GourmandeMom™

My Capital Area Food Bank Volunteer Day: Up Close and Personal Insights on our Flawed Food System

For many reasons, I signed myself up a couple of weeks ago for a volunteer shift at Austin's Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB) way down south on South Congress.  I thought I signed up my teen as well (for lessons in community, volunteerism, just getting him off the *%^%#$ couch, etc.), but that did not work out. I had no idea what to expect when my 1-4 pm shift on Saturday December 28 came around, but what I got in return were insights far beyond the mere act of volunteering.  

If you are looking for some direct-impact volunteer opportunities, consider CAFB.  In addition to many opportunities and times to help out, it has family night on the first Tuesday of every month and a Thursday 6-8:30 pm shift for adults who want to help but need a work/family-friendly shift.   Here's where you can sign up. 

(No cell phones allowed during the volunteer shift.  Safety first.  No distractions allowed.  This was after we were done.  View onto just a very small part of the operation and those precious, scarce banana boxes.)

Observations on organization, the food donation system, and how far away we are from a healthy, sustainable food system.  Of course CAFB is very much involved in the debate.

1. CAFB: well run and organized.  

I did not appreciate beforehand that because we were dealing with food, many health and safety regulations had to be followed.  CAFB staff, while hilarious and highly entertaining, took this very seriously.   (And by the way, CAFB, the fact our team leaders that day were so utterly talented in the comedic realm, I immediately felt welcome and not as freaked out at why on earth was I here with not a single person I knew to do something I had no idea about.)

One of the fun and inspiring Capital Area Food Bank staff members giving pep talk to her "Team Awesome" of youth and family volunteers: parents there with their young teens for the shift.  They did some separate work of separating and packing up canned goods.  

2.  The CAFB site on South Congress.

This site executes "product recovery."   They are a central sorting spot for 300 partner agencies in 21 counties.  Food must be sorted, inspected, packed up according to very strict standards and protocols so when agencies order what they need, they get exactly what they ordered according to the needs of that particular agency's community.  

As simple as that process sounds, it takes a small village, or Saturday afternoon team of volunteers, to get it done.  Sorting food is labor-intensive because there is far more to it than just the sorting.  And herein lies the lesson of factory line work, automation, people, teamwork, safety.  

3.  Organization.

CAFB staff organized the volunteers into various parts of the process. 

First, a group of us would be the "expediters": they brought huge heavy cardboard boxes of donated frozen foods off of the many pallets and set them down, as needed, in front of the inspectors.

Second, inspector volunteers unpacked the boxes, taking out the foods to inspect them per the many instructions (had to be rock hard frozen for one thing...learned a lot about packaging), with a LOT of guidance at first (see Food Recall point below), then placing the inspected frozen food item on the conveyor belt for sorting (a black sharpie was used to mark out the bar code to preclude resale). Some foods not meeting certain specific standards had to be thrown away. Others could go to the Austin zoo for the lions and tigers and bears.  

Because of one rule--ingredients HAVE to be listed on the food item--bin after bin after bin was filled with food that had to be thrown away.  

This was not a good day for vegetarians to be on the inspection line.  You are handling meats after all, albeit frozen, of many shapes and forms.

[Most disgusting surprise in one of those boxes?  A cardboard box just full of nothing but crushed ice and meat parts.  Yep, no packaging.  No plastic at all: just meat stuffs in the ice.  I had to go over and see that for myself.  Hey, you, who made that donation: "Not helpful."  Off it went to the trash.] 

Third, other volunteers packed up the sorted foods into banana boxes, the "lifeblood" of the operation because these boxes are so ideal and thus crucial to the packing, storing, and shipping-out process.

Fourth, as the inspectors went through their boxes, the boxes had to be broken down.  I was on that team because I said I was someone who could be trusted with box cutters.  This turned out to be not entirely true.  It took a few tries to get into the habit of making sure the blade was fully retracted back into the handle before placing it in my back pocket.

[Best trick EVER: in breaking down boxes, take those box cutters and cut out a giant X on the bottom.  It will fold up flat in a jiffy.]

Fifth, we had to sort the boxes that we were flattening because they went to different places.  

Sixth, as our bins filled up with flattened out cardboard boxes, someone else came and used that pallet-mover thing to bring them out to get baled for recyling by someone named Bertha.

