When it comes to Dine Arounds, Dine Outs or any “Eat At [INSERT CITY NAME HERE]!” complaints tend dominate the accolades. Why?

In my experience, diner criticism goes along these lines:

The service was terrible, the food wasn’t done with care and I felt ripped off. I was promised a great meal at a great price and instead I got a crappy meal at an okay price. Why wouldn’t I go some other time when the service and food will be better?

I’ve also heard complaints from chefs and servers, whose comments usually goes thusly:

Customers are greedy. We’re giving them a great deal, working our butts off and they repay us by being rude, demanding and then never coming back to our restaurant. Plus, they tip badly, which makes everyone grumpy.

These past two weeks I’ve been previewing the Dine Around menus for most of Dine Around Freddy’s participating restaurants (courtesy of the restaurants and Tourism Fredericton) with the delightful writer and Jill-of-all-trades Heather Allaby. As a result, I’ve had some revelations on what makes a great Dine Around experience. Thus:

The 10 Commandments of Dining Around

1) Restaurants: Thou shalt give excellent value.

Indeed, putting together a three-course menu for $29 is difficult from a food costing perspective. Chefs may be tempted to cut some corners by slashing protein portions, bulking up dishes with lots of cheap starches, not wasting time on thoughtful appetizers and desserts, or using obviously cheaper and easier pre-prepared ingredients or products. But they shouldn’t. Customers aren’t stupid. Dine Arounds are a chance to explore local restaurants and get a great deal. If you can really make people feel pampered and lucky, they’re going to come back. If diners can find delight in the details, they will most definitely come back.

2) Customers: Thou shalt order wine or beer and tip generously.

Awesome! You’re getting a great deal on food! But that doesn’t mean you should be cheap, both when it comes to ordering alcohol or tipping fairly. You’ve decided to treat yourself to a nice meal out. Don’t be a Scrooge and disappoint your date by drinking tap water all night. That’s not fun, and it won’t complement the food. Some of the best meals I’ve had these past two weeks have been really complemented by wine or beer.

Secondly, when you’re tipping, DO NOT TIP ON THE AMOUNT OF THE BILL. That may seem strange, but do it this way: What was the value of the meal? How much would I normally pay for that meal? If they just gave me a $50-value meal and I ordered a bottle of wine for $30, then I’m going to tip my 18% on that amount. It’s just the right thing to do.

3) Restaurants: Thou shalt give lots of options.

We get it. It’s a fixed menu, and that’s fine. But appetites, tastes, and food sensitivities can run the gamut, and if you’re able to build a smart menu that accommodates those, then you are much more likely to appeal to everyone and get some repeat customers. For example, many of the Fredericton restaurants participating in Dine Around are offering vegetarian, gluten-free and picky-eater options. Plus, that will save you some time when serving people who tend to want more options, which speaks to my next Commandment.

4) Customers: Thou shalt not be a pain in the ass when it comes to ordering.

The inverse of Commandment #3 applies here. In order to make money during Dine Arounds, a restaurant needs to be busy. Very busy. And if they’re busy, that means less time accommodating your incredibly specific requests, like to take ingredients out of a dish, or to substitute certain other ingredients. That takes time and energy from both the BOH (back of house ie. cooks ) and FOH (front of house ie. servers) and frankly, it’s energy that they may not have much of. Try to be considerate during Dine Around, and hopefully if a chef has built a great menu then you can just relax, trust the kitchen, and enjoy a delicious and affordable meal.

5) Restaurants: Thou shalt not take Dine Around customers for granted.

This may be a special event, and restaurants may get busy, particularly with lots of new faces. But you do not work on an iPhone assembly line. You are a cook, and should want to put out food that is well-plated and delicious. In a few Dine Around Freddy experiences, even with advance notice and nearly empty restaurants, some of the plating (one in particular) was terrible: food was practically slopped on the plate. This does not make anyone feel special. This makes them feel cheated, and like you’re taking them for granted. It’s like that guy who shows up at your apartment late at night and then doesn’t call the next day. It’s just rude. The upside of this is that when you do put out a beautiful plate, diners will sit up and take notice.

