The Bowdoin Orient

This weekend, I went to Stew Leonard’s, in Norwalk, Connecticut. For anyone who does not know, Stew Leonard’s is like if an Ikea, a grocery store, and an amusement park got put in a Cuisinart and congealed together. Upon entering the store, one follows a trail marked by yellow duck feet on the floor through a labyrinth of food sections, and throughout the store there are mechanized stuffed animals swinging around little trapezes with signs above them that say, “We flip for our customers!” Along the way you come to stations where digital clocks with big red letters count down the time until the next show; show, here, referring to robotic milk cartons singing Christmas carols, or huge dogs dressed in overalls playing banjos and singing an indiscernible and jaunty tune, probably brimming with canine puns.

I was taken there by my very excited 22-year-old girlfriend who made me wait at every one of these stations (the dogs were her favorite) so that I could experience the magic of her childhood food shopping experience. In my pocket was a shopping list from her mother, who had offered to share one of her recipes with me. I was extremely honored because she is one of those people that is The Cook of every circle she is part of. I was also a little worried that I would overstep my boundary with a suggestion to use local products, but thankfully, my also very dutiful and wonderful girlfriend pointed that out so that I wouldn’t have to. So, the recipe of the evening was amended to fit the produce available locally, and so, friends, again, I bring to you, soup.

Butternut squash soup is remarkably simple. On my list: two large butternut squashes, two cartons of vegetable broth, and chicken apple sausages. The thought process behind it, however was a bit more complicated. The two large butternut squashes came from Stew Leonard’s, sourced from a farm in Hamden, Connecticut, just a forty-minute drive up the road. Very little guilt there, although ideally, yes, I would meet the farmers and help them raise their children and offer up my extra kidney before buying their squash. The vegetable broth came from Whole Foods, the second stop on our tour of Connecticut food stores. More guilt there: non-recyclable packaging, showy and hard to decipher labeling, no idea of where or how it is produced. The chicken sausage was also from Whole Foods, from the case that advertises Whole Foods’s premiere 5-Step® Animal Welfare Rating, involving somewhere close to 100 species-specific standards telling you how “good”—by environmental, health, and taste parameters—your meat is, with the quality improving as the numbers get higher, and the price skyrocketing in the same direction. More guilt there: did “local” mean locally manufactured, but made with chickens from who knows where? If these are mass produced sausages, does the company think about its energy sources and usage and try to minimize it? Do they treat their workers well? Feeling overwhelmed, I shut up, and we bought the food, crossing everything requested of us off the list.

We went back home, and I chopped, baked, sautéed, and pureed. As I said, the process was quite simple, which left me a lot of time to think.

I know how to eat locally in Brunswick. Summer farmers market at Crystal Springs, winter farmers market in Fort Andros (everyone go!), Portland Food Coop, many a nearby farm to visit. I was totally disoriented in Connecticut: I had no idea where to go. Even though I was in a new place, I wanted to still support the local food economy and the people involved in it, but it was hidden behind the convenience of Stew Leonard’s and the glitz of Whole Foods that are such a part of how our food system works. One makes food shopping fun instead of mindful, the other makes shopping expensive and exclusive. I left the stores longing for Brunswick, feeling hypocritical and false. I am going to Germany next semester, and I am responsible for feeding myself! Am I going to be able to find local foods? If I ask about them, will I be regarded as snobby, pretentious and naively privileged?

Forgive me for the foray into the every detail of my thought process, dear reader, but I wanted to give you the framework that leads to this ultimate statement to wrap up my series of columns for this semester: Butternut squash soup may be simple, but eating locally is really freaking hard. It is expensive, it is time consuming; it involves research and establishment in places to the point that is maybe impossible to achieve while traveling. It involves suspicion of standards, difficult discussions, an awareness of the social connotations of “local” and an acknowledgement of the privilege I have to be able to eat this way. For me, it invokes a healthy dose of guilt mixed with a lethal dose of self-righteousness and a sprinkle of hypocrisy. But I’m trying. And now my family is trying, and my girlfriend is trying, and my friends mock me, but also try, and hopefully, things will change so that it doesn’t involve so much trying, but instead demands the things that are fundamental to it: eating, cooking, learning, talking, congratulating, helping, caring. Hopefully I have inspired some caring in those that read this, and maybe some willingness to try. Go home this winter, ask about a recipe, think about how you might be able to get the ingredients locally. Ask about a recipe for which you know you can get the ingredients locally. If you can’t, consider why that is and what could make it different. For me, it is hard, but it is so, so worth it.

