco, Louisiana pot roast with prickly pear. Food captures culture.”

Evangeline Ordaz

In spring, there can be a sense of hopefulness; a sense of renewal after winter, after conflict. I leave you with recipes of the season and a a poem that captures where these ideas have left me, for this day, for this time. 

After the Winter

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves

     And against the morning’s white

The shivering birds beneath the eaves

     Have sheltered for the night,

We’ll turn our faces southward, love,

     Toward the summer isle

Where bamboos spire the shafted grove

     And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek the quiet hill

     Where towers the cotton tree,

And leaps the laughing crystal rill,

     And works the droning bee.

And we will build a cottage there

     Beside an open glade,

With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,

     And ferns that never fade.

Claude McKay

Mother's Day

My daughter Nori with her son Alex on his birth day.      Nori at 4 months with me. 

The most complex of all relationships is noted one day a year on Mother’s Day. In looking up its history, something stood out—a requirement by Anna Jarvis, the day’s originator, that “Mother’s should be a singular possessive for each family to honor its own mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world.”:

As a daughter and stepdaughter, mother and stepmother, and grandmother, I return today to Anna’s original non-commercialized intent. I was interested in culling from my neighbors and friends, a sense of their family food history through childhood recipes. This “simple” subject multiplied  into many—homemaking, siblings, family celebrations, and in some cases deep struggle. The fulcrum of all stories was the mother. Mine is too, as I navigated two intensely meaningful relationships, each quite different; and in my mother’s case challenging enough to compel an acceptance of inconsistency and evolution. My mother has never been my true north; this was my stepmother Margie's role—one she took up joyfully. But my mother’s own fragility has led me to an awareness that we all have lives that began and will extend well beyond our time as mothers and that nurturing can be found in many places. 

My mother and me at the beach, our favorite outing.                                    Margie and me at work together.        

“Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing.”

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Being compelled to look within and without for nurturing, meant a habit of extending myself more widely and more hopefully into the world—be it neighborhood, the common history of friendship, or the glancing intimacies of community.

Drive-by Affirmation 

A bit west of us, someone writes single sentence affirmations on a large chalkboard. I now look for this sign as I drive along Woodbury Road. Most memorable was, “You are seen;” so similar to the Zulu greeting, Sawubona,meaning, “I see you” and by extension,  “I see your humanity. I see your dignity.”

Is it possible that an entire culture can embrace what we understand as the deepest form of nurturing—of being seen and therefore understood? 

I See You: a collection of mother/daughter portraits of friends and neighbors. Each mother gazes directly at her daughter.  

• I see you: Jo LaVonne Ewing and her mother Nell Brown Smith Chism, top left 
• I see you: Trish Pengra and her mother Rose Majewski Farrow, top right 
• I see you: Hope Tschopik Schneider and her mother Marion Hutchinson Tschopik, bottom right 
• I see you: Doris Hausmann and her mother Hilda Hausmann, bottom left  

Neighborhood Comfort 

Trish lives across the street in a craftsman house that extends its greeting through a wide porch and at times, the sound of her playing the piano. After a harried day of moving into our home over a year ago, she arrived on our doorstep with a lasagna and cookies in hand. The next day, without my usual hesitation, I asked to use her dryer, soon carrying a basket of wet clothes across the street. Somehow, I knew I could ask for help. 

Our kitchen window overlooking Jo's house. 

Our next-door neighbor Jo’s kitchen window and back deck align with ours allowing the pleasure of casual connection. Although she must have endured more than her share of house construction noise and filth, she never complained. Well before our move in date—impatient to feel a sense of belonging—I placed a teapot on the counter by the window. She came by to let me know how happy she was to see this sign of life—as it meant the house was becoming  a home. 

The Connection of Common History

Barbara and I were two social orphans brought together through the intercession of Miss Rosen, our eighth-grade Home Room teacher at Bancroft Junior High School. I wonder if this teacher has any idea about how she changed the course of our lives. We now tell the story as family lore about our first conversation—ending with the discovery that we both loved to make art. This toe-hold of interest led to the building of a common history; almost family and more than family; Barbara is my dearest friend. 

Peggy, an acquaintance within Pasadena's busy community of non-profits became something much more so after a walk taken together through our neighborhood. We found uncommon parallels in our personal histories, leaving us both stunned and connected. We speak and feel in a shorthand that comes through the familiarity of our common history—mothers who struggled with depression, fathers absent at times due to work in the foreign service, stepmothers named Margie. 

From Rose's Homemaking Notebook, a collection of recipes, practical hints, and ephemera. 

Marriages are Made in Kitchens, from the This n' That section of  Rose's Homemaking Notebook. Trish's mother and father came from disconnected and at times neglectful families. Her father described his greatest accomplishment as creating "a happy family" of eight with his wife Rose. 

From Jo's mother Nell's recipe for Apple Pie. Jo's family is from Kentucky, land of excellent sweets. (Pickle relish is a common savory ingredient.)

The Security of the Familiar

This week, I include family recipes from my friends and neighbors in their original form—a scrap of paper, the ubiquitous index card, and three ring notebook paper. Our mothers’ recipes assume knowledge that comes from learning side-by-side with them. The directions are brief and only make sense if knowing family context, history, and flavors. They are loved for more reasons than just taste. 

Margie’s Baked Lamb Chops

Rose’s Sugared Crunch, Honey Crisp Bars, Crispy Peanut Squares

Nell’s Angel Biscuits and One Crust Apple Pie with Rich Topping

Peggy’s Pavlova

Barbara’s Whipped Cream Pound Cake

“My mother and her youngest sister would get together to bake around Christmas time. They watched the sales for butter and sugar and confered about how many batches to make. They made ten types of cookies and shared them out. When my aunt went back to work, my mom and I continued to bake together. I would take a day off of work, as we baked all day. When I bake now, I do so, to remember those days with my mom.” 

                                                                                                                                      Trish Pengra

“One thing that we have for Thanksgiving or Christmas or sometimes both is my mom’s apple pie—a kind of Dutch apple with butter, brown sugar and flour that is crumbled over the top. My son makes it now and my nephew loves to cook”

Jo LaVonne Ewing  

And to end; it is definitely time for a poem.

Nurture

From a documentary on marsupials I learn

that a pillowcase makes a fine

substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo.

I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue.

They are warm in the throat. I suffer, the critic proclaims,

from an overabundance of maternal genes.

Bring me your fallen fledgling, your bummer lamb,

lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.

Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn.

And had there been a wild child—

filthy and fierce as a ferret, he is called

in one nineteenth-century account—

a wild child to love, it is safe to assume,

given my fireside inked with paw prints,

there would have been room.

Think of the language we two, same and not-same,

might have constructed from sign,

scratch, grimace, grunt, vowel:

Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl.

By Maxine Kumin

Happy Mother's Day!

Summer on Steroids

The Urban Forager Returns...

Writer Octavia Butler’s calendar notations from the 2017 exhibition Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories, at the Huntington Library. I love the internal exhortations to keep going.

Summertime used to be slo-mo time. School was out; some lucky folk experienced a real vacation time.  But now, I find myself working around the temperature rather than the clock; vacations are staggered; school schedules are no longer three months based on the “agrarian calendar.” Walking begins in the early dawn, racing against the waves of heat that begin well before noon. I squeeze in productive activity as all bets are off in the late afternoon. At some point, usually well after the sun goes down, I re-awaken to catch the cool.  Has summertime lost its unspooling quality? When was the last time you sat outside for a good part of the day, feeling warm rather than blast-furnace air? Did you, like me, sit under a generously spreading tree, reading a book until overtaken by sleep?

Spun silk of mercy,

long-limbed afternoon,

sun urging purple blossoms from baked stems.   

What better blessing than to move without hurry   

under trees?

