End Notes, Rumors and other ideas on Clean, Local, and Sustainable Foods, and the philosophy behind it.   Life In The Garden: Vol. 2, Issue 6 (June) The e-newsletter for Lionette's Market and Garden of Eden restaurant Your Boston connection to grass-fed meats and sustainably produced fare In This Issue: * Welcome * Events * Lionette's Meat of the Month * Lionette's Cheese of the Month * Lionette's Produce of the Month * "Sustainable Specials" at Garden of Eden restaurant * End Notes from James *************************************************************** Welcome to Life In The Garden, Lionette's Market and Garden of Eden's subscriber-only mailing, bringing you monthly updates about in-house events and the good foods the Lionette family — Chef Robert, James, Bob and Mary — are bringing to you via Lionette's Market and our restaurant, Garden of Eden. Hundreds of you have signed up for this e-newsletter thanks to your coming to the restaurant and market and liking what you see ... and, more important, taste! So feel free to pay it forward by sending this newsletter to anyone who believes what we believe: Sustainable farming is, and will always be, the only option. Happy reading. Clean eating. Family Lionette ********************************************************************************** EVENTS Saturday 23 June 2007 Il Lago Olive Oil Tasting Free Come By Lionette's Market and sample Il Lago, our latest Tuscan olive oil.  The producers are Slow Food members, and create a clean, fair and delicious EVO.  Rosemary and Tony will be on hand sampling the oil and discussing the production and uses of such a fabulous olive oil. Saturday 30 June 2007 Raspberry Infusion Vinegar Tasting Free Silferleaf Farm in Concord, Mass., is a small, local raspberry farm with a product that's big on taste -- and utility.  Its 100 percent organic Raspberry Infusion is thin like a vinegar but with a sweeter taste that's fabulous on everything from ice cream and pancakes, to sparkling water and, of course, salads. You'll be shocked at how great this tastes, and what an asset it is to your summer pantry.  Meet the farmer/producer coming in all the way from Concord! Also, just a reminder: Slow Food Wednesdays are on hiatus until autumn ************************************************************************************ LIONETTE'S MEAT O' THE MONTH: Real veal is the real deal; plus, grill grill grill!!!!!! On Thursday 14 June Lionette's will receive a whole fore quarter of veal from Pinello Farm, a dairy farm in Randolph Center, VT, where Jane Pinello breeds her own Holstein cows and allows the males to be pastured and feed off their mamas. Even if you're leery about buying, preparing and eating veal, we truly believe this is the only sustainable and humane way to get it. Come in and buy your veal chops, breast, faux tenders, osso bucco pieces, chuck, cutlets, and ground veal, knowing that it was raised sans cruelty, and sans synthetic milk (which, sadly, most "milk-fed veal is really fed). GrillGrillGrill 'Tis the season, and we've got some fabulous ideas for your next grilling adventure: River Rock Aged Beef: For a real treat get a couple of aged ribeye steaks. A little sea salt and pepper is all you need to bring out the natural goodness in flavor in these babies. Plus, you'll be eating something in which you believe: River Rock Farm in Brimfield, Mass., dry ages its  beef for up to five weeks to enrich the flavor of every bite. All beef is fully pastured (though in the interest of full disclosure, some corn is fed out to the cows in the pasture, but it's done in a responsible way.) We do, of course also have 100 percent grass-fed beef from Millbrand Farm, in Brandon, VT. And we're proud to say we believe ourselves to be the only market in Boston carrying 100 percent grass-fed beef. (Still wonder what all the fuss about sticking to a grass-only diet? Read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and you'll understand why we go to such great lengths never to sell or serve commodity corn-fed beef.) Top Sirloin: Why should you throw this cut on the barby? It has a much bolder flavor than a New York strip (though it's not as lean) and it's far less marbleized (thus, less fattening) and more tender than a ribeye. In our opinion, being between a strip and a ribeye it's the best of both worlds ... and a delicious grilling cut. Marinades: Most people find that real, fully pastured beef like the beef we sell at Lionette's has such great flavor that little needs to be added. But cuts like the top sirloin, and others, also take well to marinades of your liking. We make a simple marinade of soy, vinegar, a little hot sauce, some apricot nectar, rosemary, a bay leaf and juniper seeds. Try to make it on your own, or ask us for some ... we usually have it available. ************************************************************************************ LIONETTE'S CHEESE O' THE MONTH: Essex Valley Cow's Milk Cheese We love dumping international cheeses when we find a local one that can compete or -- even better -- replace its foreign counterpart. For those of you who enjoy Brillat Savarin, try Essex Valley's Cow's Milk Cheese. For a long time we've been selling the Topsfield Round and Highlander Goat Cheeses from Peter and Elizabeth Mullholland from Topsfield, Mass, so we're proud to feature their Essex, too. The cows are from their sanctuary in Essex, Mass., where they produce both the milk, and cheese. The flavor is between the decadence of a triple cream and camembert/brie.  Add it to whatever appie plate you put out to impromptu summer guests ... or hoard it all for yourself. ************************************************************************************ LIONETTE'S PRODUCE O' THE MONTH: It's so easy being Greeny! It is on! The local farms are bursting with fresh greens like bok choi, rainbow chard, Russian red kale, arugula, mixed greens, fresh varieties of head lettuce, cress, and so much more!  