And now for something simpler but also so, so worth it.

Remember that scene in Ratatouille where the mean food critic eats the ratatouille and the scene swooshes into his brain through his eye and you can see him remembering when his mom used to make him ratatouille when other kids picked on him? And then his heart essentially melts and he becomes all nice and starts wearing a jaunty beret and becomes BFFs with Remi the rat? If you do not know to what I am referring, I’m sorry that you have lived your life up to this point without seeing Ratatouille, and I think that you should remedy the situation by watching it (make sure you have good food on hand, it is a mouth-watering movie despite being animated).

My point is, I identify with the mean food critic. Sometimes, when I’m having a really bad day and I hate everyone, I sometimes just need the right comfort food to turn me into a nice (although probably not beret-wearing) person again.

There is a science to comfort food. Your enteric nervous system (ENS) is located in the walls of your gut, and is made up of huge lengths of nerves that are responsible for controlling digestion. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked with transmitting feelings of pleasure, is made in the stomach at the same levels that is made in the brain. At any given time, more than ninety percent of the body’s serotonin, a neurotransmitter linked with preventing depression and regulating sleep, is present in the ENS. And these hormones are released when we eat fatty foods.

I have spoken about my love of butter and eggs, and probably cheese. Other fatty foods that I like to eat to increase my dopamine and serotonin levels: bacon, cream and potatoes. Warm + Together = Chowder. 

Guess what is even more comforting about these foods? They are all super available locally in Maine! Yay! Comfort food with a comforting environmental and social context! I got most of my ingredients at the Portland Food Coop, but this is a very easy recipe to modify to whatever is available in your produce section. Essentially pick out some good vegetables with savory and mildly sweet flavors (carrots, corn, turnips, onions, potatoes, leeks) and simmer them in vegetable broth until tender, then add half-and-half. I may have said this already, but Organic Valley dairy products are awesome because it is an entirely farmer-owned, larger-scale cooperative, and their cows are happy and healthy (I actually got to go visit Chase’s Dairy Farm in Aroostook County this summer, and I’m pretty sure the cows were smiling at me).

You will need (serves 4):

           1 package of bacon (Wee Bit Farm, Orland, Maine)

           1 leek (Misty Brook Farm, Albion, Maine)

           3 or 4 small potatoes (Goranson Farm, Dresden, Maine)

           2 or 3 carrots (Goranson Farm, Dresden, Maine)

           A pint of half-and-half (Organic Valley)

           2 cups vegetable broth

           ½ cup water

           1 tsp. cayenne

           1 bay leaf

           Salt and pepper to taste

           Fresh parsley

Instructions:

1.     Fry up your bacon in a skillet until it’s pretty crispy. While it’s cooking, chop up your leek, potatoes and carrots into chunky pieces.

2.     Set aside cooked bacon. Pour bacon drippings from the skillet into soup pot. Over medium heat, sauté the leek, adding the cayenne, bay leaf and vegetable broth once it is fragrant, about 2 minutes.

3.     Let the mixture come to a boil, and add the potatoes and carrots. Simmer until these are tender enough to poke with a fork. Reduce heat, and wait for the mixture to cool down a bit.

4.     Add pint of half and half, already feeling your dopamine levels starting to rise. Add ½ cup of water, and wait a bit longer for the mixture to heat up again. Salt and pepper to taste.

5.     While waiting, chop up parsley into fine pieces and use as garnish.

6.     Eat.  

This will be your standard “Welcome to Fall Foods and Flavors” recipe. I love fall; I buy tiny gourds to decorate my room, and I take pictures of leaves changing because they are pretty. 

