The Northeast “Grows Out” Heirloom Vegetables

This growing season, rare heirloom vegetables are getting special attention in the Northeast.  Thanks to efforts spearheaded by Chefs Collaborative (as part of the RAFT Alliance, of which Slow Food USA is also a part), 3 cities in New England—Portsmouth, Boston, and Providence—will be experimenting with what is called a “grow-out” of rare seeds.

Using seeds donated by Seed Savers Exchange, Fedco, High Mowing, and Old Sturbridge Village, farmers will plant the seeds, grow them, and then sell them to local chefs, with the farmers and chefs working together to increase eaters’ awareness of delicious foods that have long and interesting histories in their region. For instance, did you know that in 1870, the Trophy Tomato was developed by Colonel George Waring of Newport, Rhode Island?  At the time, the Trophy Tomato was grown by individuals hoping to win a prize at their local fair, and when they were introduced, a seed pack cost the equivalent of seventy dollars in today’s currency.

The past two weekends the three projects were launched in each respective city, with buy-in and excitement from the local Slow Food chapters—not to mention other chapters throughout New England who have picked up the buzz and will do grow-outs of their own.  As the season progresses we’ll be checking back in with the growers and chefs to see how their peppers, squash, tomatoes etc. are faring, and ultimately to hear reports from eaters as well!

More after the jump

Profile in Regional Seeds

by Slow Food USA intern Laura Kate Morris

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need” – Cicero

Perhaps you’ve grown your own vegetables in a community garden, infusing them with the terroir of your soil, eating them at your kitchen table.  But that is only part of the circle – what about the seeds?  Nearly all seeds available today have been shipped from states (if not countries) away, and at the end of the season are lost back to the soil.  What if, in the spirit of sustainability, we closed that circle of seed, plant, table… and back to seed?

The Hudson Valley Seed Library in Accord, NY, is trying to do just that.  It brings together rare and regional open-pollinated seeds, a sustainable business model, local artists, the conservation of traditional skills, and … your local library?  I spoke with the founder of HVSL for further insight into how anyone could possibly fit so many ideas into a tiny packet of seeds.

Co-created by Ken Greene and Doug Muller to support their homesteading habit, the company is committed to staying small and growing food without fossil fuels.  Choosing to raise their seeds by hand, HVSL shies away from a bigger size that would require specialized seed-cleaning equipment, tractors, and machinery.  They look toward a sustainable, community-focused model and away from the nationalized corporation.  (To start finding out more about the corporate seed world, check out this post on Civil Eats.) The Seed Library operates in part like your local library, substituting seeds for books.  You can become a member, “check out” the items of your choice, enjoy and learn from them (in this case, grow them and save them), and return them at the end of the season. 

More after the jump

Awakening in the Winter Orchard

This year, for the first time ever, the RAFT alliance (Renewing America’s Food Traditions) will be focusing on apples.  Filling us in on their activities is our apple expert, author Ben Watson. Ben is chairing the Ark of Taste committee and helping Gary Nabhan and the RAFT alliance’s efforts to record, restore and renew disappearing heirloom apple varieties.  On the docket are fruit tree grafting workshops, an heirloom apple experts summit, and education efforts such as a forgotten fruit manual/manifesto, and a series of posts for us here on the blog.

by Ben Watson
(Ben Watson is Chair of the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste Committee and an amateur nurseryman and fruit grower.)

Late February, western New Hampshire. Tonight snow comes down in heavy wet flakes, leaving a fresh white comforter several inches thick over the landscape. Yet those of us who live and garden in this place aren’t fooled by the weather. The sun, when it shines, is stronger now, the days longer, and the signs of spring are only a few weeks away. Soon enough sap will be rising in the sugar maples, small sugarhouses will open their louvered roofs, and white steam clouds billowing from the wood-fired evaporator pans will puff into the bright blue sky. Soon too the snowpack will retreat, and on the sunny, exposed edges of the lawn the first species crocus will emerge, tentative and yellow, followed by other early bulbs: snowdrop, squill, and grape-hyacinth.

It’s a season pregnant with potentiality. We order seeds, clean and sharpen our tools. Like baseball players arriving at spring training, our outdoor ambitions for the growing season are a blank slate. Anything is possible as we enter this Lenten season – we’ve no hits, no runs, no errors. And now is the time that apple growers are contemplating the orchard, though in truth we have never forgotten about it. The trees have stood silent, dormant, but we’re still eating some choice, long-keeping fruits from cold storage: Roxbury Russet, Mutsu, Northern Spy.

