edible COLUMBUS | Fall 2011 | Issue No. 7

Member of Edible Communities

Issue No. 7

Celebrating Local Foods, Season By Season

Fall 2011

AMISH COUNTRY ƌ SHAGBARK SEED & MILL CO. THE SWEET LIFE AT HONEYRUN FARM ƌ EARTHA LIMITED EDIBLE SCHOOLYARDS ƌ DEBRA ESCHMEYER ON FOODCORPS

UNIOUE TASTES ˜ MARKET. OF THE The Barrel & Bottle brezel Clever Crow Pizza Hubert’s Polish Cuisine Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams Mozart’s North Market Bakery North Market Spices Taste of Belgium and 27 more

Supporting local businesses.

Nourishing our community.

Passionately preserving good taste.

SINCE 1876

www.facebook.com/NorthMarket @NorthMarket

www.northmarket.com 59 Spruce Street

Downtown Columbus

(614) 463-9664

open daily

DEPARTMENTS 4

Letter from the Publisher

7

Edible Events

8

Notable Edibles

11

Local and In Season

12

From the Kitchen

16

Young Palates

18

Inside Our Local Food Stories

RECIPES 8

Sugar-Coated Pears

21

Worth the Trip

13

Homemade Ravioli

24

Edible Nation

16

Pumpkin Cookies

27

At the Farmers Market

16

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

28

Food for Thought

24

40

Infused Vinegar & Spirits

A Chef’s Perspective

46

38

Infused Honey

A Taste of Home

58

A Home Cook’s Diary

45

Sweet Potato Fries with Spicy Mayo

60

48

Mariana’s Blintzes

Behind the Bottle

63

49

Plum Vodka

Our Advertisers

64

Last Seed

59

Greens on Toast with Fresh Ricotta

FEATURES

34

The Sweet Life at Honeyrun Farm

50

Ten million bees keep business humming for Jayne and Isaac Barnes

Show and Till Kids blossom and thrive when their classroom is a garden

By Jan O’Daniel

42

Waste No More A partnership between a dumpster diver and the queen of the sustainable restaurant movement in Central Ohio

By Marta Madigan

54

The Next Generation Debra Eschmeyer is determined to change how children eat with FoodCorps

By Colleen Leonardi

ABOUT THE COVER: Photographer Sarah Warda captures sugared Seckel pears from Cherry Orchards in Crooksville, Ohio. See page 8 for a recipe for sugared fruit.

Find out more about Sarah Warda and view her portfolio at sarahwarda.com.

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edible COLUMBUS

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

By Nancy McKibben

Letter from the PUBLISHER

“Simplicity is the essence of happiness.”

—Cedric Bledsoe

I

dream of simple things: waking up and reading a book for hours, having nothing on my to-do list, spending a day in my kitchen cooking and getting together with friends I have not seen in awhile over a long, leisurely meal. I envy the Italians and French who spend hours eating, talking and enjoying their time together. I long for a little of that magic in my life.

edible

COLUMBUS Publisher & Editor in Chief

Tricia Wheeler Editor

Colleen Leonardi Copy Editor

Doug Adrianson Projects Director

Kit Yoon Editorial Intern

In this issue of Edible Columbus, you will find ways to slow down and enjoy the season. I encourage you to invite friends over to your kitchen for a ravioli-making day.

I think fall is the best time to stuff ravioli with delicious Butternut squash, nuttytasting greens and, of course, what is not to love about a great sausage stuffing? If you are in need of a weekend getaway, we take you on a journey through Amish Country to The Inn at Honey Run, where you can relax and enjoy the simple pleasures of the Mennonite community.

Claire Hoppens Design

Jenna Brucoli Business Development

Jessica Opremcak Tricia Wheeler Brand Strategist

Sharon Brink

What is sweeter than honey? Maybe Jayne and Isaac Barnes, the inspirational owners of Honeyrun Farm! They have designed their lives and work around what matters most to them, and their happiness is contagious (read their story on page 34).

Sometimes simple problems create complex businesses—Mike Minnix and Liz Lessner need to be congratulated for tackling the food waste issues in the restaurant industry and creating a win-win solution with Eartha. Their passion, expertise and approach are detailed by our talented writer Marta Madigan. Our editor Colleen Leonardi brings us an in-depth Q&A with Debra Eschmeyer, an Ohio native and co-founding member of FoodCorps. Her commitment to reduce childhood obesity and train young leaders for careers in food and agriculture is powerful.

As the leaves start to change and the days get colder, I plan to carve out some special time to spend connecting with friends and enjoying our own long, leisurely meal.

I might even put on some Italian music.

Wishing you happiness this autumn,

@ediblecbus

We’d love to connect with you each day!

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edible COLUMBUS

P.O. Box 21-8376 Columbus, Ohio 43221 info@ediblecolumbus.com www.ediblecolumbus.com Advertising Inquiries

tricia@ediblecolumbus.com Edible Columbus is published quarterly and distributed throughout Central Ohio. Subscription rate is $35 annually; $5 of every subscription is donated to Local Matters. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used without written permission from the publisher. Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us. Thank you.

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

P.S. Connect with us between issues at ediblecolumbus.com.

We have new stories, recipes and events to share! Also, please ‘like’ and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

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Carole Amber Troy Amber Janine Aquino Bill Dawson Adam Fazio John Gutekanst Molly Hays Claire Hoppens Shawnie Kelley Colleen Leonardi Marta Madigan Nancy McKibben Catherine Murray Jan O’Daniel Jessica Opremcak Madeline Scherer Megan Shroy Kristen Stevens Charmaine Sutton Carole Topalian Tamara Mann Tweel Sarah Warda Dave Wible Kit Yoon Contact Us

Tricia Wheeler

Edible Columbus

Contributors

Join us for an

Edible Columbus Cooking Class at HOME HOME is proud to be the host for the Edible Cooking Class Series. Come in and look around. See what our higher standards can mean for you.

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edible Columbus

Fall Cooking Series September

15

For details and registration, please visit ediblecolumbus.com

A Sweet Corn Celebration Noon–1:30pm & 6–7:30pm Let’s end the season with a celebration of Ohio sweet corn. We’ll make a spicy corn salsa, coconut basil corn soup, savory-topped corn cake and a delicious corn pudding. We will also discuss the best way to preserve sweet corn so you can enjoy it all winter long. The evening will end with cornmeal cake topped with fresh corn and berries.

$35 | The MI Homes Demo Kitchen at Easton, 4047 Gramercy St., Columbus September

17

Lunch in a Bed of Sunflowers at Jorgensen Farms 11:30am–1:30pm The sunflowers will be in full bloom and we are going to make a seasonal farm-inspired lunch from the bounty grown on Val’s farm. Val will first conduct a farm tour and then we will move into the barn for a cooking demo before heading to the sunflower field to enjoy lunch.

$40 | Jorgensen Farms in Westerville, Jorgensen-farms.com october

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Canning with Sherri Brooks Vinton, author of Put ’em Up Noon–2pm

Edible Columbus is delighted to host our favorite home canning expert, Sherri Brooks Vinton.

Sherri will walk us through all the basics we need to safely and confidently create our own “canned” goods. Sherri will be making apple chutney and spicy carrot pickles. We will serve pumpkin soup and a fall-inspired salad for lunch. The $45 cost includes a copy of Sherri’s book, Put ’em Up! Learn more about Sherri and seasonal preserving on page 24.

$45 | The MI Homes Demo Kitchen at Easton, 4047 Gramercy St., Columbus october

12

All About Ohio Honey Noon–1:30pm & 6–7:30pm Join us for a very sweet class as we do a vertical tasting of different honeys produced in Ohio.

Jayne Barnes of Honeyrun Farm will talk about beekeeping and producing honey in Ohio and we will dine on honey-inspired recipes created by Tricia. Honey salad dressing, honey roasted vegetables, a wonderful crusted chicken breast dipped in honey, and honey cake will be the perfect end to our evening.

$35 | The MI Homes Demo Kitchen at Easton, 4047 Gramercy St., Columbus october

26

Learn How to Make Ravioli Noon–1:30pm & 6–7:30pm If you want to see how to make ravioli firsthand before attempting it on your own as described on page 13, this class is for you. We will go through all the steps to successful ravioli making, including making several seasonal ravioli stuffings. We will dine on ravioli, homemade pasta and finish with homemade lemon mint granita.

$35 | The MI Homes Demo Kitchen at Easton, 4047 Gramercy St., Columbus november

6

Butcher Basics with Bluescreek Farm Meats 10am–Noon This class is a must for any serious cook and meat lover. Cheryl and Dave Smith will share their extensive knowledge about meat and how it is raised on their farm. They will discuss and demonstrate where the different cuts on the cow come from, grading, knife sharpening, how to cut flank steak, skirt steak, stew meat and stir fry. Tricia will end the class with a meat cooking demo—come hungry and bring your questions!

$55 | The North Market november

10

A Perfect Fall Entertaining Menu Noon–1:30pm & 6-7:30pm I love to entertain. This dinner party menu shows off autumn ingredients at their peak. We will make a wild mushroom salad, Butternut squash risotto, pan-seared maple Brussels sprouts and a cranberry spice cheesecake. Special attention will be placed on plating and presentation.

$35 | The MI Homes Demo Kitchen at Easton, 4047 Gramercy St., Columbus 7

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edible COLUMBUS

PHOTO BY © KRISTEN STEVENS, KRISTEN-STEVENS.COM

edible COLUMBUS.com

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Notable EDIBLES

Sugar-Coated Pears

By Tricia Wheeler

PHOTO COURTESY OF © NANCY KANGAS

When I set the table to entertain I love the tension of natural rustic elements and touches of elegance.

Sugar-coated fruit like the pears on our cover add just the right touch of sparkle and can be used as a centerpiece, or as place card holders.

What you’ll need 2 egg whites Extra-fine sugar Skewer Selection of fruit Pastry brush

The Language of Flowers

Instructions

Nancy Kangas of Wyandotte Flowers talks about flowers with a humble regard for the way they grow, live and thrive on her city plot in the University District. A former vegetable grower, Nancy never realized the importance of raising flowers until she tried, and was soon charmed by them. Now she grows native flora using organic methods and creates arrangements out of her home for customers in Columbus, including Northstar. Yes, ever wonder where those delicate, wild, astral-like bouquets come from every time you walk into Northstar Café? Nancy. She prefers to keep her operation light, like the flowers, serving a handful of customers and a wedding now and then. “I’m happy to have it this way,” she muses. “I’m happy to have it small.”

1 Pick fruit that is smooth and blemish-free.

And part of that is because Nancy practices Permaculture methods, raising perennials and letting them go to seed so she has flowers for next season. She lets the garden grow the way it wants to, recognizing that weeds might show up because the soil needs them—and so might a bouquet! But that’s the beauty of Nancy’s creations—they have a certain organic frenzy to them, and each flower (or weed) shines through.

5 Arrange on your favorite tray, or stack on cake

2 Pour extra-fine sugar into a bowl.

3 Beat egg whites until they are frothy.

Skewer fruit for easy handling.

Use pastry brush to paint fruit with egg whites.

4 Roll fruit in bowl of sugar until coated.

Shake off excess.

Set on wire rack or wax paper to dry. stand—you can fill the empty spaces with greenery.

“There’s so much to know when growing flowers,” Nancy says. “It’s something that keeps humbling you as the weather changes. And I love how a season ends.”

By Colleen Leonardi To learn more about Nancy and Wyandotte Flowers, email her at nancykangas@gmail.com, or call 614-506-9131.

The Locavore’s Kitchen:

A Cook’s Guide to Seasonal Eating and Preserving

The Locavore’s Kitchen unfolds in an almost encyclopedic way with over 150 recipes organized by season and then harvest.

For fall, you’ll find several recipes for fruits and vegetables as well as staples like meats and cheeses—a Rustic Pear Tart in Cornmeal Pastry is followed by a Pear and Red Onion Gratin and then Pear Sauce. There’s a certain splendor in the many ways Marilou demonstrates how to utilize what a season brings, making for a practical, trustworthy volume. The cookbook also packs a lot in by focusing on extending each season, featuring two recipes to a page plus additional cooking and storage tips, historical notes and facts. It’s a worthy addition to the kitchens of both aspiring and seasoned cooks in search of a rich reminder of why we all choose to live in season. (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2011, $32.95) -CL 8

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edible COLUMBUS

PHOTO BY © CAROLE TOPALIAN

Over the last few years we’ve seen a swell of “locavore”focused cookbooks, but The Locavore’s Kitchen deserves particular attention. Partly because author and cooking teacher Marilou Suszko is homegrown and speaks to Ohio’s bounty with a deep sense of knowing and love. She comforts us by reminding us that leading a locavore-inspired life is not a new fad, picked up at the store, but an old rhythm we know in our bones and have returned to, one by one, as we each decide to harvest, cook and preserve foods grown locally, season by season.

Community Gardens in Columbus: The Highland Youth Community Garden

Peggy Murphy is the garden leader of this youth-oriented community garden that was created on one of the abandoned lots held by the city’s Land Bank. She and others began this project in 2009 after many of the area recreation centers were closed due to lack of funding. “It’s all about the children,” Peggy emphasizes when talking about this garden, the neighborhood and the food they are growing. After securing a grant and completing the eight-week Scotts Miracle-Gro Community Garden Academy led by Franklin Park Conservatory’s Growing to Green program, Peggy has acquired the skills to find additional resources, to program her garden, maintain and sustain it.

To say Peggy is resourceful is an understatement. She has secured support, donations and volunteers from innumerable places. Peggy received and distributed thousands of flowers, vegetable plants and herbs donated by Strader’s Garden Center. They were shared with many other community gardens throughout the area.

The Highland Youth Community Garden is one of 12 hub gardens in the Growing to Green community gardening outreach program of Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. With support from JP Morgan Chase, Growing to Green began its 12 x 2012 Hub Gardens initiative in 2010 to create model gardens and gardening mentors throughout Columbus and Franklin County. The Hub Garden leaders are proud of their model gardens and are eager to serve as mentors to others interested in starting community gardens. The hubs act as resources for nearby smaller or start-up garden leaders to learn best practices from their peers.

PHOTO BY © KRISTEN STEVENS, KRISTEN-STEVENS.COM

On a recent visit to the Highland Youth Garden located in the Hilltop area on Columbus’ westside, I find 8-year-old Hailey Hawkins skipping—yes, skipping—down Highland Avenue on her way to work in the garden.