Equally important to the practice of fall rituals in my book is the baking of acorn squash.

The hardest part of acorn squash is getting it cut open, which requires either a really sharp knife, or a pretty crummy dull one and a lot of determination, which is how I did it. A mix of sawing, poking and stabbing eventually leaves you with two halves of a delicious squash ready to be doused in butter and sugar.

 This rather simple recipe leaves me space to talk about an issue that is near and dear to my heart, but I have found difficult to crack into (similarly, you might say, to an acorn squash). I want to talk about food politics, especially in Maine. 

Ready for stats? According to the USDA, between one and 16 percent of people in Maine are food insecure, or they lack access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. Along with Vermont and Rhode Island, Maine has one of the highest levels in the Northeast. The adult obesity rate in Maine is much higher than any other state in New England, and most of the highest rates happen in northern Maine. This makes sense, to some degree, because northern Maine also has more fast food restaurants per person, less access to grocery stores and fewer farmers’ markets. What doesn’t make sense is that the northern counties are also the ones with more acreage used for farming by a huge degree. Food is produced and shipped away, with the profit going mostly to large distribution companies and not to the farmers. 

Meanwhile, cheap, unhealthy food is brought in to feed the people who grow fresh food for a living. Food from the ground has stopped being thought of as food, and so people living in farming communities are finding it hard to eat. It doesn’t make sense.

I would love to have the authority to insert a suggestion on what we can do to fix this. I have some partial fixes: buy local foods, study where your foods come from, pay the extra money for local and organic, knowing that it is helping farmers get what they deserve. But the issue is more complex than that, and will require policy changes, and discussions where the health of rural, agricultural communities is of top importance. It will require some sawing, poking and stabbing with a crummy dull knife to crack this one open (hit-you-over-the-head metaphor, but I’m pretty proud of it).

You will need:Acorn squashes, however many you want to feed you and your “clique” (Hannaford’s sources them from local farms! Spear’s Farm, Waldoboro, ME)Butter (I like to buy Kate’s, which is based out of Saco, Maine, and uses all New England milk to make slow churned, yummy butter)Honey or Maple Syrup (I used honey from Fairwinds Farm in Topsham)Salt & PepperNutmeg and/or cinnamon if desired

Instructions:1.     Preheat oven to 450°.2.     Saw, poke, and stab open your squashes, or cut them if you have an appropriate knife.3.     Scoop out the seeds (these roasted with some olive oil and salt are really yummy).4.     Place the squashes open-face up on a baking sheet covered in tinfoil.5.     Place pats of butter in the hollow of the squash, and drizzle with selected sugary item.6.     Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, until the flesh is tender.7.     Eat.

Eggs benedict is a theme in my life. As much as I hate myself for that last sentence and the assumptions that can be made about me because of it, it is a truth that I have learned to embrace.

One summer when I was in high school, there was a week when I made eggs benedict for my family every morning until my mother begged me to stop for the sake of my father’s cholesterol levels. This past Ivies, I woke up Saturday morning and decided to power through the process of making eggs benedict, knowing the result would be just what the doctor ordered.

I have spent many mornings experimenting with different combinations, ranging from a miso beet green base to a smoked salmon to a thick cut of Canadian bacon from the winter farmer’s market in Brunswick. People have started to associate the dish with me so much, in fact, that the other day I got a text from a friend saying, “I just ate eggs benedict.” That’s it.

One of the reasons I love eggs benedict: you can find farm-fresh eggs almost anywhere in the world. And there are a lot of eggs in eggs benedict. Hollandaise sauce is basically egg yolk and butter beaten into a frenzy, with some lemon juice thrown in there (yes, I know, it is quite hard to find lemons on a Maine farm, so I’ll get back to you—maybe—with a possible local substitute for lemon juice. This sauce is then poured, you guessed it, over more eggs. Eggs have a significantly lower carbon footprint than meat (although this recipe includes meat as well as eggs) and pretty much every farmers market, food hub or plain old farm has them. You can also often find locally sourced eggs in a regular supermarket, as they are a pretty reliable product from farms.