Seventh, someone else's job was to take the banana boxes, which we would bring over to them, and get those stacked up high to be on hand for those doing the sorting and packing up.

Lastly, someone packed up the sorted boxes, weighed them, and then someone else placed them onto pallets to be taken away and into the giant freezer warehouse. We started out slow, but that last hour we moved at a fast, efficient clip, going through 3-4 pallets I think.

Then of course at the end we all cleaned up.  A special food-safe sanitizing solution was sprayed all over every surface, and a team of persons wiped everything down. I did some sweeping. 

Lessons about our food system

4. Product recalls.  

The watch list for foods that were absolutely prohibited from passing on to the community was alarmingly large.  I vowed I would never eat food from some of those vendors ever again, and that I would re-dedicate myself to fresh and non-processed food at my house. 

5.  How to Help, What to Donate.

In making donations to a food pantry, consider what you yourself and your family might want to eat.   Peanut butter is a good option to donate.  Although we were working frozen food day, and I appreciate how critical well-packaged and well-handled frozen meat can be as a protein source, there is some disgusting stuff out there.  

CAFB is performing not just a critical role in getting food to people who need it, but they also are a critical part of taking what a store might throw out and making sure it can still be used.   Granted, a lot of waste still occurs in our food system, with a lot of what we were going through making its way still to the trash bins, but still. This is a huge help.  Thus the name of the process: "product recovery."

Consume what you yourself buy.

6.   Food insecurities, elitism.

At the required break time halfway into the shift, I talked with some other volunteers about our shock at what still had to get thrown away and the type of food donated.   Some questioned why there was not healthier food being donated and sent out to the constituent agencies.  Why not a simple meal of quinoa and fresh herbs, someone pondered aloud?  

Well, even I am not cooking quinoa at home because -- I just don't.  Would my 16-year-old son even eat it?  Would I just throw it out (more waste--of my time and all the food items that would into it), because he is not eating it?  

How do you help people evolve into different or "better" eating habits--or to eat non-industrial, processed foods?  How do you fix bad incentives with food stamps subsidies?

I piped in about these being immense problems of infrastructure that very smart, passionate (but realistic) people are working on.  These are not simple problems, these questions of who "should" be eating what and how we should be insisting more for healthier processes in how our food makes its way to grocery store shelves.  

The debate, even our conversation, almost can't help but be tinged with a certain elitism.  We forgot about privileged we are to eat as well as we do and to make the choice to buy a certain way.  That privilege comprises not just the money to do so, but the knowledge about how and why it is worth shopping and preparing foods certain ways. 

Cannot overstate how fun our CAFB staff leaders were for our shift.  I could have sat and picked Tamara's brain for hours for more details on the whole process, the warehouse system,  the product recalls, the safety rules, how and why they get the food they do from corporate institutions.   The music selections were great during the work shift.  She said at the end as she rounded us all up that on the Thursday night adult volunteer shift they play a lot of Bee Gees and Hall & Oates.  How awesome does that sound.

7.  Results

We unpacked, inspected, and sorted 2250 pounds of food, which will allow for 1875 meals.

What a great bunch of volunteers.  This is the "volunteer name tag ball."  

I hear dry goods sorting is extremely complex and requires some serious attention to detail.  I can't wait.

 

 

 

Goat on the fire...and other surprises: LongHouse Food Revival

I got back from France on Tuesday, with what I have taken to calling "my Parisian cold," crammed in the work, and made it to the Food, the City, and Innovation Conference at UT (specifically, The Food Lab at UT) this past Friday/Saturday.  In fact, that trip to France was compelled for many reasons, but primarily for getting up-to-date intel on what the France start-up scene looks like in the food systems sector.  Not just so I can be a part of that dialogue as well and connect us with the innovations over there, but also to figure out which one of the many ill-fitting, half-made hats I am trying on these days -- putative food entrepreneur, food system critic/problem-solver to entrepreneurs -- suits me best.

Between the head cold, the work, the brain-smashingingly awesome new jargon I learned (e.g., "hyper-local" and "restorative ecosystems" and "food system resiliency" and "bio-economy") that infuses the debate about local, sustainable, urban agriculture, by the time Friday night's dinner rolled around I was doing good just to get myself there.  I had no idea what it was that I had purchased a ticket for months earlier.  But someone had come all the way from Delaware just to see her friend, Molly O'Neill, run this show.  I started to take it all a bit seriously. 