Behind her and in unison are 50 other youth from the Freedom School on their way to meet with Miss Peggy. As a youngster, I never once skipped to our large backyard garden to help my grandfather clear rocks and weeds or stir the manure tea for him!

providing safe, productive activities while teaching children about where their food comes from and proper nutrition. One of the best ways for the hub gardens to mentor and assist other communities in starting their own garden is to identify the best practices, including techniques and models, implemented as part of the program. The three best practices of The Highland Youth Community Garden are: t 1SPWJEF B TBGF BOE OVSUVSJOH FOWJSPONFOU GPS ZPVUI t 1SPWJEF QSPHSBNNJOH BOE BDUJWJUJFT JO UIF HBSEFO XJUI EFëOFE MFBSOJOH PVUDPNFT t 4FFL PVU MPDBM TVQQPSU BOE SFTPVSDFT UIBU XJMM MFBE UP TVTUBJOBCJMJUZ

By Bill Dawson

Peggy’s leadership and the Highland Youth Community Garden was selected as one of 12 gardens because of its efforts to educate children,

To learn more about the Highland Youth Community Garden and the Growing to Green 12x2012 Hub Gardens Initiative, visit ediblecolumbus.com.

Double Cream Brie from Sippel Family Farm

We were delighted by the introduction of a Double Cream Brie at Kokoborrego— a soft, earthy cow’s milk cheese with a thin, edible rind, notoriously cloaked in dough and baked to gooey perfection. The brie comes in small, manageable wheels, ready for consumption after aging for 60 days.

Lisa Sippel recommends eating the brie simply—spread onto crackers and paired with fruit.

“If I’m feeling crazy,” she says, “I make baked brie with dried, tart cherries and honey on top.” Find the Double Cream Brie at the Clintonville, Worthington or New Albany farmers markets.

By Claire Hoppens Visit kokoborrego.com or sippelfamilyfarm.com for more information.

PHOTO BY © ADDISON JONES

A 77-acre farm, wildly popular CSA program and appearances at three weekly farmers markets weren’t enough activity for the Sippel family—so they took up cheese making. Lisa and Ben Sippel, assisted by Lisa’s brother Ben Baldwin, launched Kokoborrego Cheese Company from the family’s Morrow County farm earlier this year. It became the first and only accredited sheep dairy in the state of Ohio, supplementing with cow’s milk from a neighboring farm for additional varieties of cheese.

edible COLUMBUS.com

FALL 2011

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Local and in SEASON WHAT TO LOOK FOR FROM

introducing

KOMBUCHA TEA

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

edible COLUMBUS.com

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By Tricia Wheeler | Photography by Catherine Murray

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FALL 2011

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Pasta Verde (Green Pasta) Recipe compliments of the French Culinary Institute Ingredients

8 Roll out dough by hand until very thin, or run through a pasta machine according to the directions for very thin pasta. (This is where more hands help! If you have a big group of helpers, double or triple the recipe.)

9 Using a 3- or 3½-inch round cutter (or a glass, or a specialty round or

1½ cups (225 grams) all-purpose flour, plus more as needed 2 eggs ¼ cup (70 grams) cooked spinach, squeezed very dry and chopped very fine Pinch of salt 1½ teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil Semolina flour for rolling (or all-purpose flour) Filling of your choice Sauce and toppings of your choice

10 Working pretty quickly—and keeping dough covered with a moist

Procedure 1 Put the flour in the bowl of a food processor, or KitchenAid mixer fitted

11 Crimp edges, using the tines of a fork or a commercial crimper, to

with the dough hook, and add eggs, spinach, salt and oil.

2 Process/mix until the dough forms a ball and is no longer sticky when touched with clean fingers. If necessary, add in a bit more flour, a little at a time.

3 Dust a work surface with semolina flour. Scrape the dough out onto the surface and knead it for approximately 5 minutes, until the texture is smooth and silky.

4 Divide the dough into 2 balls, sprinkle with flour and wrap in plastic.

square ravioli cutter) cut dough into rounds (cut very closely together to maximize dough.) Cover ravioli with a moist towel and repeat with other ball of dough. towel—place a small spoonful of filling in middle of half of the ravioli circles. Brush edges with a little water; top each with another circle of dough. Push out all air bubbles around the filling and then press edges together to seal. further seal the ravioli.

12 If not cooking immediately, put ravioli in a single layer on a cookie sheet dusted with semolina flour. Refrigerate, covered, until ready to cook.

13 You can freeze extra ravioli, in a single layer, in a zip-lock freezer bag.

Cooking Heat a large pot of water to boiling. Carefully place ravioli into water. The ravioli will cook in 3 to 4 minutes. Carefully remove from the water with a slotted spoon. At this point, you are ready for your favorite sauce, or try it my favorite way:

5 Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

6 Remove dough and allow it to warm up for about 10–15 minutes.

7 Ready a small bowl of water and pastry brush for sealing the cut-out dough.

Place 5–6 ravioli in a bowl and top with your favorite cheese, a sprinkling of herbs and, my favorite, toasted pine nuts!

As the Italians would say … buon appetito! edible COLUMBUS.com

FALL 2011

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Some great, easy ravioli fillings: Your Favorite Local Sausage One of my personal favorites is Bluescreek Sausage. You’ll find them in the North Market. Mince sausage as finely as possible and sauté with a little sprinkle of cayenne pepper until done.

Set aside to cool.

Wine Pairing: Chianti Strong and bold, yet fruity

Roasted Acorn Squash with Mascarpone Cut Acorn squash in half. Place cut side down on a cookie sheet with sides. Add ½ inch of water around squash and roast in a 400° oven until soft, about 30 minutes. Let the squash cool for about 15 minutes, scoop squash out of skin and combine with ¼ cup mascarpone and season to taste with salt.

Wine Pairing: Alsatian Riesling Dry with a crisp finish

Collard Greens with Scallions Clean collard greens and remove ribs. Cook in salted boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain. Heat two tablespoons olive oil and sauté scallions and collards over medium heat until done.

(Use leftover bacon fat instead of olive oil, if you have some, to add more flavor.) You can also substitute any other hearty greens in place of collards. (See ‘A Home Cook’s Diary’ on page 58 for more information on local greens.)

Wine Pairing: Syrah from France Rich, chewy and a little spicy

Ravioli Tips ȈThe dough should feel like dough but not stick to your fingers. If it is sticky, it needs more flour; if it is dry and not holding together, it needs more water. ȈIt is important to rest the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to let the gluten relax. ȈAfter resting, the dough will sometimes still feel a little sticky and will need to be sprinkled with flour. ȈYou can use a rolling pin to roll out dough, if you do not have a pasta machine—it just takes some muscle! It can be easier to roll out smaller pieces at a time.

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edible COLUMBUS

Farms = Food Be part of the equation.

Since 1979, the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association has brought farmers and consumers together to reconnect and build a sustainable food system one meal at time. Please use the following resources to be part of the solution for a healthier farm and food system.

Demand democrac y in our food system

Get involved in grassroots efforts to save family farmers

Get connected to your community

Go organic

= Use your voice and your vote to support good food www.oeffa.org/farmpolic

y.php

= Take action

= Attend an event, learn a new skill, and meet like-minded people in your community www.oeffa.org/events.p

hp

www.oeffa.org/alerts.php

Ensure that your dollars support family farmers

= Transition your farm to organic www.oeffa.org/certification.php

Stay informed

= Buy direct from farmers www.oeffa.org/search-geg.php

= Get the latest news updates and media coverage

Learn how to grow your own food

www.oeffa.org/news

wa o kno Get t farmer y famil

Stay connected

ctive Get a hapter OEFFA Cpter.php ha = Join an /c

effa.org

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t OEFFA 's work = Become a memb er or renew your membership www.oe ffa.org/membe

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= Join OEFFA on Facebook, Twitter and/or OEFFA’s discussion listserve, OEFFA DIRECT

= Find informatio n and/or become an appren tice

www.oeffa.or g/growers.ph p www.oeffa.or g/apprentice.ph p

www.oeffa.org/facebook, www.twitter.com/oeffa, www.oeffa.org/index.php

Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association

www.oea.org

Young PALATES

Madeline’s Pumpkins On an old farm in Dublin that is covered in vines, live many little pumpkins in many straight lines

By Madeline Scherer Every fall we go to Jacquemin Farms. It is right by our house in Dublin. It is one of my very favorite things to do in the fall. The air smells like corn and I love to hear the crunching of the leaves.

They have tons of activities to do, including hayrides and mazes, corn boxes to play in, eating homemade donuts and, of course, picking pumpkins. There is a huge field of pumpkins that you walk out into and pick from. The best part is feeling the skin of the pumpkin and the prickles of the stem. When you find the perfect one, the farmer helps you cut it from the vine. You can even take a hayride out to the field and back to the barn. In the barn, you have your pumpkin weighed and then you pay. They also have lots of little squash and Indian corn, which is fun. You can sit in the barn and listen as they talk to you about all the different types of pumpkins and they are all on display. They have a lot of crazylooking pumpkins.

We bring home big ones and little ones. Big ones to carve, put candles in and display on the front porch; little ones for baking! We wash them, cut them open and remove the seeds. Then we steam the pumpkin. After you steam it, you take the pumpkin meat out and toss the skin. (My Uncle Tom has a compost pile that loves pumpkin skins!) The pumpkin meat can be used for pumpkin soup, bread, cookies and all things pumpkin. My favorite are the pumpkin cookies.

Here is the recipe I use:

Pumpkin Cookies Mill 1½ cup soft wheat berries* (or use 2½ cup all-purpose flour) ½ cup organic butter ½ cup coconut oil, melted ¾ cup Sucanat* (or brown sugar) 1 egg 1 cup cooked pumpkin (canned works, too!) ½ cup raw honey 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon nutmeg ½ teaspoon Celtic sea salt Dash of allspice

1 Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl.

Icing (if you like icing)

8 Spread icing on cookies.

8 ounces cream cheese ½ cup powdered sugar 1/8 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla Mix well in mixer until creamy.

2 Add all other ingredients to mixer and beat until creamy.

3 Combine dry ingredients slowly.

4 Refrigerate dough for a few minutes, especially if you ground your own wheat berries.

5 Drop spoonfuls onto cookie sheet.

6 Bake at 350° for 12 minutes, or 375° if you like a crispy cookie.

7 Let cookies cool on sheet for 30 minutes before removing.

9 Try to only eat a couple! * Wheat berries and Sucanat can be purchased at Kgrains. com, a local grains company that two of my friends’ moms opened in 2010.

While the cookies are baking, wash the pumpkin seeds and let them dry on your countertop overnight. You can also put them in your oven on low or in your dehydrator. After they are nice and dry, you can flavor them.

You can do sweet seeds, salty seeds or a combination of both. Whatever you want! Here is one of my favorite ways to bake the seeds:

Pumpkin Seeds

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If you like them sweet, for each cup of seeds, add:

If you like them salty/spicy, for each cup of seeds add:

1/8 cup organic butter, melted 1 teaspoon cinnamon Dash nutmeg 2 tablespoons pure Ohio maple syrup

2 tablespoons organic butter, melted 1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt Dash garlic powder 2 teaspoon organic Worcestershire sauce

Toss all ingredients into a bowl with the seeds. Mix well and then spread onto cookie sheet. Bake at 350° until crispy and brown, stirring every 10 minutes so they don’t burn! They usually take about 30 minutes.

Toss all ingredients into bowl with the seeds. Mix well and spread onto cookie sheet. Bake at 275° until crispy and brown, stirring them every 10 minutes as well. They take about an hour. Enjoy!

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PHOTO BY © CAROLE TOPALIAN

My name is Madeline Scherer and I am almost 10½ years old. I have a big family—seven of us. Mommy, Daddy, me and I have two sisters and two brothers—all younger than me. I am homeschooled—or alternatively schooled, as my mom likes to say.

I take classes all over the city! My favorite things to do are practice the piano and violin, read books and go to my Uncle Tom’s farm. I absolutely love to cook and started cooking as soon as I could read recipes, at least that’s what I remember. I make a great guacamole and a pretty good hummus, too. Someday I want to become a farmer and cook all foods from my farm.

green is good health-conscious, planet-friendly products for families and small businesses that fit your priorities and your budget serving central ohio as a resource for eco-products, information, and advice. we can help you green your backyard, garage, home, office, kitchen and more.

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Network with your green community at

Green Gala 2011 October 22, 6 - 9 p.m., Columbus environmental acheivement awards ƒ dinner & cocktails eco-friendly silent auction

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Photos: Carrie Williams, Sandra Cobb, Cheyrl Bach

PHOTO COURTESY OF KRISTEN SCHERER

Madeline Scherer

909 river road, granville ohio 43023 15 minutes east of columbus via 161 t: 740.963.9644 | info@thegoinggreenstore.com tuesday, wednesday and friday 10-6 thursday 10-8, saturday and sunday 10-2

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Inside Our LOCAL FOOD Stories

the B.E.A.N. TEAM Matt Ewer builds regional relationships for the sake of a stronger local food system Story and Photography by Kit Yoon

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t started when Matt Ewer was 8 years old. He would gather sweet corn from his family’s farm outside of Indianapolis, load it into a Radio Flyer wagon and peddle it door-to-door to customers looking for fresh local corn.

After a couple of decades, Matt still finds himself delivering local produce to his customers—on a much larger scale.

Matt’s brainchild, Green B.E.A.N. Delivery, is a Midwestbased distributor and network of farmers and artisans. The B.E.A.N. stands for Biodynamic, Education, Agriculture and Nutrition. Started in Indianapolis in 2007, this web-based grocery store gives another option to eaters who are looking for organic, local and sustainable food products. The store offers more than 400 items that vary according to the season, availability and demand, and distributes all over Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

“Our main goal is to help build a local business system that can grow. The Midwest is a beautiful place to start this company. There is an abundance of diversity and product selection,” comments Matt about his fast-growing company.

The Green B.E.A.N. Delivery seed was planted back in the Pacific Northwest when Matt and his wife Beth spent time in the Seattle area. While Beth pursued a degree in nutrition, Matt was working at Full Circle Farm, featuring one of the largest community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs in the country. Working with his mentor, Andrew Stout, Matt started to grow the farm’s CSA program, implementing new ideas to make it more successful.

One of the Green B.E.A.N. bins ready for delivery.

“I am a farmer with a good business sense,” says Matt. “I was the one they would send back into the office to get some work done.” And that is just what he did when he came back to Indiana. His first challenge: how to start and grow this kind of business in a territory new to the concept.

“We are a young, dynamic company. There is no blueprint for what we are doing, so we have to rely on hiring creative, passionate staff members that can help us develop systems, ” says John Freeland, Matt’s colleague and vice president of Green B.E.A.N. Delivery. “As a result, we have created over 70 jobs within our company in the last four years.”

Green B.E.A.N. Delivery has distribution hubs in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus and Louisville, with smaller sites in Dayton and Fort Wayne. Each hub has its own distribution warehouse and employs an all-local team. Green B.E.A.N. delivers about 5,000 bins per week to their customers.

