Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver

  Salt and pepper to taste

  6 ounces grated or sliced mozzarella

  Chop onions and garlic and saute in olive oil. Add diced tomato and spices and mix thoroughly. Spread mixture over the eggplant and sprinkle an even layer of cheese over top. Bake at 350deg for 20 minutes, until golden on top.

  FRIDAY NIGHT PIZZA

  (Makes two 12-inch pizzas: enough for family, friends, and maybe tomorrow's lunch.)

  3 teaspoons yeast

  11/2 cups WARM water 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 teaspoon salt

  21/2 cups white flour

  2 cups whole wheat flour

  To make crust, dissolve the yeast into the warm water and add oil and salt to that mixture. Mix the flours and knead them into the liquid mixture. Let dough rise for 30 to 40 minutes.

  1 cup sliced onions

  2 peppers, cut up

  While the dough is rising, prepare the sliced onions: a slow saute to caramelize their sugars makes fresh onions into an amazing vegetable. First sizzle them on medium heat in a little olive oil, until transparent but not browned. Then turn down the burner, add a bit of water if necessary to keep them from browning, and let them cook ten to fifteen minutes more, until they are glossy and sweet. Peppers can benefit from a similar treatment.

  Once the dough has risen, divide it in half and roll out two round 12-inch pizza crusts on a clean, floured countertop, using your fingers to roll the perimeter into an outer crust as thick as you like. Using spatulas, slide the crusts onto well-floured pans or baking stones and spread toppings.

  16 ounces mozzarella, thinly sliced

  2 cups fresh tomatoes in season (or sauce in winter)

  Other toppings

  1 tablespoon oregano

  1 teaspoon rosemary

  Olive oil

  Layer the cheese evenly over the crust, then scatter the toppings of the week on your pizza, finishing with the spices. If you use tomato sauce (rather than fresh tomatoes), spread that over crust first, then the cheese, then other toppings. Bake pizzas at 425deg for about 20 minutes, until crust is browned on the edge and crisp in the center.

  Download these and all other Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes at www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com

  SOME OF OUR FAVORITE COMBINATIONS FOR SUMMER ARE:

  Mozzarella, fresh tomato slices, and fresh basil, drizzled with olive oil Mozzarella, chopped tomatoes, caramelized onions and peppers, mushrooms

  Chopped tomatoes, crumbled feta, finely chopped spinach or chard, black olives

  GOOD WINTER COMBINATIONS INCLUDE:

  Farmer cheese, chicken, olives, and mushrooms

  Tomato sauce, mozzarella, dried peppers, mushrooms, and anchovies

  * * *

  10 * EATING NEIGHBORLY

  Late June

  Just a few hours north of Massachusetts lie the working-class towns of central Vermont, where a granite statue on Main Street is more likely to celebrate an anonymous stonecutter than some dignitary in a suit. Just such a local hero stood over us now, and we admired him as we drove past: stalwart as the mallet in his hand, this great stone man with his rolled-up sleeves reminded us of Steven's Italian grandfather.

  We were still on vacation, headed north, now hungry. We pulled in for lunch at a diner with a row of shiny chrome stools at the long counter, and booths lining one wall. Heavy white mugs waited to be filled with coffee. Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette sang their hearts out for quarters. A handmade sign let us know the jukebox take is collected at the end of every month and sent to Farm Aid. The lunch crowd had cleared out, so we had our pick of booths and our order was up in a minute. The hamburgers were thick, the fries crispy, the coleslaw cool. The turkey wrap came with mashed sweet potatoes. Lily seemed so lost in her milkshake, we might never get her back.

  The owners, Tod Murphy and Pam Van Deursen, checked by our booth to see how we liked everything--and to tell us which of their neighbors produced what. Everything on our plates was grown a stone's throw from right here. The beef never comes from Iowa feedlots, nor do the fries come in giant frozen packages shipped from a factory fed by the world's cheap grower of the moment. In a refreshing change of pace, the fries here are made from potatoes. This is the Farmers Diner, where it's not just quarters in the jukebox that support farming, but the whole transaction.

