In her book,  An Everlasting Meal, Cooking with Economy and Grace, Tamar Adler has captured in full the spirit of MFK Fisher. Ms Adler’s approach to cooking presents an opportunity to live and cook within the season, to embrace local goods with an appreciation of the beauty of each ingredient, and an understanding of the frugality required to enjoy what we gather to its fullest capacity. If one thing MFK Fisher taught us is how to think about living well even in hard times, Ms Adler shows us how to enjoy the process of cooking and thinking about the table with the grace of our not so distant past, and to cook with frugality and appreciation for the abundance available to us now. Reading this book gives you an ample understanding of planning, home economics, and, most importantly, a joy of living within the abundance available to us. READ THIS BOOK!

To order this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Everlasting-Meal-Cooking-Economy-Grace/dp/143918187X

Monday-Friday 11am-4pm  &  Saturday/Sunday 9am-4pm

Bubby’s was thrilled this Fall to present a program of special dinners celebrating efforts to renovate American agriculture and the American menu.  Each event featured a conversation about a significant aspect of this project, followed by a meal that pleasurably illustrated the themes under discussion.

At Bubby’s, we have observed and are engaged with three parallel movements that are gaining momentum in the New York region and around the country:

1. New farmers are supplying greenmarkets and alternative food networks with produce and animals raised without relying on an arsenal of chemicals or industrial methods (vast feedlots, etc…)

2. New artisans are re-inventing food crafts, sometimes (as with coffee) improving on traditional models.

3. A fresh appreciation of authentic American cooking from all regions and communities, including new immigrants, is evident in the neighborhoods of many cities, as well as blogs, cable channels and websites like Roadfood.com.

These three movements are mutually reinforcing and they seem to originate in a common yearning for authenticity and a way of life that is environmentally and ethically sustainable.  All three are, at least partially, responses to the perceived, ongoing deterioration of American agriculture and the diet of most Americans.

The subjects and content of these seven special dinners were intended to reflect the exciting state of the conversation about what we are eating today and how that is changing.  We are proud to say that the consensus of those who attended (30 to 50 people per event) was that each “symposium”* was successful in that regard and really big fun too.  All the meals were served family style around our 12 and 16 foot pine plank community tables, which contributed to the spirit of optimism and sharing that was felt at each gathering.

 [The term “symposium” is used, appropriately, as it turned out, in the spirit of its original Greek meaning as a thoughtful dinner and drinking party]

The Carolina Rice Kitchen with Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Glenn Roberts is pioneering the restoration of nearly extinct “landrace” (ancient) Southern grains and has developed a uniquely subtle and detailed understanding of how the integrity of the land, agriculture and culture of the Carolina Lowcountry are interdependent.  His presentation was a tour de force of erudition, passion and energy.  Almost everything Glenn said was entirely new to those listening; the complex interplay of agronomy, immigration history and cultural cross-fertilization he described was a window on living history, a history he is actively shaping through Anson Mills and other research projects.  Not to be forgotten was the irresistable “grits cheer” [Gimme a “G”!…Gimme an “R”!…What’s that spell?!  GRITS!] with which Glenn closed his remarks.

 The menu for the dinner was an expression of the Carolina Rice Kitchen, the cuisine that developed from the combination of crops that the first Creole people established around Charleston, SC and on the Sea Islands.  Its foundation is Carolina Gold rice and includes red peas and sesame (benne).

Twain’s Feast Spectacle with Andrew Beahrs

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Twain’s Feast Spectacle was based on the famous list of longed-for American foods that Mark Twain composed in 1879 while on an extended sojourn in Europe.  He lists more than eighty dishes to be consumed by himself, alone, the moment he sets foot on American soil.  This extraordinary dinner was introduced with a talk by Andrew Bearhs, the author of Twain’s Feast, Searching for America’s Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens.  Andrew described how different foods were at the emotional core of Twain’s experiences as an engaged resident of every region of the United States.  Sadly, a major theme of the talk and the dinner was the absence of many foods (canvasback duck, prairie chicken, terrapin, etc.) now lost to us through destruction and transformation of habitat since Twain’s day.