6) Customers: Thou must have reasonable expectations.

Just because this is a special event and you may be dining out more than you normally would doesn’t mean you should expect a $100 Michelin-starred meal for the low, low price of $29. Be reasonable. In any world, a three-course meal for the prices that some of these restaurants aim for is amazing. It’s a feat of strength, and of culinary intelligence. So don’t be a jerk about it. Maybe a restaurant won’t include shaved truffles on top. Maybe they won’t serve duck. Maybe they won’t even (God forbid!) fold your napkin for you while you’re in the bathroom. That said, smart restaurant chefs and managers will try to EXCEED your expectations.

7) Restaurants: Thou shalt try to showcase what you do best.

Dine Around is a great chance for restaurants to come up with some really interesting food that is on the menu for a short time. So chefs and cooks? Live a little! Use Dine Around as a showcase for the culinary predication of your establishment. Our meal at [catch] was a great example of this. Clearly they’re taking the chance to use Dine Around as a culinary labaratory and testing ground for some new dishes that suit and complement their current menu. The food, from fresh sprouts on the gnocci appetizer to the totally charming chai bubble tea served with a biscotti for dessert, had a kind of cohesion and charm that made me feel like Chef Chris Taylor and his whole team really knew which direction their ship is headed. That’s the kind of experience that makes one want to go back.

8) Customers: Thou shalt be adventurous.

In some cities, diners can be very conservative. In Fredericton, I’ve noticed this is particularly true — I’ve met people who think cheese is too exotic. This is a short-term menu, and you’re getting the food for a great price. Sure, there is a time and a place for predictable comfort food, but I would argue that Dine Around or Dine Out events are a great time to try to spread your wings, little birdie, and try something new.

9) Restaurants: Thou shalt send them home with leftovers.

There have been times this week when I literally jumped with joy to find the leftovers from my Dine Around meals in my fridge. If you want diners to leave with happy memories, offer to send them home with some of the delicious food you cooked for them. This is another great reason to be generous with portion size.

10) Customers: Thou shalt tell thy friends!

This is where all your good deals and delicious meals translate into good karma. After all, these events are about promoting food traffic to local restaurants, and they’re hoping that you do them good by recommending the meal to your friends, family and the entire Internets. And let’s be real: running a restaurant, cooking at a restaurant and working at a restaurant is damn hard work. If you have a great meal, pay it forward and come back to pay full price some other day.

The Top 3!

(click on name for a link to their menus)

1) [catch]

This underdog, which is still getting the word out that it’s no longer a mediocre hotel restaurant, pulled into an early lead and held it. Every single dish was thoughtful and well-executed, service was quick and friendly, and portions were generous. At any price, this was an exquisite night out.

2) Sam Snead’s and The Blue Door (it’s a tie!)

This may be cheating, but I just couldn’t pick a favourite:

Sam Snead’s was a surprising standout with a beautiful scallop appetizer (pictured above, highly recommended), large mains that we were excited to take home as leftovers, and not-fancy but a very delicious chocolate raspberry trifle that’s actually just the world’s best brownie with raspberry coulis and whipped cream in a water glass. Ask for your salmon rosé and skip the coconut cream pudding: the “trifle” is really that good.

Not to be outdone, The Blue Door had the standout dish of the night, a cilantro, sake and black bean braised baby back ribs with fried rice and house-made kimchi. It’s gluten-free and totally addictive. In fact, it should probably be on the permanent menu. The curry-coconut mussel appetizer was a generous portion and the dessert, a dulce de leche cheesecake, is the only option but it’s a good one.

3) The Schnitzel Parlour

This may be a surprising choice, but Uwe and Beate have put together a menu that showcases their restaurant’s delicious and unpretentious comfort food, and do an excellent job of providing value and a warm dining experience. For a fun night out with schnitzel, spaetzle and a German beer in a stein, this is a night out. Plus, we were surprised that they get much of their meat and produce from Real Food Connections, not some scary-no-name meat provider, so kudos!