All I knew was the space was gorgeous.  We were there early, Melissa and I, to be almost first in line at the bar (tequila tasting, etc. and an actually pretty darn good Texas wine) and take in what this place, this thing was going to be.  

As in many, many things, I was starting to learn that I am a little late to the party on this food systems stuff.  Yet I come at it from such a different perspective - funding/legal challenges these folks face as they (we) seek to change the world (lawyers, we're such total buzzkillers) - but even though I am late, I am delighted to be seeing my city in a whole different light.  Much like I saw Paris for the first time in a very different way this time: the young, hipster, smart entrepreneur/challenge the system side.  (Young being an operative word.)  

I had just learned about Hope Farmers Market that day, and it so happens that this particular market, when it happens, is at this Pine Street Station where the LongHouse Food Revival Dinner was happening.  It is a complex of old barn buildings or lean-tos, with rafters, soaring ceilings, and metal siding and roofing, just east of I-35, which can be rented out for private events.  Exquisitely rustic.  I take pictures.  I look for snacks to accompany the really not bad at all, and really pretty good, Texas red wine.  Melissa finds Iliana de la Vega. They do their gorgeous Spanish thing.  I do not even try to keep up.

Soon we are herded from the now very energetic crowd of folks around the bar, under the lights, into a separate room, one that is not the dining room.  This concerns me, as I am very hungry.  And the dining room looked so adorable all set up improvised like in a farm to table dinner-at-the-field/farm dinner.

But as the music starts -- guitars, some percussion, some singing -- I am easily distracted from the crankiness of no food. (The tamales out for aperitif dining were great, but I stopped after a couple of halves....practicing moderation.)

I am handed a gorgeous program.  I am very critical of printed products.  This one is really well done: lovely font, lovel graphics, right size.  I sit on a back row with new friend, whom I figure out I must have partied with here in 1990 in the early post-grad school transition year to law school, and long-time friend Melissa from that same era (who also knew said new/re-met friend).

Now the magic begins.  LongHouse Food Revival is a multi-media performance art statements of sorts about food.  Our food stories.  Our communities and our food, our personas and our food.  Including recipe demonstrations -- Iliana de la Vega - poems, with powerful visual background of a daughter's recounting her memories or mother's soup juxtaposed against the loss of her mother to dementia; more music, interviews - with Gustavo Arellano of the Ask a Mexican column - with Melissa Guerra, a Nortena, whose husband, Kiko, we learn is the one out there cooking the cabrito. Ah, so there's a goat on the fire.  That's what that's all about out there.

We hear this other Melissa's back story, her 300+ year old cattle ranch around the border, the many hours of getting here, the many hours her awesome husband (her words) has been tending the cabrito - just for us to eat.   

It is cumulatively charming, inspiring.  Even with the flawed sound system. 

Molly has some serious verbal skills.  I was a little jealous, yea, but between my cold and the red wine, I just sat back and delighted in her prose in setting up the various stages of this event, in explaining what she does - to those of us who were clueless.

LongHouse Food Revival is this:

Based on the 19th century American Chautauqua movement, LongHouse Food Revivals are a series of annual gatherings of thought leaders across the United States. The Revivals are designed to stretch the boundaries of how food stories are told, raise the bar on the nation’s food news agenda and, most of all, foster the community between generations, regions, cultures and media platforms that support innovative work of the highest quality. Produced by CookNScribble, the online educational resource and virtual editorial office for food writers, bloggers and producers, LongHouse Food Revivals are intimate gatherings that are large in vision. No two Revivals are alike. All are serious fun 

After that, I lingered.  I loaded up on beads, set up in the bottom bin of a rustic wood display stand.  Molly applauds me for getting that I needed to get some beads. The NOLA thing in me I guess.  I see beads.  I grab.  Told Molly, genuinely, this was so well done.  I love it.  Needed it.  Have found my people.  

At the end of all that, and then the meeting of new friends--the Shrimp Boat Projects guys, a landscape architect professor specializing in urban agricultural designs and rhetoric (I felt very out-intellectualized)--there were small cups of Mexican hot chocolate.  Some ice cream.  I went for the chocolat chaud.