A glance any day at our veggie bins will also display great treats to add to your salads like Easter egg radishes and spring turnips. Once all of our local farms get on board Lionette's expects a fresh shipment every day of the week! (We're so excited we can't stand it!) Our regular sources of fresh produce this year will be: * Atlas Farm (USDA organic), Deerfield, Mass. * Pete's Greens (NOFA Organic), Craftsbury,VT * Stillman Farms, New Braintree Mass. * Blue Heron Farm (Certified Organic) Lincoln, Mass. * Grateful Farm, Franklin, Mass. If you check out nothing else, we beg you to try Pete's Greens Mountain Mesclun Mix. Nothing is like it.  And while you're at it, be sure to pick up Pete's purple potatoes, shallots, so-peppery-it-stings-your-mouth-in-an- awesome-way cress, and much more. We also have several varieties of potted herbs from Grateful Farms including basils, thymes, rosemarys, and cilantro, among others. As for fruit, Stillman Farms' Aiden (those of you at our Pig Event earlier in the year met him and tasted his pig!) tells us that his strawberries are going to be a huge crop this year, and will probably be ready by mid-June. Keep popping into the store to look for local, delicious strawberries. We'll keep 'em in stock as long as we have 'em. ********************************************************************************** SUSTAINABLE SPECIALS at GARDEN OF EDEN As we noted last month, diners at the restaurant may notice a departure of Albacore Tuna in the nicoise and other cold-fish salads, and the addition of Deep Water Alaskan King Salmon. The reason: Albacore Tuna is not sustainably harvested this time of year and according to Chef Robert it won't return to the menu until late July. Lucky for you, Chef Robert and his staff can make anything taste delicious, so while taking a break from tuna, enjoy Garden of Eden's Poached Salmon with Housemade Remoulade Sauce, using only the finest mayonnaise, poaching liquids, and of course, salmon. ************************************************************************************ END NOTES from JAMES Finally, we can all enjoy ourselves and eat locally without having to try very hard, at all, because the few local farms still remaining in New England are in full bloom! February and March are perhaps the most unmotivated time of year for eating local as the farms produce little produce.  There are a few year- round farms with whom we work, but the reality (especially in Massachusetts) is that most of our farms are on the Farmer's Market schedule from May through October. This is to no fault of theirs -- it's just the reality of our modern culture that wants what it wants, when it wants it. Currently we eat very little "cellared" produce (veggies like root vegetables that can be stored in cool, dry cellars, and consumed all winter long). We have all but lost the domestic task of pickling and preserving fruits and veggies ... something that just two generations ago (before airplanes, supermarkets, mass-production of food…you know, all the stuff we at Lionette's try to avoid), everyone knew how to do, so they could survive year 'round in New England.  But now we can be true localists or seasonalists (or whatever the catch phrase ought to be). There is so much ready to be bought and eaten from our local farms that now there is little reason to visit supermarkets to buy mass- produced food from all over the world. And from local farms, you are definitely buying!  In fact, we know that many of our loyal customers on Tuesdays and Fridays shop at the farmers market in Copley Square ... where several of the farmers from which we buy have their stands set up. Fair enough, say the Lionette clan: it is "competition" we can appreciate!  But, dear patrons, just remember that we have produce from dozens of local farms at Lionette's, seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. And this year we expect to get produce deliveries every single one of those seven days....  Also, for those of you interested in Evans/Sunrise Milk from Norwich, VT (the milk we used to sell): The farm produces what is easily one of the cleanest and purest milks ... but, unfortunately, it's also one of the only local milk producers in the Northeast. I am still speaking with Dave Evans as we try to figure out how to get a truck to Boston every week to bring us his milk. We'd like nothing more than to dump our Stoneyfield organic and once again carry a real, local, clean, sustainable, milk that's not from a factory, but from a local farm. Hopefully by month's end this will happen. Stay tuned.  Lastly, for those who like sifting through the Web, here is a nice site I found about through Chef's Collaborative: www.sustainableagriculture.net Cheers, James Lionette Taken from our monthly newsletter. Taken From April, 2007 Newsletter The Beef Industry Is Full of the Biggest Meatheads Out There I, of course, do not include beef farmers in the above statement. I revere beef farmers, actually ... which is why I'd like to draw your attention to the following tidbit: Tucked somewhere in the News section of the 5 March issue of The Boston Globe was this story: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/03/05/fda_poised_to_approve_antibiotic_for_cattle/   The article read, in part: "The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defense against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals."   To sum up the issue brought up in the article, the commodity beef industry (though I don't know the exact figure, but it probably accounts for 90 percent of beef in this country, maybe more) has pushed for yet another antibiotic to be administered to cattle on feed lots, and according to the article it seems it will be approved by the FDA this spring.  This antibiotic has only been used for humans, and really sick humans, at that. Already, more than 75 percent of all antibiotics in this country are fed to the animals we eat; the other quarter is administered to ill humans (pets, too).    