The feast itself gallantly offered around forty of the prescribed dishes, from corn pone to oysters to wild turkey and butter beans.  It would be accurate to say that no two people at the dinner ate the same meal; the variety and quantity of foods being beyond the internal comprehension of any individual.

http://sporkful.posterous.com/mark-twain-eater-w-andrew-beahrs

http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/topics/food-dining/restaurants/for-those-eating-out-next-thursday-may-we-suggest-this-mini-feast-spectacle/

Pie Social Workshop with Ron Silver

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Always near the center of Bubby’s chef and owner Ron Silver’s idea of the American Table is pie.  It is the quintessential American food, simple, the symbol of home cooking, yet challenging and inexhaustible.  Ron offered a detailed, hands-on tutorial of pie making with particular emphasis on its most intimidating feature–the crust.  He discussed the under-appreciated role that lard can play in achieving the best possible results.

The dinner itself presented a wonderful spectrum of savory pie and pie variations, from a light and delicate cheese and leek pie to a dense, cornbread based lamb cobbler.  The dessert pies were equally varied and featured the rarely made, almost disturbingly unfamiliar pan dowdy.  All attendees went home with a pecan pie as a parting gift.

4 Heritage Breeds Pork Comparison with Patrick Martins of Heritage Food US

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 7pm

Although much is said about the re-emergence of heritage breed pork on farms and menus, very few of us know how these breeds might differ in the field or the kitchen.  Patrick Martins (founder of Slow Food USA) described his experiences as a catalyst in this market linking farmers with restaurants and consumers and Patrick participated with Bubby’s in presenting a direct comparison of the bellies and loins of four types of heritage pork.  These were from farm raised Duroc, Gloucestershire Old Spot and two versions of Berkshire hogs, one finished on a diet of peanuts and the other, a diet of dairy products.   Remarkably, all four of these porks were distinctive in flavor, as well as being almost absurdly delicious.

This tasting, really a meal in itself, was followed by a full dinner that included airy cracklings, cured ham, sausages and barbecue, filling out what many considered the pork experience of a lifetime.

Blue Moon Fisherman’s Dinner with Alex and Stephanie Villani

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Blue Moon Fish has brought seafood from its own boat directly to thousands of New Yorkers for decades and many of their loyal devotees came to celebrate its work at this dinner. The Villanis talked about how they have sustained this ancient foodway in improbable circumstances and Alex described his solitary method of fishing in our local waters.  Perhaps surprisingly, he also offered a generally upbeat report on their health and productivity, with many types of seafood more abundant now than in years past.

The dinner itself was wonderfully varied, featuring Blue Moon smoked fish, unusually fine raw oysters and clams and sea bass ceviche, all served cold, and six other hot seafood dishes including eight more kinds of sea creatures.

Ground Up: The New Foodshed Farmer’s Dinner

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Farming today in the New York region is more than ever a creative act, often requiring unique solutions by individual farmers to questions about what to grow, how to farm and how to market their products.  The New Farmers dinner was mounted with the participation of several local foodshed farmers from Sullivan and Delaware counties, who explained something of how they carved out their own individual answers to these questions and what their lives are like.  They included Marc and Susan Jaffe of Snow Dance Farm, Mark Dunau and Lisa Wujnovich of Mountain Dell Farm, Greg Swartz of Willow Wisp Organic Farm and Richard Giles of Lucky Dog Farm.  Also participating was Jennifer Grossman, who, working for the Open Space Institute, helped assemble “Ground Up”, a detailed study describing how these farms work.  One highlight of the evening was Lisa Wujnovich’s reading of her “vegetable haiku,” tributes to the inherent poetry of our gardened friends.

The dinner itself was a harvest-time, family-style meal, fashioned by Ron Silver from produce and meats raised by the farmers themselves, including products from Tonjes Dairy Farm.