  It is the simplest idea in the world, really: a restaurant selling food produced by farms within an hour's drive. So why don't we have more of them? For the same reason that statue down the street clings to his hammer while all the real stonecutters in this granite town have had to find other jobs, in a nation that now imports its granite from China. The giant building directly behind this diner, formerly a stonecutting works, is now a warehouse for stone that is cut, worked, and shipped here from the other side of the planet. If ever a town knew the real economics of the local product versus the low-cost import, this ought to be it.

  Buying your goods from local businesses rather than national chains generates about three times as much money for your local economy. Studies from all over the country agree on that, even while consumers keep buying at chain stores, and fretting that the downtown blocks of cute mom-and-pop venues are turning into a ghost town. Today's bargain always seems to matter more.

  The Farmers Diner is therefore a restaurant for folks who want to fill up for under ten bucks, and that is what they get: basic diner food, affordable and not fancy. The Farmers Breakfast--two eggs, two pancakes, your choice of sausage or bacon--is $6.75. The Vermont-raised hamburger with a side of slaw, home fries, or a salad is $6.50. At any price, it's an unusual experience to order a diner burger that does not come with a side of feedlot remorse. For our family this was a quiet little red-letter occasion, since we'd stopped eating CAFO-produced beef about ten years earlier. Virtually all beef in diners and other standard food services comes from CAFOs. Avoiding it is one pain in the neck, I'll tell you, especially on hectic school mornings when I glance at the school lunchroom calendar and see that, once again, it's hamburgers or tacos or "manager's choice." (The manager always chooses cow meat.) But I slap together the peanut butter sandwich; our reasons are our reasons. In Lily's life, this was the first time we'd ever walked into a diner and ordered burgers. Understandably, she kept throwing me glances--this is really okay? It was. The cattle were raised on pasture by an acquaintance of the owner. When Tod asked, "How's your burger?" it was not a restaurant ritual but a valid question. We told him it was great.

  Tod Murphy's background was farming. The greatest economic challenge he and his farming neighbors faced was finding a market for their good products. Opening this diner seemed to him like a red-blooded American kind of project. Thomas Jefferson, Tod points out, presumed on the basis of colonial experience that farming and democracy are intimately connected. Cultivation of land meets the needs of the farmer, the neighbors, and the community, and keeps people independent from domineering centralized powers. "In Jefferson's time," he says, "that was the king. In ours, it's multinational corporations." Tod didn't think he needed to rewrite the Declaration of Independence, just a good business plan. He found investors and opened the Farmers Diner, whose slogan is "Think Locally, Act Neighborly."

  For a dreamer, he's a practical guy. "Thinking globally is an abstraction. What the world needs now isn't love sweet love--that's a slogan." What the world needs now, he maintains, is more compassionate local actions: "Shopping at the hardware store owned by a family living in town. Buying locally raised tomatoes in the summer, and locally baked bread. Cooking meals at home. Those are all acts of love for a place."

  The product of his vision is a place that's easy to love, where a person can sit down and eat two eggs sunny side up from a chicken that is having a good life, and a farmer that will too, while Tammy Wynette exhorts us all to stand by our man. It's also an unbelievable amount of work, I suspect, for Tod, Pam, and their kids Grace and Seamus, who start the day early on their farm and keep things running here until closing time. The diner has had to create a networ
k of reliable year-round producers, facilitating local partnerships and dealing with human problems, for better and for worse. Supplies have to keep running even if a potato grower falls ill or the onion farm gets a divorce.

  Trying to make a small entrepreneurial economy competitive with the multinationals is an obvious challenge. Tod has met it, in part, by creating an allied business that processes all their breakfast sausage, bacon, smoked ham, and turkey, and also sells these products in regional stores. With the Farmers Diner Smokehouse and the diner itself both doing half a million dollars in business annually, they can create a market for 1,500 hogs per year. That's just about how many it takes to keep a processing plant running. A nearby bakery stays busy making their burger buns and bread. The stonecutting jobs have all gone to China, but Tod taps every channel he can think of to make sure it's Vermont farmers' hogs, grain, potatoes, and eggs that end up on the white porcelain plates of his diner.