When a friend of mine found out I’m writing a magazine piece on offal in the Maritimes, he said, “You have to meet Jesse Vergen.” Well, last week I had the chance to eat at the Saint John Ale House, where Vergen is the executive chef, and my oh my, was it ever something.

I don’t want to poach too much from my piece, but it’s fair to say that I know my offal. I’ve worked with most pieces of most eaten animals, which has included boiling a pig’s head for headcheese, sautéing lamb kidneys, grinding chicken livers, peeling a cow tongue, pressing veal sweetbreads and searing succulent little duck hearts.

One thing that is for sure: it’s a tricky to make a tough, iron-tasting or super-gelatinous piece of organ, trotter or cartilage taste delicious. So when it comes to eating it, it’s good to have low expectations.

But from the moment this array of charcuterie arrived, we had a feeling something magical was about to happen.

On it was house-made cured hog’s snout, beef heart tartare, porchetta di testa (rolled pig’s head), pancetta, smoked mackerel with potato and mackerel aoli, pancetta, duck prosciutto, and a pig skin bruschetta (yes, you read that correctly) done in a Sicilian style with capers, olives and tomato concasse. And that was just the proteins. Garniture included crostini, pickled red onions, carrots, cucumbers and eggs quick-pickled in beet vinegar.

Phew, right? It was so extensive it was hard to know where to start. But from our first bite of beef heart tartare (which was divine) it was clear that Vergen not only knows what he’s doing, but that he seriously respects his ingredients and knows how to work with offal.

The other magical thing with offal is what it can do for food costs in a kitchen. In fact, the crazy-sounding pig skin bruschetta was an exercise in improvisation from Vergen, who challenged one of his cooks to play with the often-discarded skin right before the platter came out. While the final result was a bit soggy, the idea behind the attempt was admirable. The lip-smacking gelatinous effect of the braised skin, cut with the astringency of capers and acid and served on grilled bread, was pretty delicious and certainly unexpected.

Most importantly, that plate helped to make a point, a point I’ll write about in Saltscapes in more detail, but one that I think goes thusly: in trying to eat local meat, in trying to eat sustainably, chefs have to be creative, they have to be smart, and they have to let the ingredients lead. Every item on that charcuterie plate was made with the above in mind, and perhaps more importantly, with love. It was obvious.

A brief tangent away from offal: this plate of smoked sturgeon arrived near the end of the meal, and at this point I was convinced Vegen was just showing off. Apparently the locally-raised fish came from an event he recently catered, and it sat on a bed of fermented cabbage with a garnish of green apple julienne. It was beautiful, precise and original.

I hope Mr. Vergen is aware of how high he has set the bar for himself. Or maybe that’s the point.

Growing up in Ontario, my dad used to come back from wintertime east-coast work trips with a bag of frozen smelt, but I never really understood where they came from (river? ocean? lake?) or why they were so delicious.

Imagine my surprise when, driving home this week, I saw a pickup truck in a church parking lot with crudely painted sign advertising TROUT and SMELTS. Moving east has its perks, including this totally delicious oily fish, which are fished in the winter through holes in the ice. It’s a local and sustainable fishery, and comes with none of the horrifying ethical dilemmas posed by tuna, for example. Plus, did I mention that they are delicious?

Now, they’re excellent and easy if done the old-fashioned way: breaded (crumbs or panko mixed with a bit of powdered garlic or pimenton and salt) and then deep fried, but you can only do that so many days in a row before it’s old news.

Luckily, a dear chef friend recently gave my man and me Preserving Wild Foods, by Matthew Weingarten and Raquel Pelzel. It’s a truly excellent cookbook (and this is coming from someone who would rather make room for a new implement than a new cookbook) and a great resource for anyone who wants to start foraging or preserving (or both!) It also has a neat way of presenting recipes, which integrates measurements and ingredients into the recipe and process itself, but you’ll have to read it for yourself to know what I mean.