Antibiotics are becoming more and more ineffective to fight off sickness in both humans and our livestock.  Certainly it would seem that this is due in part to over-prescribing the antibiotics, something that seems so common in American culture.  The germs and viruses have no choice but to become resistant by mutating to become immune to the commonly prescribed antibiotics.  Certainly, it would seem that if we are constantly eating meats which have had heaps of antibiotics administered to them (which, again, is the overwhelming norm in the United States) this would only further the strength of virus' and weaken the antibiotics needed by ill humans.    Granted, I'm no doctor, so ultimately I'm not qualified to prescribe how much, and when, antibiotics should be used.  But that is precisely why Lionette's Market doesn't sell meat that has antibiotics in it.  Instead of raising cattle naturally on pasture on farms, the big-beef industry just keeps cutting corners to make beef inexpensive for consumers, and highly profitable for themselves.   Unfortunately, we who opt not to eat or any way support the commodity beef industry still face the problems that arise from this mess.  Viruses and germs could care less if you eat grass-fed beef from a local farm or supermarket commodity beef. And yet it lends to reason that the more commodity meat and poultry you eat, the worse your defense system will be for fighting off said viruses because your meat will have already eaten your antibiotics, leaving your body nothing to fight with.    It doesn't seem fair, especially to people who have no choice but to buy what's best for their budget. *************** On somewhat of a different topic, here's a book I believe everyone must read: Heat, by George Monbiot.  Monbiot is a weekly columnist for the Guardian (a United Kingdom publication) and author of several books.  People actually need to read two books: Omnivore's Dilemma (about food) by Michael Pollan and Heat.  But for now, let's discuss Heat. Heat is about climate change, not food.  Where it is true that we do not know if the Honey catastrophe in this country is because of our pollution or because of some weird natural occurrence, it seems that we are already feeling effects on our natural food supply, and certainly will feel very serious effects in the near future.   Heat was a best seller in the UK, published on Penguin Press UK.  But Penguin USA would not publish it here in this country, so a small (and local, mind you) publishing group called South End Press just released it this April (2007).  (In the interest of full disclosure, my roommate is part of the South End Press Collective and put the project together; I was lucky enough to land one of the first U.S. copies.) Shocking as this may seem (considering the nature of this book), I somehow managed to think about food while reading Heat and came up with a few related issues: :: Methane is second only to carbon dioxide on the list of our environmental problems.  The necessity of drastic cuts in methane would mean closing down those devastating pig factories in the West, which would be one of the easy ways to help solve our methane problem ... especially since every publication from Rolling Stone magazine to New York Times editorials are exposing the tyrants of the commodity pig industry. Even if shutting them down does little for a sustainable future, it would still just feel so good to get rid of them. :: We absolutely have to become, once again, dependent on local food sources.  This country is so utterly dependent on international food sources, and we have so shunned our local sources that locals have nearly been wiped out.  I imagine that more than half of Boston goes weeks without ever eating a single thing that came from a local source.  It is imperative that we rebuild the necessary infrastructure to get local food into the cities and suburbs.    :: It is essential to rebuild our local farms.  I thought local farms were near extinct, but this year in Massachusetts, for example, I learned there are more farms than there have been in 30 years ... yet the amount of land actually being farmed is still at an all-time low, since the Europeans first came here.   :: The sense of individuality on which so many Americans pride themselves will surely doom us if we don't learn how to band together for the right reasons. Sadly, it's not enough for one person to cut back their energy use or to shop locally several times a week.  It has to be a social movement, not an individual one.  It's so hard to believe that one person can't make a difference.  It's true.  But several million can, and must. :: Too many people I speak with about food and all of the misinformation that comes from chain supermarkets and organic mass-produced food companies wind up not trusting anyone. Although I think it's healthy to not trust big business, trusting no one is about as unhealthy as we can get.  Not to sound too "Goody Two-Shoes,"  but we need to begin trusting those who are actually part of the food community to which you want to belong -- the farmers, the food producers, and local market keepers.  It is a lot easier to trust people when you can actually meet them and speak with them, where  it's very difficult to trust P.R. press releases, sly advertising, and agro-business marketing campaigns. I will gladly engage anyone who has read Heat, both those who "get it," and possibly even with "Flat-Earth-Society" types who still deny our climate problems (though my patience with them is almost done).   As to where to find the book, it is literally being released right now, but you can order it or inquire about it at www.southendpress.org .  I do know that the only book store left in the South End does carry it: the Lucy Parsons Center, a non-profit collectively-run bookstore which is on Columbus Avenue, a block before Mass. Ave. (And don't worry, contrary to how some of them look, they are all good people in there!)   