  His unusual take on the ordinary has recently made the place world-famous, at least among those who pay attention to food economies. Here in town, though, it's just the diner. The average customer comes in for the atmosphere and the food: the NASCAR crowd, or elderly Italians and Ukranians from a nearby retirement home. The old folks love the Chioggia beets and greens, farmstead fare that reminds them of home. Some of his customers also enthusiastically support the idea of keeping local businesses in business. But whether they care or not, they'll keep coming back for the food.

  How is local defined, in this case? "An hour's drive," Tod said. Their longest delivery run is seventy miles. Maintaining a year-round supply of beef, pork, chicken, and turkey from nearby farms is relatively simple, because it's frozen. Local eggs, milk, ice cream, and cheese are also available all year, as are vegetal foods that store well, such as potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, sauerkraut, and maple syrup. The granola is made in Montpelier, the spaghetti and ravioli right here in town. Fresh vegetables are a challenge. The menu doesn't change much seasonally, but ingredients do; there's less green stuff on the plate when the ground outside is white. The beer is locally brewed except for Bud and Bud Light, which, according to Tod, "you've gotta have. We're not selling to purists." Obviously, at a diner you've also gotta have coffee, and it's fair-trade organic.

  The Farmers Diner does not present itself as a classroom, a church service, or a political rally. For many regional farmers it's a living, and for everybody else it's a place to eat. Tod feels that the agenda here transcends politics, in the sense of Republican or Democrat. "It's oligarchy vs. non-oligarchy," Tod says--David vs. Goliath, in other words. Tom Jefferson against King George. It's people trying to keep work and homes together, versus conglomerates that scoop up a customer's money and move it out of town to a corporate bank account far away. Where I grew up, we used to call that "carpetbagging." Now it seems to be called the American way.

  Marketing jingles from every angle lure patrons to turn our backs on our locally owned stores, restaurants, and farms. And nobody considers that unpatriotic. This appears to aggravate Tod Murphy. "We have the illusion of consumer freedom, but we've sacrificed our community life for the pleasure of purchasing lots of cheap stuff. Making and moving all that stuff can be so destructive: child labor in foreign lands, acid rain in the Northeast, depleted farmland, communities where the big economic engine is crystal meth. We often have the form of liberty, but not the substance."

  Speaking Up

  * * *

  The increased availability of local food in any area is a direct function of the demand from local consumers. Most of us are not accustomed to asking about food origins, but it's easy enough to do.

  First: in grocery stores, when the cashier asks if you found everything you were looking for, you could say, "Not really, I was looking for local produce." The smaller the store, the more open a grocer may be to your request. Food co-ops should be especially receptive. Restaurants may also be flexible about food purchasing, and your exchanges with the waitstaff or owner can easily include questions about which entrees or wines are from local sources. Restaurateurs do understand that local food is the freshest available, and they're powerful participants in the growing demand for local foods. You can do a little homework in advance about what's likely to be available in your region.

  Local and regional policymakers need to hear our wishes. Many forums are appropriate for promoting local food: town and city hall meetings, school board meetings, even state commissioner meetings. It makes sense to speak up about any venue where food is served, or where leaders have some control over food acquisition, including churches, social clubs, and day-care centers. Federal legislators also need to hear about local food issues. Most state governments consider farming-related legislation almost weekly. You can learn online about what issues are being considered, to register your support for laws that help local farms. In different parts of the country the specifics change, but the motives don't. As more people ask, our options will grow.

  * * *

  STEVEN L. HOPP

  It does not seem exactly radical to want to turn this tide, starting with lunch from the neighborhood. Nor is it an all-or-nothing proposition. "If every restaurant got just ten percent of its food from local farmers," Tod boldly proposed, "the infrastructure of corporate food would collapse."

  Ten percent seemed like a small pebble to aim at Goliath's pate. Lily picked up her spoon and dipped into Rock Bottom Farm's maple ice cream. We could hear the crash of corporate collapse with every bite. Tough work, but somebody's got to do it.