Said newfound old acquaintance of mine, who does a lot of cool things in Austin, echoed my own random thoughts at about that same time when she said:  This is the coolest thing I have ever done in Austin.   

  (Cabrito being distributed in the buffet line; which line of food also had the best tortillas I have ever had (good thick rustic corn tortillas))

Special Delivery - the "Local Box" (fresh, local, organic produce) from Greenling

Back in the day, when I had my season ticket for one (1) for the Houston Grand Opera, the fact of having a season ticket compelled me to make huge efforts to get to that opera I had already paid for.  Because of that season ticket, I saw not only the amazing Cecilia Bartoli in Cenerentola, but also pretty random, obscure operas.  Like Gertrade Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts.   Never ever would have gone to that, even if I am a literary Paris 1920s groupie.   Result: Loved it.  Quirky, weird.  Visually stunning when the HGO did it. 

And so it is going to be true, I see already, with my subscription to the Greenling organic produce home delivery service.

I will be meeting a founder of La Ruche qui dit oui when in Paris here soon, an organic, fresh produce delivery service in France, so it seemed right that I needed to get down to the business of getting familiar with the organic farm-fresh produce delivery situation here in Austin. 

I signed up for the service over lunch last week at Second.   No brainer I wanted the "Local Box."  No substitutions: just picks of what's best that week from local-ish farms. And a delivery every two weeks.  Once a week is no bueno with just me and the son.

My first box, crate, or bin, rather, arrived.  But not until like almost 8 p.m. on the one of two delivery days that I chose.  The experience so far:

Pretty easy interface for the website.  I was on the tiny iPhone; as I am over 45, and having increadingly difficult time navigating that tiny wondrous phone/computer to do intensive data entry, the fact that even I was able to do it says something.

The delivery experience/presentation.   I am not sure what I was expecting about this first delivery.  A gorgeous richly textured handwoven artisanal basket with funky handle and weave? Darling rustic and exotic-looking of colors or ribbons a la Williams Sonoma?  But when I got the green plastic bin, and first opened it after scampering back with it to the kitchen, I was underwhelmed.  Is this it?  This for my $40 something? ($10 deposit on the bin; you set it out when the next delivery comes but they will spot you a few times and remind you to return the create/bin from the last visit on the next delivery cycle, please, before they ding you for it.)

The Produce.   I started going through the items in the bin.  The first item I pick up for study was probably the smallest head of red leaf lettuce I have ever seen.  It was adorable. Like Ina had gone out into her garden and picked it right up out of there for a lovely weekday lunch for her Hampton friends, or a beach lunch with Jeffrey on the weekend.  I had two of those little heads of lettuce.

The List of Stuff: good, helpful explanations.  I realized there also was placed in the crate a list of the items, which included the name of which nearby farm grew the item.  Good thing there was a list.  I never would have guessed why I was getting a HUGE, giant bunch of ginger.  (And that would be because it was not ginger. It was what I would learn, after research, was sunchokes.)

And then I got more excited as I dug in.  Beets!  Goodie!  A beautifully formed green bell pepper!  A not so beautifully formed bunch of radishes!  And then I saw the real star.  A big frothy frilly bunch of this.  

Thinking it was rocket lettuce, I made a salad immediately.  Used part of that and an entire (tiny, tiny) head of red leaf lettuce.   Radishes.  And some of the many various brands of roasted almonds with sea salt I have on hand these days.  And the go-to dressing these days: fancy olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, sea salt, pepper.  

Back to the list for the Local Box items:  Rocket lettuce is nowhere on there.  But there is Mizuna.  I look it up.  Yep, that must be it.  Looks like rocket lettuce/arugula.  Related to mustard greens.  How cool do I feel.  Never heard of it. (I really should get out more. Working on that.)

Also in the green plastic bin:  bok choy.  Never had it.  Lovely parsley. (I have had parsley before.)  Two grapefruits. Those two grapefruits at first glance not too stunning.   But today, I cut into the grapefruit to accompany what I now know is Mizuna, not rocket lettuce.  This grapefruit is spectacular: everything you want in a grapefruit. Explosion of tartness and that wildly bright color.