Last August Hours Before the Year 2000

Naomi Shihab Nye

Since my last post honoring Mother’s Day well back in May, my summer ritual all but disappeared, overtaken by a publishing deadline for The Urban Forager: Culinary Exploring & Cooking on L.A.'s Eastside. Writing a cookbook, with its exacting requirements, is not for the faint of heart. Its gestation is longer than the carrying time for a baby elephant, and the finished product evinces none of the intensity of the process. As a bridge between pre-cookbook Urban Forager and post-cookbook Urban Forager, I cannot help but share some of its in-process content, as the back story to creation so often includes unseen commitment and labor. 

The most inspiring part of this work was searching for and connecting with some of the eastside’s great cooks. Of the five profiled—Sumi Chang, Minh Phan, Rumi Mahmood, Mario Rodriguez, and Jack Aghoian—three are home cooks whose journey towards expertise is both inspiring and feasible. All have been extraordinarily welcoming and supportive; their generosity contributing as well to an unexpected side effect of this project: a fifteen-pound weight gain.

Sumi Chang, Jack Aghoian with his parents Mary and Abraham, Minh Phan, Rumi Mahmood, and Mario Rodriguez. Photos by Ann Cutting.

Their stories are enriched by family members, mentors, and in the case of Rumi and Minh, links between their home countries' food cultures with their adopted country’s possibilities. Of the five, I knew only Sumi and Mario personally. The other three received an email from me out of the blue, asking them to participate in a cookbook that until recently was without a publisher. Each gave me liberal amounts of their personal time, so necessary for a cookbook that depends upon understanding of origin and authentic cooking style. I treasured sitting down with each of these cooks, interviewing them, hearing about their early experiences with food, and then working with a gifted young illustrator, Simone Rein, on visualizing these influences through the metaphor of a personalized table overflowing with delights. 

Onil Chibas, left, inspirational chef and friend, who suggested Rumi as a cook to be profiled in The Urban Forager.

I stood side by side with each of these cooks, watching them work, tracking each step as they made one beautiful dish after another. In all cases, photographer Ann Cutting and I ate what was made, meaning we were treated to pozole, lemon bars, saag, shrimp dopiaza, jahl ghost curry, vegan rice porridge, guacamole, cabbage rolls, yogurt, negi oil, nut cookies, salsa, and frittata. In some cases, the recipes were reverse engineered at every step for dishes that had never been recorded. In others, a recipe was more than ingredients and steps, but a way into understanding the qualities of a great cook.

In documenting Rumi's recipes, we managed to combine our work with a four-course, elegantly presented meal. Between each course, Ann and I ran outside where the light was better to capture a newly plated dish.

A sampling of Rumi's gorgeous food, including his Jhal Gohst Beef Curry (left). Photos by Ann Cutting.

Simone's first sketch of Rumi's Table of Influences and the final drawing. Each table went through a number of revisions as the cooks considered how their food history made visual sense. 

The words of each cook reveal a conviction that cooking is a form of energizing, creative delight rather than a chore.

One thing I decided is that people who love to cook do so because they are all aesthetic.

Rumi

The markets in New Mexico were so physically beautiful. They had these corn kernels that were almost blue. They have this sensual quality of food that you either get or you don’t. My jaw kept falling!

Sumi 

Bags of chile powder at the Sucre Central Market in Bolivia.

The reason I am a cook is that my greatest creativity came out when I made something from whatever I could find in the refrigerator. This began in my childhood and continues today. 

Minh

Cooking is like breathing. I pride myself on making something from nothing and don’t use a recipe.

Jack 

Minh foraging for ingredients at the late, great Muir Ranch. Photo by Ann Cutting.

I have a starter for bread. I tell my daughter Paloma it is her big sister because when Monica was pregnant, I decided to start my first starter dough with my own wild yeast trap and it’s fine. It's almost nine years old.

Mario

Twenty-One Hour Boule, one of the simplest recipes for so much deliciousness. Photo by Ann Cutting.

Writing the cookbook has felt seamless: a natural expression of my belief in community's variations on the common table. Watch for more stories as the journey to its publication continues. And in the meantime, may you find a quiet moment within our overheated days and enjoy a cooling dish of Rumi's Saag, More to come! 

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good*

Illustration by Simone Rein

 

*attributed to Voltaire

FireFall

Fall at last.
Heat came too early
and stayed too long.
All summer I dreamed
of fog-shrouded beaches,
walks on thick-leafed paths
under trees bearded with wisdom.

The wind is not spice.
It is heavy with the scent of
charred sycamore and
Home Depot specials.
I spend hours sorting
my belongings in my head.
What would I take?
What leave behind?

And through the days
when fire wraps and cooks
me into a hard brown nut,
I am prepared to start over,
forget the dreams I’ve lived.
Like the earth, I drink
the hard liquor of reality.

Fire, earthquake, flood,
things lose their meaning.
Soggy or turned to ash,
form no longer holds.
Yes, I can see myself wizened
and leak proof, afloat,
memories chittering around me
like so many children.

There are burdens I would not go without.

Published on December 20, 2017  in Environment/Wildfires in Poets Reading the News by Beverly Lafontaine

This post has haunted me for months since my most recent visit to Ojai in June. I originally envisioned it as a return to the impact of the Thomas Fire, a “story” that has receded for most of us since its devastation last December. Our attention has more recently been claimed by another fire-news cycle—this time the Carr Fire in Northern California, burning for more than a month and destroying nearly 230,000 acres before containment in August.

Something that I heard in Ojai, from Peter Strauss, actor and citrus farmer, released a cascade of long-held assumptions and redirected this post toward exploring the yin and yang of environmental sustainability and and our need for a reliable food source. 

The wind changed direction from east to west, from the orchards toward the town. Fire fighters believe that the massive fields that had been irrigated saved the town.

Peter Strauss, actor and citrus farmer/gardener

View through the window at Ojai's Peppertree Retreat.

Beautiful Ojai, a balm that opens my heart whenever I approach from Highway 150, is a community that also poses serious questions about the future of our state's identity as the country’s most valuable farming resource. Any discussion of agriculture begins and ends with water. Scale, heritage, and the wobbly definitions of “organic” add to an already loaded subject. In a wide-ranging conversation, Peter gently—and sometimes forcefully—confronted me with the unexplored implications of what I had considered thoughtful, sustainable consumption. 

Meaning

How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.

Wendell Berry

Citrus farm in Ojai, June of 2018

Describing himself as an advocate for growing “healthy, tasty, nutritious food,” Peter turned quickly to the potentially devastating impact of growing produce without some form of defense against an increasing range of threats. As a farmer, he said, “I am aware of the fungus, insect, and weed world. Every year, there are new insects in our world. There is a new ‘Bug 273,’ and we rely on UC Davis to tell us how to rid ourselves of this bug. At the moment, our defenses are chemical. In Florida, farmers are faced with the insect borne Greening disease, now decimating the citrus crop. And think of the amazing number of gophers that are no longer kept in check by hawks or coyotes.”

Our conversation suggests that the term “organic” has become an exercise in opportunistic semantics. According to Peter, there are 17 derivations of the word. Other words, natural, farm-fresh, local add to a sense of healthfulness—that has little to do with actual quality. Organic certification, a costly and for many farmers, impossible standard, is monitored by a relatively small number of inspectors as few as 80, Peter told me, for the entire country. 

I felt obliged to reexamine my own notions of “pure” food, of one apple exceeding another in flavor, delight, and health because of the ubiquitous sticker that identifies it as “organic.” 

How do we reconcile the vast abundance of farming communities such as Ojai, the cost differential inherent in organic produce with urban communities whose access to nutrition is described as food deserts?

Desire

Our land use is based on how we eat and how we eat is based on unreasonable behavior.

