Reading Rainbow: The Third Plate

Ever since I came back to the US, I've been pretty paranoid about what I eat. I have a pretty serious problem with the way America farms, raises, and grows its food. I think most of us are pretty familiar with a lot of those problems. But aside from pesticides, chemicals, and hormones, there's this other aspect which I've been worried about for a while.

Remember in elementary school science, when we learned about soil nutrients, crop rotation, and seven year cycles of fallow earth? (I do. Largely because I am frequently using it as a metaphor for creativity. Also because I regularly help a fourth grade boy with his homework.) 

The new book I'm reading talks about the future of food-- from the failures and missteps of the farm to table movement to how farmers and chefs can work together change the public image of certain foods. Foods can be and are just as trendy as anything else. Sometimes just to the benefit of big agri-business (like the terrible terrible soy trend. Processed soy jacks with your estrogen levels.) but also for real health. Did you eat kale three years ago? Or quinoa? Or ramps? No. You do now because chefs got creative and made delicious recipes with those ingredients. 

Dan Barber, author of the The Third Plate is the executive chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan. I haven't had the pleasure of eating there-- alas, the price tag is outrageous...more on that later-- but I've heard nothing but good things about the quality and flavor. 

From the book's review in The Wall Street Journal:

Yet after reading Mr. Barber's compelling book, "The Third Plate," I realize the problem may be with my conditioning: I associate value with top-of-the-food-chain proteins like tuna and beef. But the truth is, it takes 13 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef, and the Bluefin tuna is almost depleted. Ours is a food culture based on the expectation of immoderate consumption, and that's just not sustainable. Mr. Barber's solution is no less than an overhaul of American cuisine, so that the value of an ingredient is based on flavor, not folly.
Mr. Barber uses the metaphor of the plate—as in plates of food—to describe three stages of modern eating habits and the agriculture that has supported them. The first plate contains a 7-ounce corn-fed steak and a small vegetable side, say, carrots, produced by industrialized agriculture as it developed over the course of the 20th century. On the second plate, where we are today with the farm-to-table movement, the steak is free-range, the carrots organically grown. But the two aren't that different. The future, Mr. Barber suggests, is the third plate: a carrot dish flavored with a sauce made from a secondary cut like beef shank.
The third plate sounds a lot like the way my Italian grandmother used to cook on her subsistence farm. Her tradition called for managing the land. Soil health, seed diversity, crop rotation and diverse animal husbandry kept the farm fruitful and also produced delicious, healthy food. There was modesty to her cooking: The family primarily ate vegetables and killed one pig a year that had been fed on table leavings. There was no deprivation. We've replaced this model with industrialized farming and fishing, and we aren't eating well. We feed.

Let's go back to price. Part of how we can bring down some of the cost of flavorful, nutrient-rich foods is by giving new light to the crops that farmer's plant in between the main crop. If those farmers can make the same amount of money on mustard greens or buckwheat or milkweed that they can on wheat, they do better and then we can do better. And there's incentive for other farmers to return to this way of farming before industrialized farming manipulated the ecosystem into oblivion. I mean, sure, it's important to produce enough. So much of how we farm is a reactionary product of The Dust Bowl, The Irish Potato Famine and other plague of locusts style crop failures. But at some point, you have to ask, is my all-you-can eat more important than the flavor and nutrition of what I eat? And then no wonder we're fat. We have to keep eating and eating to get less flavor and less nutrition. It's hard to stay aware of all this all the time, but you gotta try, right? 

Check out the book, and Dan Barber on NPR. I listened to a much longer version of this interview and I wish I could find it. This is the closest I could find. Scroll to the bottom.

FYI: I'm probably buying this book as a gift for everyone I know for holidays for the next year. 

Manufacture New York & Bob Bland on CBS News

My lovely and visionary friend, Bob Bland, was on CBS news for her extraordinary efforts on behalf for local manufacturing of clothing products in the US, and specifically in New York. I'm so on board with her Manufacture New York. 

Here's a snippet from the new program:

There was a time when clothes worn by Americans were also made here. By 2011, more than 97 percent of the clothes sold in the U.S. was made overseas. Fashion designer turned apparel advocate Bob Bland explains why in an interview with "CBS Evening News" Saturday anchor Jim Axelrod. She's behind Manufacture New York, a new initiative to bring clothes manufacturing jobs back home.

It's not a good deal if the true cost is someone dying in the process.

This Week Felt Like This - Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

After a week spent in a fictional revolution, in chaos, in shock, in the air, in rehearsals, in awe, in despair, in gratitude, I am returning to this song, which is one of my favorite numbers from the upcoming Shaping Sound tour. Watching dancers apply energy to this. I wish you could see what I've seen all week. Soon you will. This is how I feel about this week. Get it all out. 

Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead from Arts & Crafts on Vimeo.

BRAVE - New Sara Bareilles

Brave is pretty much my favorite word in the English language. (Snacks, perhaps a close second.) Which is why I couldn't be happier that one of the foremost voices for joy in pop music today, Miss Sara Bareilles, has a new single called just that. Brave. Not Snacks. That'd probably be a good single too. 

I'm 100% behind the message of this jam. Let your words be anything but empty.

Legacy - Some Thoughts on Boston

It was strange and poignant to be in our reading yesterday when we all received the news about the Boston marathon bombings. I had just been saying to Steven the day before that even though Nicholas & Alexandra is a period piece about historical figures, I think its issues are contemporary to today. Most of Nicholas & Alexandra's actions were rooted in a deep sense of fear that they had felt since childhood-- the fear of living under constant threat of physical violence. 

One of the saddest things about terrorist activities-- and why violent methods are used to make a point-- is the cloud of fear they attempt to create in large groups of people. But no one makes their best decisions out of fear. It's encouraging to hear so much light-based rhetoric after yesterday. The messages going viral are largely about looking for the helpers in terrible situations, and how as many people who try to do harm in the world, there are more of us who want to do healing, creating, and loving. So look for those people. And decide that it's those people, that idea, those messages that will remain when we're gone and serve as our legacy. 

Someone Wrote That Song

This is an issue that's been going on for a while and I addressed it on this blog back in the day during that kerfuffle with Jason Robert Brown and the kids on his blog. Some say the economics have changed and writers can just go eff themselves, but I really think a lot of it is about education and attitude-- particularly indoctrinating young people. When you teach people that something and someone's work is valuable, they'll think it's valuable. When they see the through-line, they'll understand. I'd still rather give sheet music to someone who couldn't afford it than have it stolen. 

And that's why I'm so excited that Dramatists' Guild and a whole bunch of my friends made this video. Yay for purchasing sheet music and making it so writers can keep writing. 

Cause & Effect - Midway Film

Through my very dear friend Torcuil, I gained a new appreciation for birds while I was living in Scotland. Living in New York, birds are more of a nuisance than anything else. But now that I know what to look for, I can't help notice the thrushes flying over my apartment terrace in Madrid or the murmurations of starlings all the time... even in Los Angeles traffic. 

Which is why this video trailer for the film Midway made me feel so profoundly sad. On trash days in New York, I used to have to shield my eyes from the mountains of bags. If I allowed it in; allowed myself to process it, I'd be depressed the rest of the day. But you gotta let it in. Because it all ends up somewhere. Please watch this.