More after the jump

Nantucket Scallop visits the White House

by Slow Food USA intern Gabrielle Redner

We may all be wondering what goes on inside the White House kitchen on a daily basis, but it is not every night that we get to peek inside. Yesterday, newspaper readers, blog addicts, and radio listeners across the country got a mouthwatering sneak-peak into the Obamas’ first state dinner, thanks to the slew of reporters invited into the kitchen by First Lady Michelle Obama. Here is the menu that is largely locally sourced (and “built on American Relationships,” in the words of Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford) for all you hungry and curious readers.  Nota bene, the main course features a Slow Food USA Ark of Taste food, the Nantucket [Bay] Scallop!

More after the jump

Eat it or Lose it: National Pig Day

by Slow Food USA intern Laura Kate Morris

March.  It conjures up thoughts of melting snow, hatless days, and… pigs?  Yes, for all you porcine aficionados, March 1st is National Pig Day. Interested in hosting your own pig-tastic celebration?  Here are a few tips for more background info and how to sustainably enjoy your pork…

To learn a bit more about the many shapes and sizes of hog, check out the American Livestock Breed Conservancy’s listing of threatened breeds and Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, which profiles four endangered American varieties. 

As with other livestock, the popularity of conventional pig breeds endanger the broad genetic diversity found in heritage animals.  Conventional pigs put on weight fast, maximizing output (and profit) for large corporations in controlled (and usually inhumane) environments.  On the other hand, heritage breed pigs, ignored by many big farms, are a nod to our agricultural history with a look and taste that is genetically closer to their piggy ancestors.  Heritage breeds tend to be heartier, good foragers, and suited to their respective regions.  Not to mention their fantastic names like “Red Wattle” and “Ossabaw Island Hog.”  It’s organizations like the ALBC, and some very dedicated farmers, that are helping these breeds to make a comeback.

One of the major problems for conservationists is that without a demand, the breeds will disappear (hence the title of this post.)  Emerging connections with chefs and restaurants are helping to create a market for specialty breed pork products. To source one of the four Ark of Taste-listed breeds, read their profiles on the Slow Food website. Also check out LocalHarvest to find a farmer near you that raises the animals. This site should help you source the ham of your dreams.

More after the jump

Tour of Anson Mills

by Slow Food USA staffer Jerusha Klemperer

  Last Friday, finding myself in Columbia, South Carolina, I took the opportunity to visit Anson Mills, where heirloom rice, corn and wheat are hand-processed and packaged in small batches before being shipped fresh to customers and restaurants around the country.  Glenn Roberts, the founder/farmer/expert behind this 11 year old company—and one of the newly appointed members of Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste committee—was generous enough to take me around for a tour and a quick and dirty lesson on the history of Carolina Rice, the meaning of “landrace” grains, and the story of how his work as a historic art and architecture restorer led him to historic plant restoration through his Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.

Last Minute Holiday Gifts

It’s a little late in the game for buying holiday gifts, but hey, you’re slowwwwww and slow’s a good thing, right? 

If you left your shopping for the last minute, and are feeling a little bit nervous and a lot uninspired, we’re here to offer some delicious, nutritious, (not that ambitious) sustainable gifts for you.  Most of them won’t arrive in time, but you can give your loved ones an IOU that promises good things to come.

   
• Slow Food USA membership: How about a membership for that friend who keeps meaning to join but never gets around to it? Or a donation to the organization?
   
• T-shirts: our friends at Just Food have three that are simply adorable—“Beet the System,” anyone?
   
• Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Know someone interested in saving and savoring the endangered foods of North America? Check out the book!
   
• Feed the Hungry: Donate money to your local Food Bank in somebody’s name
   
• Slow Food in the Heartland: Slow Food USA Board Member Kurt Friese has written a beautiful book that explores the culinary traditions of the Midwest    
• Pleasures of Slow Food: Check out the Endangered Hog Foundation (in support of rebuilding Arie McFarlane’s farm and stock)
   
• Take back the tap! Bottled water is soooo 2008. Buy a SIGG bottle and take your tap water with you every day.
   
• Like it sweet? Try the unusual Guajillo Honey—newly boarded to Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste.
   
• Like it spicy? How about the crazily spicy Chiltepin Pepper, also an SFUSA Ark food? It’s pictured above…

Happy and Healthy Holidays from your friends at Slow Food USA!