Only much later did I realize that the folks at Greenling had done me another huge favor.  Not only did they include a sheet of paper listing all the produce and their provenance, and in the order in which the produce should be eaten based on the time in which each one will remain fresh for optimal enjoyment.  On the reverse side there are recipes for many of the items.  Good thing.  I've never had bok choy before, but I of course I will eat it now.  It was in my basket.  I paid good money to have that bok choy delivered to my door.  And of course those sunchokes. Cannot wait to try this recipe for roasted sunchokes. Delighted to learn that I do not need to peel the rough outer layer as with ginger (which it very much resembles). Just scrub.  Perfect for the time-pressed gourmande.

I admit, with some shame, that in preparation for this delivery, I had to throw away a lot of produce I had not gotten around to eating (and it was in the mushy phase).  It is shameful that waste.  Melissa tells me she can work up a nice composting routine for me.  

This wastefulness is one of my big ticket environmental, food-consciousness issues to work on this year.  As elitist as this luxury seems, of getting farm-fresh local produce delivered to my door, I feel much more committed to actually consuming it.  

Sure, it is a great cause and story that Greenling offers.  But it also is a good story if I can cut down on waste and get committed to this new angle of healthy eating and supporting my community.

I will stick with my subscription because who knows what else I have been missing out there all my life.  Because of it, I can already add mizuna and sunchokes to my list of "been there done thats."   Just like the Gertrude Stein opera. 

 

Food Cycle : Hunting and Butchers (Artisanal...Paris & Hugo Desnoyer: Book Review)

There is nothing quite like a hunting expedition to get one back to nature and thinking about the food production cycle.   Here in the so-called (but fondly labeled) granola-like People's Republic of Texas community that is Austin, which I love, there is not much talk of hunting in my neck of these woods.  There has been as part of recent gun control debates, yes, and it is here in this climate that it just never came up for me to mention that my son shot his first deer over Thanksgiving - a nice 8-point buck.  I get the sense that talking about such things around here might be a little inappropriate politically, so I said nothing about it until recently.  (As he also was the only one in our group to catch a fish on the family fishing expedition in Galveston over the summer, which fish we thoroughly enjoyed for dinner soon thereafter, I am thinking I want him on my team when it comes to some outdoor survival situation.)

Truth to tell though, I grew up around all this. Grew up hearing about deer leases and quail and dove hunts. Grew up seeing the freezer full of plastic bags with tiny little birds (quail). Hunting - and guns - were all part of this.  When I lived in France in that idyllic Junior Year in France time, my host family in the pre-Paris phase, in Tours, took me out with them to their country home.  Out around all the hunting dogs.  And around all the guys setting out on foot with their hunting rifles.  Or whatever they were.  All I remember are the adorable dogs, dozens of them, and being relegated to a small bicycle to keep up that had my knees up into my chest.  

In terms of sustainability and organic local food, getting out and hunting or fishing is as basic and primal as you get. The deer?   All being processed into prime cuts such as backstrap, as well as jalapeno cheddar sausage, and also mounted (European style). No waste.  

We do not think too often of where our food comes from.  Out in the countryside, catching and hunting your own food, you get a bigger picture of the food cycle and how we end up with the food we enjoy so well in our favorite restaurants. Though the world is sharply divided into what items are appropriate for human consumption--meat/no meat; dairy/no dairy--it would probably surprise many to know that, at least from my limited experience with this hunting world, there is considerable respect and even love for the land and its bounty.

Which brings us to another love for the bounty of the land, of a different sort.  This brings us to artisanal butchering in Paris and Hugo Desnoyer.  Hugo's butcher shop in the 14th arrondissement of Paris is right next to the well-respected Jeu de Quilles restaurant.  Friends dining at Jeu de Quilles recently, who apparently told Hugo (who had stopped by the restaurant to visit with his colleagues, the owner/staff of Jeu de Quilles) of a certain American foodie friend who was a little starstruck when she met him back in February 2012, scored a copy of Hugo's book. (He is after all, said to be by some the best butcher in Paris, if not in all of France.)

Hugo even signed the book.  The inscription reads (per my rough translation):  "To Lisette (what my friends and certain French persons call me in France), hoping that this little work gives you a better image of our wonderul metier (profession)!  [something I can't read/translate well]  Merci la vie!  Hugo D--  

I did not know what to expect.  I recently read it.  I get it now.