Matt Ewer and John Freeland.

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“There is a lot of talk about regional food hubs. And it’s good to talk.

But we are actually doing it. We are working hard everyday to make it happen. Even though we are about local food, it’s really about regional food security. In order to be successful, there has to be viable regional food system in every single market in this country,” says Matt.

Green B.E.A.N. builds relationships with local farmers and artisans who share similar values and core beliefs. Columbus is a relatively new market for them, and they are already finding several amazing artisans and farmers.

“We can offer them stability to grow their business. We are the distribution mechanism that helps spread the gems,” says John.

While the emphasis is on creating a robust regional food system, not everything is local, or even from the Midwest. Pineapple, for instance, is featured in the weekly bins, and it only grows in the tropics.

“We emphasize local, but we also listen to the consumers’ demands.

We will always have the staples that can’t be sourced locally, like bananas and oranges. The order of priority we go by is: local, regional, Midwest, United States, and then if we have to, we source from outside of the U.S. ” explains John. “Meats, honey, bread, milk and cheeses are always local to the region we are servicing no matter the time of year.”

Asked if their business could be viewed as competition for the farmers markets, CSAs or regular natural food grocery stores, both Matt and John say no. They emphasize the term “co-optition” which, in their own words, means: “Working together, collectively, when it comes to local agriculture and local food producers.

Understanding that anyone trying to make a difference within this movement is welcome and should be supported.”

Recently, the company acquired land, and Matt is in his first year farming on the Feel Good Farm, a 60- acre certified organic

farm outside Indianapolis. It’s a large-scale vegetable production farm. Besides being a source for local food, the farm will also act as a classroom for children to come learn about farming. Matt’s wife, Beth, is a nutritionist and a curriculum writer, and plans to implement a program for schoolchildren to visit the farm and learn first-hand how food is grown.

“If we can reach a couple kids on field trips to the farm and they decide that they want to be a farmer, I’d consider that a job well done,” Matt remarks on his vision. “ As they say, no farms, no food.”

Aside from the farm, the educational resource, the online grocery store and the home delivery service, Green B.E.A.N. also has its own line of products (Farm to Kitchen Foods), and its own distribution company (Tiny Footprints). Though you’d think they would have enough on their plates already, Matt, John and Beth have more ambitious plans for the future. In the works are a couple of projects to help bring healthy regional foods to schools and hospitals, namely Cool School Lunch and Break Room Bin Spin.

For the 8-year-old boy who wanted to deliver local corn to his neighbors, it is safe to say that Matt Ewer is living his dream, and so much more.

To learn more about Green B.E.A.N. Delivery, visit greenbeandelivery.com.

Kit Yoon was born and raised in Thailand. She came to the United States in the late ’80s and has since lived in Boston, Northern California and now Columbus.

She is a freelance photographer and writer as well as a trained acupuncturist and reflexologist. She enjoys exploring the unique gems that Central Ohio has to offer and blogs about it at coolcolumbus.blogspot.com. Kit lives in Bexley with her husband and two children.

Worth the TRIP

The Inn at Honey Run.

Amish Country Simplicity at its best

By Carole Amber | Photography by Troy Amber

y husband and I recently had the pleasure of taking a personal timeout in Amish Country. Located within two hours northeast of Columbus, Ohio’s Amish Country is home to the world’s largest Amish and Mennonite settlement. Known for simple agrarian lifestyles, the Amish live on self-contained estates, practice nonconformity and believe in peace, community and faith.

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Born on a farm, Chef Fetty grew up with straightforward, familygrown food. Once he decided that he wanted to become chef, he traveled the world to sharpen his skills. He studied and held positions in New York, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany and France. His vast international experience also includes six gold medals with TEAM USA in the “Culinary Olympics.”

With a bountiful fall harvest, farming activities and the Inn at Honey Run, locavores will find Amish Country has much to offer. Cheese houses, homemade chocolate and roadside stands, antique shops and more dot the backroads of Amish Country, revealing a delectable way to experience the flavors of the area. At the end of an adventuresome day, make your way to the Inn at Honey Run to taste how local ingredients come to life.

In January 2010, Chef Fetty accepted the executive chef position at the Inn because it allows him to cook according to his motto: “Find one good ingredient and treat it respectfully and simply.” He creates rustic, upscale dishes that meld his French training with regional traditional cooking. He finds that the Inn “is the perfect setting to do this type of cuisine,” and allows him to revisit his roots.

The Inn is a sanctuary hidden in the treetops of Amish Country. The outdoor dining space is set high in the trees and makes one feel like they’re tree-house royalty. We spend the evening with Executive Chef Scott A. Fetty to learn about his cooking style and how his career has come full circle.

Chef Fetty runs a scratch kitchen with seasonal and local ingredients. He serves us juicy lamb on top of butterscotch beans with tricolor carrots. Tender, succulent and colorful—this meal showcases his talents. The chef is particularly skilled when he cooks game and local vegetables.

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Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center PO Box 324, 5798 CR 77, Berlin 330-893-3192 or 877-858-4634 behalt.com

Boyd & Wurthmann Restaurant PO Box 207, 4819 E. Main St., Berlin 330-893-4000 or 330-893-4222 Open M–Sa 5:30am–8pm

Guggisberg Cheese 5060 SR 557 Millersburg, OH 44654 800-262-2505 babyswiss.com

Fall is “one of my favorite times of the year,” says Chef Fetty as he recalls how the Inn showcases two-foot large woodpeckers (bigger than most), deer and brightly colored birds. In addition to the fresh ingredients he transforms from the surrounding fields, Chef Fetty plans to build a smokehouse so that guests can sample his homemade sausage.

As we discuss our stay in Amish Country, Chef Fetty suggests we peruse downtown Berlin and stop by Boyd & Wurthmann Restaurant. Downtown Berlin feels like a slice of apple pie Americana with shops selling antiques, furniture, handmade Amish purses and popped kettle corn on the sidewalk. Stop in Coblentz Chocolate Company for an old-fashioned hand-dipped snapper, and be sure to try one of the nearly 20 pies served daily at Boyd & Wurthmann.

Amish Country has a little something for everyone. The outdoorsman can bike, blade or go horseback riding on the 15-mile Holmes County Rails-to-Trails path featuring a “chip and seal” path for horse-drawn vehicles. For those who enjoy culture, the Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center provides an overview of the area and a history lesson to boot.

Hershberger Antique Mall 3245 SR 557 Baltic, OH 43804 330-893-2064 or 800-893-3702

Holmes County Trail Rails-to-Trails Open from Fredericksburg to Killbuck holmestrail.com

The Inn at Honey Run 6920 County Road 203 Millersburg, OH 330-674-0011 or 800-468-6639 innathoneyrun.com

Lehman’s 4779 Kidron Rd. Dalton, OH 44618 877-438-5346 lehmans.com

Mohican State Park 3116 State Route 3 Loudonville, OH 44842 Park Office 419-994-5125 ext. 10 Camp Office 419-994-4290 mohicanstatepark.org Amish Country typically closed Sunday

04-worththetrip-lamb: Chef Fetty’s lamb on top of butterscotch beans with tricolor carrots.

05-worththetrip-produce: The local and seasonal harvest at a roadside market.

Hats for sale at Lehman's.

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Traditional horse and carriage in Amish Country.

Here you can learn about the Anabaptist movement, become awestruck by the 265-foot circular mural Behalt or have a conversation with the Amish staff. Antique shops and furniture stores showcase the work of skilled craftsmen such as handmade baskets, hickory rocking chairs and quilts.

Another treat of the area is homemade cheese. Our favorite is the Baby Swiss Cheese from Guggisberg Cheese. Alfred Guggisberg, founder of this cheese factory, introduced his Baby Swiss to the United States after recognizing that the American palate preferred a milder cheese that of to his Swiss ancestors. Aged 30 days rather than the traditional 60, Guggisberg Baby Swiss is smooth, buttery and out of this world. As one of the locals told us, “You will never taste anything like it anywhere else.”

Our last destination in Amish Country is a local recommendation. We are told that we must hit Lehman’s, a country store filled with nonelectric, old-fashioned products. This is not your typical country store.

It is a 30,000-square-foot slice of history where you can find anything from butter churns to milking stools, and oil lamps to candle-making kits. Local almond and cranberry granola, bumbleberry jam and fresh popcorn are some of our preferred products.

As we head home on Route 62, we see a perfectly tattered sign “Eggs, jams, popcorn, fresh produce.” We quickly turn down the skinny dirt path and land at a white farmhouse. Sitting in front of the house is a table topped with glorious jams in reused jars and an Amish woman working at its side. I admire the zucchini jam, almond soap and jars of popcorn that reflect hard work. The woman recalls how her family harvested the popcorn. “We planted the country white seeds, then harvested the stalks late in the season. Next we hung the stalks outside to dry for months and then hand-rubbed each cob to release the corn.”

An entire jar is only $1.10. This collection of food-lover delights, the humble conversation with their makers and the hues of the sunset add up to quintessential Amish Country.

For a wholesome sliver of tranquility and a dose of good, clean fun, Amish Country is a delicious timeout.

Carol M. Amber is a foodie and writer who adores whole, fresh and delicious food. Her background includes marketing experience at Nike, creating/selling a gourmet dining company in Chicago and an international MBA. She currently sinks her teeth into a food website called ChopSizzlePop! with her husband Troy. Together they hunt down expert restaurant recommendations and recipes, interviews with chefs like Jacques Pépin and Rick Bayless and behind the scenes footage of age-old food traditions at chopsizzlepop.com.

The local and seasonal harvest at a roadside market.

THIS AIN'T A ONE HORSE TOWN

Preserving Local Agriculture Infused with Flavor

By Sherri Brooks Vinton

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nfusions are a quick, easy and delicious way to capture seasonal flavors. I find them particularly helpful for using up the late-season bits and bobs from the market—a few of the last stone fruits, cool-crop raspberries, grapes, apples, pears and herbs—that might otherwise be caught in Jack Frost’s clutches.

Make your infusions now by steeping fresh produce, herbs and/ or spices in spirits or vinegar and these tasty concoctions will offer a burst of fresh-from-the farm flavor to enjoy for months or give as holiday gifts.

Infused Vinegars Infused vinegars are a little turn of kitchen magic—you start with a pantry staple, add a little imagination (and a few treats from the farm or garden) and wind up with a jewel-colored, fullflavored elixir. They make stellar vinaigrettes, of course, but can also be used to perk up the flavor of long-cooking dishes such as stews and braises and bring a surprising kick of flavor to quick refrigerator pickles and homemade mayonnaise. But my favorite way to enjoy them is to add a sweetened splash to sparkling water to create a modern version of the Colonial thirst quencher, Shrub.

Infused Vinegar Recipe You want to use a light or neutrally flavored vinegar that won’t overpower your flavoring agent—distilled white or apple cider vinegar make nice blank slates. Berries and herbs are popular and versatile vinegars but don’t stop there—try peach, pear, chili, plum and more.

1-quart glass jar with lid Flavoring agents such as: 1–2 cups berries or chopped fruit 3–4 sprigs fresh herbs Or a combination

1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon whole dried spices (optional) 1 pint vinegar (preferably distilled white or cider)

1 Sterilize the jar by submerging it in boiling water for 10 minutes.

2 Add flavorings. Bring vinegar just to a boil and pour into jar.

3 Cover jar with a piece of waxed or parchment paper to prevent lid corrosion. Screw on lid.

4 Give the jar a good shake and set it in a cool, dark place for at least a few days and up to one week, shaking daily.

5 Strain vinegar through a fine-mesh sieve.

6 Return vinegar to the cleaned, re-sterilized jar or other decorative food-grade bottle.

7 Vinegar keeps in a cool, dark place for 3–4 months or refrigerate for 6–8 months.

Edible NATION Shrub | Makes 8 drinks A tasty, refreshing way to enjoy your infused vinegars.

1 cup infused vinegar ½–1 cup sugar Seltzer

1 In a small saucepan, warm vinegar and sugar, stirring to dissolve sugar.

2 Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

3 Add 2 tablespoons of syrup to a tall glass filled with ice and top with seltzer.

Infusing Spirits Home-infused spirits not only taste great, they let you claim a little corner of the craft cocktail movement for your very own. Create custom combinations that mimic your favorite top-shelf tipple or let your taste buds be your guide to new flavor sensations.

You can infuse any liquor you like, but it’s best to stick to those that are at least 80 proof—any less and you run the risk of fermenting your fruit, rather than infusing it.

When it comes to flavoring your hooch, look to your market basket for inspiration—peaches, plums, apples, pears, chilies (I have a friend who swears by celery!)—it’s all good. Try vodka with chilies, brandy or rum with peaches, gin with plums, rum with cranberries, tequila or vodka with citrus, just to name a few.

Infused Spirit Recipe After straining out the fruit, you can sip infusions chilled and up, use as the base for a custom cocktail, or add sugar to the infusion to conjure up a cordial.

1-quart jar with lid Flavoring agents such as: 1–2 cups berries or chopped fruit 1–2 chilies 3–4 sprigs fresh herbs dried spices Or a combination

1 pint 80 proof spirits ½ cup sugar (optional)

1 Combine flavorings and alcohol in a clean quart jar. Screw on lid.

2 Give the jar a good shake and set it in a cool, dark place for a few days and up to a week or two, shaking daily until you reach the flavor intensity you like.

3 Strain the spirits through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing on solids to release all of their juices, and then through a coffee filter to remove any sediment.

4 Return spirits to the cleaned jar or other decorative food grade bottle.

5 Add sugar, if using, and shake to dissolve. Spirits keep in a cool, dark place for up to a year; flavor improves with time.

Sherri Brooks Vinton wants you to “preserve” local agriculture with your food choices. Her writing, talks and hands-on workshops teach fellow eaters how to find, cook and preserve local, seasonal, farm-friendly food.

She is currently touring to promote her latest book, Put ’em Up! To find out more, visit sherribrooksvinton.com.

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At the Farmers Market

A Delicious History 135-year-old North Market farmers market welcomes new generation of peers

By Dave Wible | Photography by Catherine Murray oday, it seems like every community in Central Ohio has its very own weekly farmers market, where shoppers can take advantage of the rich diversity of our state’s agriculture. Since 2006, farmers markets in Ohio have grown 66% with more than 1,000 now dotting our state. In downtown Columbus alone, there are now five farmers markets, and if you venture across the Scioto River to COSI, you’ll find a sixth.

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What’s the greater good? It begins with community.

A farmers market is a community of growers who come together in a traditional marketplace environment. The community of growers is supported by the demand of a community of buyers.