  11 * SLOW FOOD NATIONS

  Late June

  North of the border, in Petite Italie, where everyone speaks French, it can be hard to remember where you are exactly. This was Montreal, outermost point on our elliptical vacation. Our Canadian relatives gamely asked what we wanted to see in their city, and we answered: Food! We wondered what was available locally here at the threshold (to our southerly way of thinking) of the frozen tundra. We lit out for Chinatown and Little Italy. Here, as in the United States, the best shot at finding locally based cuisine seems to involve seeking out the people who recently moved here from someplace else.

  We passed a few restaurants that advertised "Canadian food" along with the principal ethnic fare. Our hosts explained this meant something like "American" food, more an absence than a presence of specific character: not Chinese, not Italian. Is it true that "American food" means "nothing?" I pondered this as we walked down a street of Chinese shops where butchers pinned up limp, plucked ducks like socks on clotheslines (if your mind's eye can handle socks with feet and bills). It's easy enough to say what's not American cuisine: anything with its feet still on, for starters. A sight like this on Main Street USA would send customers running the other way, possibly provoking lawsuits over psychological damage to children. As a concept, our national cuisine seems to be food without obvious biological origins, chosen for the color and shape of the sign out front: arches, bucket, or cowboy hat. That's the answer to the question, "Where did it come from?"

  Of course that's not the whole story. We have our New England clam chowder, Louisiana gumbo, southern collards and black-eyed peas, all regionally specific. But together they don't add up to any amalgamated themes or national guidelines for enjoying what grows near us. The food cultures of other geographically diverse nations are not really one thing either; Italy is particularly famous for its many distinct regional specialties. But still that whole country manages to export a cuisine that is recognizably "Italian," unified by some basic ingredients (i.e. pasta), and an intrinsic attitude. We recognize the origins of other countries' meals when we see them, somehow sensing their spirit: Mama mia! Bon appetit. Pass the salsa.

  If you ask a person from Italy, India, Mexico, Japan, or Sweden what food the United States has exported to them, they will all give the same answer, and it starts with a Mc. And it must be said, they're swallowing it. Processed food consumption is on the rise worldwide, proportional to growing affluence. French metro stations are pla
stered with ads for convenience foods. On a recent trip there I queried audiences about the danger of France losing its traditional foodways, and found them evenly divided between "Never!" and "Definitely!" Working women my age and younger confessed to giving in to convenience, even though (as they put it) they knew better. They informed me that even the national culinary institute was going soft, having just announced that its chicken courses would no longer begin with "Feathers, Feet, and Viscera 101." A flutter of conversation ran through the crowd over this point, a major recent controversy that had created radio call-in riots. I got an inkling that "giving in to convenience" means something different on that side of the pond. But still, these are real signs of change. Plenty of Parisians visit "MacDo" every day, even though it's probably not the same customers going back every day. They're in for the novelty, not the food value.

  We are all, I suppose, dazzled by the idea of things other people will eat. There on the Montreal Chinatown sidewalk we stopped to admire what must have been twenty-five-pound fish chasing each other's tails in slow motion in a half barrel of water. Lily and my young nieces inspected them closely, then looked up at me with eyebrows raised in the age-old question: dinner, or pets? I had no idea. We poked into shops that sold tea, dried mushrooms, and fabulous dresses that zip up the side so tightly they look painted on. We ate lunch in a bustling cafeteria where the goods ranged from fried squid to Jell-O.

  Later we stopped in at a Lebanese market, which the kids also considered fine entertainment. They kept running up to show me intriguing edibles: powdered flowers in bottles; some kind of cola apparently made from beans; "Greek Mountain tea," which looked to me like a bunch of weeds in a cellophane bag. An enormous glass case ran the full width of the store across the back, displaying cheeses. No modest yellow blocks or wheels were these, but gigantic white tablets of cheese, with the shape and heft of something Moses might have carried down from the mountain. Serious cheesemaking happened here, evidently. A young woman in a white apron stood ready to saw off a bit of goat, cow, or sheep cheese for me. We chatted, and she confirmed that these products were made in a kitchen nearby. I was curious about what kind of rennet and cultures were used for these Middle Eastern cheeses. She answered but seemed puzzled; most customers weren't interested in the technicalities. I confessed I'd tried this at home.