Lard Exoneration Dinner with Ron Silver

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 7pm

“Lard” continues to be a metaphor and an epithet representing all sorts of negative things about the American diet: obesity, chronic disease, poverty and benighted ideas about food in general.  Bubby’s Lard dinner was a challenge to that.  Artisinal lard, in contrast to industrially produced lard, is a wholesome food and an unequalled medium for baking and frying.  Ron Silver’s presentation described how lard has been demonized, partially by rival commercial interests (Crisco), degraded by chemical processing, and how it actually compares favorably with vegetable oils and butter as part of our diet. 

The dinner featured chicken and potatoes fried in leaf lard, biscuits and pie baked with leaf lard shortening, greens and beans cooked with fatback, as well as seasoned lard spread served in yet another mode now exclusively assigned to butter or vegetable oil.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/06/144806987/the-friday-podcast-who-killed-lard

http://blog.cheapeatsinc.com/2011/11/28/the-best-thing-i-ever-ate/

Bubby’s serves the best coffees from the finest roasters in America, single origin, organic, fair trade, or rainforest alliance. Our brewing methods include small batch drip, single cup pour-over, or chemex. Featuring Blue Bottle, Intelligentsia, Counter Culture, and several other small roasters that do an amazing job.

Liz Clarke is a diminutive red head who wields a cleaver and scimitar with grace and speed. Each week around Wednesday Liz helps pull 5-6 whole heritage breed hogs and a whole steer off a truck. She spins these animals around like that guy from Karate Kid. She’s been clocked breaking down a whole hog in less that four minutes! Each week Liz uses almost every scrap from all of these animals to cure bacon, Canadian bacon, grind our breakfast sausage and Texas Hot Links, make pork chops, and a week’s supply of scrapple.

Alice Waters might not seem like a conservative. A veteran of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement, who once cooked a $25,000-a-seat fundraising dinner for Bill Clinton, she eagerly compares her campaign for “edible schoolyards”—where children work with instructors to grow, prepare, and eat fresh produce—to John F. Kennedy’s attempt to improve physical fitness through mandatory exercise. Her dream of organic, locally and sustainably produced food in every school cafeteria, class credit for lunch hour, and required gardening time and cooking classes is as utopian as they come. The name she has given her gastronomic movement, the “Delicious Revolution,” strikes the ear as one part fuzzy-headed Marxism, the other Brooksian bobo-speak. This woman is not, as they say, one of us.

But a closer look tells a different story. In a 1997 talk, Waters quoted from an essay by Francine du Plessix Grey about the film “Kids,” which portrays the sex-, drug-, and violence-crazed lives of a circle of New York teenagers. Du Plessix Grey writes of being haunted by the adolescents’ “feral” and “boorishly gulped” fast-food diet: “we may,” she suggests, “be witnessing the first generation in history that has not been required to participate in that primal rite of socialization, the family meal.” Such an activity “is not only the core curriculum in the school of civilizing discourse; it is also a set of protocols that curb our natural savagery and our animal greed, and cultivate a capacity for sharing and thoughtfulness.” These teenagers “are deprived of the main course of civilized life—the practice of sitting down at the dinner table and observing the attendant conventions.”

Today’s children, Waters goes on to say, “are bombarded with a pop culture which teaches redemption through buying things.” But schoolyard gardens, like the one she helped create at the middle school a few blocks from my home in Berkeley, “turn pop culture upside-down: they teach redemption through a deep appreciation for the real, the authentic, and the lasting—for the things that money can’t buy: the very things that matter most of all if we are going to lead sane, healthy, and sustainable lives. Kids who learn environmental and nutritional lessons through school gardening—and school cooking and eating—learn ethics.” Good cooking, she writes in the introduction to her 2007 cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, “can reconnect our families and communities with the most basic human values, provide the deepest delight for all our senses, and assure our well-being for a lifetime.”