The environment is intensely personal as shoppers buy directly from growers. There’s connection to the process, as you know your grower by name. When you get home, you eat Margaret’s tomatoes, Adam’s radishes, Kathy’s corn and Tim’s greens.

As the last remaining public market in Columbus, North Market has played an important role in our community’s farmers market scene since 1876, featuring both local produce and products and imported goods. Over time, we have built a well-earned reputation as a premier destination for the finest, freshest local foods sold by local families, and our Saturday farmers market furthers that reputation.

Farmers markets also provide a real opportunity for the family farm to be economically sustainable.

By providing a marketplace where growers can sell direct to the buyer, farmers markets support a locally based economy and produce economic benefits to our community.

While the Market House has served as the focal point for commerce for more than 135 years, it’s only since 1979 that North Market has been home to our Saturday farmers market.

Some 30 years ago, when a small but loyal group of growers came to the old Quonset hut that was home to North Market, the farmers market served as a weekend diversion—a place in the city where you could pick up some fresh fruits and vegetables. Today, families and growers like the Ehmanns, Rhoadses, Thomases and Andersons still come to the market every Saturday during the growing season. They were among the first to come to North Market and build the foundation of what we have today.

And that foundation has allowed for farmers markets to exert a powerful influence on the way people shop, eat and build local economies. Farmers markets, like ours at North Market, not only provide the community with a wonderful opportunity for great food, they bring people and communities together. If you think about it, when you shop at your local grocery store, you’re really just a consumer.

When you shop at your local farmers market, you’re part of the process. The market experience makes people not only feel good about what they eat, but where they live and where they shop.

That’s not just an opinion. Recent research that we have conducted showed that more than 85% of our shoppers believe that when they shop at a public market like ours, they are contributing to a greater good.

a deep interest and understanding in the buying experience. They want to know how their food was grown. How did the soil and weather impact the growing process? Did the grower use organic or conventional methods?

How will the conditions influence the taste?

All the answers and the education about the food come directly from the individual who produced it—“your” grower.

Why is that important? As markets and demand grow, sellers supplement their offerings with items they have purchased, not grown. It’s our belief that the bond between a grower and buyer is an important one.

When you buy at your local farmers market, it’s implicit that the seller is the grower. At North Market we want to be sure that our long history is one that’s tied to the highest level of integrity. It helps insure that you can buy with confidence.

Where do we go from here? Our history of long-term growers is now being supplemented by a new generation of young, passionate and creative growers. Growers like Adam Welly and Jaime Moore at Wayward Seed are leading a fresh new group of individuals who realize that the family farm still is an important part of our social fabric. The spectrum of growers at North Market is broad. The Rhoads Farm family, a fixture at the market, is complemented by the brand-new Rock Dove Farm. The Orchards of Bill and Vicky Thomas are now the Thomas Family Orchard as a new generation enters the business.

While the growth is great, the benefits are many. Both the producer and the eater win.

Photo of a poster in a series designed exclusively for the North Market, 2002.

And the most appealing benefit? The food tastes better. We can talk about freshness, quality and local economies all day long, but the best benefit is taste. Fresh-picked, tree- and vine-ripened fruits and vegetables simply taste better—way better. The difference, while almost impossible to articulate, is unmistakable, and in every case palpably different from what you’ll find in a grocery store.

As farmers markets grow, there is pressure to meet the ever-increasing demand of a well-educated market shopper. At North Market our buyers show

The community grows and is strengthened.

The fabric is woven tighter and we once again get to learn what real, fresh food tastes like. And thanks to the growth in farmers markets it’s delicious.

Dave Wible is the executive director of the North Market Development Authority. A self described "foodie," Dave can often be found scouring the market for the perfect herbs, cheeses, wines, meats and exotic fare for his next dinner party. On Saturdays during the growing season, you'll find Dave chatting with farmers about how to select vegetables and fruits that he later will whip into a culinary masterpiece. He currently resides in German Village with his wife, Mary Cusick. He has two children, Charles and Geoff, who both live in Columbus as well.

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Food for Thought

Shagbark organic Ohio corn ready for grinding.

Breaking New Ground Shagbark Seed & Mill Co. pioneer a fresh approach to staple foods

By Colleen Leonardi | Photography by Sarah Warda

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n a Thursday afternoon in Athens, Ohio, I lean into a huge bulk bag of unhulled spelt nearly as tall as I am. Brandon Jaeger and Michelle Ajamian, owners and operators of Shagbark Seed & Mill Co., encourage me to take the plunge. As we scoop and sift our hands through the grain at Shagbark’s processing facility, Brandon identifies corn cockle seed, black nuggets the size of a pin head, and explains how he’ll have to work to separate them out to keep the batch clean for sale, with disappointment but no less determination in his voice.

It’s this care for one and for all that comes through in everything Michelle and Brandon do. With their line of Shagbark products, they encourage this kind education through experience to help people understand where staple foods come from. As summer draws to a close, it’s easy to think about the farmers who supplied you with your tomatoes, peaches and lettuce. But what about your grain, flour and beans—do you know the farmer, processor and distributor who supplies you with these staple goods year-round?

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“Living on lettuce is hard to do,” jokes Brandon, as we talk about the necessity of a regional staple food system. “Grains and legumes are anywhere from 60% to 80% of the calories and protein in a healthy human diet. It’s a lot of calories.”

Most of those staples are not grown, processed or distributed locally, and as food security issues heighten and climate change escalates, Michelle and Brandon think it’s a risk to not have those staple goods growing close to home. It was after a visit to a farmers market that Brandon said to Michelle: “This is wonderful. We have all this great food. But now we’re going to go to the store and get grain from … who knows where it comes from. So let’s figure this out.”

The figuring it out included growing test plots of high-nutrition staple seed crops like buckwheat, adzuki beans, millet and quinoa. As vegetable farmers, it was welcome territory, but they soon realized there were plenty of farmers in the area growing these crops. The barrier was processing and distributing them.

Top: Plainsman Amaranth flowers bloom at Michelle and Brandon’s farm.

Bottom: Brandon Jaeger and Michelle Ajamian beside their self-contained flour mill from France.

In 2008, Michelle and Brandon formed the Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative (APFC), a collective designed to “…create a model staple food system that gives farmers a market for growing healthy, highnutrition beans, grain and oil seed.” Michelle convened an advisory board with partners from several different sectors. Soon the advisory board said to Michelle and Brandon, “You have to start the processing business because no one else is going to do it.”

Shagbark Seed & Mill Co. was launched in 2010 as a “prototype regional processing facility” for staple foods. Why staple and why regional?

“There’s a nutrition and food security reason. And there’s also an economic reason,” Brandon answers. “To bolster Ohio’s, or any region’s, agriculture economy, we’re missing a huge chunk if we’re not taking care of that large percentage of the diet. And these are better varieties that are grown and processed in better ways, so it allows for a lot of variation and diversity in production and processing.”

The quality of Shagbark products is undeniable. Their variety of black turtle beans tastes the way black beans should, and the corn chips fly off the table at the farmers market. Michelle and Brandon work closely with local farmers to help them grow high-nutrition, sustainable crops because, for them, it starts with the soil and the seed.

“Right now, we’re working with both certified organic farmers and Amish farmers,” Michelle says. “And in the next year, we hope to bring in

Black Turtle Beans chosen because of high antioxidants and long cultural history—in cultivation for 7,000 years!

some conventional farmers who are ready to try organic methods. We want to foster good growing methods—part of that is winning over conventional farmers who now use a lot of chemical inputs and crop varieties that are destined for the CAFO or high-fructose corn syrup.

If we’re going to have impact on conventional farming, we want to be able to look at a farmer and say, ‘If you grow without chemicals, we’ll get you non GMO good seed, give you some guidance on how to grow the crop our way, and pay you a good price.’ Building the market for good crops will help farmers stop destroying our soil.”

They also want to change the value of staple foods in the Western diet.

During their first season in 2010, amaranth, heirloom corn, spelt and black turtle beans were grown and harvested, varieties adapted to grow well in the Midwest. These high-nutrition varieties offer more flavor, vitamins and minerals than highly refined grain and seed, especially when they’re fresh. Farmers deliver their yields to Shagbark Seed & Mill Co. once harvested; a yield may be 5,000 pounds of black beans and 7,600 pounds of corn in one delivery.

This summer, Shagbark expanded their processing facility so it’s better equipped to handle, process, store and distribute these higher quantities of grain and seed, a boon for Michelle and Brandon as demand for their products rises. They sell their flours, beans, chips and artisan spelt bread wholesale and at farmers markets, and they also offer a CSA.

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Right: Brandon winnows amaranth at a Staple Foods Collaborative harvest party.

And while you can purchase their corn chips or beans at the Athens Farmers Market, you’ll also find them on the menu at Casa Nueva, or taste their spelt flour in the pizza crust at Avalanche Pizza. Shagbark distributes to local restaurants, bakeries, pizzerias and grocery stores. It’s Shagbark’s business to sell their products, but it’s also their business to support other local organizations in having access to the same high-quality, high-nutrition staple goods. Michelle and Brandon want other food producers and customers in Athens to benefit from the value of regional staple foods. The goal is to be a staple food facility and strengthen the local economy. “Building a staple food system cannot happen without a strong network of collaborators,” they write.

There are fewer than 10 regional staple food-processing facilities like Shagbark in the United States, according to Michelle. She aims to change this, however, by connecting with other likeminded facilities and leaders in regions across the country to form a staple foods collaborative nationwide where regions trade information and share resources. And the nation has taken notice—Utne Reader last year named Michelle and Brandon among their 25 Visionaries who are changing the world.

“Our mission is to set up a regional-scale facility here and help others figure out how to adapt it to their region. Different regions will grow different crops so we need to be elastic when we think about this as a model,” Michelle notes. “That mission is key to thinking outside the capitalist ‘keep on growing’ model and addressing instead how to help other regions build their own food system infrastructure and economy. We are open-source. We want to share everything we learn with others to build a network of food secure regions.”

Their dedication to the business of social change runs deep. With backgrounds in social justice, the best way Brandon and Michelle can rationalize building out a system of this size and scope is if it brings about a real change in staple food production, replacing “… the global commodity elevator system with enterprises that pay farmers to grow highnutrition, open-pollinated crops for their region to build regional food security.”

“We thought this food should be local just like everything else because it contributes to a better diet, a better economy and farm preservation,” Michelle says. “Look at the global system. It subsidizes U.S. commodities to the tune of more than $15 billion. Other countries can’t compete—farmers go under. But then there’s the low-nutrition issue.

Corn has been bred to have more starch and less protein—it fattens cows and people, and makes a lot more high-fructose corn syrup per ear. So there’s all this profitability really running it. And when you think about Native Americans living on corn when Europeans arrived, you realize they were eating a corn that offered protein, and more.

They weren’t obese. They didn’t have diabetes. That was then. Now, we have a dietrelated health epidemic.”

Brandon jumps in, “We’re already seeing problems in the global food system because of climate change and the complicated economic factors that are plugged in to feeding people that shouldn’t be so complicated. Not having this kind of regionally scaled infrastructure is dangerous.”

“This is homeland security,” Michelle smiles.

Shagbark Seed & Mill Co. products can be found at the Easton Farmers Market, the Clintonville Farmers Market and purchased through Green B.E.A.N. Delivery. Knead Urban Diner uses their beans and flours, and starting in spring 2012 Watershed Distillery will feature a gin and vodka made from Shagbark’s corn flour and an experimental whiskey made from a blend of spelt and wheat flour. Shagbark’s five-month CSA starts in November. To learn more, visit shagbarkmill.com, or call 740-590-8240.

Colleen Leonardi is a writer, choreographer and editor of Edible Columbus. Born into a family of French and Italian cooks, she has always had a love of good food and the real living it engenders. Cooking food, writing stories and making dances are all a part of the same process for her—creating imaginative and thoughtful experiences for people to inhabit and enjoy over time. She lives with her sweet cat and even sweeter husband in the Short North. To learn more, visit colleenleonardi.com.

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heir story meanders sweetly, like a nectar-laden bee, from rural Ohio to Breckenridge, Colorado; to Missoula, Montana; and back to Ohio, where Isaac Barnes, 35, teaches high school and keeps bees. His wife and mother of two Jayne, 31, shares in developing the honey-centered cottage industry that makes their farming life possible.

Honeyrun Farm is the couple’s two acres of paradise tucked into the 2,000 owned by Isaac’s family outside Williamsport, Ohio. Their farmhouse overlooks a shaded lawn that slopes to a flower and vegetable garden. Here, you might see Mason and Maizy Barnes, ages 3 and 2, tumbling around the grass like puppies. Jayne trails behind, picking lavender to infuse the honey produced by their bees. (See sidebar to learn about honey infusions.)

Isaac tends the bees and builds things. The children play in the fenced playground, or wander beneath the rustic arbor, or nibble bread and honey in the honey house, all products of their father’s craftsmanship. The chickens enjoy Isaac’s handiwork in a coop that features arched windows salvaged from Isaac’s grandma’s house. The only naysayer is the family goat, who escapes like Houdini from every improvement that Isaac makes to his pen.

Although paradise has its price, Jayne and Isaac are happy to pay it: in planning, perseverance and unrelenting hard work.

Bee Friendly How can we live in a bee-friendly way?

James Tew, an Ohio State University associate professor of apiculture, the coordinator of the OSU Wooster Bee Laboratory and a beekeeper himself since 1972, offers these suggestions.

Be tolerant of bees.

If you find some living in your yard, try to find a way to live with them.

Don’t spray more pesticides than necessary.

Plant flowering plants and trees, rather than just grass, so the bees have something to eat. Clover and dandelions, which have been nearly eradicated in city and suburb, were once the main summer diet of honeybees.

Provide a home for leafcutter bees,

The Flight of the Bumblebee Jayne, from Millersburg in northeastern Ohio, was the college roommate of Isaac’s sister Becky Swingle (profiled in the Winter 2010 Edible Columbus) s at Wittenberg University. Isaac had graduated from Westfall High School, where he now teaches, and received a geology degree from Wittenberg in 1999. While he spent winters as a self-described “ski bum” working at the Breckenridge resorts, Jayne graduated and spent a year teaching urban gardening with Americorps in Columbus, then began her master’s program in rural sociology at the University of Montana in Missoula.

“Jayne was raised in the country with a farm background,” says Isaac. “She’s also beautiful, intelligent, open-minded and interested in many things—especially travel—like I am.”

Jayne calls Isaac “an intelligent country boy. He had all the great qualities of a man who knows how to work with his hands, be creative and hardworking and appreciate the simple things, yet he was able to philosophize about life.”

