Food in Boston

From the Food in Boston mailbox:

Exclusive New Program for Boston Foodies
Hi Joe-
I can tell from reading Food in Boston that you’re very passionate about what’s going on in Boston when it comes to dining out. That’s why, on behalf of The Cheesecake Factory, I’d like to invite you to join the Insider’s Table, an exclusive new program for locals in Boston who love dining out at The Cheesecake Factory, and talking about their experience with others… Insiders receive special benefits and are granted access to a private online community where they actively discuss the restaurant… Access to the Insider’s Table is by invitation only. . .

Hmm, Cheesecake Factory — well, I like cheescake, but the “factory” part doesn’t sound very appetizing. Wikipedia, who is this Cheescake Factory anyhow?

…oh, “ninth-largest restaurant company in the United States”, “characterized by extensive menus, custom lavish décor, and large portions”? Maybe not a great fit for this blog. Of course, if the local franchisee wants to talk about their supplier info like local Boston chefs have done, that might be interesting.

Err, never mind.

The Cheesecake Factory uses just one food service supplier, Sysco, and because of the chain’s size and volume, “we take deliveries four to seven days a week”

(via beveragenet.net)

While skimming a roundup of the New York City green scene, which includes a bunch of food-related events and organizations, I couldn’t help but wonder how things in Boston compared. Upon reflection, it turns out to have been an interesting year for local food.

If nothing else, Bostonians have been getting folks together to talk about food. This year’s events included the Tufts Food Symposium, the Food Project’s Farming the City conference, the ACGA conference, Barbara Kingsolver talking about her family’s year of eating locally, Vandana Shiva in Cambridge, local growers & grocers at the JP Forum, and more growers & grocers at Lucy Parsons.

In addition to all the gabbing, Slow Food put on a couple series of potlucks, as did my community garden, the Food Project, and many others. A number of food-related bike rides went down (and I missed them all; next year!). A bunch of folks I know started gardens for the first time, and started putting up their own & other local produce for the winter.

Looking forwards to 2008, it’ll be interesting to see if our apparent momentum towards more local & sustainable foods keeps on movin’. Off the top of my head, there are a few stories to watch. JP’s incomparable City Feed will be adding a second, bigger location and has indicated that they’re aiming to purvey more local foods. Harvest Co-op (hey, new web site!) has a few new directors on its board (including yours truly) with commitments to a healthy local food system. Brown & the Food Project are working together with Yale and other northeastern schools to build the student movement for sustainable and responsible food on campus.

Other notable local events for ‘07? Things to look forward to in ‘08? Your comments, as always, are appreciated.

An alert reader pointed me to the local rag stuff@night’s latest issue, which has a number of food-related items. Of greatest personal interest is the article detailing some local chefs’ food sources. Meat and fish sources are all over the place, but some interesting trends emerged from the 10 interviewees:

• Russo’s is the overwhelming favorite for produce
• Iggy’s dominates in the bread category
• a few of the restaurants have more or less exclusive relationships with local farms for their produce
• Christina’s gets the most nods for spices, Eva’s Garden for herbs, Formaggio Kitchen for cheeses

Special props to Tim Wiechmann of T.W. Food for his particularly local stance on meat, fish, and everything else. Having said that, the overall level of local food sourcing was impressive. The profiled restaurants are relatively high end, so it’d be interesting to see how more affordable places measure up.

At last week’s annual membership meeting of the Harvest Co-op, I was pleased to meet a recent transplant to the area, who happens to have a convenient habit of writing about local food issues. I recommend to Boston-area readers the profile of Lionette’s Market, and the account of the recent Vandana Shiva talk (both coincidentally related to the last post here! Small town.)

Tuesday’s local food forum at Lucy Parsons included a ton of information, questions, and ideas crammed into 90 minutes. Rather than try to capture it all, here’s a few snippets that stuck with me.

I don’t think you need an excuse to hold something like this, but a nominal reason for the event was the recent release of Vandana Shiva’s new book from South End Press, which includes a troubling-but-inspirational essay from James Lionette of Lionette’s Market, who kicked off the night’s discussion. Other panelists were Adrieanna Bozeman & Kettia Louis, interns at the Food Project; Matt Kochka, grower at ReVision House; and Jean Claude Bourrut, grower at the Farm at Long Island Shelter.

Economics

It still doesn’t sound like anyone’s getting rich around here producing or selling real, local food. That said, some of the panelists see potential for a better economic picture, especially if the proximity of producers and consumers in local food systems can be better taken advantage of.

There are certainly innovative arrangements being made already to get good local food to Bostonians in an economically sustainable fashion. For example, ReVision House does some interesting collaboration with local farms, including redistributing food from Drumlin Farm in their CSA, and from Allandale Farm at their farm stand. These have both been successful ways of getting local food to people in their part of Dorchester.

The Challenge of Winter, and Limited Land

This came up a number of times: how can we feed ourselves locally through the winter? A decentralized root cellar network could help. James Lionette argued that there’s a gap on the demand side: too many people still act like children and turn their nose up at turnips & cabbage, but those are what were traditionally eaten around here in the winter (along with meat & other animal products, of course). Jean Claude Bourrut’s farm feeds 2,000 shelter guests daily; there’s no way they could produce enough food on their 2 acres to store a significant supply for that many people. ReVision’s Matt Kochka ran the numbers and came up with ~900 farms within 40 miles of Boston, which still don’t produce enough to feed everyone in the metro around the year. Jean Claude followed this up by reiterating that there just isn’t enough farmland to support the people in & around Boston as long as we’re going to use it for golf courses & the like.