The proposal, put slightly differently, is that our attitudes toward food—which nourishes and sustains us, which binds us most fundamentally to place, family, market, and community—provide a measure of our respect for what Russell Kirk called the “Permanent Things.” We are not just what we eat but how we eat. The cultivation and consumption of our meals are activities as distinctively human as walking, talking, loving, and praying. Learning to regard the meal not merely as something that fills our bellies and helps us grow, but as the consummate exercise of beings carnal and earthbound yet upwardly and outwardly drawn, is a crucial step in the restoration of culture. The suggestion that the inculcation of such values might be an essential part of an adequate education ought to resonate beyond the confines of the doctrinaire Left.

Adopting an alternative view of food does not require rejecting the possibility of a free and prosperous market economy. Indeed, the rise of the New American Diet—meals eaten in a rush and very often alone, made from processed and prepackaged ingredients—was not solely or even primarily the product of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Historian Harvey Levenstein has argued that the spate of government regulations in the wake of early 20th-century food-safety scares played a crucial role in the rise of industrialized agriculture and centralized food processors. Early nutritionists and home economists, many distinctly of the quack variety, found a key ally in their attempts to reform American cuisine in Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration. The goal of reducing consumption of scarce foods and eating in accordance with “scientific” principles was tied to the cause of Allied victory in the First World War.

Official dietary guidelines inevitably became the product of collaboration between government agencies and representatives of the industries that stand to benefit. The substitution of state-sponsored nutritionist technocracy for the collective wisdom of taste, instinct, common sense, and tradition is a perfect example of the triumph of Tocqueville’s feared “immense tutelary power” (“absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild”). The same goes for the extraordinary industrialization and global “flattening” of our culinary economy, which Waters’s focus on community gardening, seasonal eating, and local markets is meant to combat.

Heavily concentrated industries demand expansive and centralized government. The converse is also true: bigger businesses are easier to regulate than smaller ones, and economies of scale are good for economic growth. “Get big or get out,” Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture told American farmers—a directive updated to “bigger” by Earl Butz, the infamous Nixon agriculture secretary who instructed farmers to abandon crop rotation and plant “from fencerow to fencerow.”

Price controls and multibillion-dollar farm subsidies prop up corporate agribusiness and discourage smaller producers from trying to find alternative market niches. Real local autonomy—setting regulatory standards that do not conform to national or international ones, restriction or taxation of imports or exports, and preservation of place-specific forms of agriculture and animal husbandry—is undermined because it makes for economic inefficiency. The natural capacities of location, season, and culture to link people together and shape the ways they farm and eat are countered by artificial measures designed to maximize yield.

But it is exactly these social and cultural dimensions of our culinary economy—the centralization of processing and production into an ever shrinking number of multinational corporations, the incredible distances over which food travels before it reaches our tables (an average of 1,500 miles in the United States), the loss of idiosyncratic foods and food cultures, and so on—that should raise the greatest concerns for traditional conservatives. “Eating is an agricultural act,” writes Wendell Berry. But Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini argues that it is also a political one—a deed no less significant than the ways we cast our votes. Hence even the smallest acts of resistance to the hegemony of the present system, where corporate representatives and industry-funded scientists at public universities collaborate with government officials on regulatory policies and nutritional guidelines, are crucial steps in recovering local culture and reconstituting our “little platoons.” This will nurture the ability to govern—or resist being governed.

The seeds of change are already being sown. Many American cities are transforming blighted urban districts with neighborhood farms that raise food not just for consumption by those who grow it but for sale in local markets. In 2007, a group of teenagers at a community farm in Brooklyn brought in $25,000, and a nonprofit organization that runs a one-acre plot in Milwaukee grossed over $220,000 in local sales.

The website LocalHarvest.org lists over 3,600 farmers markets in the U.S., and the number of Community Supported Agriculture programs, in which supporters pay a set fee in exchange for regular shares of the produce from a local farm, grew from 50 nationwide to over 1,500 between 1990 and 2005. Such efforts give growers and buyers the opportunity to relate to one another—one study showed that shoppers at farmers markets have 10 times as many conversations as those at supermarkets. These local ventures also provide families with fresh produce and allow farmers to diversify their crops and receive a far greater rate of return than when they deal with corporate middlemen.