Peter Strauss

Evolving consumer tastes toward ease of use have changed the way we farm. The Pixie tangerine, a relative newcomer to Ojai, is popular not only for its taste, but because it is easy to peel and a convenient size. Valencia oranges, representing a majority of Ojai’s historic crops, are made for juicing—and surely nothing tastes better than a freshly squeezed glass of orange juice! Yet purchasing a generous bag of oranges, no matter how inexpensive, has been largely supplanted by more efficient forms of consumption. The underwhelming taste of bottled orange juice, requiring pasteurization to extend shelf life, can deflect the uninitiated fresh juice drinker. And on Ojai’s Gifferson Road, which runs parallel to Highway 126 between Santa Clarita and Santa Paula, the citrus trees are covered with white gauze to prevent bee pollination, which produces the flowers that in turn create seeds. The desire for seedless fruit as a convenience means fewer bees, the world’s most important pollinator of food crops. 

Small and Nearly Perfect

In Ojai, as in many other agricultural communities, alternative farming methods are developing. Permaculture designed to channel and reuse irrigation water is an example. Such measures are almost always quite small in scale,  and therefore do not affect a large market of consumers. The small size of these farms means flexibility, with a focus on developing sustainable practices and educating consumers over production quotas. 

Eclectic farm stands along Thatcher Road in Ojai. Payment is on the honor system.

How does the innovation of the small and the individual support whole system change?

“Some efficiencies should be conducted within whole systems; for example, lined channels to conduct water. There are a lot of unlined channels in California’s farmland functioning like streams, but the ground all around them is saturated. These irrigation “streams” do not provide habitat; rather habitat is stripped. Nor do they direct water to crops or help to replenish our ground water. A single farmer concerned with sustainable practice can make adjustments. But for meaningful impact, these practices need to be scaled up and in a collaborative way on all fronts.” Kitty Connolly, executive director of the Theodore Payne Foundation.

Kitty Connolly at the Theodore Payne Foundation office.

The Golden Mean

Ventura County’s water comes from one source, Lake Casitas, dependent entirely on rainfall to “re-charge.” After years of severe drought, Lake Casitas hovers between 32 and 34% of its capacity. As its future is uncertain, Ventura County is looking at alternative water sources including accessing the California Aqueduct, a long-term project requiring significant political will and financing. Its timeline may exceed the lifespan of its Lake.

What do you say in terms about a state that has this connection to agriculture, a community that is built upon the legacy of family farms?” Question posed to Kitty Connelly.

First of all, I have to say is that I eat food; I do it every day. So, I can’t vilify food production entirely, because I eat food that is grown in California. I even grow my own food. I think there is no way to be pure on this issue. There is no way to be pure on basically any issue.

Kitty Connolly

There is a tremendous joy in growing fruit. No farmer I know is making money. They are breaking even at best.

Peter Strauss

 A single almond requires a gallon of water to produce; this reliance is evident in the acres and acres of fallow fields and dying trees in California’s drought-stricken Central Valley. Persimmons, pomegranates, and cactus are now emerging as sustainable crops, supplanting the unrealistic water requirements of more traditional farm produce. Fortunately, consumer tastes appear to be bending to availability. Peter farms eight acres of navel and twenty-two of Valencia oranges. He has switched out eight acres of citrus for cactus and is now experimenting with juices and tequila.  He waters at night to prevent evaporation; uses drip irrigation to encourage longer, deeper, more drought-tolerant root structures; and even uses a bucket in the shower. “That’s one rose’s need per shower!”

An example of challenge creating abundance and innovation. Some of Bolivia’s 4,000 native potato varieties cultivated for their ability to withstand extreme elevation (over 12,000 feet) and cold. They are a revelation in taste and are nutritious too.

A dish from Restaurant Gustu in La Paz, Bolivia—builds its tasting menus on Bolivian native food products including potatoes.

Between 1975 and 2005, Los Angeles County’s water usage has not increased despite a growth in population of more than a million people. An investment in water conservation began in the mid 90's with a suit brought against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power District to restore and protect Mono Lake by a coalition of local, state, and national organizations. The Aqueduct's design diverted all water from the Mono Lake Basin.  The strategy has moved from confrontation to monitoring, education, and access, including the distribution of more than 40,000 low-flow toilets. The Rush and Lee Vining Creeks are now flowing again into the Lake, reviving and restoring its ecology. 

The original goal of the Theodore Payne Foundation was to encourage Los Angeles County residents to return to native plants as a way of supporting natural habitats and reducing pests. Drought has shifted its conversation to both incremental and larger scale changes that can affect water conservation practice and policy. 

I am left searching for balance, avoiding what Confucius and Aristotle described as extremism. In its place, is “the golden mean,” or the middle way. There are no simple answers to the question of need, desire, and reality. Practices that have seemed reasonable turn out to have unintended consequences. There is a case to be made for the small and the incremental; its impact is built by individuals working in common for long-term change. There is likewise a case to be made for beginning with confrontation when there is no time for evolution. There is sadness in the prospect of losing California’s traditional farm heritage and excitement in the possibility of evolving both acreage and consumer taste toward water-wise crops. There is a case to be made for sustainable farm practices that avoid the overuse of pesticides but do not rule out their judicious use. Quality and sufficient food for all, no matter what a person’s income, should be a right. 

To conclude this overly long post, I suggest a number of activities along with a recipe for Nopal Salad courtesy of Mario Rodriguez, friend and consummate cook.

Visit Theodore Payne Foundation. Wander among the plants, close your eyes, sniff the beautiful fragrance, and notice the butterflies, bees, and the absence of pests.

Follow our water situation by clicking on Kitty’s favorite link, The United States Drought Monitor

Buy a bag of Valencia oranges and squeeze a few to make yourself a glass of juice. Close your eyes and taste.

Breakfast from foraging Ojai’s farm stands. A boiled egg and fresh orange juice.

Till next time.

The Word for the Day is Hintertür!

Is it week four or five since we have exercised a sense of civic duty wrapped around dread and have for the most part stayed put in our domiciles with partners of all kinds, human and animal to wait until…?  

Whoops, this is not the path I meant to enter, as the big news has been better described by so many others. What is more uplifting for me is learning about how we have reshuffled our lives, discovering and rediscovering priorities that are quieter and less insistent, having wished so long for a break in our schedule. Now the break has come for many of us. My survey of dear friends (through shared journals, phone calls, and Zoom—thank you, technology) has revealed a pattern.

Many of us are moving more slowly, elevating what used to be described as chores to the higher calling of “home making.”

A conversation with my dear friend Julia from Dusseldorf crystalized the whole matter. When asked about how her life had changed she answered, “The word for the day is hintertür.” Of course! Hintertür is the German word for back door reminding me that the German language draws its beauty from meaning rather than sound. Hintertür—such an apt metaphor! Its meaning was clarified by Julia’s anecdote: “Last week, I needed to go to the bank, but saw a long line of people waiting and thought, ‘this will never do.’ And so, I walked around to the back of the bank where they have a hintertür. No one was there. I walked in and took care of my business. I have always lived my life this way, going through the back door.” Many of us are living by reconsidering the back door—less obvious ways to invest our lives with meaning without the usual props. 

The many faces of dear friend Julia. 

Keep Calm and Bake On, Friends!*

For me, my love of food preparation has become almost an ethical challenge, as I truly am invested in wasting nothing. “Refrigerator foraging”  is now a requirement, as food shopping is not the last-minute inspiration it used to be. Scraps of this and that become soups, fried rice, savory tarts, fruit curds, and pavlovas (grapefruit and passion fruit curds are made from egg yolks—what to do with all those egg whites?).

But even more inspiring is the beautiful alchemy of sourdough bread. It is made of so little—sourdough starter, flour, salt, and water—and returns so much.