In it, there’s a totally crazy technique for making garum, an ancient umani condiment favoured by the Romans that is also a handy way way to repurpose smelt innards. (Let’s be fair, the only other use would be to help fill my garbage can.) That is currently fermenting (ie. rotting) on top of my fridge, and I’ll let you know if it works out.

I fell in love with the book’s salted sardines, coriander and thyme process, so I modified the recipe slightly, substituting cumin for coriander, and piment d’esplette for red chili flakes, and appear to have stumbled upon a winner.

Plus, because the salting is a preservation method, I’ll be able to snack on them all week. They’re great with bitter greens and epic with a nice Manchego and crackers.

YUM.

Salted Smelt, Cumin and Thyme
adapted from Preserving Wild Foods

1 pound cleaned and gutted smelt
1 1/2 cups kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cumin, toasted
1 orange, zested and juiced
2 lemons, zested and juiced
2 teaspoons piment d’esplette (or 1 tablespoon red chili flakes)
10 sprigs fresh thyme
olive oil (have at least a few cups on hand)

1. Mix the salt and sugar, and spread 1/3 of the mixture on the bottom of a non-reactive pan. Lay the smelt flesh side down on the salt and cover with the remainder. Cover and refrigerate.

2. Meanwhile, mix cumin, zests, juice and piment d’esplette in a small bowl.

3. Once fish are slightly firm and skin is wrinkled (45 minutes to one hour) brush excess salt from the smelt and rinse and dry the pan. Lay down a few sprigs of thyme, dip each smelt in the citrus mixture and then cover with the rest. Refrigerate for 12 to 16 hours.

4. Put 1/4 of a cup of olive oil in a 6-inch long (or so!) glass container and layer with smelt, more oil, then more smelt, more oil (you get the idea) until finishing with a layer of olive oil to cover. Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight. They will keep very well for at least a week, but I assure you that it won’t take you that long to eat them.

If you aren’t familiar with Patricia Wells, you should be. She’s the doyenne of bistro cuisine, and runs what I’ve heard is the best cooking school in Provence. She has a pied-à-terre in Paris where she also hosts cooking classes, but if you look at her photos online, you can tell her heart is in Provence.

Her cooking classes for 2013 are nearly full, but if you want a taste for the quality of her recipes then look no further than her Winemaker’s Grape Cake. This one is from her 1996 cookbook Patricia Wells at Home in Provence, and was given to her by Rolando Beramendi.

To be in Provence in the fall is to be surrounded by incredible amounts of grapes, and this recipe is a fabulous way to use those grapes. As Wells notes, the incredible texture of this cake comes from the half butter, half olive oil mixture. It’s also not too sweet, so is great for brunch.

A note on the grapes: you can use seedless, but Wells recommends trying small seeded grapes like Zinfandel or Cabernet for a bit of “rustic crunch.” I’ve had this cake with both kinds, and have to side with Wells on this one.

Last week I was sent on assignment to Halifax, Nova Scotia* and stayed with friends. It was a glorious visit, and we made some pretty spectacular food, including a handmade orecchiette served with a pumpkin-almond-sausage-maple syrup sauce. There’s no better way to spend time with friends than making tiny pasta “ears” with your thumbs and drinking bottomless bottles of super Tuscans.

While in Halifax, I had a chance to eat at the Wooden Monkey, a local institution that serves totally delicious food in a cozy environment. The food is also local, healthy and ethical to boot, but thankfully (and surprisingly!) they don’t make any compromises on flavour. A great example of that was their spectacular chocolate-tofu torte.

A server was generous enough to share the ingredients with us, and while she didn’t give us proportions or techniques, we took it upon ourselves to try to replicate this outrageously rich-tasting and healthy dessert. This is what she told us: semi-sweet chocolate, silken tofu, maple syrup and nuts. That’s it.