Prompted by Isaac’s insatiable appetite for honey, Jayne bought Isaac his first hive in 2003, “only three months after we started dating.” They married in 2005 and, while Jayne studied, Isaac worked for a commercial beekeeper in Missoula with 5,000 hives. In 2006, the couple returned to Ohio and traditional working life. But as soon as they were ready to start a family, they put their plan into action—call it Plan Bee.

which pollinate but do not produce honey and rarely sting. Make a nest box by drilling about 50 2- to 3-inch-deep holes in a hardwood block and hang it up in a tree or garden shed at the back of your property. Tew promises that the block will not attract termites or wasps.

Consider keeping bees.

“Three-fifths of the people at beekeeping meetings now are brand new,” Tew says. He attributes this growth in beekeeping to the high awareness of the bees’ plight (see sidebar), and also the green and urban farm movements.

Many cities and suburbs (including New York City and Columbus) permit residents to keep a limited number of hives.

Dana Stahlman, a Master Beekeeper and the president of the Central Ohio Beekeepers Association, encourages beekeeping wannabees to come to their meetings. “It’s too late in the season to start a hive this year,” he says, “but you can learn about it and meet other beekeepers.”

Plan Bee Bees on the honeycomb.

“Part of the reason we’re here,” Jayne says as she disentangles Mason from the dog he is trying to ride, “is because the farm is a fun place for kids to grow up.” Both Jayne and Isaac are determined to arrange their lives so that she can stay at home with the children, and they can live on the farm, close to family.

Isaac and Jayne work hard for those goals. Besides teaching, Isaac spends his winters building the honeycomb frames—3,000 and counting—and the molds and cutting tools that Jayne uses in her soap making.

Each of Isaac’s 17 bee yards, or apiaries, contains 10 to 12 hives of 60,000-80,000 bees each (the number varies by season), which may fly two or three miles a day in their quest for blossoms. So that the hives do not compete for nectar, Isaac sites his yards within a 20-mile radius of his farm, paying a honey rent to each property owner—typically two pounds of honey per hive per year. Of course, the bees also do their landlord the favor of pollinating his fruit and flowers.

Every spring Isaac performs the profitable but Herculean task of transporting and renting his bees to Sunny Hill and Lynd’s Fruit Farms to pollinate their apple orchards. After 8pm, when the bees are quiet in their hives (stackable wooden boxes or “supers” with pull-out frames that hold the honeycomb, not the dome-shaped skeps we generally picture), Isaac loads the hives onto truck and trailer, drives them to the orchards, unloads them and repeats the task in reverse 10 days later.

Left: Isaac Barnes in his bee suit.

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Honey Laundering: Another Reason Artisanal Honey Is Better Honey laundering is an amusing term with a sober meaning: the smuggling of tainted Chinese honey into the United States by first shipping it to other countries (called transshipping) to disguise its true country of origin. Thus the anomaly of countries like India and Malaysia, which had never exported honey before, suddenly emerging as massive exporters of honey to the US— honey that originates in China.

The Chinese launder honey to avoid the heavy tariffs that the US imposed in 2001 to protect the US beekeeping industry after China began flooding the American market with artificially cheap honey.

And not only artificially cheap, but often artificial. In Seattle in April of this year, the Department of Justice seized 10,000 gallons of counterfeit “Thailand honey”—actually a compound malt extract originating in China, and shipments seized elsewhere have been adulterated with water or corn syrup. Worse, testing has shown some Chinese honey tainted with heavy metals, or with the antibiotic (banned in the West) that they feed their bees.

In June the FDA announced a “new global strategy” to ensure import quality and safety, as well as its intention to broaden food safety efforts under the 2011 FDA Food Modernization Act. Meanwhile, the European Union has simply banned the import of “Indian” honey, a strategy that American beekeepers would like the US to imitate.

The US produces only about half of the honey it consumes, so it will continue to be an importer. China is by far the largest producer of honey in the world, so it will continue to be an exporter. Honey laundering is profitable.

An operation involving a German conglomerate as the middleman defrauded the US of $80 million in tariffs. And the label on the honey jar may not disclose the true origin or content of the honey on your grocer’s shelf—unless it is artisanal.

Bee warned.

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Isaac tending to beehives; Mason Barnes feeding the chickens; Isaac's goats; jars of honey; Honeyrun Farm.

Sweet Success Isaac removes the honey from his chemical-free hives in late spring, mid-summer and autumn, a task that takes 15–20 hours per harvest. “We harvested 10,000 pounds of honey in 2010,” Isaac says, “about 100 pounds per hive. The state average is 55–60 pounds per hive.”

Each season’s honey is different in color and flavor, with spring honey from black locust blossoms the lightest, the most popular and also the scarcest.

“We sold out of locust honey this year—about 1,000 pounds of it.” The golden summer honey comes from Canadian thistle and clover; the dark fall honey, from goldenrod and aster.

Honey is anti-microbial and can rest at room temperature indefinitely, so once it leaves the hive, the honey in the wax comb need not be extracted immediately. “My first extractor only did four frames at a time,” Isaac says. “It took about a month to harvest the honey that way. But I figure that it takes a month to harvest a lot of crops.”

Today, a 33-frame extractor purchased from a beekeeper’s estate takes pride of place in the honey house. Once Isaac has scraped off the wax caps with a heated knife, the centrifuge whirls the frames for five to 10 minutes and the honey drains slowly (nothing about honey is fast) into a large bucket, where it sits, covered, until Isaac has time to deal with it.

Then he gently heats the honey to less than 120° F., strains it, bottles it and slaps on a Honeyrun Farms label. Isaac avoids the higher temperatures and high-pressure filtering used by commercial honey producers to prevent granulation, because, according to Catherine Berry, director of marketing at the National Honey Board, such processing “reduces the final quantity of the enzymes in honey.”

The leftover wax goes outside, where the thrifty bees eat any honey that still clings to it, after which thrifty Jayne melts the wax for the beeswax candles she sells at farmers markets and online.

The Buzz “She’s the smart and savvy one,” Isaac says of Jayne.

“She’s the one that does all the marketing.”

And makes the soap.

“All the different varieties and scents—I just got hooked.” Jayne’s experiment began in the kitchen in 2006, but with sales last year of 3,000 bars, the operation moved to the honey house. Made with lye the old-fashioned, cold-processed way, the more than 20 varieties of soap contain herbs and flowers, many homegrown, beeswax to help the soap last longer and always honey, a natural moisturizer.

PHOTOS BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED

Jayne ships orders from their website to points as diverse Alaska and Puerto Rico— “the lavender-infused honey is especially popular”—a time-consuming task that she nevertheless finds rewarding for the many positive customer comments.

This year Honeyrun Farms debuted at the Worthington Farmers Market. The Greener Grocer at the North Market was their first retail customer, and last winter Jayne decided to try expanding the retail end by selling to Whole Foods in Dublin.

“There were so many hoops to jump through,” Isaac says, displaying the final product, a Honeyrun Farms honey bear, labeled Ohio Summer Harvest or Ohio Fall Harvest Pure Raw Honey. “We thought the bear was corny, but they insisted. And they wanted the seasonal label with the outline of Ohio.”

“No,” Jayne reminds him.

“The little state map was our idea.”

“Right.” Isaac regards her fondly.

“This was all Jayne’s doing.”

“When I market, I look at why I’m drawn to a product,” Jayne says. “Our market is mostly direct and local, and our customers want that connection to the person and the process. On the blog I let people know how we make our products. I try to respond to email questions quickly, and we always invite people out to the farm, if they want to come.”

Their vision for the future, besides welcoming Baby Barnes in November, is simply more of the same. Their main challenge, Jayne suggests, is not to work too hard—“We’re both workaholics,” she confesses, as if no one would guess. “If we can keep it at this level, then whatever we can do is icing on the cake.”

Honey cake, of course.

Honeyrun Farm: 9642 Randle Rd., Williamsport, Ohio 43164; 740-225-2462; info@honeyrunfarm. com; honeyrunfarm.com. For information about purchasing Honeyrun honey and other products, please visit the website.

Nancy McKibben has been writing and eating for years, and is happy to combine those loves with the opportunity to advocate for local food in the pages of Edible Columbus. Her novel The Chaos Protocol was a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award for Fiction in 2000, and she was the winner of the Thurber House Essay Contest in 2003. She is also a lyricist and journalist, the mother of six, and the wife of one. View her work at leader.com/nancymckibben; contact her at nmckibben@leader.com.

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The fruit not chosen gets jealous

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Bee Gone

Over thirty locally made handcrafted flavors www.sweetthinggourmet.com

Since 1975, the U.S. bee population has dropped by approximately half, according to James Tew of the Ohio State University Wooster Honey Bee Lab. The problem was brought into sharp relief in 2006, when 600,000 of the 2.5 million bee colonies in the United States died from a malady labeled colony collapse disorder, or CCD, the mysterious abandonment of a hive by most of the bees.

CCD is not a new problem, as similar phenomena have been described since the 1800s. Tew likens the disorder to a cold: “You know the symptoms, but you don’t really know exactly what caused it.”

CCD is more likely to affect large commercial beekeepers with thousands of hives who use their bees primarily for pollination, often transporting them thousands of miles to pollinate crops.

Tew lists factors that do or may affect bees adversely: viruses, pesticides, lack of genetic diversity (at least 1/3 of all U.S. bees are derived from the same 300–400 special breeder queen lines), varroa mites, pesticides and chemicals, air pollution and overuse of bees as pollinators. CCD may be a result of any one factor, or a variety of interrelated factors.

“Today’s bees are not as vibrant and resilient as they once were,” says Tew, who points out that bees used to survive easily on their own, without human intervention. “Bees could have a hive behind your barn, and the hive lived for years, and you never had to do anything with them. Today, bees need us.

They have become more like tomato plants, having to be replaced every year.”

Master Beekeeper Dana Stahlman is hoping to help make the Ohio bee population more robust by breeding queens that are resistant to the state’s cold winters. His are the brains behind the Ohio State University Queen Project, which he runs through the Ohio State Beekeepers Association and in conjunction with the OSU Bee Lab at Wooster.

Isaac Barnes, who has about 120 hives, has not experienced CCD, and focuses his energies on varroa mites, the plague of beekeepers everywhere. Isaac recalls the effort to control them in the commercial hives where he worked in Missoula. “We were putting outright poison into the hives.”

Isaac has a pesticide-free strategy: “After June 21, the old queens slow down and lay fewer eggs, but the mite population in the hive is building up. The best thing is to have a young queen split off. July is a big month—we start 50 to 60 new hives. The new queen lays a lot of eggs to get the population up, and this keeps the mite cycle down.”

“That’s what’s working for us,” Isaac says diffidently. “We don’t have thousands of hives, so we can babysit the bees more.”

Resources for those interested in beekeeping: centralohiobeekeepers.org gobeekeeping.com ohiostatebeekeepers.org honeybeelab.com Franklin County Zoning Resolution; Section 115.04 Regulation of Apiaries: franklincountyohio.gov/commissioners/edp/zoning/ZoningResolutionUpdated6.9.10.pdf

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MORE GREAT CULINARY EVENTS FROM

Returning in October on WOSU TV ... (check website or Facebook for date and time listings)

CHEFS IN THE CITY AUCTION PREVIEW highlighting incredible culinary and travel packages up for bbid online

Wednesday, September 14

CHEFS IN THE CITY OHIO BEER TASTING at Granville Inn featuring Chef Chad Lavely and Rockmill Brewery Brewmaster Matthew Barbee

with

Chef Jacques Pépin and featuring 14 local culinary greats including:

Chef Hubert Seifert SPAGIO

Jeni Britton Bauer JENI’S SPLENDID ICE CREAMS

Chef Richard Blondin REFECTORY

Granville Inn’s Chef Chad Lavely will create the hors d‘oeuvres and Julie Mulisano will present an array of beers from Ohio breweries, including: Maumee Bay (Toledo), Hoppin’ Frog (Akron), Buckeye Brewing (Cleveland) and Rockmill Brewery (Lancaster).

Tickets: $45 at wosu.org/chefs Questions? -email chefs@wosu.org or call (614) 292-4510

Chef John Skaggs TWO CATERERS

Chef David Tetzloff G. MICHAEL’S BISTRO & BAR

Chef Travis Hyde Z CUCINA DI SPIRITO

Coming this holiday season...

We'll announce our featured chef for our signature Chefs in the City event in April 2012!

Visit wosu.org/chefs and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter @wosuchefs to stay up-to-date on all events.

Proceeds from these and all Chefs in the City 2011 events directly support children's educational programming on WOSU TV.

A Chef's Perspective

By Shawnie Kelley

C

hef David Tetzloff, executive chef and co-owner of G. Michael’s Bistro & Bar, brings Low Country flair to the German Village restaurant’s innovative and seasonally changing menu. Chef Tetzloff’s philosophy is simple: Work with the freshest food you can find. He looks to Wayward Seed, Northridge Organic Farm, Rhoads Farm and Ohio’s Amish Country farmers for his ingredients.

“You just don’t normally see Country Gentleman corn, Brandywine tomatoes or the endless varieties of peas, beans and cucumbers in grocery stores.” He explains, “It is more commercially viable to make foods uniform and transportable, thus cheapening the culinary experience.” Luckily for Columbus, Chef Tetzloff is committed to sharing with us his desire for a more meaningful culinary experience.

What was your favorite food as a kid?

Corn on the cob.

What was the first meal you made that you were proud of?

I made a spaghetti dinner for my now-wife while in college.

What three adjectives that describe your cuisine?

Southern. Simple. Fresh.

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What book most influences your food, cookbook or otherwise?

Becoming a Chef by Andrew Dornenburg was most influential in my early career. I now follow contemporary Southern chefs like Ben Barker, Frank Stitt, Louis Osteen. I even served as one of the recipe testers for Louis’s book.

What chef do you most admire?

Frank Lee, owner at the Elliott (restaurant) Group, executive chef at Slightly North of Broad in Charleston, S.C., and my mentor.

What is your favorite ingredient?

Pork in all of its varied and beautiful forms.

What music do you like to hear when you cook?

The gamut of rock ’n’ roll, ranging from classic rock to mid-’90s, Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses, REM. What is your favorite hangover meal?

Bacon (undercooked). Eggs (runny). Hash browns (hashed).

What is your favorite midnight snack?

Wendy’s double with cheese.

What restaurant in the world are you most dying to try?

Pierre Gagnaire in Paris.

What kitchen utensil is most indispensable to you?

What’s your favorite place to go (and favorite thing to order) for lunch?

Tongs and a dry towel.

Akai Hana, a Japanese restaurant in Upper Arlington. My regular order is the noodle and sushi combo at lunch or the healthy lunch box.

What is your favorite pot?

12-inch French steel sauté pan.

Whom do you most like to cook for?

Impromptu Sunday afternoon meal or cookout for family and friends.