Sourdough bread is the hintertür of bread preparation. Not because it saves time, but because it enriches the time you have. It is so incredibly inefficient and inconsistent—the opposite of ready-made. And it is perfect for this time, this place. Most of us have flour (King’s Roost, Central Milling, Grist and Toll, King Arthur) water and salt. Sourdough starter is one of life’s great “shares.” However, sourdough is challenging enough to keep us stimulated as these simple ingredients mean there is nothing to distract from error. Your bread is either dense and as tightly structured as a curling stone or it is a light and flavorful crusty dome. 

Image by Simone Rein

And sourdough bread can be made from a dizzying yet inspiring variety of wheat and other grains. Their names and descriptions are mysterious enough to add poetic flair to this very basic ingredient—hard white, rye, farro, spelt, red fife to name a few—all milled into variations of flour that become bread. Every step of bread baking is aesthetic to me as it is a completely sense-based experience. To begin with the sourdough starter, my friend and bread master Roe Sie describes a good starter as smelling faintly of bananas, ripe ones at that.  My starter was given to me by good friend and brilliant cook, Mario Rodriguez. He calls his starter “Paloma’s little sister,” as he began baking bread when his daughter was born. 

You rely on the senses of smell and touch rather than time and measurement. There is something called hydration ratio (the ratio of water to flour):  each type of flour behaves differently, so the amount of flour to water is not a constant. There is dough fermentation and proofing (aka rising): its readiness for baking is dependent on whether the day is warm or cold, the strength of your starter, and if the gluten has been stretched enough to transform the dough from a ragged mess into a springy, cohesive ball. 

Bread baking mastery almost always means learning the old-fashioned way, with a mentor by your side. My bread baking masters include some of the greats who have literally walked (no running with sourdough) me through every step of the process. 

From left to right:

Sumi Chang: her bread became the standard of what we could be eating outside of France.

The late, great Joseph Shuldiner and Eric Knudsen, who continues to inspire: the bridge builders to all bread baking “newbies.”

Joseph Abrakjian: He allowed me to “stage” at Seed bakery. I weighed bread dough and watched him work. 

Roe Sie: He teaches the joys of milling your own flour and combining grains. 

Masako Yatabe Thomsen: The most generous of bread baking mentors, she found every mistake I made when my boules came out of the oven resembling flattened berets. I milled my grain too coarsely and so it was too heavy to rise: I didn’t stretch the dough consistently or with real energy; I under-proofed the dough—”it needs to became almost jiggly with a few bubbles emerging on the surface”.

Do you Sharpen Your Shovels? 

I know this is becoming ridiculously arcane, but isn’t this the point of it all at the moment?

We have this odd feeling of spaciousness and choice within the context of unprecedented restriction.

Why not allow ourselves to go down the rabbit hole of healthy obsessions? 

I know I am not alone. Central Milling, one of my go-to flour suppliers, actually took a break from business to catch up with their vast backlog of mail orders. I am planning two face time sourdough instruction sessions with friends. For the first time in my life, I crested a wave early. 

A coda to end. I send to you all a photo of my husband Eric’s shovels. Why? Because he took the time to sharpen them. Something else for all of us hintertür folks to consider as a sweet, small accomplishment. 

Further reading on the beauty of sourdough bread with thanks to good friend, Anna Ganahl. 

Some of my favorite bread baking resources. Brilliant Bread is my favorite.

And thanks to Erik Knudsen, news of a more than delightful way to participate in the science of sourdough. Yay nerds!

And of course, some recipes considering simple ingredients, most made of a bit of this and that along with one for making your own starter.

Fruit Curd From Unlikely Sources

Beautiful Roasted Salad

Zucchini and Spinach Soup

Gnudi Bianchi (Gnocchi)

King Arthur Sourdough Starter

May you all stay healthy in body and in spirit. 

*From the Central Milling website.

The Little Engines That Could

Many of us are now living in isolation, and our daily life stories remain separate and individual. We share few common experiences in real time; instead most are perceived through the lens of the past or the future. Yet there is another side to this picture. While some are “sheltering in place,” others are struggling to maintain businesses that make it possible for us to remain safely at home. For many of us, time is unspooling slowly; our calendars have been wiped clean. And then there are the food producers and distributers, who are living in a hyper-intensive world of rapidly shifting and unpredictable realities. Their schedules are crammed with completely unanticipated new responsibilities.

I am a newbie to the world of food, having had the outrageous luck of my first cookbook being published by a well-respected small press. My career path had been firmly centered in the nonprofit lane, first as the executive director of the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California, later on the funding side as a program officer with philanthropic foundations, and finally as a planning consultant to nonprofit leaders. This experience has given me some insight into the characteristics of resilient nonprofits. And lo and behold, these apply to food production and distribution as well.

With the exception of healthcare, no other sector is now situated on a more crucial testing ground for sustainability. Food purveyors that are hanging in there are doing so thanks to inherent structural or circumstantial advantages.  Some are small and nimble, while others are culturally flexible enough to pivot. Most are used to being responsive to their community, in part because their hand is permanently on its pulse. 

So, for today, three individuals whose stories are about more than survival; they represent inspirational, creative, and workable responses to the unimaginable.  

Maegen Rzasa-Cleary, Manager, The Hollywood Farmers’ Market

Beautiful produce from the Hollywood Farmers’ Market in situ and at home. Photos and ceramics by Ann Elliott Cutting.

The Hollywood Farmers’ Market is one of the largest in Los Angeles County and is part of SEE-LA (Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles), a nonprofit that has under its wing six markets located for the most part on the south- and central-side of L.A. County. I must admit that I was surprised to read that the markets were open for business, as my local farmers’ market in Altadena has shifted completely to pre-order and curbside pick-up. Maegen Rzasa-Cleary, the Hollywood Farmers’ Market manager, gave me plenty of clear-eyed rationales for staying open. Let’s start with the question of safety, as this is top of mind for all of us. The market is outdoors, rather than indoors. Check. The produce comes directly from farmer to market, rather than being part of a complex chain of distribution that includes long-haul truckers (who are suffering in their own ways) and multiple opportunities for contact, be it packers, store clerks, or handsy customers. Check. The market has restructured its entire design, temporarily removing all prepared food to allow for ten feet between each vendor stall. Check. The market has only one entrance and several exits and more importantly, allows only 250 people at a time in its approximately three-quarter square mile area. Check, check, check. A cadre of volunteers act as gentle disrupters to maintain the required six-plus feet of social distancing and mask wearing. Check. And the produce is handled only by its vendors, who are required to wear gloves and must not cross-contaminate between produce and cash. Check again. 

Maegen at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market monitoring an exit at Selma and Cahuenga Avenues.

In my mind, however, there are many reasons beyond the timely issue of safety to support our farmers’ markets. Please excuse me as I go on a “did you know” tear for a moment. The Hollywood Farmers’ Market is home to over 100 vendors, half of whom are small farm owners who are themselves the faces you see at the market.

“If you compare a grocery store to a farmers’ market, you might ask yourself, who am I supporting?” says Maegen.

“Closing down farmers' markets but leaving the grocery stores open was shocking to me. You're ok with having truckloads of produce from large scale farms shipped all over the country, with multiple contact points, but you're not ok with produce being driven directly from the farm to an outdoor location?

It feels like a dialogue about small farmers and big agriculture with little hesitation to close down the small farmer whose livelihood, for the most part, comes from a farmers' market. Farmers' markets are not a flea market or a carnival, we're not just for the elite. We are a vital food source for everyone.”

Indeed, farmers’ markets address global as well as local concerns. Smaller family farms make up the majority of farms throughout the world and are the greatest contributors to food production and crop diversity, contrary to the assumption that large-scale, industrial agriculture is the solution to feeding the world’s growing populations. Lower energy consumption is one advantage of local farming and distribution. Transportation accounts for approximately 14 percent of the total energy used in the U.S. food system. Our farmers’ markets are a distinct exception, as they farm and sell within a relatively small geographic area. Their local purview has, in fact, enabled them to be quite nimble in managing life during the coronavirus pandemic. They sell their produce at farm stands and farmers’ markets, and through CSA boxes, pre-ordering, and curbside sales. Despite the Hollywood Farmers’ Market reduction of customers from an average of 7,000 to about 2,500 per Sunday, nearly all the farmers have remained, and sales are generally at two-thirds of pre-coronavirus levels. 