Personal Capacity Jamey Lionette PS: Thanks to everyone who is bringing in or sending us articles and links to food-related topics.  We appreciate them, and read them. So keep 'em coming! **************************************************************** Taken from March 2007 Newsletter I Want What I Want, When I Want It I'm sorry.  But if the above title sums up your food-buying personality, perhaps Lionette's Market is not the place for you.  At least, not always.   Confusing?  Yes.  Obviously we want your business, but we run an honest business, here, and these are the facts:  People are so used to getting strawberries and plums in January thanks to supermarkets stocking their shelves from industrial food manufacturers from all over the world, that Lionette's Market probably seems, well, empty during the winter.  But we primarily buy from local farms and producers, so, if you were to come in to shop during the course of a week, this is likely what you'd find according to the, er, "schedule" I keep with our various purveyors.    People ask me what it's like to run a market that sells locally grown and made items.  At its core it's a pretty easy job that makes people relatively happy.  But schedules like this will kill you.  Here's why: :: On any Thursday we could get you any cut of pork you want because that's the day we receive our entire pig from Mr. Clark of Clark's Farm in Ferrisburg, Vermont.  But on a Wednesday there's a good chance that the only pork we'll have is cuts like our house-smoked bacon and guanciale.  It just doesn't take long for all of the fresh cuts of meat to be sold and eaten.    ::  Tuesday is "100 percent grass-fed beef day," when Millbrand Farm in Vermont sends us its beef.  But we work with three different grass-fed farms in both Vermont and Mass.  They all raise their cattle slightly differently ... so of course, they have their own unique delivery schedules. ::  In the summer, certain farms drive in on Mondays and Thursdays; others on Wednesdays and Sundays.  The Vermont co-op truck arrives only on Thursdays (unless, of course, there is bad weather.  In that case, it arrives Fridays).   ::  With the game farms from the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York, I order on Monday or early Tuesday.  They do what it takes to fill my order on Wednesdays, and we receive our bird orders on Thursday.  So no heirloom chickens are available on Tuesday or Wednesday.    :: Mr. Clark, the pig farmer, has a USDA inspector on Fridays and Tuesdays, only.  He is kind enough to break down our pig into roughly a dozen "primal" pieces (which is very nice because as you can imagine it's a pain in the a** to lug around a 300-pound pig in the kitchen).  So if someone wants to have a big cut of pork cut in a different way, we need to know by the weekend prior to get word to Mr. Clark, his son, and grandson, to cut differently.  On the off chance that someone would want a full pig from us, we need to know by the Friday for the following Thursday.   (Again, Clark's a small farm, and has only enough money and pigs to afford a USDA inspector twice a week.)   ::  Turkeys are raised for the fall and early winter (for all of those holidays!) and a few more are raised for Easter.  So fresh turkey in February is just not an option from our local farms.  Pheasants, certain ducks, and partridge, are also seasonal.    ::  We get goat cheese made way up in Northern Vermont, by the border of Quebec.  The maker drives her cheese down to a year-round produce farmer, also in the northeast kingdom, who adds the cheese to our produce order and drives that down to Mr. Clark's farm, which is another drop-off spot for the co-op farmers, where a truck will later swing by and load it in.  That truck, of course, is bound for Boston.  It will make several more stops at farms, drop-off spots, and slaughterhouses, and then make its way to us.    ::  Boylan Soda (kind of local - New Jersey) is a family run Soda company that makes soda the old school way, with cane sugar and NOT high-fructose corn syrup.  The local distributor dropped them last year.  Now we teamed up with a bunch of local businesses to put a direct order in with the company.  So we are dependent on when Boylan can deliver a giant order up to Boston.  So we are at times out of stock and unsure when it will arrive in Boston.   :: We are currently trying to do a similar buying method with some local producers to bring back Evans/Sunrise Milk.  Made in New York State, this is considered the best organic milk made in the Northeast (truly a local, clean, and sustainable milk source, something impossible to find these days).  Their distributor stopped coming to Boston (lack of orders from Boston stores, because, commodity milk, organic or not, is so much cheaper that most places are not willing to pay and charge the real price of milk.)  Anyone interested in getting involved in organizing a co-operative buying of this milk, please call me at the market 617.778.0360 or send me an email.  Hopefully the folks from Evans will come to Boston, perhaps at one of our events, and we can muster up some interest in this milk.  The milk industry is getting very ugly.  There are many reports coming out on it.   If you have seen and heard the things we have, you would stop drinking milk.  Hopefully we can get Evans/Sunrise in the shop, and you can continue to enjoy milk. Hard to believe, but things actually get even more complicated than that, which makes it difficult for the wait staff at Garden Of Eden to know exactly from which farm certain foods come on any particular day -- it's just too much to ask of everyone.  I think I am the only one who knows the whole schedule, and I wonder how much weekly sanity I lose figuring it all out.  (So if you really need to know which farm the steak tips are from at Garden of Eden, please find me at Lionette's Market and I'll fill you in. And don't hold it against our kind staff if they don't know the particulars!)   So all of that explains why sometimes we'll have everything you could hope for; and why on other days, it's:  "Sorry -- that truck arrives on Thursday." It's kind of incredible, but that's how it works.  And the system works well, actually ... except when people confuse sustainable local farming practices with mass-produced agro-business.    Quantity, vs. ... Quantity? If the first issue with buying locally is understanding a limited selection during certain times of the year, the second issue is accepting limited quantity.   For instance, we get a pig every Thursday, so if you are thinking of preparing a nice pork loin dinner from a recipe you recently discovered (like the one we included above) then come in and ask for it.  But beware: If you need three or four, then Houston, we have a problem. Because pigs only have two tenderloins I would need a couple of days' notice to get several pork tenderloins from a clean source in Quebec (a big co-operative of farms).  I know it would be much easier to just go to Whole Foods or Shaw's and buy those pork loins because they have hundreds of them on hand. After all, efficiency is the key to mass production; and having what you want when you want -- and the convenience, inexpensive prices, and one-stop shopping -- are the ideals that put the "super" before "market."    However, the manufacturing of this type of food comes at a great cost, even at supermarkets pretending to sell food that is "naturally raised." You see, supermarkets depend on mass-scale production, transportation, and storage, for their food.  And you can forget about the markets intimately knowing suppliers.  After all -- how could a regional manager at a supermarket deal with Mr. Clark when he or she needs 1,000 pork tenderloins?  For starters, Mr. Clark doesn't have 500 pigs, and even if he did, he certainly wouldn't slaughter them all just to get a thousand 14 to 16-ounce cuts of pork.  What would he do with the other 300,000 pounds of pork?  And how much would he and his family need to change their farming practices to fulfill such an order?   Clark Farm would have to morph into a mass- produced pork manufacturing facility, which wouldn't be stretch: Stonyfield and Organic Cow of Vermont did just that: neither are in New England anymore (but at least Stonyfield buys some of its milk from local dairy farmers).  Wolf's Neck up in Maine did it, too, so now you get Wolf's Neck beef from slaughterhouses in Nebraska or Pennsylvania and not from New England. How local is that?   Today, very little food we eat comes from local farms, even though 50-60 years ago most food consumed in this country came from them.  So obviously it's not some utopian pipe-dream that we, a wealthy society living in a very fertile land, can't once again have most of our diet come from locally made, clean, and sustainably made foods; especially if in the rest of the world, most people's diets come from locally harvested food.   Some people are seeing an obvious problem, here: How can we all eat locally farmed food when there are so few farms left?  I really worry that soon there won't be enough farmers remaining to pass along their knowledge, and we will be lost at how to farm locally.  What if we and future generations only know agro-business of food? Bottom line:  We need to eat differently.  Recipes are great.  But if every ingredient is not available to make a certain recipe on your night of choice, my advice would be to save it for later or, better yet, get creative and adapt it.  Or try grocery shopping this way, instead: See what is available from local farms or your markets carrying local items, and create your recipes from what you can buy. Of course this is the worst time of year to attempt this as February and March in New England don't offer much produce.  Cellared turnips and rutabagas are great in braised dishes, but do we honestly want to eat that every night? Truth is, we can -- and historically we did eat locally, all the time, back when people knew how to pickle, preserve, and cure in their own homes.  Clearly we're less kitchen savvy than our ancestors, but does that mean we ought give up hope and just buy whatever we feel like at the supermarkets? It's certainly tempting.  But not necessarily wise.  And, a great way to help ruin your neighborhood is by shopping at chain-supermarkets and not from your local markets or farmer's markets.  Again, the South End has everything a kitchen could need between the dozen or so local shops (and yes, if all else fails, we do have a local, independent supermarket.)   There's little excuse in the summer and fall not to have three meals a day based primarily on locally produced foods.  But even in the late winter it's important to still try to keep it local, at the very least keep it clean, and certainly keep it sustainable.  Part of that can be accomplished not only by changing what we eat but how we buy.  If there is no seafood caught sustainably that day, eat beef from a local farm.   It's a hard habit to break, but everything we learned from watching our parents do weekly big shops at supermarkets has to be forgotten.  It's infinitely harder to make more trips to a store -- or different stores -- during the week to buy for only a few days at a time rather than two weeks.  But we as American eaters should try to learn that we can't always get what we want, when we want it.   Instead, we should simply be more mindful and enjoy what we have whenever it happens to be available.    Believe it or not, this simple change in attitude and behavior could help our brother and sister farmers doing all they can to keep future generations still eating food from the land. **************** Allow me this follow-up to last month's "End Notes" on "the real price of food." Just after we sent out the February newsletter, the Boston Globe published an article on ribeye steaks.  