A farmer from Lincoln’s Blue Heron Organic Farm shared some thoughts about how much potential suburbs have for producing food. The main barrier has to do with the relative market values of real estate and of food. Suburbs can overcome this using conservation policies, as is the case in Lincoln where they and many other farms are located.

A recent emigrant from the Berkshires pointed out that there is, in fact, a thriving local food system there, and it’s an easy trip from Boston for anyone who’d like to get a bit of the experience.

Things aren’t all bad; we can always make sprouts in our kitchens, and can & otherwise preserve food during the summer. Getting through the winter in these parts has traditionally been done by preparing in the harvest season.

Local Grains?

A little (expensive!) spelt & bulger is produced in the Champlain Valley, but generally the economics of producing grains in the NE are much less favorable than for veggies or animal products. There was some confusion about King Arthur Flour being owned by one of the big agribusinesses; it looks like they’re actually a 100 percent employee-owned business. Maybe the point was more about their grain coming from industrial producers?

Farm Bill

We talked about the general situation with the farm bill, as well as its impacts on our local food system. People from the Food Project who had recently visited Senator Kennedy’s office heard that nobody had been in touch with the senator about the importance of preserving the Community Food Projects money — if I understand correctly, this helps keep the Food Project running in Boston, and similar initiatives throughout the country. More info at the above resource, and at Slow Food USA. It looks like the bill is about to hit the Senate floor, so there’s still time to contact Senators Kennedy and Kerry & let them know about our needs here in Boston.

Just saw on the Slow Food Events site that there’s going to be a fascinating looking panel on the costs and challenges of local & sustainable food at Lucy Parsons next Tuesday, 7 PM. If it’s half as good as the combination forum / potluck that the JP Forum put on last month, we may learn things that we didn’t even know we didn’t know. I myself am excited at the prospect of meeting Jean Claude from the Share our Strength farm in person — talked to him on the phone for the survey, but haven’t had a chance to say ‘thanks’ in person yet.

Farming the Concrete Jungle, in this month’s In These Times, provides a great overview of the state of urban agriculture in the US, and has a bunch of great quotes from Food Project folks.

I would have been thrilled to find this last year when I was starting to wrap my head around this stuff, and still find it useful to see all the various pieces wrapped up succinctly.

(via ethicurian)

The 2007 American Community Garden Association conference was this weekend at Northeastern. Various factors prevented me from spending much time there, but the parts I did experience were good fun:

• Volunteering at registration and for a workshop missing one of its presenters reinforced a lesson I’ve learned before: gardening people are, by and large, friendly and laid-back folks.
• I’d forgotten that there was a Boston Community Garden Council, but there is and it meets every month. I fear that another monthly meeting is not something I should contemplate, but it would be interesting to check out once.
• Will Raap, founder of the Gardener’s Supply companies, presented at the opening session. While his talk veered dangerously into advertisement zone, I really appreciated his discussion of the company’s origins in the 70’s energy crisis, and their work to build a sustainable food economy in Burlington.
• The Saturday morning talks by gardeners and coordinators from New Orleans was really moving. In particular, Noel Jones of the God’s Vineyard project told a story of perseverance in the face of very difficult circumstances. The NOLA food map is a totally different kind of inspiration — while I can see how the absence of food in New Orleans post-Katrina created the necessity for that particular example, I think every community should have one. Certainly Boston.
• A Sarasota gardener’s story about the city’s seizure of her garden’s land (for development purposes) really emphasized the importance of having city buy-in to the value of community gardens. My understanding is that Boston is in good shape in this area, but it’s a sobering reminder of the possibilities.
• Living south of the Charles, I confess that I have little idea about food and garden issues north of the river. I was lucky to be able to attend a tour to Somerville, visiting the Union Square farmer’s market and the Somerville Growing Center, both well worth experiencing.

Regular readers have remarked that I’ve been in a FiB slump for the last few months, but this event, like all good conferences, was a real burst of inspiration. Fortunately, I’m involved in the early stages of an exciting new & related venture, which I’ll be saying more about in the future.

The American Community Garden Association’s annual conference is in Boston this year, from August 9-12. Some of you may recall me plugging it at the Food Project’s conference this spring. For anyone who wanted to make that event but couldn’t, there is a Public Policy and Food Security component to the Friday and Sunday workshops that may be of interest. There’s also a whole slew of garden and related tours, plenty of other workshop tracks, a local foods dinner at the Boston Nature Center, etc.

If you’re thinking about signing up, I’d advise taking a look at your options a bit ahead of time - it’s possible to take on the whole three day event, or a subset, depending on your schedule. After June 15 (Friday!) the rates go up. If you’re not already an ACGA member, you still save by signing up for a year, but if you’re reading this, it’s probably not a bad idea to join regardless of that fact.

Most immediately, there’s a hearing next Wednesday on the bill. If you can’t make that, MPHA also has a PDF you can print out, write your endorsement and offers of support, and mail to them (how old-school).

(via US Food Policy)