If you could do one other job, what would it be?

Teacher of high school English or social studies. It’s my family profession.

Splurge meal?

I consider a splurge meaning special food like from Alana’s, The Top, The Refectory, or anywhere I can find a 32-ounce rib eye. My dream splurge would be to attend an offal dinner, but I’m usually working when they are taking place.

Late night/after work meal?

Beer and peanuts at Beck Tavern in German Village.

What do you most value in a sous-chef?

Cup of coffee?

Attention to detail, confidence, independence. I have been very fortunate to work with good sous-chefs over the years.

The staff is top notch at the Starbucks in Bexley.

My regular order: iced coffee with a shot of espresso.

What food trend would you erase from the annals of history?

A greasy spoon meal?

The fact that 40 or 50 years ago, people started putting food in cans and lost touch with local, seasonal foods. The trend to make foods uniform and transportable has cheapened the culinary experienced. There is a whole encyclopedia of flavors within one vegetable to be had.

Chicken fried steak and country gravy.

What one food would you take with you on a desert island?

Groceries?

One hog.

Bread desire?

Sourdough and rye.

Kroger, primarily because of my children.

What is your favorite guilty-pleasure treat?

German chocolate cake, particularly my grandmother’s award-winning recipe used at the restaurant, or a well-made pecan pie.

G. Michael's: 595 S. Third St., Columbus, Ohio 43215; 614-464-0575; gmichaelsbistro.com

What most satisfies your sweet tooth?

Chocolate.

What would you eat at your last meal, if you could plan such a thing?

Something simple: a mid-rare rib eye steak and a baked potato. At the other end of the spectrum, a massive sushi feast. Stick a chopstick in me and I’m done.

Cheeseburger or foie gras?

Cheeseburger with foie gras—I found a loophole.

Shawnie Kelley is a freelance writer living in Upper Arlington with her husband, Kevin Foy. She is the author of the Insiders’ Guide to Columbus, It Happened on Cape Cod and more than two dozen articles for various history and travel magazines. Shawnie teaches travel and architectural classes for Upper Arlington’s Lifelong Learning and is the owner of Wanderlust Tours, a cultural and culinary tour company.

When we say local, we mean it.

For us, local is a way of life. It defines us and every spirit we handcraft from scratch. Local doesn’t mean bringing grain or pre-made spirits in from another state and treating it here in Ohio. It doesn’t mean settling for a less-expensive ingredient from the next state over.

Local means using the world- class resources that are right in our backyard, at all costs. Because local— truly local —supports our communities and creates incredible flavor with a distinctive sense of place.

Yes, it’s that simple.

Public Tours Weds. & Fri. 6pm For reservations contact tours@middlewestspirits.com 1230 Courtland Ave, Columbus OH 43201. Distilled from grain. 40-46% Alc. by vol. © 2010 Middle West Spirits. Columbus OH.

A partnership between a dumpster diver and the queen of the sustainable restaurant movement in Central Ohio

By Marta Madigan | Photography by Kristen Stevens

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ood fries are irresistible. That thought alone— mmm ... a basket of sweet potato fries with spicy mayo at Tip Top—will make your mouth water. (See sidebar for recipe.) But have you ever wondered what happens to the many gallons of oil bubbling away in the restaurant’s fryers? Where does used grease go?

And what happens to the vegetable peels and scraps?

Mike Minnix—president, chief consultant and dumpster diver of Eartha Limited—did more than wonder about those things. Gaining experience as sustainability manager at Concessions by Cox, where others saw trash he saw potential.

Over the past four years Mike has developed and implemented a handful of environmentally friendly programs enabling,

for instance, Super Bowl XLIII and XLIV to go greener. He converted several tons of football food waste into compost for organic gardens. Hundreds of gallons of used vegetable oil were processed into biodiesel fuel. Meals were served on compostable plates and all the recyclables were actually recycled instead of piling up at the landfill.

Combining green solutions with modern technologies, Mike created a successful operation that did not pass unnoticed. In 2009, he picked up the Ohio Achievement Award for Green Business and Innovation. That same year he decided to dive into the sea of waste generated by the local food service industry. He quit his job with Concessions by Cox to open his own Columbusbased environmental company and approach his ideal client.

Outside the Eartha warehouse.

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Our Queen of Green Elizabeth Lessner—CEO and president of Betty’s Family of Restaurants—had dreamed of becoming a “zero waste” business long before she met Mike. She spent her college years in San Francisco, the city that signed the nation’s first law mandating separation of recyclables and compostables from normal trash. Aware of the eco-friendly practices of the West Coast, Elizabeth wanted to roll the three R’s of reduce, reuse and recycle in her new hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

By offering a large variety of beers on tap at her debut restaurant Betty’s, she helped minimize the waste of empty glass bottles. Installing energy-efficient lighting both at Betty’s and at her second-to-open bar, the Surly Girl Saloon, she reduced energy consumption as well as energy bills. Recycling all aluminum, glass, plastic and cardboard significantly reduced the amount of solid waste in each of Elizabeth’s growing family of fun food joints—altogether numbering five. “Everything that comes through a restaurant is not trash,” Elizabeth reasons. “It is a byproduct and still can be used for something else.”

Elizabeth soon earned well-deserved recognition for leading the way in Columbus’s local and sustainable food service industry. She was the first restaurateur to receive a Columbus GreenSpot designation (see sidebar)—becoming the program’s ambassador and helping others to reduce their waste ever since. She won the Central Ohio Emerald Award from the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) and the Green Leader Award from the Ohio Environmental Council.

She was also the 2010 Celebrating Visionaries honoree. Yet her appetite for less waste grew even more. She met Mike.

Guilt-free to Go Both energetic and eco-minded, Elizabeth and Mike hit it off during their first “trash talk.” He knew how to recycle and organize. She in turn was experienced in running a happening chain of bars and restaurants. He wanted to work with organic waste; she couldn’t wait to compost all her kitchen scraps. In no time, they became business partners.

At first, Mike provided Elizabeth consulting services by training her staff and collecting data. “I am a data geek,” he confesses. “Gathering information is vital because you can see where pitfalls lie.” Although many sustainable practices were already in place, he discovered that her takeout containers needed a truly green makeover. “Betty’s Family were using these pretty ‘to go’ boxes,” Mike says. “But they weren’t as sustainable as they could be.”

Selling genuine bio-products has been Eartha’s focus from the very beginning. A new generation of cups, straws, cutlery, plates and clamshell boxes are made of plant material such as corn, palm leaves or bagasse, a fibrous material harvested from sugarcane. Fully compostable—if a fork from Mike’s catalog gets mixed up with organic waste, no worries; it will break down in less than two months. Plastic and Styrofoam, now old school, probably take hundreds of years to decompose— leaving chemical residues as they degrade.

Starting with Elizabeth’s business in 2010, Mike quickly expanded his clientele to over 20 local restaurants. A bunch of bakeries, hotels and big events caterers have been purchasing his green disposable products since then. If you quenched your thirst with beer during Pecha Kucha or the Dublin Irish Festival, chances are you drank it from a PLA, or “corn plastic,” cup distributed by Eartha.

Fork to Farm Compostable service-ware and consulting are just the beginning. Mike and Elizabeth have set their sights on a sustainable future for the local food service industry. No haulers specializing in picking up waste from restaurants in Central Ohio? Eartha had an idea: become one. In order to start filling this market niche, they first had to jump through a series of legal hoops. Minnix realized existing laws Photos from top: Elizabeth Lessner and Mike Minnix; a new generation of cups, straws, cutlery, plates and clamshell boxes made of plant material such as corn, palm leaves or bagasse.

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had to change to make it economically appealing for him and his clients to see value in watermelon rinds and potato peels. Until last winter, all recyclables in Columbus were considered municipal waste and as such subject to fees collected on trash. Say Tip Top (one of five restaurants owned by Elizabeth) would have source-separated its food scraps and hired Eartha to process them locally. The restaurant would still have had to pay $9 per ton in fees to SWACO. “Restaurants generate a lot of heavy waste,” Elizabeth comments. “We didn’t want to put it to the landfill.”

Fortunately, the Green Economic Incentive Plan, approved by SWACO in March 2011, lifted recycling restrictions giving the green light to Mike and Elizabeth. Eartha could now apply to Ohio Department of Natural Resources for a grant, buy trucks and begin recycling and composting. “Our goal is to complete the cycle from farm to fork and back to farm,” Mike explains.

Eartha already collects organic waste from a few restaurants and drives it to an outdoor composting facility and an anaerobic digester—a high-tech power plant that processes kitchen scraps, meat and dairy into energy. The byproduct of such an operation is a fertilizer that can safely enrich the soil of local farms and community gardens, thereby closing the sustainability loop.

Recycling with a Cause The little over a year-and-a-half-old partnership between Mike and Elizabeth already inspires other local green initiatives. On Whittier Peninsula, at Eartha’s headquarters, they cut a symbiotic deal with four friends.

Candle with a Cause handcrafts its boutique candles out of discarded wine bottles that Mike collects from Elizabeth’s restaurants and brings to his warehouse. The bottles are cleaned, de-labeled, cut in half and filled with natural wax sourced from Ohio soybeans. Upcycled glass that otherwise doesn’t have any value is then sold back to Betty’s Family of Restaurants. Adding charm and helping a cause (25% of proceeds go to local nonprofits or charities such as the Jack Roth Fund or Pelotonia) the candles shed light on important movements that are happening all around town.

Eartha’s spacious warehouse and Mike’s big heart allow gently used books to find a new home. Outdated textbooks, newspapers and magazines end up smashed in a bailer and sold on the commodity market together with other recyclables. “All the books that still have a lot of love left to give, we store them here and donate to anybody who wants them,” Mike says. Eartha was recently able to help the Girl Scouts with their project to furnish a children’s library on an Indian reservation in South Dakota.

A diagram of Eartha’s operations.

One Home + Three Commitments = GreenSpot Background courtesy of Anita Musser, manager of Columbus GreenSpot, Department of Public Utilities Launched in 2008, Columbus GreenSpot educates, inspires and recognizes homes, businesses and communities that take steps toward a sustainable lifestyle. The program is open to everyone. To join this constantly growing group of over 2,000 GreenSpot members, all it takes are three commitments. Participants choose one commitment in each of the following three areas: energy conservation, water protection and conservation, and the three R’s of reducing, reusing and recycling.

There are many simple ways to make your home a greener place. Here are three tips from GreenSpot’s manager:

1 Be a locavore: Get seasonal produce from where you live.

2 Say no to plastic: Carry a reusable bag when you shop.

3 Don’t waste water: Run your dishwasher only when it is full.

Following GreenSpot will not only make you more environmentally responsible but will also save on utility bills. Go green today!

To learn more and join, visit columbusgreenspot.org 44

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Facilitating food donation is something that Elizabeth and Mike also want to tackle. “If you are in the restaurant business and choose a charity it should probably be one that feeds people,” Elizabeth believes. Working with big-scale events, Eartha will deliver good, unpurchased food to those in need through the Mid-Ohio Food Bank.

For now they are waiting to expand their fleet of trucks and install a biodiesel processor at their warehouse. Once Eartha starts to collect used vegetable oil from all Elizabeth’s fryers, process it into biodiesel and fuel the trucks, watch out! They plan to service other Columbus restaurants, venues, hospitals, nursing homes and schools. The possibilities seem endless. Eartha might even start selling its own potato-infused biofuel. So next time you delight in a basket of fries at Tip Top— well, you know the story.

Eartha Limited: 371 Maier Place, Columbus, Ohio 43215; 614-221-9046; earthalimited.com

Marta Madigan is a Polish freelance travel and food writer who, as an editor and contributor, helped begin the Polish edition of National Geographic magazine. Among her many NG stories she covered a variety of food-related topics such as Spanish tapas, French cuisine, Polish Christmas traditions and Sonoma and Napa Valley wines. After she moved from Warsaw to Atlanta, she wrote a chapter on Southern cooking for a collective book on international cuisines published in 2008 in Poland. This year she and her husband joined the Columbus GreenSpot program. One of their key commitments is to buy local food.

Sweet Potato Fries with Spicy Mayo Adapted for home scale by Keith Adams,

chef of Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails 2–3 pounds sweet potatoes 1 small jalapeño pepper, minced fine, remove the seeds and ribs 1 small clove fresh garlic, minced fine 1 cup mayonnaise 1 tablespoon Frank’s Red Hot sauce Salt Oil for frying

1 Wash and peel potatoes, placing peeled potatoes in cool water to keep from discoloring. Cut each potato into ¼-inch planks, then lay the planks on their side and cut into ¼-inch fries.

2 Return cut fries to the cool water. Continue until all potatoes are cut. Drain and pat dry.

3 Fry pieces in batches in smoking-hot oil until crispy. Don’t crowd the frying pan or they will become soggy.

4 Remove to paper towel to drain.

Salt immediately to taste.

5 For a creamy, spicy dipping sauce combine mayo, pepper, garlic, Red Hot and a pinch of salt.

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A TASTE off HOME

The Art of Blintz Making Collage Cooking with Mariana Smith

By Tamara Mann Tweel and Charmaine Sutton

I

n a breadline in Moscow, in the 1980s, the artist Mariana Smith fantasized about food. Not one dish, but many: pirozhkis made of puff pastry, veal with roasted cherries, stuffed pigeons, blinis with caviar and plates of luscious fruit puddings. Squeezed tight between other hungry Muscovites, she dreamed up a concert of courses, better suited to the Anastasias and Alexanders of another world than the restrained palate then imposed in the Soviet Union.

Mariana is a printmaker by trade, and an epicurean first by imagination and later by choice. A survivor of political regime change and migration, she has spent decades crafting a canvas and a cuisine that track her adaptation process and give form to a life lived between homes.

The Gilded Canvas Mariana grew up in a ninth-floor apartment overlooking her beloved city. Despite food rations and the daily indignities of religious and political oppression, she remembers Moscow fondly. She loved the urban vistas and the outlying forest, which served as a foraging ground for local residents. Her family, the Cherepanovs, became expert mushroom hunters, picking porcinis, slippery jacks and other varieties found beneath aspen and birch trees. They gathered berries and stone fruits to mix with vodka and pickled other foraged delicacies, intent on saving every last bit of summer for the long winters.

The Cherepanovs never quite accepted the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Relatively well-to-do before 1917, her mother’s family suffered greatly with the coming of communism. Their land was seized for redistribution and their beloved grandfather, a prominent local engineer, disappeared in the night. Her father’s family didn’t fare much better. Formerly merchants, they ended up working in the Siberian oil fields. In the spare and carefully controlled world of the former Soviet Union, the Cherepanovs longed to create a space reminiscent of an earlier era.