Its staff bought steaks from several supermarkets and taste-tested them.  The results were that they all more or less tasted the same.  This made sense because the ribeyes were all what's called "commodity beef," and most likely came from the same feed lots.  So of course they were all going to taste the same.    This article also published the retail prices of the steaks, showing how woefully inexpensive they all were.  In fact, the most expensive ribeye the Globe could find was several dollars cheaper than what we pay for meat (before we clean and cut it) from the local, clean, and sustainable beef farms.  Again, don't ask why the meats at Lionette's Market or farmers' markets are deemed "so expensive" by consumers; ask why meat at supermarkets is so utterly inexpensive.  We've said it before but it bears mentioning, again:  Americans pay, per capita, less for food than anyone else in the world, because the majority of our food supply comes from agro-business, which is not fair, clean, local, sustainable, and frankly, not good. -Personal Capacity Jamey Lionette *************** Taken from February 2007 Newsletter The Real Price of Food We lost a great small distributor last week.  They had one truck that would pick up local, clean, year-round produce from around the Hudson Valley, New York, Western Mass., and Vermont and deliver to Lionette's and the Garden of Eden things like real pastured eggs, biodynamic produce and products (like Hawthorne Valley Kraut), as well as meats from one of our beef farms. This distributor had probably the cleanest, most local and exclusively sustainable product list of anyone we have dealt with.  The reason we lost it?  Not enough businesses in Boston were buying from them. In fact, the list lessened so much that they were actually losing money driving down here.  And yet this distributor has now upped its visits to New York City, where there is a demand, and more important, an understanding of what the real price of food is ... something that seems to be significantly less the case here in Boston.   Don't take this as some kind of reverse psychology.  Often we hear, "Your food is great but it is so expensive."  But it is important to think of it differently, like this:  Our food is the normal price ... for real food. Supermarket food, and most restaurant food, is cheap.  It is mass-produced, corners are cut, and all integrity is eliminated.  I could easily sell arugula at Lionette's for several dollars cheaper in the early summer if I bought organic arugula flown all the way across the country from California.  It is significantly cheaper than something grown 50 miles outside of Boston and it's not because Californians pay their laborers less or because the cost of living is so much cheaper there.  It is because that arugula, organic or not, is mass produced on giant mono-culture factory farms, processed in huge factories, kept cool (not to be confused with "fresh") in enormous refrigerators or by hydro-cooling, shipped to the airport, flown across the country, picked up at another airport and shipped to a big refrigerated hanger in Chelsea; then loaded on another truck, and driven to the Boston market or restaurant. Tell me: How is that cheaper than arugula harvested in Western Mass., and driven to Boston the next day, or possibly that afternoon?  Mass-production treats food like a commodity. It's produced in bulk so it can be less expensive. But it also reduces or eliminates all quality, integrity, health benefits, environmental benefits, and flavor, and at the same time puts small producers -- so often owned by families -- out of work.   And the happy byproduct of all of this is, yes, cheaper food is brought to the masses; but because monoculture farming has no sustainable value (even with a "USDA Organic" stamp the land can't survive forever using mono-culture farming methods) the earth, is ruined. Americans buy this rationale because the face value of the food is cheaper at the Shaw's, Wal*Marts, and Whole Foods of the world. They perceive that driving to a sterile, lifeless supermarket is more convenient then walking around their own neighborhood and buying from the small neighborhood markets. Yet pretty much everything a kitchen could need can be found in the dozen or so small shops in the South End and neighborhoods like it across the country. Back to the farms for a minute. Lionette's does on occasion get produce from small farms from the west coast, the South, and the Pacific Northwest. It's how we've brought to you those luscious Cara Cara oranges for the last two months. But they're expensive. We recognize this. But what we tell folks who question our prices is that the "USDA Organic"- stamped produce in large stores is actually mass-produced by industrial food producers. So folks shopping at large supermarkets instead of small stores and local farms to "do the right thing" buying organic because it's good for the body and environment (and their wallet), it's only cheaper because though "organic," it was cranked out by a farming machine. If you ever have the misfortune of seeing a video of what some of the big "organic milk" producers' factories look like, you'll see the cows are in the same outlandish conditions as commodity milk-producing cows, the only exception being that they haven't been given any antibiotics. (On a side note, with amassing stories about infant and toddler boys sprouting breasts -- only to see them recede when a doctor prescribes organic milk -- it seems that the commodity milk industry has realized how bad its milk is for customers and soon, most milk companies will have antibiotic free milk.)   Again this is mass-production to make food cheaply, sell it cheap, and essentially cheapen and further ruin our food supply in the name of greenbacks. What can we do? Americans need to rethink our budgets for food. Several studies suggest that Americans pay less for food per capita than any other nation.   