While I had never worked with silken tofu, my friend couldn’t say enough about its creamy properties. It’s protein-rich and dairy-free, and makes a wicked cream sauce, pudding, and this case, would be the liquid component of our ganache. Here’s what we came up with:

Doppleganger Chocolate-Tofu Torte in the style of Wooden Monkey (Makes one torte, enough for 8 people)

1 cup tree nuts (almonds, pecans, hazlenuts, walnuts, etc.)
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon honey

1 340g package silken tofu
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips or bar chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted (optional, will add to richness)
big pinch of sea salt

For crust, blend nuts, butter and honey in a food process until it resembles crumbs. Press into a pie pan and bake at 350C for 10-15 minutes until golden. Check frequently to ensure it doesn’t burn. Remove and let cool.

For filling, melt chocolate in a medium-sized bowl over a pot of boiling water or in the microwave. In the meantime, liquefy the silken tofu with a hand blender (this is key) and add the maple syrup, coconut oil if using and sea salt. Once the chocolate mixture is melted, fold in tofu mixture and blend well. Pour filling over pre-baked nut crust and smooth the top with a spatula or spoon. Once cool, refrigerate for at least 4 hours or freeze for 2. Serve with a nice dollop of maple butter and a small pile of fleur de sel on the side.

Postscript…

The next day, we baked a whole pink trout filet on a bed of dulse, covered in lemon slices, and again the silken tofu came to the rescue. We needed a cream sauce, so blended the leftover silken tofu with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper in a small pot. It separated slightly, but provided a tart-yet-unctuous counterpoint to the rich and salty fish and seaweed. That was served with a mixed wild rice blend and baby bok choi.

Moral of the story? Next time you’re looking to make something, almost anything, that’s creamy, then consider silken tofu. I’m glad I gave it a chance, and so will you.

*My husband and I recently relocated from Vancouver back east. Luckily, the Foodists family said they would be happy to keep me around, so I’m chuffed. All posts onwards will most likely be from the east coast.

One dark morning last week, I made ham and eggs for one in a tiny skillet on an industrial range. Now, this has its pros and cons:

Pro: With the high heat that comes out of that Italian thoroughbred, all stainless steel and cast iron grates, breakfast can be ready in under 3 minutes flat. (For the uninitiated, it looks like this: Heat on, oil, ham on, ham off, eggs on, season, eggs off, tomatoes on, season, tomatoes off, skillet off, slightly stale baguette slices left in hot pan to soak up juices, serve.)

Con: After a late night of drinking pastis (a milky yellow anise liqueur the French adore) and Campari on a St. Remy patio, having the sudden realization that even when bleary-eyed, you are still a trained cook. If you burn your eggs while daydreaming about line-dancing in the street to a syrupy-sweet European pop trio — sparkle mini dresses,  coordinated dance moves, blonde lady playing the accordion and all — then all you have is burnt eggs and low self-esteem.

Luckily, breakfast turned out fine.

After a crazy few days at the Mas, a street party was just what the doctor ordered. While sipping my drink and listening to French pop, I realized that my last note didn’t give you much of a sense of what I’m actually doing here, so this missive is dedicated to painting a clearer picture of what this experience has been like so far:

The Mas is an inn and cooking school, in a huge converted farmhouse decorated to the nines with antique furniture and valuable rugs. It sometimes feels like hospitality from another century. There are six bedrooms, a salon with a bar, an office and a dining room, which is connected to our teaching kitchen via our dish area. There is a large pool beside my little “maisonette” and a rope swing out front of the house, which is protected from burglars by a code-protected front gate.

Guests at the inn are usually Europeans or North Americans (rooms at the inn start at 180 Euros a night, with a two-night minimum) and I have been put in charge of preparing and serving them an elaborate continental breakfast in the morning, with piles of fresh fruit from the garden, steaming pastries, and espresso coffees. (I just learned how to hold four plates or four wine glasses at once!! Former servers, please do not laugh.)