Farmers’ markets have long been critical players in alleviating food insecurity. In our area, they are located in a diverse range of high- to very low-income communities. SEE-LA and all other local farmers’ markets not only accept SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the current name for food stamps) but provide matching support through a variety of government programs and private contributions as incentives to select healthy produce. At one SEE-LA market—Central Avenue—nearly 50 percent of transactions are with SNAP clients. SEE-LA has stepped up its fundraising as the number of food insecure residents has increased dramatically due to the economic fallout of shelter-in-place regulations. In a single month, they were able to donate 20,000 produce boxes. They have also tripled their SNAP matching benefits up to $30 weekly and are matching WIC support (Women, Infant, Children supplemental nutrition) at two South L.A. markets.

Despite the good will and positive impact of these resources, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti temporarily closed farmers’ markets on March 30 after photos of what appeared to be a crowded market surfaced on social media. Following a review and approval of a Covid-19 operational plan, most re-opened within days.  The quick turnaround was due in part to the unimpeachable case that these markets represent essential services, services that Maegen considers the heart of their mission.  “During this time, it is really, really interesting to see where our values as a society lie—defining how we prioritize different facets of life, deciding what is considered important and crucial and how we function as humans in community. It is our responsibility to get food to people. To me that feels really basic and simple.” Maegen continues,

“The coronavirus cannot stop crops from growing. They need to be harvested. We are one of the main ways that small farmers maintain their financial health and help to stabilize our food supply.” 

Leah Ferrazani, Owner, Semolina Artisanal Pasta 

Left: September 2019, at Semolina Artisanal Pasta. Leah Ferrazani preparing for a panel about food with Mary Aghoian, Amelia McDonald, Elisa Callow, Masako Yatabe Thomsen, and Leslie Ito. Right: Store signage post Covid 19.

Leah owns a small-scale pasta-making business located on Lincoln Avenue in Northwest Pasadena. In 2014, she began making dried pasta, at first in her home laundry room, then in a Lincoln Heights prep kitchen, and soon after in a small retail storefront complete with a glass-walled “factory.” Pre-coronavirus, Leah and her one employee produced slightly more than one thousand pounds of dried pasta each week, at times running out as demand remained high. 

She is a meticulous person, sourcing high quality durum semolina from U.S. farmers and using brass dies, which create a sauce hugging texture, to extrude her pasta. She slow-dries each batch at low heat to preserve flavor. Once you get a sense of how much goes into any food making process, the difference in taste and texture begins to make sense! 

Leah is also a thoughtful businesswoman. Having worked front-of-house in restaurants, she understands the nail-biting rigors of running a business based on quixotic customer satisfaction and high built-in costs. She purposely focused on a product for a number of markets, investing in wholesale distributors who could get her product to high-end supermarkets and specialty shops as well as building on her connections with chefs at restaurants and her shop’s retail customers. 

Leah’s instincts for diversification, quality, and “right size” have more than paid off. Social distancing restrictions forced her to close her retail business (with the exception of infrequent online orders), and her restaurant sales went from 30 percent to negligible due to closures in that industry. Instead, she and her employee are now working daily to produce 1,700 pounds of dried pasta each week for an expanding wholesale market. 

“When you have something that is not perishable, it makes a huge difference. People are cooking a lot more, and pasta is something they know, so they are comfortable with it. It is friendly across the spectrum of eaters and it is economical.” The niche for high quality pasta has opened wide since Italy’s own production has slowed to a trickle. The holy grail for all food producers in this country--shelf space--is suddenly wide open for small, boutique brands. “I think a lot of people are trying my pasta for the first time, because even though I can’t keep the shelves stocked, frequently my pasta is the only one available.”  

Leah’s resiliency as a small businesswoman is perhaps no surprise.

“We all have our vulnerabilities. In my case, if either my pasta dryer or extruder break, my production stops completely. But because my business is smaller and more agile, it’s easier for me to adapt my business model to keep myself and my team safe. For me a bigger challenge is trying to figure out how to scale up in a way that’s sustainable. There is an important role for my size business now in feeding our community, and for demonstrating the benefits of a more localized supply chain.”     

José Reyes, Farmer, Cortez Family Farms

Left: José Reyes, farmer. Right: José at a farmer’s market.

Twenty years ago, José’s soon to be father-in-law invited him to work on his farm. José was in construction then and felt more than capable of hard work. After a day in the fields with a picker, José was ready to quit, but his pride and work ethic stopped him. “I am one of those guys, if you tell me I can’t do something, I will do the opposite. That’s the story of my life. I run toward challenges.” Following his father-in-law’s retirement, José is now running the farm—a more than formidable challenge, even for someone with José’s moxie. 

On his twenty-acre farm, José grows celery, carrots, radishes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries—food for people, not feed for animals. When asked about his work, he said readily,

“I love farming because it is something different from my other job. I meet people, different people. My customers—they all have their stories.” 

Pre-coronavirus, he sold small amounts of produce at a farm store but mainly rotated sales at six nearby farmers’ markets: Baywood, Los Osos, Arroyo Grande, Ojai, Morro Bay, and San Luis Obispo. After the coronavirus restrictions, each of these farmers’ markets closed temporarily. Within days, Jose was faced with dwindling access to customers and acres of berries and vegetables ready to harvest. All have since reopened, with the exception of San Luis Obispo, the largest market. To make up for a more than 50 percent loss in sales at farmers’ markets, José’s workweek has increased from five to seven days. With help from his wife and son, he offers his customers produce delivery service throughout the region. People are slowly coming back to the markets, but the numbers are nowhere near what they were. 

José’s produce boxes, now a part of his post-Covid 19 business plan.

José’s experience as a farmer and board member of the local Farmers’ Market Association leaves him with a sobering sense of realism about his future as a farmer. For now, he has made up for his loss in sales, but the personal costs are high, as he has even less time to spend with his family and his expenses leave little for retirement.

“I rent my land, and the land costs $4,000 a month. That and housing, water, supplies—all cost. For now, I break even.”

He mentioned the demographic shifts in his customer base and wonders if a desire for the convenience of pre-washed vegetables, pre-squeezed juices, and packaged food will edge out fresh, higher quality, locally produced food.

I end with a surprising source for good news.  My niece Melanie Greben is a demand science manager at Conagra Brands—the fifth largest food producer in the county and thus the diametric opposite of these little food producer/distributor engines. A demand science manager analyzes food purchasing trends and translates these into sources of information for product development—in Melanie’s case, frozen vegetables. 

She generously shared a raft of data that actually pointed toward some positive trends for the small of scale, sturdy of heart and mission. She describes five “covid themes” that represent recent buyer behavior: 

• Seeking Solutions: I am now cooking three meals a day, 21 meals a week, times however many people. I am looking at ways that different foods and different brands can provide solutions.  Melanie identified the impact on smaller food producers. “When there are shortages of known brands, people do try something new—which can be great for the little guys.” 

• Seeking Comfort and Familiarity: It feels unstable. I have a desire for comfort: baking bread and cookies and going back to the basics. 

• Seeking New Channels (that is, how people are shopping):  I may go to a grocery store instead of buying snacks from a gas station convenience store. I am buying more when I shop. I am shopping online, looking for other ways to purchase food. 

• Seeking Financial Help: I am more cash-strapped, I need value for my dollars. More from Melanie: “The top search online is for ‘frugal meals’ and ‘frugal meals near me.”

• Seeking Health and Immunity: What should I eat to stay healthy and less stressed?