Many of our best food writers are in full-throated rebellion against the corporate-industrial-governmental nutrition establishment. Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food deconstructs the pretensions of “food science” in often hilarious fashion and distills all you need to know about eating into three directives: Eat food (as opposed to things with unfamiliar or unpronounceable ingredients, packaged “food products” that make government-sanctioned health claims, and pretty much anything from the middle aisles of the grocery store); Not too much (go for quality over quantity, and eat at a table, with others); Mostly plants (in unprocessed form when possible). Nina Planck’s Real Food takes the traditionalist counterculture to the extreme by denouncing veganism and extolling the health benefits of everything from cheese, lard, butter, and raw milk to eggs, beef, chocolate, and wine. And Waters’s wonderful new cookbook offers a step-by-step course in keeping a kitchen and preparing a range of dishes that, though simple, require time and effort to put together and are a joy to eat.

There are, of course, elements of leftism and elitism here. Pollan, for example, has a puzzling line in which he condemns as “shameful” the fact that not all Americans “can afford to eat high-quality food.” It is sad, to be sure, and we should strive to remedy it, but life’s inevitabilities do not warrant our shame. And while Bill McKibben, in his brilliant communitarian manifesto, Deep Economy, takes care to insist that his program is not one that can be driven by top-down governance, Petrini very often rails against free markets, suggesting at one point in his Slow Food Nation that contemporary China’s “political homogeneity” and exploitation of labor and the environment are “the embodiment of perfect capitalism.” (The Chinese economic system, he says, is only “nominally communist.” One wonders what he made of the agricultural policies of the Soviet Union.) But that doesn’t alter the value of the Slow Food vision of a world of “gastronomes,” attentive to taste and cognizant of the sources of their food, and of thriving local markets driven by “economies of place.”

Proponents of a new way of eating are on shakier ground when they claim that a widespread turn toward small-scale and deindustrialized agriculture would not affect crop yields. McKibben proudly cites a study in which sustainable farming methods were found to lead, on average, to a near doubling of food production per hectare. He does not mention the many cases in which results have been less impressive. A much discussed study published in the journal Science in 2002 found that switching to organic farming reduced yields by 20 percent, though the possibility of lessening our reliance on petroleum may be worth the investment of some extra land. Reincorporating into the human food chain some of the millions of acres where corn and sorghum are now grown for ethanol production would also make a great difference.

But no reasonable person wants to remake the world or do away with modern agricultural technologies all together. The best solutions will come through honest, case-by-case engagement with the subtle demands of specific situations. As the UC Berkeley agroecologist Miguel Altieri puts it, a sound approach to agriculture “does not seek to formulate solutions that will be valid for everyone but encourages people to choose the technologies best suited to the requirements of each particular situation, without imposing them.” (That this could just as well be the summary of the ideal domestic or foreign policy ought to argue in its favor.) Respect for tradition and social and ecological responsibility can work together with technological innovation and capitalist resourcefulness to respect the ridges and valleys of regionalism in an increasingly flattened world.

Efforts to realize this vision ought to figure centrally in the projects of social and cultural renewal that traditional conservatives see as essential precedents to meaningful political reform. Neighborhood gardens, cooking classes in schools and church basements, and the promotion of local and co-operative markets are the kinds of projects that will build community; revitalize regional economies; encourage stable, healthy families; and instill the kinds of civic attitudes that make centralized government appear burdensome. These are not merely aesthetic or gustatory concerns, nor are they essentially private or familial ones: eating is part of our politics, too.