I opted for eggs (and most other ingredients) from The Portland Food Co-Op, a local food hub located at 290 Congress Street, to which I highly recommend a pilgrimage. Owned by Portland residents through a membership system, the co-op houses a beautiful and well-stocked 96 percent organic produce section with 115 local items from 20 Maine farms. They also sell meats, cheeses, pre-made meals, soups, spices, pickles, snacks and anything else local they can get their hands on.

Food hubs, for this reason, are becoming a ray of hope in the otherwise murky and complex food system of the United States. They provide both a reliable market and a marketing service for farmers, as well as a one-stop shop for all things local for consumers. The Portland Food Co-Op also offers cooking and nutrition classes, programs for people living under a certain income level and SNAP benefit acceptance so as to make local, healthy food a reality for as many people as possible.

Choosing ingredients was soo easy it was hard. There were so many beautiful veggies and fruits and greens and meats to choose from, so immediately a million ideas for different eggs benedict combinations occurred to me. However, my friend that I had promised eggs benedict to that morning had suggested lamb, so I started there.

From then on, this recipe became an amorphous, ever-changing idea, from the buying of the ingredients to the final blistered cherry tomato. I even broke the cardinal rule of eggs benedict and decided not to make hollandaise sauce, which led to somewhat of an existential crisis. I had willingly chosen not to smother my food in eggs and butter, and that is quite out of character for me, but I think I am happy with that decision, ultimately. For those that would like to make hollandaise sauce, however, I egg you on, friends.

Makes 6 eggs benedict

6 Eggs (Portland Food Co-Op)

Ciabatta Bread (Forage Bakery, Lewiston)

Roughly 3 cups arugula (Portland Food Co-Op)

1 lemon, juiced (Portland Food Co-Op)

1 lb. ground lamb (Portland Food Co-Op)

1 yellow onion, minced (Portland Food Co-Op)

2 cloves garlic, minced (Portland Food Co-Op)

Cherry tomatoes (Portland Food Co-Op)

Fresh thyme, finely chopped (Portland Food Co-Op)

1 inch peeled and chopped fresh ginger root

2 tsp. turmeric

2 tsp. cumin

Olive Oil

A dash of vinegar

Salt & Pepper

This is a great recipe to make with friends, as there are many parts and each of you can be in charge of something. Make all the components and assemble on top of ciabatta toast like eggs benedict. 

1. On medium heat, heat about 2 Tbsp. olive oil in large cast iron pan. Sauté onion until slightly translucent and soft.

2. Add garlic and ginger to pan and sauté about 2 minutes, until fragrant.

3. Add lamb, and mix well. Cook until lamb starts to lose its pink color, then add turmeric, cumin, salt, and pepper. Cook for about 5 more minutes.

4. Once the lamb is cooked and starting to brown, add the fresh thyme and cook for about 1 more minute. Remove pan from heat.

1. While lamb is cooking, take care of the little stuff. Toss the arugula with about 1 Tbsp. olive oil and the juice from the lemon. Slice ciabatta and toast slightly. These steps can be done really whenever in the process, but the more everything can be finished at the same time, the better.

1. Put a pot of water on to boil. You want it to be rather large in diameter and fit at least 5 inches of water.

2. Once water has boiled, reduce the heat to keep the water at a steady simmer.

3. Add about 1 Tbsp. vinegar, to help the eggs keep their shape.

4. Carefully break the eggs into the water. Do this in batches, depending on this size of your pot. I would not recommend trying to poach 6 eggs at once.

5. Cook eggs for about three minutes each, until whites have hardened and yolks are still pretty runny.

1. Heat a pan pretty hot with olive oil. Throw tomatoes in there until they blister, rolling them around sometimes.

One of my first kitchen memories consists of my father handing a very small and somewhat clumsy me a gallon jar stuffed full of bright green cucumbers, red onions and golden liquid and telling me to “shake like hell, we don’t mind the noise.” 