So much of what we are needing, feeling, and experiencing points to what these smaller food producers do quite naturally and authentically. They are a source of beautiful, inspiring food; they offer familiarity and comfort and alternative (and possibly safer) ways to access food; and they more than meet our desire for high quality, nutritious food. 

How have your food purchasing and eating habits changed? Here are a few images of my newly forming habits. 

And for you to try, here are two recipes that celebrate the beauty and bounty of our farmers’ markets, Shortbread Crust and How To Fill it and Everyday Vinaigrette, and my favorite basic, Crème Fraiche.

Take care, stay healthy, eat consciously and well.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

A Library circa 1950, My father at 2, Minh Phan and other chef buddies at porridge & puffs pre-COVID-19

My father grew up in the height of the Depression on the northwest side of Chicago in a Polish/Jewish enclave. At the end of his life, he began telling the stories of his youth and admitted to the depth of poverty he experienced. Called Peewee because of his small size, he remembers working at ten as a delivery boy for a local butcher. During one such delivery, he lost an order and was made to forfeit his wages until the loss was reimbursed. His family depended on his meager contributions and so, even at the end of a brilliantly successful life, he continued to feel shame. He also remembered two uplifting constants in his life that form the core of today’s writing: his frequent, almost daily visits to the neighborhood library and the delicious, nourishing meals shared by a neighbor when his family moved to the small town of Lyons, Michigan after his father secured a job there.

Libraries, in my mind, are the quintessential exemplars of a civic asset. They are the “clean, well-lighted places” that welcome all and form through their equity and aesthetic a sense of values writ concrete.

Because they are places for reading, research, and contemplation they can be respite to the intensity of a city’s psychic and sensory overload. (This of course, in the time before COVID-19.) Love of libraries is demonstrated over and over again. In my city of Pasadena, a parcel tax was passed by an easy 79.9 percent margin in 1999 to restore the Library budget to its pre-recession level. In 2011, a gutted Los Angeles Library budget was restored by a charter amendment supported by more than 63 percent of voters.

“All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library’s simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.” 

― Susan Orlean, The Library Book.

In this time of COVID-19, the small, neighborhood café and restaurant have an elevated role as similarly democratized community spaces that promise to prevail as such, even as our libraries, recreation centers, and cultural institutions begin to experiment with re-opening. They provide a needed break from our adventures in home cooking as well as personally curated selections of groceries and provisions. Through the simple act of feeding us, listening to us, and responding to us, they offer some semblance of our pre-COVID-19 communal life.

At every visit, we see the owners of the cafés and restaurants make it their business to welcome their customers and check in about their needs and desires.

Julie and Minh at the front door of their restaurants, every day.

They are pivoting on a daily basis, responding to complex, rigorous and changing health department requirements while remaining deeply committed to creating an experience of aesthetic and sensory nurturing without the bells and whistles of a wrap-around dining environment.

How do they achieve this seemingly incongruous magic trick of creating community and connection in a time of profound isolation?

I spoke to three food professionals, all small-business owners whose core strengths lie in considering and honoring the communities they support—their customers, their staff, and their suppliers--while committing to business practices based on ethical choices, no matter how challenging: Julie Campoy of Julienne’s, Minh Phan of porridge & puffs, and Onil Chibas of Onil Chibas Events Deluxe 1717.

“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

--H. L. Mencken

There has been a great deal written about the punishing work cultures of restaurants and in many cases unfair labor practices, particularly for servers who often earn well below minimum wage when tips are designed to complete rather than supplement fair compensation. In smaller businesses, owners are often on similar footing as their staff, and in some cases are taking little or no salary as an extended stopgap measure.

Minh describes looking at her family’s personal finances as a way of reverse engineering the scope and scale of her restaurant’s life during the shutdown. 

Some are looking at the virus as an extreme wake-up call, likening it as Julie described to “my time when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It required enormous internal reserves, an ability to pivot, and a reminder that I just had to keep on walking.” She has been able to maintain a full- and part-time team of 50 (down from 65) and is committed to maintaining her staff, several of whom have been at Julienne’s for over 20 years.  

Onil, a former manager at Disney Animation, began problem solving with an extensive personal review of what is possible and what he enjoys most about his work in food. “Although I loved many aspects of owning a restaurant, for me it was like a hamster on a wheel. Catering fits my love of project work with a beginning, middle and end, but now events like the 350-person gala is gone. And as I look to the future, do I really want to be schlepping those “cambro” boxes up another flight of stairs? So I was left with a weekly meal service as a sort of catering and restaurant experience combined, which allows me frequent contact with my customer-friends, consistent work for my small team, and a rational workload.”

Onil with chef and friend, Masako Yatabe Thomsen in Deluxe 1717, October 2019.

A Slight Digression

The average salary of wait staff in Copenhagen, a city with one of the highest costs of living in Europe, is nearly $2,000 per month--slightly higher than similar wages in Los Angeles. However--and this is a big however--the Danish government covers healthcare and includes significant housing subsidies (about 43% in Copenhagen), meaning a huge differential in the security and lifestyle of their workers.

Nourishment is a Form of Activism

The Protest Box from porridge & puffs

Minh’s customers are encouraged to purchase prix fixe meals as a form of giving back. For every [Jonathan] Gold Set Meal purchased, another is donated to a first responder. The Protest Meal Box ranges from free to full price, depending on ability to pay, and was created to support those actively protesting racism. Minh’s provisions are as unique as her food: makrut lemon jams, prickly-ash oil, sesame oil, and bulk grains, walnuts, and raisins from small farms. (Minh’s connection with local farmers is a part of her food-making heritage, as her first venue was a pop-up at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market.)  She maintains a “strong team,” all of whom have adjusted without complaint: three chefs, including herself, and a front-of-house person. “The model is, you pay attention. You change on a dime. If the weather is hot, people want provisions. Fifty percent of our orders were cancelled during the curfew. We didn’t charge our customers; instead we created family meals and gave them to our neighbors, many of whom are really struggling.”

Julie with long-time Julienne chef Marcelline Dominguez in the days of hugging.

Julienne’s counter and to-go service was 60 percent of its revenues, which expanded overnight to 100 percent. Nearly every person on her team has transitioned to a new role: head waiter to head greeter, kitchen prep to grocery prep. Despite the herculean work behind the scenes, Julie’s brilliance is her sense of calm and welcome. She is as serene as a swan while paddling mightily underwater. She instituted “hazard pay” and every-other-week Friday Food Day, when all team members, including furloughed workers, are encouraged to take home produce, eggs, tortillas, cheeses. She too is listening to her customers.

“That’s how you are a good merchant, by asking your customers directly, what do you need? I can get that. I can do that.”

Along with an expanded number of Julienne-prepared standbys, there are shelves stocked--aesthetically--with sugar, flour, yeast, and even toilet paper.

A produce box filled with vegetables and fruits exemplifies her ability to transform a challenge into an asset. “A customer’s son sold produce to high-end restaurants, and suddenly there was no market. The next day, I asked him to put together these beautiful boxes that are for sale here.” 

From Here On?

Libraries offer lessons here, as the advent of the computer was thought to be the death of them. Instead, they are proving to be as nimble as these much smaller businesses and have in fact recalibrated and celebrated some of their inherent strengths: community connection, a culture of service, access to content and technology.

Julie, Minh, and Onil are all considering their futures, and all are thoughtful enough to understand that this intensive and extended “moment in time” will have lasting impact on them.

Julie is clear; “I am really investing in creating an experience that is gracious and nurturing for now.” For her, that means baby steps toward thoughtful additions to service that are safe while maintaining the well-loved Julienne environment of aesthetics and pleasure. Very soon, Julienne’s will be providing an expresso bar and pastries in the morning for customers to pick up and take to socially distanced tables outside. Hours will be extended to take advantage of the “pink” of the lengthening days with a wine service.

Brandon, a greeter, Julienne style.