The cooking school offers tours of the St. Remy market and lunch and dinner classes, in which we (increasingly becoming I) do most of the prep work, and then a group of up to 20 hikers or cyclists will roll (literally or figuratively) into the front yard of the inn. They get recipe binders, information about the gardens and Provençal cuisine, and then drink rose immediately after they take all our careful mis en place and throw it together.

Now, the inn does offer private morning, afternoon and evening courses, and these classes are a pleasure to run, as they tend to be smaller and attract more serious cooks.

A day in the life…

Before dawn, even before the roosters have started, I’m making tea and scarfing down a breakfast of fresh figs and yogurt. By the time the rooster starts but the sun isn’t quite up, last night’s dishes are put away.

I run around preparing breakfast, which includes huge aforementioned freshly-cut fruit platter, and have everything on the table by 8am. Then comes distributing the vegetables, pastry components, starches and proteins that comprise each dish, which have been carefully measured and prepared the afternoon before. When the group arrives they are given their recipe folders, an apron, and a rundown of what the class will look like.

Once the class starts, it’s controlled chaos, as people wave knives around, pretend that they were actually paying attention to the instructions, and ask me what part of the United States I’m from. That then starts a whole conversation about how lovely Vancouver is (yes, I know), why I’m leaving it (have you ever heard of New Brunswick?) and what the heck I’m doing in France (um… long story?). It’s usually around this time I need to go help someone else, so I dash away, glad to not explain my lack of a concrete life plan to a total stranger.

Then the guests are shuttled outside for a snack and a glass of the Mas’s famous bottomless rose, at which point I actually cook the food, then they come inside, take credit along with a plate, and then take a seat at a glorious long table that is set out front of the inn. While they are eating I am elbow deep in dishes, until the point where I am invited outside for dessert. This is where I wipe the sweat off my face, lose my dirty apron, and proceed to make small talk, the same conversation over and over, about how yes, I am a journalist, and yes, wouldn’t it be swell if I considered writing for magazines about food, and no, they haven’t heard of Maclean’s but best of luck in all my endeavors.

After guests leave and the kitchen is clean, I usually dive into the pool until my body temperature is somewhat stable, take a short break (usually an hour or so) and then spend the rest of the afternoon and evening cooking and preparing for the next day’s class. Sometimes my evening task involves picking thousands of fresh grapes off of vines to be put onto a drying rack for raisins, that kind of thing. I’m lucky if I’m in bed before 11pm.

Some nights we’re up until the wee hours, de-seeding zucchini and pre-cooking tartlets, only to be up at 5am the next day to do it all again. It can be a gruelling schedule. But slowly and surely, I’m starting to reclaim a feeling I became addicted to in culinary school: you are drowning in work, in your growing list of urgent to-dos, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, time starts to slow down. You start moving faster relative to it. Your moves are more controlled, you start overtaking, taking charge of the feeling of controlled panic that pounds in a kitchen.

We have another hard week of classes coming up, but I’m slowly but surely getting my bearings in the kitchen, where dishes are jam-packed upon dishes, and special platters and linens are squirreled away in every cranny.

She says that by the time I leave, I may know where everything goes.

In this first week of my French stage, I’ve learned all kinds of tips and tricks . This ranges from suspending a soupy salad (like bulgur-less tabbouleh) in a tamis (sieve) set over a bowl, so as to preserve the sauce but keep the cucumber, tomatoes and parsley from macerating in the acidic liquid, to freezing meat and sauce separately, then reheating the sauce first and putting the meat into the hot sauce so as not to overcook but serve piping hot. (Amazing, right?!?!)

But of all of the tricks I’ve learned so far, none compares to the vegetable eventail (fan) trick, which is a common French method of preparing the vegetable. You can find a great recipe here. Generally, a thick vegetable (most commonly a zucchini or eggplant) is thinly sliced on the vertical and fanned out on oiled parchment paper. It can then be layered with anything your heart desires: classically the Provençal use tomatoes and onions with anchovy or tiny black olives, but cheese is splendid, as is anything that gets soft and succulent when baked.

