LUCIDMEDIA

Fresh Delicious and Local

Written by Catherine Kustanczy Friday, 11 September 2009 14:40

As the popularity of farmers markets grows, increasing numbers of people are becoming aware of the value of eating locally –value not just monetarily, but in terms of a greater social good. The movement has its fair share of proponents –notably author Michael Pollan, whose popular works The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defence Of Food (Penguin) place great value and importance of eating locally grown, fresh produce. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” is the author’s dictum. In the latter book, Pollan wrote of the importance of developing and maintaining a connection with local growers: “The number of farmer’s markets has more than doubled in the last ten years, to more than four thousand, making it one of the fastest-growing segments of the food marketplace. It is true that most farmers’ markets operate only seasonally, and you won’t find everything you need there. But buying as much as you can from the farmers’ market, or directly from the farmers when that’s an option, is a simple act with a host of profound consequences for your health as well as for the health of the food chain you’ve now joined.”

Barbara Kingsolver’s 2007 book, Animal Vegetable Miracle (Harper Collins), along with The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (Random House) by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, were also important in raising awareness around the importance of local eating, and in mobilizing people to seek out farmers’ markets. It’s been through these works, as well as a groundswell of media attention on both international and local levels that resulted in the public turning away from the ease and convenience of supermarkets, and in the process, becoming more aware of food itself–its origin, and its inherent value within the complex chain of growth, distribution and consumption.

Lucy Waverman, award-winning food editor of the magazine Food & Drink, author of eight cookbooks and the woman behind “Weekend Menu” in The Globe and Mail, says the influence of books such as The 100-Mile Diet has been considerable, but notes the movement was already well underway before the book’s publication. She believes the locavore movement really started as a groundswell movement, marked by the increasing popularity of local farmers markets among the public.

“There had always been markets around,” she notes, “but they’d never been particularly popular, and they were not necessarily organized, (but)… I think it was beginning to seep in” –“it” being the down-to-earth, living-with-the-land ethos that locavores espouse.

Restaurants have followed the lead of authors and eaters. The Drake Hotel on Queen Street West has its own garden, which chef Anthony Rose regularly draws from, and many of the items on their menus feature products culled from local sources.  Just down the street from the Drake is the Gladstone Hotel, whose Harvest Wednesdays have become a hit with both diners and farmers alike. Owner Christine Zeidler originally envisioned the evenings to be a way to bridge the gap between growers and eaters.
Chef Marc Breton, who previously cooked at Toronto landmark The Rivoli, says that in addition to this ambition being achieved, the locavore movement has changed the way many chefs, himself included, approach their business.

“It’s been a change of mindset for most chefs from way we’ve done business,” he notes. “We’re presented with a list of things available and it’s a case of, “send me this, send me that” –then we turn around, we get more information from suppliers and farmers, and we’re prepared to make changes and to wait a bit more at the last minute.”

When it comes to creating menus, Breton says it’s all about organization. “Some of the main ingredients, stuff that’s less seasonal, we try to put in place in advance a week or two, make calls and arrangements, bring in things we might not necessarily have on a regular basis here, have fun with it, so main courses, sometimes even desserts planned in advance, make sure fruit are ripe, seasonal, a lot of menu comes together the day before. We’re still changing things and throwing ideas around.” This reliance on variance and availability doesn’t come easy; it means menus have to be planned on the fly and Breton and the people in his kitchen –as well as diners –have to be prepared for last-minute changes. “In waiting for deliveries, we used to be really panicked, but we’ve learned to be fatalistic.”

Harvest Wednesdays, which features regular tasting evenings as well as prix fixe menus (with food supplied by the likes of Monforte Dairy, Under Ground Organics and St. John’s Bakery, among many others) has become a Gladstone staple.  Breton feels the public is more educated than it once was about food production and growing, and events like Harvest Wednesdays help to foster and promote that kind of awareness. “Absolutely,” he says when asked about the knowledge Gladstone patrons are bringing to tasting and prix fixe evenings, “I don’t know how pervasive it is as a whole, but a substantial group are getting more interested in this, and are supporting this kind of thing.”