Mariana took up Russian folk art, spending her days creating “theatrical and ornate” objects that challenged the industrial surroundings.

Food Follows Form Mariana left Russia in 1990, a year after the Berlin Wall fell, to attend the Columbus College of Art & Design. Although unaware of it at the time, she was part of a massive migration that brought 10,000 individuals from the former Soviet Union to Columbus. In a tiny apartment in a Galloway complex, she spent afternoons tasting the calorie-dense cuisine that peppered Ohio’s highways. She loved “curly fries” and hated “all the brown sodas.” Most of all, she missed the blintzes she used to eat in Moscow, the comforting stuffed crepes filled with sweet cheese and embellished with cherry or apricot preserves.

As her palate adapted to abundance, her eyes became acquainted with American minimalism. At CCAD (where she now teaches), her instructors exposed her to an artwork pared down to its bare components. In the midst of grocery aisles Berry blintzes at Mariana’s.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF © MARIANA SMITH

Horizon, 2010, intaglio printmaking, golf leaf.

overstocked with every kind of food, much of it destined to go to waste, Mariana began to relate to the visual ideals of her teachers.

Soon, her canvas transformed and she began to limit her work, once filled with ornamentations, to a few crucial details.

Today, Mariana begins a work of art with a small collection of visual ingredients. Often, these will come from her life: a memory of home, an image of her son or a striking landscape. She sits with these visual building blocks until they collide, overlap and become something new and whole. On her canvas, she re-creates her own process of migration. She does not romanticize the world she comes from, a world to which she can never return. Rather, she recovers certain parts of her past and matches them with details of her present. “I am always suspended in between,” she says, “But I am trying to define that in-between place…I don’t want to go back.” Her multimedia prints are a working compromise between her past and her present, a physical space designed to transcend the seduction of nostalgia.

PHOTO BY © CHARMAINE SUTTON

For Mariana, food followed form. By the time the whole Cherepanov family moved to Columbus in 2000, she had crafted her own Russian/American cuisine with an aesthetic she likes to call “abundant presence.” Joining her fantasies of 19th century Moscow with her belief in limiting work to its fundamental elements, she begins a meal with a few ingredients, working with them until they become something lush and beckoning, something that contains a mixture of memories rather than a singular vision of home.

When her mother arrived, they began foraging grocery stores, finding new ingredients to layer into traditional Russian recipes.

When Russian farmer’s cheese couldn’t be found, they whipped together heavy cream and mascarpone to fill their blintzes. Soon they discovered two Eastern European grocery stores—Deli Delicious in Bexley and Romashka International Deli in Dublin— for a ready supply of smoked fish. Eventually, the Cherepanovs planted a home garden, where a European plum tree (Prunus domestica) supplies the fruit for their homemade liqueur. edible COLUMBUS.com

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The Blintz Bash On a Friday afternoon, Mariana took a break from her studio to teach us how she brings her artistic process into the kitchen. First, she starts with a few memories and their corresponding ingredients. Then, she matches them with some local flavor and style. For us, she created the blintz bash!

She arrived with two items: a worn bottle of homegrown plum liqueur and a well-used pan. “My mother always says,” Mariana smiled as the burner heated up, “the first blintz is just a clump, the second one can go to distant acquaintances, the third to the family and the fourth to me.” Luckily, she made about 50 as we puttered around sipping and snacking. The kitchen soon transformed into a colorful mess of batter, fruit and dairy. With cutlery in hand, we each began to work with the various ingredients to craft our own version of the perfect blintz. We stuffed them with farmer’s cheese from the Russian deli and fruit cooked with alcohol. We ate the crepes fresh from the oven smothered in butter, topped them with fresh herbs and spiked the batter with apricot preserves. We lined up our creations, sharing our favorite ways to stuff, adorn and chow down on these whimsical treats.

Beneath the exuberance of a meal designed to elicit laughter were the fleeting memories of loss, edible reminders that we all, in some capacity, live between worlds.

Tamara Mann Tweel is a freelance writer and PhD candidate in American History at Columbia University. Born and raised in New York City, Tamara comes from a boisterous clan of exploratory eaters with two passions: family and food. She is excited to bring this spirit to Columbus and discover the many world traditions that are being recreated within our city. Her culinary writing has appeared in such publications as The Washington Post, Icons of American Cooking and Museum.

Charmaine Sutton is a designer with an obsession for all things food-related.

With a background in magazines and architecture, she spends her days honing her skills as a marketer of architecture. As a recent transplant to Columbus, she enjoys exploring town with her husband in search of the perfect bowl of noodles.

Where to Shop All of the ingredients in the following recipes can be found at Columbus grocery stores. But if you’re looking for a little adventure and some specialty treats, visit Deli Delicious in Bexley or Romashka International Deli in Dublin. We highly recommend the farmer’s cheese with sweet raisins and the sweet braised apricot preserves.

Mariana’s Blintz Bash Makes 15 8-inch blintzes Ingredients 3 cups of all-purpose flour, sifted 2 large eggs 2 cups of heavy cream 3 cups of milk 1 teaspoon salt 4 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil Half a potato ½ stick of butter to brush on crepes

Deli Delicious

Romanshka

2177 E. Livingston Ave Columbus, OH 43209 614-235-4600

2400 W. Dublin-Granville Rd. Columbus OH 43235 614-336-8070

1 Combine flour, eggs, half the milk, half the cream and salt, mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Be sure to get all the lumps out. Continue adding the milk and cream until the batter is smooth. Do not whisk or use a food processor; it will make the blintzes rubbery.

2 Pour oil into a saucer. Spear the half potato with a fork and dip it in oil. Use it every time for greasing the pan. (A Cherepanov trick!)

3 Heat the pan. Grease it with the half potato. Pour a quarter cup of batter evenly and thinly in the pan. If it doesn’t pour evenly, the batter is too thick and more milk and cream should be added. Cook until light brown, about 2–3 minutes on each side. Transfer to a plate and rub with butter.

4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 until batter is finished.

For the filling: Experiment with the filling! Put out some fresh fruit, sweet creams, cheeses and preserves for your friends and family to do what they will. Here (at top right) are two fillings that are staples in Mariana’s household:

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Farmer’s Cheese with Sweet Raisins 1 Preheat oven to 350° F.

We are more than just exceptional scones...

2 Mix 1½ cups of raisin farmer’s cheese from Deli Delicious with one egg yolk, a splash of vanilla and half a stick of melted butter.

3 Spoon the desired amount of filling along the lower third of the blintz. Fold the bottom edge away from you to just cover the filling; then fold the two sides in to the center. Roll the blintz away from you a couple of times to make a package, ending with the seam side down.

4 Brush with melted butter, and place in the oven for 20 minutes. Serve warm.

Mascarpone cheese and fresh berries 1 Sprinkle sugar over berries and let sit for 10 minutes.

but some days, the scones are enough!

Bakery · Breakfast · Lunch · Afternoon Tea Monthly Dinners · Private Events

2 Cook berries with apricot jam until berries burst. Add a splash of a sweet liqueur when the heat is off.

3 Mix equal parts mascarpone cheese and whipped cream.

4 Place the blintz on a plate and spread ¼ cup of filling onto blintz. Fold into quarters and top with berries.

PHOTO BY © CHARMAINE SUTTON

What to Drink This year, try planting a stone fruit tree for your own homemade liqueur. Or, you could just buy some fruit at the farmers market.

Plum Vodka 2 pounds plums (The best plums for this liqueur are Prunus domestica.)

1 two-liter bottle of vodka (preferably 100-proof Stolichnaya Blue Label) 2½ cups sugar

1 Wash plums and place in an airtight container. Pour vodka to cover plums and soak in a cool, dark place for 6 weeks.

2 Strain mixture and place vodka and plums in separate airtight containers. Pour the sugar on the plums, cover and keep for 2 weeks in a cool, dark place.

3 After 2 weeks, strain all of the plum juice and put the strained liquid into the vodka container. Seal and keep in cool, dark place for 6 months.

4 Open and serve at room temperature or chilled.

1885 West Fifth Avenue Marble Cliff, Ohio 43212 614. 486. 6464 | cambridgeteahouse.com

Kids blossom and thrive when their classroom is a garden

By Jan O’Daniel | Photography by Catherine Murray

T

hey place yellow calendula petals on their tongues. Then, with mouths open and tongues wagging, they carefully and deliberately chew and taste. Next, they vigorously rub the leaves of a lemon verbena plant, offering up citrus-infused hands almost prayer-like to anyone who will take a whiff. Finally, they push a small wheelbarrow of recently pulled weeds to the compost heap, “mixing the green with the brown” as Farmer Paul Etheridge directs.

“Actually, it’s child labor in action,” says Farmer Paul with a laugh. “We let the kids do as much as possible during the growing season. Sometimes one group of kids will uproot everything the other group just planted. But it’s OK. It’s about the learning experience.”

They are the children of the Franklin County Board of Developmental Disabilities Early Childhood Education & Family Center (ECEFC) Partnership. Farmer Paul is their in-the-garden teacher. And this is their edible schoolyard.

Started some 16 years ago in Berkeley, California, as an outreach program of Alice Waters’ famed Chez Panisse Foundation, there are now thousands of edible schoolyards across the country, including Columbus. The premise of an edible schoolyard is to involve students in gardening experiences that awaken their senses and nurture their appreciation for nourishment, community and stewardship of the land.

These 3-, 4- and 5-years-olds are rife with wonder and the edible schoolyard is fodder for their curiosity. Like all schoolyards, it is certainly a place to play. But at ECEFC, it’s also a place to learn.

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Yes, the learning experience—the core mission of the edible schoolyard.

Left: The children of the Franklin County Board of Developmental Disabilities Early Childhood Education & Family Center tasting calendula petals with Farmer Paul.

By that measure, Columbus’ edible schoolyards are great examples of what is possible in Central Ohio.

Take ECEFC, for example. Each year for the past nine years, the school’s 700 students have made their way into and around the garden.

“It’s a sensory experience for our students, who are a diverse group of children with varying interests and abilities,” says Rebecca Love, ECEFC’s director. “For the younger children out playing, it’s integrated with their motor experiences; for our other students, it’s integrated into their life, physical and social science studies.”

The field-to-table experiences facilitated by Farmer Paul and his cohort, Farmer Molly Helt, help connect the outdoors with the classroom in meaningful ways. The children get ample time in the school’s gardens to explore, plant, water, compost, harvest, save seeds and taste.

ECEFC’s expansive outdoor learning experience began in 2002 when Noreen Warnock, co-founder and director of public policy and community relations for Local Matters, met Mattie James the executive director and CEO of the Child Development Council of Franklin County (CDCFC Head Start), while the two served together on jury duty.

Warnock and James started talking about the disparity between the “haves” and “have nots” when it came to access to healthful, local, sustainable food. As they discussed solutions, Noreen suggested that CDCFC Head Start collaborate with others in the community who were also concerned about local food issues, and apply for a USDA Community Food Security Grant.

They were awarded the grant, which included funds to start gardens at CDCFC Head Start Centers, including the center located at ECEFC. So James asked Warnock to propose the idea of a schoolyard garden to Love, who was in the midst of forming a cooperative partnership with CDCFC Head Start and others.

“We were just building this new partnership,” Love explains, “so I said ‘No. I’m not interested.’ Then I started thinking about [the novel and movie] Field of Dreams—you know, ‘If you build it they will come’—and within an hour, I decided I should at least listen to what Noreen had to say.”

And Love was glad she did.

With funding from the grant, Local Matters launched the Greater Columbus Foodshed Project, which helped create 20 community gardens for CDCFC Head Start families, including the small project at ECEFC known as the Circle Garden.

So named for its shape, the Circle Garden engages ECEFC’s students in growing, picking and enjoying fresh produce such as tomatoes, peppers and lettuce.

It was so successful that Warnock and Love began wondering what could happen if they expanded the food garden into a bigger outdoor learning experience.

Top: Principal Fritz Monroe working in the garden at Brookside Elementary.

Bottom: Watering the garden at ECEFC.

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ECEFC brought in Jean Gordon of Moody-Nolan Inc., and Warnock connected ECEFC with Susan Weber of Integrity Sustainable Planning and Design. Together they imagined and developed a plan for an outdoor leaning environment, which included a larger vegetable garden than the Circle Garden.

Weber helped make the project operational, ensuring that what was implemented would be linked not only to students, but also to staff, faculty, parents and the local community.

“The idea of an edible schoolyard is so much bigger than what plants to plant or how it works with the curriculum,” says Weber. “We already know that when kids are engaged in growing, they’re more open to tasting a diversity of fresh vegetables. We understand that this offers a more natural way of learning.”

Warnock agrees.

“When we start educating through gardening at an early age,” she says, “the kids learn where food comes from; what healthful, fresh food is; and all about our ecosystem. It’s a way of teaching them about healthful practices and wellbeing that can affect their whole lives.”

ECEFC offers students a sustainable learning lab, giving them hands-on botany and biology lessons—even before they know what botany and biology are.

“Who wants to try a flower that tastes like breakfast?” asks Farmer Paul as the children rush to sample the sweet sausage overtones of sage and learn about the herbaceous perennial.

As the children pluck petals off daylilies and sample their sweet essence, Farmer Paul incorporates a little environmental respect into his lesson by instructing the students to say, “Thank you, plant.”

Across town at Brookside Elementary in Worthington, Principal Fritz Monroe has been doing something similar with the Brookside Community Vegetable Garden and Schoolyard Enhanced Learning Program.

In 2007, using a seed grant from Local Matters and enlisting in the help of Weber as project manager, Amy Dutt of Urban Wild Ltd. as landscape designer, and countless teachers, students, staff, neighbors and contractors as laborers, Brookside created a sustainable vegetable garden. Today the garden, which launched in the spring of 2008 just six short months after conception, reaches and impacts both Brookside students and the local community.

“Our edible schoolyard gets the students outside,” says Monroe, “and gives them what author and educator Herb Broda calls ‘a change of pace and place.’ It also gives them a sense of stewardship for the earth. Plus, we use it to support local families. For example, in the fall most of our yield goes to Smoky Row Brethren Church’s food pantry.”

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How to Successfully Build an

The students also get the chance to eat some of the fruits of their labor since Brookside incorporates fresh garden produce into its lunch menu with special events such as Spring Salad Day and Potato Day. Learning. Engagement. Nutrition. These are the ideal harvest of the edible schoolyard.

“We view school gardens and edible schoolyards as community gardens that happen to be on school property,” says Julia Hansel, education manager at Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.

“With our Growing to Green program, we’ve participated in around 20 gardens on school properties in Central Ohio. I think we’re in the game or ahead of the curve when it comes to this kind of work.”

Indeed, says Warnock.