Yet we spend exorbitantly on things like electronics.   But when was the last time a plasma t.v. purchase helped keep a family business afloat?   Too many people think, "It's only food: I could not possibly pay that much for it," which is a mindset perpetuated by most supermarket campaigns touting getting "healthy" or "organic" food cheaper at their store than anywhere else. But it just doesn't work that way. The price of tomatoes should be cheaper in Boston in late August, when they are in full season. An orange should have a lower price tag in Florida than in New England because that is where they are grown.  Local lettuce in season should be cheaper than lettuce flown in from the other side of the country.    Naturally raised pork from Colorado, grass-fed beef from New Zealand or Uruguay, pastured chickens from Maryland, and frozen venison from Alberta, Canada, should all be more expensive than locally raised meats.    But they are not.    Honestly:  Would you go to the cheapest doctor you could find, or the one with a "Sale, Today Only!" sign in the window? Americans shop for food like we would for trash bags or broom handles: find the cheapest one, use it, and move on. But we're talking about food, here. Sustenance: Things we chew and swallow that go deep inside our bodies and fuels us and makes us happy for the time we're allowed on this planet. Lastly, please don't think that the Boyden's, Hepworth's, (or the Lionette's for that matter) are making bundles of cash ripping people off.  Small farms (and small markets) don't make a fraction of what the agro-businesses do. Owners of small farms and small markets understand that there's an entire population of people in this country that because of life circumstances buys the cheapest food they can, wherever they can. We'd obviously prefer people to buy food -- any food -- than go hungry, and we'd never turn snobbish noses up at them. In a perfect United States, we would find a way to make clean, sustainable food items cost less than fast food, not morosely more. For those in this country who can afford to drop money on designer jeans and lavish personal effects, it's just so frustrating to see they aren't willing to pay for their basic nourishment. If there were no IBP beefs, Whole Foods or Wal*Marts, no Hatfield's pork, Earthbound greens, nor any Purdue chickens, nobody would bat an eye at the price of real beef from a farm in Vermont.   And, we would not be in the food mess we are in today either. Remember: When the farms are gone, we will have no more real food. Food In The Media I didn't see them myself but I've heard of two fascinating shows on television over the last few weeks. One was on the Discovery Channel on the history of butchers, and what I heard about the show seemed quite fascinating ... until the end, when there were some images of the big meat industry plants with workers blasting carbon dioxide at the meat and giving it all kinds of injections to keep it bright red for a longer time.   The other program was Independent Lens on PBS about fishing in Massachusetts.  It gave the viewpoints of local fisherman in Gloucester and Chatham (apparently quite different opinions) on sustainable fishing versus fisherman struggling to survive, at any cost, regardless of what it does to the ocean and our food supply.  Admittedly I haven't seen either of these programs, but if they air again I would recommend checking them out. I know I will try to.  Finally (promise):  If you were at the Ann Cooper event, perhaps you remember one of her many memorable quotes, to the effect of: "Go to Whole Foods, blindfolded, get a tomato, and bite into it.   It tastes like shit." Personal capacity, James Lionette ******************************************* Taken from January 2007 Newsletter I do, however, want to keep eating everyday. I am a doomsayer.  From fishing, to emissions, whether we have 30 years to seriously and radically change our industries before we have done irreparable harm to our planet (which is what many scientists not receiving misinformation financing are suggesting) or if we have already come to that point, is irrelevant to me.  The fact that it is January and still there's no winter in New England is not helping me any.  My outlook is grim. What does that have to do with food?  Everything.  You know how after political lectures/workshops there are always concerned people who ask "What can I do?"  Though I have no idea how you can stop desert growth in China or the stop the Arctic Circle from melting, a glaringly simple answer to the "what can we do" question pertaining to helping the world support local farmers and avoid mass-produced food is to start by being more mindful of the foods we eat and causes we support, if by no other way than by "voting with our dollars," and letting our purchases dictate our desires to keep clean food alive. I'm sometimes asked what got me into the job I have now of selling local, clean, sustainable food, and I know it is because the more I learned about food offered to us in this country, the more I knew I didn't want to eat it.   Clearly, I cannot get myself to sell it to anyone. And the more I learned, the more disgusted, insulted, and outraged I became over the food industry in this country. Disgusted.  I am not going to repeat all the horrific and stomach-turning accounts of what goes on in feedlots, those pig cities in the Midwest, "scallop" assembly lines in New Hampshire, or chicken factories. Because learning how the animals are fed, treated, and slaughtered, is enough to make you want to stop eating. Period. The more you know, the more disgusting it is. And knowing the farmers I do, and seeing their methods has made me the "food snob" who will only eat naturally raised meats from local farms, and not what a growing number of U.S. supermarkets sell as wholesome, natural, or organic. When the farms go is when I stop eating food. Insulted.  