Once stuffed, season generously with salt and pepper, drizzle with a good olive oil, and sprinkle with some fresh whole thyme leaves (not the sprig, silly. The leaves.) Bake at 400 degrees F for 15 to 25 minutes (depends on the size of vegetables you are dealing with) or until cheese is golden and bubbly.

Voila! It looks sexy on the plate, and is oh-so easy to boot.

When asked to become part of the Foodists community, I was flattered and somewhat surprised. Sure, my life is food, I know how to cook and I have strong opinions about food. But for most of my journalistic career I’ve been behind the scenes, either editing other writers or working as a journalist, which mostly involves purging prose of opinion, and most certainly of adjectives.

Most food writing online is the antithesis of my background, full of hyperbole, hysteria, freebie-influenced swooning, and uninformed speculation on the restaurant industry. After going to culinary school (Northwest Culinary Academy, if you really want to know) and wading through the murky trenches of freelance journalism (you can find my credentials here, if you really need to know them), I’ve bitten the bullet and decided to let the adjectives fly.

After, all some of the best writing ever (EVER!) has been created by the likes of MFK Fisher, Claudia Roden, Patricia Wells, and Ruth Reichl, and I’m heading towards France in the year of Julia Child’s 100 birthday. While I’d never dare to compare myself to those amazing women, at least I can aspire to follow in their footsteps.

For the next two months I’m staging (apprenticing) at an inn in Provence, and will be posting recipes, mediations and the occasional rave for your reading pleasure. My interests are food science, culture, gastronomy, DIY projects (especially charcuterie), foraging and food security, but you’ll hear more about that in the weeks to come.

For now, here’s an excerpt from an interview I did  with Foodtree so we can get to know each other a little better:

Has your relationship with food evolved over time? How?
Everyone’s has, I think. But I suppose working on an apple farm at such a young age had a profound impact on my preconceived notions of what our food system should look like. I took for granted that everyone could eat asparagus out of a garden, or knew how to forage for chanterelles. That kind of cheap self-sufficiency was a practical matter, not just a high-end luxury, so it’s strange for me to think about modern-day gourmand-ism as something that’s only accessible to the very rich. It’s mostly about doing something over buying something, which is something I think we’ve lost touch with as a society.

What is your earliest memory about food?
My earliest food memory is probably from the apple farm. I was probably about thirteen or so, and had taken a break from patrolling the orchard (it was pick-your-own, and many careless people would climb trees and break branches or throw apples). I picked a Jonagold apple, which were quite new at the time, that was nearly as large as my head, and laid back in the thigh-high grass. I remember munching on this huge apple, looking up through the trees, watching the fluffy white clouds drift across a Dutch-blue sky as apple juice ran down my cheeks.

What’s most important to you when it comes to buying food – local, organic, fair trade, GMO-free, etc?
Definitely local, and not factory-farmed. Local is important for changing how our food economy is structured, and supporting local entrepreneurs and farmers. However, good food doesn’t have to be “”organic”” to be good. Our apple farm wasn’t organic, but it was a manageable size, my grandfather practiced careful spraying and tree maintenance, and didn’t depend on irrigation to keep the trees alive.

For things we can’t get locally, I think fair-trade chocolate and coffee should be the default, but unfortunately capitalism doesn’t work that way. This makes the fair-trade label necessary, which is too bad. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could assume that trade was fair?

When it comes to GMOs, I think engineering seeds, animals or otherwise that can’t reproduce or support themselves should be outlawed. It’s a horrible, self-sabotaging practice that’s going to bite society in the butt in the long run.

What is the one thing you’d like to see change about the food system?
I’d love to see more grassroots community action around skills-sharing, like foraging, preserving, curing, cooking and otherwise. Right now cities aren’t doing a great job of supporting these movements through grants, etc., but I also don’t believe they should be expected to do all the heavy lifting. Food economy is really important as well; I’ve had friends tell me that it’s cheaper to eat out than to buy the base ingredients. This means they are either wasting too much, or don’t know how to freeze/save/use leftover food, which is a tragedy, and super wasteful.