 For any great artist--be it a chef, a painter, a baker, a candlestick maker--there has got to be an almost incomprehensible to others passion for the subject matter.  And so it is for Hugo. I get that he is passionate about the subject matter of the butcher's work: the animal, the animal's happiness in its life, its comfort at the time of slaughter, the poetry of just the right cut of the meat to bring out the best of the animal, and the optimal cooking of it to respect the purity of a perfectly raised, slaughtered, and aged piece of meat.

Hugo's view of meat, the animal, the right treatment and the right cut does not purport to engage in the sometimes rabid debate about meat and no meat.  He quotes a former President of the National Cancer Institute of France as contrapoint to others decrying the consumption of meat for health reasons:  "In eating meat, think to verifying the meat's origins, choose French meat fed naturally.  Do not overcook it."   He eschews the debate and does not purport to take sides.  He wrote the book instead just to communicate "la passion de ma vie : celle pour la viande - cet univers gore, puissant, sexy et puissamment vivant.  Bousculant tant, c'est mon metier de boucher.  Et vous verrez : la viande, ce n'est pas l'ennemie."  Hugo, p. 12 (very rough translation: ...the passion of my life - for meat - this universe of gore, this powerul, sexy, and powerfully alive universe.  So disruptive/upsetting this my metier of butcher.  And you will see : meat, it is not the enemy.")

In the book we learn that Hugo was rather non-conformist.  Not all that great at school.  Kept getting into trouble.  He left at the age of 15.  He went out into the world from his small town of 739 inhabitants, to Paris, to learn his craft from the ground up.  He was disgusted at the slipshod nonchalance and deficient work ethic at Paris butcher shops at which he was apprenticed.  

Now he can practice his art, his metier, his way.  He writes that he spends two hours a day with his guys (les gars) preparing his shop window to make it look its very best. He takes considerable pleasure in wrapping up the meat, for the most pleasing presentation for his customer.  He enjoys thinking about his work being extended into its next life, in the kitchens of his customers, once the carefully-wrapped package of meat leaves his shop.

He cultivates close relationships with farmers.  He learns which ones care for the animals and ensure their happy, stress-free lives.  He visits the farms to keep an eye on the operations to make sure they live up to the standards he requires to care for the animals.

He even has a philsophy and instructions for the moment of slaughter.  Hard to imagine this moment.  If I saw it, I am sure I would never eat meat again.   But we eat meat all the time, those of us who do, and we live in the denial of that reality.   For Hugo, this moment is critical to exercising his craft in the way that has made him so renowned and sought after for the final product.  The animal must not be stressed at the moment of slaughter. (p. 44)  It must be completely comfortable.  To help with the de-stressing, Hugo asks the small number of hand-picked slaughterhouses with which he works to play classical music at this critical moment.  Any stress in the animal -- the meat quality suffers.   He avoids the quick money in selling the meat immediately.  For him, there must be a wait to secure the optimal quality.  Money sacrificed for quality: the essence of a locavore movement and slow food.  

All of the extra steps he demands to respect the animal and the meat add up to limited volume: the additional time he takes before he can sell the meat, the limited quantites of meat to begin with given the rigors of how the animals must be cared for : all this severely constrains the volume of business.  Truly the essence of what we know as artisanal, and are beginning to take note of in the US -- even for butchers.

Some of the same principles that inform Hugo's craft are found in this trend in US artisanal butchers. Such as a vegan who sought a way to ethically get meat back into her diet (besides bacon, which was her gastronomic slippery slope into eating meat) and ended up being a "game changer" for "well-raised meat" in the meat production world.

My son keeps asking me when the meat from his first deer will arrive.  Soon, I say, reluctantly, as I wonder how on earth I will cook all this.  I will never tell my son that this outdoor experience of food production--the hunting and the eating--is more than a little French and rather foodie-esque.   I am subtly working on the foodie side of him.   But the next time I am in Paris, enjoying Hugo's melt-in-your mouth charcuterie at Jeu de Quilles, I'll have that picture of the son with his 8-point buck handy.  Will help give me a little street cred.  And maybe get me a nice recipe for that venison tenderloin.