Look at the back of a tin of lemon-lime-flavored Altoids for the ingredients list.  There are only two: natural flavors and other natural flavors. I do not eat Altoids for their nutrition, but think of all the natural food claims where "natural flavors" are an ingredient.  I just assumed it was the same as when people ask me what is on the chicken du jour, and I reply "herbs and seasoning," meaning, "whatever was in the kitchen that the chef felt would complement the flavor of chicken." But it does not.  My understanding (having talked to a juice maker once about this) is that "natural flavors" are some huge puck you throw in a vat to add flavor in a food or drink manufacturing plant.  So I think of Altoids, or the juices which claim "made of 100 percent fruit juices and other natural ingredients" and I think of some wealthy guy laughing at me saying: "Gotcha sucker; now give me a buck seventy-nine."   When I go into a supermarket, just about everything there has some claim that if I buy that particular product I will not be dumb, fat, ugly, lazy, or ignorant.  And yet, most of the mass-produced foods in the supermarket are making me dumb, fat, ugly, lazy, and keeping me ignorant.  The more mass-produced food claims it is "healthy" because of all the stuff added to it to make it so, the food almost always ends up with fewer natural nutrients than if it was clean, local, and sustainable in the first place.  Same goes for taste.  When you work with mass-produced food, you must add and add and add to get some kind of flavor out of it. But real food always tastes better.   The other source of my feeling of insult stems from the proverbial shaft often given to local food.  Why buy meat from other parts of the world when we have farms in the Northeast corridor?  We have long-standing food traditions here in New England, so why do we need to rely on others?  Yes, exotic things like oranges and bananas should still be part of our diet, and it is important to mix things up and eat Indian or Venezuelan cuisine, but if it can -- and is  -- being grown locally, why are we buying it from people who have nothing to do with our community?  The farmers in Northeast have kids who want to go to college, too. (And if I am wrong about the Altoids thing, please e-mail me, and I will gladly make a public apology to Altoids). Outraged.  From e-coli in spinach and Mad Cow disease (and the fact that they still allow cow's blood and fat to be fed back to cows, which if you ask me can be filed under the aforementioned heading of "disgusting") to organic mono-culture farming that is as unsustainable as conventional farming, to the notion that cod, caviar, and striped bass will most likely no longer be options to eat in my lifetime, I am outraged.  The time for being "concerned" has long since passed.  Outrage leading to action is what I believe is the answer to "What can I do?"   Outrage led to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (which subsequently created the USDA). Outrage at McDonald's in Rome, and the whole fast food de-evolution of our eating habits, led to the creation of Slow Food.   Outrage over seed patents caused hundreds of thousands of Indians to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO) and intellectual property rights.   Outrage in Europe over genetically modified food is what will hopefully bring upon the downfall of that ludicrous industry.   Personally, when I see an SUV driving down the street it is like someone spitting in the face of my 2-year-old nephew; even worse is when that car is driving to a Starbucks and Whole Foods to shop "responsibly."  Mass produced food is not sustainable.  And the more our food supply is based on mass produced food, the more I want to walk the streets with a placard reading "THE END OF THE WORLD REALLY IS NEAR."  As mass- produced food becomes the norm in our society, the fewer farms there are, and the fewer farmers there will be.  Who will know how to grow spinach and where can it be grown when we can no longer mass-produce it? So, what can you do?  Eat responsibly.  Be the "food snob" that only goes out to dinner where the chef is buying responsibly.  Re-budget yourself.  Understand the real price of food.  Remember, mass-produced food is dirt cheap.  Americans pay less per-capita for food then anyone else in the world.  It can not be that hard to spend more on food and less on porcine luxuries.  Meet the farmers (the few who still exist) at farmers markets (or come to the Slow Food events at the Garden of Eden and eat and drink with them!) and find out where else they are selling their food.  Slow Food, Chef's Collaborative, eatwild.com, and Edible Boston magazine are all great resources which I trust because they can inform you on clean, local, and sustainable food. And if what I said means absolutely nothing, or you think I am just some raving wingnut, then let me appeal to your stomach, directly: FOOD FROM LOCAL FARMS JUST TASTES BETTER! If you do not care about the world, and care only about yourself and live for the moment, then at least eat food that tastes good. Personal capacity, James Lionette ************************************************************************************** Next month.... ~  Slow Food Wednesday features "New England Pig," and March looks ahead to "Cheese of the Northeast Corridor." ~  Kumquats!  In past there's only been a three- or four-week window when these are available, so we want you to start thinking about these exotic treats now. Buy one next month, and eat the whole thing at once:  it will start so wonderfully sour your face will squirm, then finish with the stunning flavor of a piece of cane sugar dissolving on your tongue.  They're amazing to eat and with which to cook. ~ Taza chocolate bars debut.  We can't wait to bring these to you!

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