Thanksgiving Takes the Bronze

by Jerusha Klemperer

For a few years now, as part of my job, I have been preaching to others about eater-based conservation and the joys of keeping biodiversity alive by eating heirloom varieties, and heritage breeds. Conventional turkeys are not bred for flavor, don’tcha know; they’re bred for big boobs and fast maturation, and ability to freeze well; and blah blah blah and yup sure, I hear ya.

Finally this year I myself cooked not just a free range bird but a heritage one—an American Bronze from Frank Reese’s Good Shepherd Ranch in Kansas. Which for me is a bit like a football fan saying he ordered a football and it came from Brett Favre’s backyard where Brett Favre himself stitched the pigskin together with his own two (giant) hands.

I proudly served the beautiful 9 pound bird at the Thanksgiving feast called by one enthusiastic guest “the most delicious, least emotionally complicated Thanksgiving I’ve ever had!” And I found that I was suddenly my own target audience; this bird was weird. There was no light fluffy, watery breast. It didn’t taste like any turkey I have ever eaten before, and of course that was unnerving.

But by bite three I was won over by this flavorful, tenacious, lean meat, and finally understanding this idea of “real turkey flavor,” that heritage bird proponents talk about. My initial dislike helped me understand how deeply ingrained our food preferences are—we like what we know, and what we know is a Butterball. If I am to be any kind of spokesperson at all for the importance of re-shaping our palates, I must begin with myself, no?

*This post originally appeared on Jerusha’s blog.

The Newtown Pippin: Our Nation’s Founding Apple

Ed Yowell, Regional Governor of Slow Food NY/NJ

While apples are not native to the New World, from the time they arrived during the 17th century, they became the quintessential American fruit. Here, European varieties adapted, becoming uniquely American. By 1872, more than 1,000 varieties, some local to a farm, a village, or a county, were classified, each prized for unique characteristics of taste and use…cider-making, cooking, eating out-of-hand.

The Newtown Pippin is one of 129 American heirloom apples aboard the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste, a program to preserve foods in danger of being lost to our culture and palates. The Newtown Pippin, a chance apple sprouted from a random seed, or “pip”, hence the surname “Pippin”, is such an apple. It was first picked in 1730 on the farm of Gresham Moore, in Newtown, Queens County (now part of The City of New York). George Washington favored them, Ben Franklin had them shipped to him in London, and Thomas Jefferson grew them at Monticello and wrote of them to James Madison from Paris, “They have no apple here to compare with our Newtown Pippin.”

During the 20th century, for reasons of appearance, uniformity, transportability, and shelf-life, the interests of commercial food distribution reduced our local apple selections from dozens to a few. Alas, the short, lop-sided, green Newtown Pippin, while extremely good tasting, versatile in its culinary uses, and a keeper, lost the fight for shelf space to the tall, uniformly shaped, bright red, arguably bland tasting Red Delicious apple. 

In 2003, Slow Food NYC determined to restore the Newtown Pippin to New York City tables. To start, Peter Hoffman, chef/owner of New York City’s Savoy restaurant, helped by hosting a fund raising dinner and, in 2004, Mayor Bloomberg proclaimed Slow Food NYC Apple Week, citing the Newtown Pippin as the Big Apple’s “most historic” apple. With the help of Ben Watson, Slow Food USA Ark of Taste Co-chair and Tom Burford, a Virginia heirloom apple expert, Slow Food NYC supplied Newtown Pippin cuttings (called scion wood) to the Cummins Nursery in Geneva, New York. There they were grafted on to root stock suited to our region. 

During April, 2008, Slow Food NYC donated 85 Newtown Pippin trees to three New York State farms, Breezy Hill Orchard, Prospect Hill Orchard, and Migliorelli Farms, these farms bringing apples to NYC Greenmarket farmers markets, and to the educational farms, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in nearby Westchester County and the Queens County Farm Museum, not too far from the site of Gresham Moore’s farm.     

How do you feel about genetically engineered corn?

The fact that the EU won’t allow in most genetically engineered crops is a fairly good indication that there may be good reason to be skeptical about the healthfulness of genetically modified food in our food supply.

No?

The USDA doesn’t think so.  They would like to deregulate the use of genetically engineered corn, specifically “corn genetically engineered (GE) to produce a microbial enzyme that facilitates ethanol production.”  Because ethanol as an alternative to oil still seems like a really good idea to them.

If you have a strong feeling either way about this, (i.e.: keep those deregulations coming! or I ain’t scared of no GE corn!) you have a forum to express it, directly to the USDA; they are having an open comment period through January 20th, 2009, and will actually read and register and consider all of your comments. 

Make your voice heard by clicking here!