But things will have to take root in our kitchens first. It is here that Waters’s cookbook, which begins with the basics and consistently encourages the reader to modify recipes and vary ingredients with the seasons, provides as good an introduction as one could hope for. Each Friday, my wife and I walk with our 1-year-old son to a house down the street where we pick up a box of just picked produce and pastured eggs from a nearby farm. Nigel Walker, who runs the farm and also has a stand at San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, was involved in a nasty public spat with Carlo Petrini after an essay in Slow Food Nation called the prices at the Ferry Plaza Market “astronomical” and “boutique-y” and its clientele “extremely exclusive.” But at $24.50, my family’s haul this week—lettuce, mixed leafy greens, arugula, potatoes, beets or summer squash, lemon verbena, cherries, peaches, carrots, strawberries, and chard—will cost us about $8.50 less than similar (but non-organic, less fresh, and markedly lower-quality) produce from the local Safeway.

As with many CSA’s, our farm box comes with a newsletter that suggests recipes for some of its more exotic contents. But of late we’ve been making a point to turn to The Art of Simple Food whenever possible. So carrot soup, summer squash gratin with homegrown herbs, marinated beet salad, and wilted chard with onions are likely candidates for the days ahead. Obviously this is especially easy to pull off in the hometown of Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, the birthplace of Chez Panisse and California cuisine. It is, however, increasingly within the reach of anyone who wants to try.

Renewing the culinary culture, and restoring the kinds of values that are necessary for the proper functioning of a healthy republic, is not the sort of thing that can be left to activists, environmentalists, and government bureaucrats. This is a conservative cause if ever there was one, and it is going to have to begin at home. The revolution is coming. And it’s sure to be delicious.

John Schwenkler is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley

The first animal is always difficult for us because we have to decide what to do with it.  Also, communicating with the farmer, who has to communicate with the butcher, can be like playing telephone at a birthday party. I had made some decisions to smoke the hams, the loins (for Canadian bacon), the jowls, hocks, and bacon.  The picnics were to be for Cuban sandwiches and pork taquitos in green chili, and then we had some weird shoulder chops left, and some breakfast sausage. I also kept the skin to make cracklings for bar snacks.

We were missing the Canadian bacon and the sausage for some reason… So I am waiting until Monday to speak with Mark Jaffe about the missing cuts

Our hog man, Mark Jaffe, works with a processor who smokes with no nitrites.  This being the case, the hams and bacon are not as smokey as I would like.  I am not opposed to nitrites, so next time I am going to try to get some smokier meat from the smokehouse.

So… here is what we got from a 300+ pound hog (we are definitely missing a box of meat):
neck bones    2.82 and 1.29
Country ribs    2.29 and 2.47
Spare Rib    3.81
pork loin    7.23, 8.13, 6.75, 8.1
Pork Bones    3.83
Ham    28.31, 28.59
Jowls    6.87
bacon    11.33 and 11.7
skin    40
tenderloins    3.6
Shoulders    32.8
For a total weight of 209.92

Ken Jaffe does not have a barn to winter his animals in. His are a cross between Scottish Highlands, Black Angus, and Herefords. The Scottish Cow is used to harsh winters.  However, the muscles are pushed a little harder, and what little fat there is is burned up in the process of keeping warm.  The prime cuts from one of the steer we got after the winter were pretty tough.  We basically had to use them for burger or for pot roast.  It’s against one’s instincts to cook a strip loin at 225 for 5 hours, but we did it.

For his part, Ken Jaffe was very open-minded about this, and he charged us for a burger animal, which is less expensive than a prime animal.  This, of ciurse, required us working together, and required also for us to have a trusting relationship.  No one was yelling about “what the fuck is going on with these tough steaks,” or anything of the sort.  Neither was anyone saying, “you bought it, you eat it.” As one of Michael Pollan’s mottos is ‘shake the hand that feeds you’, one might be comforted in not only shaking but also trusting the hand that feeds you.  In fact, one hand feeds the other. Everyone is learning, ad everyone is grateful for the opportunity. And, best of all, everyone knows where the meat, and the money, are coming from. It is a good reminder to know that, pre-1935, there were probably a lot of tough steaks being served in February as well there should have been.