Lucy Waverman sees a connection between the locavore movement and restaurant experiences too, particularly when it comes to the quality of meat being raised as a result of the recent emphasis on local production. “Now in Toronto, you can buy meat from different farms around Ontario. Farmers are raising the beef and pork and lamb that people really want, and I think that’s wonderful. It’s never happened before –you could hardly eat some of the stuff being produced here, but now they’ve got pedigrees. One of the butcher shops I went to had a Tamworth pig. I think it’s wonderful. And it’s great, that we can always do that here all year.”

The local-eating movement also reaches citizens in more rootsy ways. Maria Solakofski, who has participated in the Gladstone’s Harvest Wednesday tasting evenings, is the owner and operator of Guerrilla Gourmet, a catering and dining service that almost exclusively involves the cooking and preparation of ingredients from Sokolofski’s own garden. “People are looking at more than just food,” she explains. “I invite them into the kitchen to get involved, pick herbs, touch things. I tell them about the garnishing or invite them to come into the kitchen or play the piano … it’s a lifestyle other people are being tuned into.”

Solakofski grew up as the youngest child and only daughter of a large Eastern European family, where food culture played a big role. Though cooking was a constant passion, she didn’t study it professionally, and worked doing customized home furnishing. About twelve years ago, she says she saw the light, and became passionate about hosting people in her home for meals, and sharing her own unique vision of the vivid interplay between life and eating. Hosting Guerrilla Gourmet evenings gives her, she says, a palette through which she can express all of her skills, which is suitable, considering she views what she does through an artistic lens.

“I like to feed people,” she states, “that’s my art. If I don’t have an audience, what can I do? It is an art –definitely –I’m an artist, I’m not a chef… people may argue with you, but I think I’m an artist, and my medium is food.”

Solakofski has been involved in teaching gardening workshops and community groups, and notes that “there is a very big buzz, people are very interested. The motivation is that they’re seeing, and this is inevitable, that you have to do something about this. You have to get involved in your food.” She says a big part of her hosting evenings involves making connections between people –connections that wouldn’t happen, were it not for the presence of food.

“That fun, joyful aspect of food, being involved in food, it’s absent in a lot of ways,” she says, “people are a machine and they eat just the calories they need, but some people are taking a lot more time to slow down and enjoy food. It’s how European culture has lived, with a connection to land, to food, and then with a connection to each other as they’re eating within that culture, breaking bread. It makes it a more humane place to live when people live in communities, even for one evening. Strangers coming together around a dinner table is the simplest way for people to break barriers.”

She notes that events like the Gladstone’s Harvest Wednesdays have been an important way of local Toronto growers meeting other locavores –whether for eating or supplying, or simply networking.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, going on ten years, and local is only way I’ll serve you,” she says earnestly. “All of these big guys who are heroes to me –like (JK Wine Bar chef) Jamie Kennedy and (Eigensinn Farm owner/chef) Michael Stadtlander  … I met them, they fed me, they were amazing experiences. They are building things on large scales, which spreads to large scales of people. It makes my work more accessible. More people are learning about it. As time goes on, new things start to get exposed … once you start getting involved, the momentum you have adds so much to it…”

The downside to local eating, says Lucy Waverman, is the limit it places on one’s pantry. “I’m not going to live without olive oil, coffee, tea, lemons, and things like that, which are a very important part of cooking,” she says. “I also believe in order to make cooking interesting, we do need to use products, like mangoes from India. You can’t replace anything. I’m enough of a person who loves food and who wants to experience all these things. You can’t necessarily prepare them locally. In summertime, everything is fresh and lovely, but are you going to have a salad made with Ontario stuff, and never have olive oil because we don’t grow it?”

Marc Breton concurs. “It’s not feasible for me sometimes,” he says of stocking his kitchen with 100% locally grown items. “A lot of it is about distribution as much as anything else.” He names suppliers like 100 Km Foods and Kawartha Ecological Growers, two companies who’ve taken part in Harvest Wednesdays in the past, and how they help to simplify the process of getting hold of what local stuff he can use.

At the heart of locavore culture is the desire to foster and maintain relationships –between food, and between people. As Michael Pollan wrote in his best-selling, highly readable book In Defence Of Food, “In a short food chain, eaters can make their needs and desires known to a farmer, and farmers can impress on eaters the distinctions between ordinary and exceptional food, and the many reasons why exceptional food is worth what it costs. Food reclaims its story, and some of its nobility, when the person who grew it hands it to you.”

Maria Solakofski would agree with this. “Food needs a personal connection,” she says. “I’m trying to remind people of that.”