Onil sees the weekly meals as continuing even when he reopens Deluxe 1717. “My feeling with this whole thing is, we can’t be victims, otherwise you start feeling that it is something done to you. I want to approach this as a new venture. I really dove in and considered everything—how we would present the menu, involving other chefs and catering staff, supporting them and my customers.”

In what at first would seem counterintuitive during a time of daily upheaval, Minh decided that everyone still working would receive raises, saying “The most essential workers are often the most disadvantaged.” She is also a realist, understanding that the rock-and-hard-place for her is a commitment to fair wages while living through a recession’s depressed market and prices.

Are Restaurants the New Nonprofits?

There are so many examples of owners providing free food for their communities and initiating funds for unemployed workers. And, of course, there is World Central Kitchen’s José Andrés, who has been hiring laid-off restaurant workers to provide meals for the expanding numbers of unemployed. He is the impetus for the FEMA Empowering Essentials Delivery Act, which if passed, will not only provide FEMA funds for local and state governments to partner with restaurants and nonprofit groups to feed all those in need during COVID-19, but expands the understanding of need from short-term emergency fixes to ongoing support.

 On a much larger scale, the pandemic has recalibrated our understanding of restaurants as essential services. Julie, Minh, and Onil were wholly aware of their potential to turn challenge and nourishment into a form of grace well before the pandemic.

Earlier days: Minh foraging at the late, great Muir Ranch.  The beautiful poultry and mushroom porridge at p&p.

Work among all its abstracts, is actually intimacy, the place where the self meets the world.

Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Words David Whyte

To conclude, three recipes featuring the beautiful food of Julienne, Minh, and Onil.

All are condiments and add-ins designed to wake up everyday dishes: Crème Anglais, Minh’s Geranium Pickled Baby Onions, and Red Onion Jam.

For those of you have time to go deeper during this time of seclusion, some suggested reading:

The Library Book by Susan Orleans

A bipartisan group of lawmakers and José Andrés want to empower FEMA to meet America’s growing hunger crisis by Tim Carman

To the Stars Through Difficulties by Romalyn Tilghman

My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore? by Gabrielle Hamilton 

Shades of L.A.: Pictures from Ethnic Family Albums Edited by Kathy Kobayashi and Carolyn Kozo Cole

On a personal note by Julie Campoy

The World is Small, the World is Big

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Photo by Marika

As very young children, we ventured out into the world in small bites, beginning with our family—immediate to extended. We explored the neighborhood in the secure presence of our parents, made a first trip to the store, to the park, to a side-by-side playdate, and then to “school”–one of the first experiences without the touchstone of our families. As we grew, our touchstones and circles of attachment multiplied to the point where we matured into adults, hopefully with a sense of identity, purpose, and mastery. 

And now, here we are in a world nearly as small as it was many, many years ago: home, neighborhood, once-a-week visit to store, a periodic “visit” at a distance of 6-plus feet with one or two friends. This period of isolation feels like an odd developmental rewinding of my experiences as a very young child. On my bad days, I dream of the freedom of movement without planning and without considering the persistent and strange new calculus of risk’s return on investment.

Have we managed to reverse human progress to become a culture whose sense of survival overshadows the very natural orientation toward curiosity and exploration? 

On my good days, I remember how fortunate I am to be living in a generous and supportive community, in a home with space and garden, and without financial exigencies, as both my husband and I are retired. I realize that this rewinding brings with it opportunity to reconsider these developmental stages through the lens and perspective of an adult. I now have the time and space to follow Jean Piaget’s tenets as a mechanism of psychic survival. 

“Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an act internalized as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a re-adaptation.”

“Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.”

“What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see.”

“Experience precedes understanding.”

For today’s post, I asked several artists whose medium is photography to share images taken during the pandemic. With the generous sharing of their photographs came a desire to talk about what they noticed about this extraordinary period’s output.

All spoke about a continuous “thrumming” of anxiety residing in their subconscious—something that has proven to be deeply distracting, thus making the intense demands of creative work even more challenging. 

“By midday, I am done, exhausted and so my work is morning work only.” Ann Cutting. 

“Working in my garden is a sustainable future; more in some ways than my current work.” Dennis Keeley. 

“I find myself working in two spaces: at home or alone, on daily walks in the street recording the most common of material—shadows and sidewalks.” Doris Hausmann. 

There is a possibility that we are living through a psychic winter.  We are storing our energy for a time when it feels safe once again to venture outside our narrowed comfort zone.

I choose to believe there will be an equally intense outpouring of creative and energetic work waiting for fear to be replaced with relief, breath, and finally wonder.

It is now that I hold onto my fifth-grade love of the “great civilizations” of the Fertile Crescent and all other periods of stability and plenty that led to productive brilliance in the arts and sciences. This too must come again. For now, there is the challenge of sudden and enduring constraint that on our good days acts as a stimulus for creative work. The loose affinity between photographic images and Piaget’s ideas seem most assuredly to express the increasingly smaller, but perhaps deeper exploration of our lives. 

We now experience our world through extreme close ups, computer screens, or at a distance of at least six feet. There is no space between this tight focus and distance. 

Photo by Ann Cutting

Photo by Dennis Keeley

Photo by Ann Cutting

Schedules are elastic, allowing for open-ended time and something I like to call deep noticing. What we see changes what we know.

Photo by Doris Hausmann

Photo by Doris Hausmann

We’ve got the whole world in our hands. Our young children are playing, but often singularly, in spaces created by parents to simulate our parks and playgrounds. We adults are finding deep wonder and a form of play in the most commonplace sources. 

Photo by Elisa Callow

Photo by Dennis Keeley

Alternative celebrations are the finest exemplar of Piaget’s sense of re-adaptation. My gratitude “runneth over” when humanity expresses its honoring of connection combined with safety. 

Photo by Elisa Callow

To close, as promised, the big as well as the small worlds—an eclectic list of links to the big world of cultural delights courtesy of Hope Tschopik Schneider, Esther Kang, Nicolas Gerpe, and yours truly, the Urban Forager:  

Picks from Hope, knitter and sage:

Modern Daily Knitting - My favorite go-to link at the moment is a knitting link--truly extraordinary, connecting me with some of the best designers, fabric artists and yarn makers in the world.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Watch and Listen

Pick from Esther: researcher and strategist

A needed respite from chaos, the eclectic newsletter Sprung.

Picks from Nic, pianist and faculty member of the Pasadena Conservatory of Music:

 Piano Spheres - This longtime series is dedicated to contemporary piano music in Los Angeles, commissioning and premiering countless new works as well as presenting a range of new and little-known pieces and composers. Concerts from previous seasons are now being streamed. 

Hear Now Music Festival - Since 2011, the Hear Now festival has been dedicated to promoting composers in Los Angeles and the greater Southern California area. This year, an e-Festival was launched to continue the group's mission of promoting local composers and showcasing new works.

Pasadena Conservatory of Music - PCM has been working tirelessly to continue their  students' musical education and to provide opportunities and outreach in a variety of innovative ways during the COVID lockdown. Aside from online lessons and classes, PCM now has online series such as Keep Calm and Play On, Faculty Voices, and Artists in Residence. 

Picks from the Urban Forager:

Neighbor Mwï Epalle’s website - It is truly inspiring to experience a young and talented person spread her exquisite wings. 

This Land - Rebecca Nagle’s fascinating and beautifully narrated podcast about the Muscogee Creek Nation’s fight to maintain sovereignty over eastern Oklahoma, as promised after The Trail of Tears. 

The Ojai Virtual Music Festival - I recommend watching this glorious Festival sitting outside, over dinner, without interruption, just like we used to do.  

And for you ballet fans: Misty Copeland and Roberto Bolle in Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet

Restorative adventures with food: 

Photo by Ann Cutting

Masako’s beautiful home baked weekly delights are available every Saturday. Masako, baker extraordinaire, bakes bread and other exquisite treats including this August’s take on The Urban Forager’s Polenta Almond Cake.