This was a unique kitchen task in that he felt there was not much risk in entrusting it to me—I often had a dangerous tendency to impatience and carelessness when tasked with a meticulous job. So involving me in a family recipe in which the actual last line (handwritten on a yellowed, crinkled Post-it) was “Shake like hell, we don’t mind the noise,” seemed fitting.

The raucous and celebratory shaking of a huge jar was the main allure of this recipe for me then, and still is now, although the list of great things about this recipe has since gotten longer. 

1) It’s delicious. 2) It’s incredibly simple, bypassing all of the sterilizing and pressurization usually required for canned things. 3) When I am home, it uses up the overwhelming number of cucumbers that emerge from my mother’s garden. 4) It tastes like summer and lasts all winter. It provides brightness and crunch from local vegetables well into the season when the ground is frozen hard under feet of snow, unwilling to offer up any of the goodies that are so plentiful in the summer.

For this reason, pickling, as well as canning and other methods of preservation, is rightfully becoming a centerpiece of the local food movement. 

Food preservation has been part of human culture for centuries, and actually was key in allowing previously nomadic cultures to settle and establish year-round communities. 

Harvested foods no longer had to be eaten immediately, but instead could be stored for when fresh food was scarce. Food preservation in the home was a critical part of feeding oneself and one’s family during the winters of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across the United States, a la the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

To my young self, raised with three major supermarkets and an obscene number of restaurants within a five-minute drive, these were tales of long-lost, fantastical, nostalgic times where food was work—growing, raising, slaughtering, cooking, canning, every last part of every last organism used in some way to stave off hunger or disease or cold. 

I knew as I shook the gallon jar of green and red and gold, many hundreds of years and technological developments later, that food could be transported from anywhere—scarcity was something that could be conquered by ingenuity. 

However, in a manner that I hope is more than a trend or a fad, foodies around the world are returning to home food preservation as part of a healthy food system, a way to make the most out of locally grown produce when it is available.

This, I hope, will be the purpose of this column throughout the semester: to make the most out of locally grown food when it is available. 

I have come a long way from my former jar-shaking self in terms of my interest and respect for food. I love food: I love to cook it, I love to eat it, and I love to study it. Every single thing on every single shelf of every single grocery store has a complicated history involving people and money and science and soil and sun. 

I believe that with the way our system works now, we are too far removed from that story. I therefore hope to possibly inspire a trip to the farmer’s market, a different choice at Hannaford, a meal cooked with friends or at the Bowdoin Food Co-op using local ingredients. Or maybe just a dialogue about these things. About how a jar of pickles from Hannaford, sent to them from Michigan, processed in a high-tech factory, costs less than a bunch of fresh cucumbers from the farm down the road.

But not to worry, my first recipe is very budget-friendly, even when buying local! I got everything that I could for this recipe from the farmer’s market at the Crystal Springs Farm on Saturday morning, and the other things (sugar, vinegar, pickling salt—items not readily found from a local producer) at Hannaford. 

I opted out of the gallon jar, and instead used a quart jar, anticipating less-than-happy roommates if a monstrous jar of pickles occupied most of our fridge space for the rest of the winter. 

The result: tangy, crunchy cukes and onions as a quick snack that will remind me of 80-degree days, sunshine and that wonderful morning at the farmer's market, even when I have on two sweaters in bed and the sun sets at 4 p.m.

You will need:

2 cucumbers (Six River Farm, Bowdoinham)1 red onion (Six River Farm, Bowdoinham)¼ teaspoon celery seed (Gryffon Ridge Spice Merchants)¼ teaspoon yellow mustard seed (Gryffon Ridge Spice Merchants)¼ teaspoon turmeric (We already had this in my house…)1 cup white vinegar1 cup sugar1 tablespoon pickling saltA quart jar

Instructions:

1.    Cut up the cucumbers and onion, both pretty thin. Put in jar.2.     Add everything else to jar.3.     Put lid on jar, shake like hell.4.     Put jar in fridge, and shake  a couple of times a day for five days5.     Eat.