Two “safe” shopping adventures: Highland Park Farmers’ Market For those of you newly venturing out to open air markets, this one is a good bridge to the larger markets. It is one “lane” of fresh produce vendors, carefully monitored to assure safety, and never very crowded. Cookbook Market - A small and beautifully curated collection of small farm based produce, dairy, grains, oils, and vinegars. The Highland Park location is large enough to allow three shoppers at a time. All is carefully monitored for health safety.

And further afield: Bloom Ranch of Acton —Peach season is coming and nothing feels more relaxing than a visit to the open space of a happy farm. A small store sells fresh produce, eggs, and other goodies. Call ahead for peaches, as these are some of the best you will ever taste. 

Recipes for “Pods”

Marionne’s Cucumber Gazpacho, Summertime is Here: Fried Green Tomatoes with Basil Mayonnaise, and Campsite Pan Fried Layered Toast —a breakfast treat. 

And three poems for our time: 

Pandemania 

By Daniel Halpern, Poetry Foundation, March 2013 

There are fewer introductions

In plague years,

Hands held back, jocularity

No longer bellicose,

Even among men.

Breathing’s generally wary,

Labored, as they say, when

The end is at hand.

But this is the everyday intake

Of   the imperceptible life force,

Willed now, slow —

Well, just cautious

In inhabited air.

As for ongoing dialogue,

No longer an exuberant plosive

To make a point,

But a new squirreling of air space,

A new sense of boundary.

Genghis Khan said the hand

Is the first thing one man gives

To another. Not in this war.

A gesture of limited distance

Now suffices, a nod,

A minor smile or a hand

Slightly raised,

Not in search of   its counterpart,

Just a warning within

The acknowledgment to stand back.

Each beautiful stranger a barbarian

Breathing on the other side of the gate.

The End of Poetry 

Ada Limón, Together in a Sudden Strangeness, 2020

Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower

and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot, enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy

and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis

of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god

not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,

enough of the will to go on and not go on or how

a certain light does a certain thing, enough

of the kneeling and the rising and the looking

inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,

the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost 

letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and

the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough

of the mother and the child and the father and the child 

and enough of the pointing to the world, weary

and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border, 

enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough

I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate, 

enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high 

water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,

I am asking you to touch me. 

Snow Day

By Billy Collins from Sailing Around the Room, 2001 

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,   

its white flag waving over everything,

the landscape vanished,

not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   

and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,

schools and libraries buried, the post office lost   

under the noiseless drift,

the paths of trains softly blocked,

the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots

and step out like someone walking in water,   

and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,   

and I will shake a laden branch

sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,   

a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.   

I will make a pot of tea

and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,   

as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,   

the Ding-Dong School, closed.

the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,   

the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,

along with—some will be delighted to hear—

the Toadstool School, the Little School,

Little Sparrows Nursery School,

Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School   

the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,

and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,

These are the nests where they letter and draw,   

where they put on their bright miniature jackets,   

all darting and climbing and sliding,

all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard

in the grandiose silence of the snow,

trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,   

what riot is afoot,

which small queen is about to be brought down.

Til Next Time.  Stay healthy in heart, mind, and soul. 

Photo by Nori Durham

I Miss You

The view from the Gold Line

There is no self-discipline left. Originally, I was committed to writing five “Covid” pieces, with this one as part of the middle hump before the grand finale huzzah marking the time when we would have returned to our life as usual. But here we are, almost a year since last March when our world changed into a place now delineated neatly by the descriptors “pre-“ and “post-Covid.” 

This post, titled “I Miss You,” has been almost heartbreaking to turn to.

Grandson Alex and the post Covid hug.

Grandson Anthony

Its original intent was to speak of the small, everyday patterns of life that are no longer, beginning with my wild mornings with grandson Alex. Once a week I picked him up at 6:30 for an early morning breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and sausages at the Nano Cafe in Monrovia, just a hop, skip and jump from his school. I dropped him off at the main office, where he was greeted by the school secretary, a gentle man who allowed Alex to hang in the office rather than deal with the big yard. And then--wonders of wonders--I spent a luxurious hour completing my 45 laps at the Monrovia Y with all the other regulars before the 80-plus- year-old ladies began their water aerobics class. A bicycle with its jaunty basket propped up daily by the entrance meant my friend Dave was “in the house.” A developmentally disabled group of adults, whose morning coffee klatch off the lobby made my heart sing because this center of community had fulfilled its promise. There was even some fragment of scripture posted on the bulletin board that in my younger years would have annoyed me but was now somehow comforting. As I write, I find myself choking up. It’s not my style, as I am one who has searched without fail for the heroic rather than painful stories of Covid. 

My mother, Norma Green, brother Jan and me in earlier days. 

I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. What does this mean now, nearly a year later? It means so much more than the innocent first blush of loss. In concentric circles moving outward, I miss touching my dear ones—grandchildren, children, their spouses, good friends. I miss my mother, who died this last October, basically of old age. I was allowed to see her hours before she died and once or twice before then, yelling through our masks out in the parking lot of her assisted living home. I miss our once vibrant neighborhood, where I used to hear voices without fail as spontaneous street visits occurred almost daily, along with planned summer and winter gatherings. My daily mantra, “We are so lucky to live here,” still holds true, but now we are hunkered down behind closed doors, waiting like the protagonists in Ray Bradbury’s short story from The Illustrated Man for the rain to cease. 

Scene from the film, The Illustrated Man 

We are waiting--I know it--to emerge into the sun feeling wonder and indescribable joy. I miss smiling as I pass other walkers, hikers, browsers in stores. I miss inadvertently brushing by one another without fear. I miss you, concerts, museums, food folk, restaurants, libraries, bookstores (where I wandered for hours—not for a furtive five minutes, double masked out of some odd idea that I will be safe). I miss you, plethora of gorgeous food markets, where I tasted as well as bought. I miss you, good friends who cook like dreams. I miss you, long tables filled with food made and eaten communally. I miss you, cooking classes taught at Descanso Gardens. I miss you, book talks. I miss you, Altadena Community Gardens summer potluck/movie nights, where once we watched Caddy Shack on the deck as an antidote to our frustration about the incessant destruction of gophers. I miss you, impromptu activities engaged at the last minute, just dropping by.  God, I even miss you, meetings for which I had to drive, emerge, get to on time. I miss you France and Japan, Oregon and New Mexico—2020 travel destinations that now seem like evanescent dreams. 

The Ojai Festival in pre Covid days. 

And then, somehow, I miss a sense of beginning and end. At first the idea of time unspooling without the bracketing of events felt like an endless form of hooky. Projects could extend into the ether or be put off for weeks at a time; returning to them seemed somehow less essential. And while I am eternally grateful to the ingenuity of performing arts community in engaging us in their generous content, the idea that I can slither in and out of committing to a time and place is too much latitude. I want to miss something because I did not pay attention. Because I miss paying attention. 

Nurse Lori Marie Key singing Amazing Grace at the Inauguration’s Covid Memorial

Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman

A sense of gravitas

At the beginning of new leadership in our country, I feel like a child who is finally being held after a long nightmare of neglect. Knowing that I have been grieving is a sign that the end may (?) be (?) in sight. Is it possible that I will no longer have to parse my feelings to outlast this year and to a larger extent the past four years?  I have no assurances; we are all in shock. But I do know this: I will never take anything for granted again. 

A coda: The Urban Forager is normally a blog that centers on the relationship of food to culture and community. To honor one of my most missed I Miss You’s, I am including recipes from some of my dearest cooking friends: 

The food makers who gave so generously to The Urban Forager Cookbook. Left to right: Jack Aghojan, Sumi Chang, Minh Phan, Mario Rodriguez, Rumi Mahmood, and Masako Yatabe Thomsen

Take care, dear ones. I know we are nearly over the hump.