“There are gardens all over the city,” she says, citing the Columbus Community Gardening Map on the Fresh Connect section of Local Matters’ website. “In fact, the editor of Organic Gardening magazine says we’re a ‘hidden gem’ that’s doing more on developing a local food system than many cities around the country. In Columbus, local food and growing more food through gardens is not a trend, it’s a movement.”

Still, there are barriers to creating an edible schoolyard.

“You don’t need a lot of money to start one, but you do need some,” says Warnock. “School and community gardens are a bigger part of transforming our local food system. We just need a little, literally, seed money and we need people who are willing to pass their expertise along to many who want to learn to grow food.”

Hansel agrees.

“Pulling the resources together and making this work happen is still a challenge,” she says. “It’s important to get parents, kids and school staff involved in making a school garden happen. Gardens can come in all shapes and forms, from a container garden in a window to a plot in the ground—all equally valuable in educating children.”

Edible Schoolyard

by Susan Weber, principal at Integrity Sustainable Planning and Design

An edible schoolyard can change the way kids learn. Creating a space that becomes a “yes” and a “do” instead of a “no” and a “don’t” require these key elements: Partner with the principal.

An edible schoolyard project needs approval on an ongoing basis in many areas, including funding requests, participation in grants, inclusion of community members as resources and volunteers, and involvement and buy-in of staff members. In order for that to happen, the school principal must fully understand the parameters of the project and, more importantly, be willing to support it.

Practice deep engagement during planning.

Employ a design and planning process model that includes diverse engagement strategies for both adults and children. Request participation from teachers and staff, especially from areas like cafeteria and maintenance.

Employees in these departments will appreciate being asked and by including them in the process you’ll likely garner their support for the project. Invite neighbors and strategic community members, too, as they often bring great resources and enthusiasm to the table. And, it should go without saying, the children and their parents need to be included as well.

Familiarize yourself with sustainable practices.

Every edible schoolyard project should model—and teach—safe, healthy practices at every level. Make environmentally responsible construction, installation, growing and maintenance practices a requirement of your edible schoolyard project.

Have fun.

The most important resource you can bring to an edible schoolyard project is an active sense of joyful discovery. A fun-filled project always attracts great partners and resources.

Susan Weber Integrity Sustainable Planning and Design 614-402-1188 susanlweber@earthlink.net Children of the ECEFC planting in the garden.

What’s most important, the experts agree, is to assess the needs and dreams of the school and create a garden that’s manageable with the resources available, whether through fundraising, donations or grant money.

Regardless of form, these advocates agree that the function of a schoolyard garden is this: setting the stage for a lifetime of success with healthy habits, healthy bodies, eco-consciousness and life skills management.

Jan O’Daniel is a full-time writer, part-time foodie and sometime cook. She lives, works and eats in Central Ohio with her salad-loving husband under the ever-present eyes of their three catnip-craving cats. Contact her at jan@janodaniel.com.

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Debra Eschmeyer is determined to change how children eat with FoodCorps

By Colleen Leonardi | Photography by Kit Yoon

O

hio native and fifth-generation farmer Debra Eschmeyer brings her regard for hard work and passionate heart to everything she does. Since 2007, Debra and her husband, Jeff, have been the proud owners of Harvest Sun Farm, a 13-acre certified organic produce farm located in New Knoxville, Ohio. Over those years, Debra has worked as a Food & Society Policy Fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy while also serving as the director of outreach and communications for the National Farm to School Network.

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happy endings, and there is no greater joy than working on a program that is a win-win for the health of children, families and communities.”

Currently, Debra is the co-founder and program director of FoodCorps, a new national nonprofit set to launch this fall that seeks to reduce childhood obesity by expanding vulnerable children’s knowledge of, engagement with and access to healthy food. She is also a recipient of the inaugural James Beard Foundation Leadership Awards, recognizing 10 visionaries—including First Lady Michelle Obama—who are creating a more healthful, sustainable and safe food world.

FoodCorps aims to be a win-win by leveraging federal funds and partnering with local groups to provide schools with the peoplepower needed to change their food environment. The program focuses on high-obesity, limited-access communities in states across the country. Like Teach for America in its design of using AmeriCorps as part of the solution, 50 public service members will partner with host and service sites, like specific schools or grassroots nonprofits in the field, at the state-level. Together, they will teach students about food and nutrition, build and tend school gardens and facilitate the integration of local, high-quality food into public schools. In return, FoodCorps will train these members for careers in food, public health and agriculture.

Debra is happy farming in her home state, but it’s with FoodCorps that her grace truly shines through. When I ask her why she loves her work, she cites not one but three reasons: “Because I believe in this program with all my being; I know it works. Because the colleagues I have developed over the years have become like family. And because I love

The goal: Strive to help meet the CDC goal of bringing childhood obesity rates below 5% by 2030. But the hope that FoodCorps will have a significant impact on some of the most pressing issues of our time—children’s health, environmental sustainability and the way we farm, eat and educate—is much more holistic.

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Left: Debra and Jeff Eschmeyer on their 13-acre produce farm in New Knoxville, Ohio.

Q: A:

Q:

A:

Colleen Leonardi: How has your family farm in New Knoxville and your life as a farmer informed the development of FoodCorps?

Debra Eschmeyer: My rural roots in Shelby County, Ohio, helped shape my understanding and appreciation of agriculture, specifically the need to nurture this generation and the next to restore the connections between food, community, land and place. Partly because I grew up on a dairy farm, I was ingrained at a very young age for an appreciation of all the hard work that goes into growing food. I want all children to know who their farmer is, just like knowing your doctor.

Not only because it’s valuable to put a face to who grows your food, but showcasing farmers as public health leaders because food is the gateway to health.

What brought you to work with Farm to School, and what have you learned from being a part of the national network that has informed the founding of FoodCorps?

Q: A:

Q: A:

I was introduced to Farm to School programs in 2005 when the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference was hosted at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. I saw the program as this perfect snapshot of our food system. High-quality local food, nutrition education and hands on learning with school gardens providing for the most vulnerable populations through our educational system—it’s ideal!

While I was working for the National Farm to School Network, I received thousands of requests from around the country saying: “I love the idea of a Farm to School program, but how do I get started in my community’s school? Our budgets are tight and we just don’t have the sweat equity and the labor to pull it off.” So I started working to find answers. Fortunately, the stars aligned and I connected with a group of like-minded young leaders—and the seeds of FoodCorps were planted.

Q: A:

Q: A:

As an organization that aims to address childhood obesity, why is fixing the food in the schools an essential place to start?

Schools—their classrooms, cafeterias and playgrounds—are the logical front lines in our nation’s response to childhood obesity. More than 32 million children eat school food five days a week, receiving more than half their daily calories from school food programs. What we feed our children, and what we teach them about food, affects how they learn, how they grow and how long they will live. Considering that when last studied, only 2% of schoolchildren met the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the nation’s school food environments have significant need for improvement.

Q: A: Q:

A:

FoodCorps service members will be working directly with communities in 10 states across the U.S. Why the regional focus?

When we began our planning year, it was unclear how FoodCorps would fit into the existing patchwork quilt that is the “Good Food” movement.

We’ve since learned that our role––at least in one small but growing area of that quilt––is to be a connecting thread. Rather than reinventing the work of improving school food in each community, we instead embraced a model of collaboration in which we are partnering with local organizations and strengthening them to direct our common work in their communities. This model has allowed FoodCorps to assume a lucky role as a national organization that supports rather than competes with the grassroots groups that make up the current Good Food landscape.

What other kinds of values and shared knowledge are you looking to grow with your work with FoodCorps?

Rebuilding the connections between children and food is about more than giving them access to healthy calories: It’s about education, understanding, enthusiasm and empathy.

You cite Wendell Berry’s “solving for pattern” on your website as one of the main goals of FoodCorps. What solutions do you hope to create and provide to change the pattern of the obesity epidemic?

Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and poet, talks about there being three kinds of solutions:

I think that’s the kind of ripple effect we could get from FoodCorps.

Children benefit from a cycle of mutual reinforcement—from information about what healthy food is, to hands-on engagement with how it grows and what it tastes like, to reliable access to it every day, in the place where 32 million children get more than half their calories: school food.

Prior to beginning service with their host site, FoodCorps service members will receive a week of extensive in-person training in Wisconsin, including a day with Growing Power. MacArthur Fellow Will Allen will share his inspiring story of empowerment through urban agriculture and lead hands-on training in a series of sessions on topics ranging from vermicomposting to building raised beds.

FoodCorps staff will facilitate team building and experts will conduct short courses on school garden and Farm to School implementation.

1 FoodCorps members will conduct food and nutrition education.

2 FoodCorps members will establish or expand school garden programs.

3 FoodCorps members will increase children’s access to and information about healthy food in school cafeterias, offering them regular servings of the nutritious meals they’ve studied and grown.

Just plopping a plate of salad in front of Johnny will not influence his lifelong eating habits. Our goal to improve the school food environment with knowledge of, engagement with and access to healthy food through nutrition education, school gardens and highquality local food is a proven strategy to influence a child’s increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, and positive attitudes towards healthy food.

1 those that deepen the very problem they were supposed to fix, 2 those that just push the problem somewhere else, 3 and then those that “solve for pattern.” So instead of moving the problem around, these real solutions, systemic solutions, cause more solutions.

What will a day in the life of a FoodCorps service member look like?

Once in the field at their sites, service members will receive ongoing training from state and local partners and will be paired with a professional mentor from the food and health field. As they conduct their 1,700 hours of service, FoodCorps members will concentrate their efforts in three areas:

Why the trio of goals? How do all three simultaneously address childhood obesity?

There are model programs that have been doing this work in places like Montana, Wisconsin and Iowa––and they’ve achieved incredible results. Kids in these programs understand what good nutrition is, and they change the way they eat, adopting healthy habits that last a lifetime. It’s just a matter of scaling these efforts up. Imagine––if we put this idea in motion at a national scale—if we get these solutions to start to snowball—think of where we could be in 50 years. Think of what it could mean for childhood obesity, for environmental sustainability, for the future of farming, if we reimagined food service through the lens of food and service.

Q: A:

In your eyes, what could America look like 20 years from now, if we all work with the belief that all children deserve a healthy future?

I envision a nation of well-nourished children: children who know what healthy food is, how it grows and where it comes from, who have access to it every day. I believe that children who are immersed in a healthy food environment at a young age will learn better, live longer and liberate their generation from the painful and costly epidemic of diet-related disease.

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Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Where do we need more leadership on the issues of childhood obesity and food justice?

We need more leadership from the youth and need to create an environment where young leaders can be heard. Not only are all the founders of FoodCorps in their early 30s, but the upcoming generation has read volumes on Good Food, social justice and the value of service to community, and they are overflowing with energy for hands-on experiences. We need to make room for them to learn and grow and become the leaders of tomorrow.

What is food justice and how is FoodCorps one of many organizations working to achieve it?

In sum, all calories are not created equal—we cannot have social justice without food justice. I see the lunchroom as an opportunity for an even playing field without racial and economic barriers to overcome the injustice of poor health, poverty and food insecurity.

What are some emerging trends in the Farm to School movement that you’re excited about over the next few years?

Institutionalizing the Farm to School program into the school food environment so it’s no longer a program, but just the way it is! The following have helped make that happen: $5 million per year available through a Farm to School Competitive Grant Program made possible through the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, October as National Farm to School Month, USDA Farm to School Team & Economic Research Service providing resources for program development, and dozens of states with Farm to School Coordinators in their Department of Agriculture, Health and/or Education.

How can the rural and urban communities of Ohio improve upon their food to school relationships and networks?

Simple: Talk more. Develop stronger and deeper relationships between farmers, food service and the community. A conversation is the seed to a better tomorrow.

FoodCorps is the product of a two-year planning process, engaging more than 4,000 stakeholders. The co-founders of FoodCorps include Debra, Crissie McMullan, Curt Ellis, Jerusha Klemperer, Ian Cheney and Cecily Upton. FoodCorps was developed under the auspices of the National Farm to School Network, the umbrella organization that connects 2,000 school garden and Farm to School programs around the country.

Now an independent 501(c)(3) headquartered in New York City, FoodCorps is made possible by the generous support of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps), the Woodcock Foundation, the Claneil Foundation, the Wallace Genetic Foundation and anonymous private donors.

To learn more about FoodCorps and how you can apply for next year, visit foodcorps. org, or our website to find the full interview with Debra.

Deb walking the rows of vegetables on her farm in New Knoxville, Ohio.

breads d pastries sweets d coffee sandwiches soups d salads vegan g specialties breads d pastries THE ANGRY sweets BAKER d coffee 891 Oak Street sandwiches Columbus, OH 43205 soups p d salads 614-947-0976 vegan specialties www.theangrybakerote.com

Food Matters Offers a Taste of a Healthier Way

By Adam Fazio On a muggy, bright Tuesday morning at the Hoover Y-Park in Lockbourne, Ohio, a group of campers milled around the entrance to Shelter One. Jesse Hickman and Christine Annarino, both food educators from Local Matters, filled plates with crisp fresh cucumbers, red and green bell peppers, raisins, lettuce leaves, carrot coins and glistening slices of local strawberries.

Anticipation was growing among the students who all wanted to know, “Are we going to get to eat that?”

This particular Tuesday was the first day of the summer session of Food Matters, weekly lessons about nutrition, cooking and ecology provided by Local Matters. This year, more than 1,000 preschool and elementary-aged students will have the opportunity to experience this hands-on curriculum designed to teach them about where their food comes from, and give them the tools to make healthy choices in their own lives.

For many students, the hands-on nature of the program is key to its success.

Elizabeth Bolen, program manager of Food Matters, explains: “I love the hands-on parts of the lessons because I know that’s really reaching the children.” In many of the Food Matters lessons, students use plastic knives to chop tomatoes for stir-fry or salsa, or to cube mango and pineapple for fruit salad. “When I see the kids doing that and their eyes just light up, for me that’s very satisfying as a teacher.”

Parents are often amazed that their children will eat fruits and vegetables after the Food Matters program that they wouldn’t have tried before. This is

particularly true for students who are exposed to fruits and vegetables through the ecology portion of the curriculum. In one lesson on native foods of the Americas, students learn about “the three sisters” —corn, beans and squash—and perform a skit that explores the way these three plants grow together: the corn stands tall and provides a sturdy pole for the beans to grow, while the squash stays low, providing shade and protection for the other plants. After learning about how these foods grow, how they have been used historically and how to prepare them, students are eager to try the dishes they make in class.

In addition exposing students to a broad range of fruits and vegetables, Food Matters gives students the language they need to talk about the healthfulness of the foods they eat and encourages them to discuss the issue with their parents and caregivers. The father of a Food Matters student at G. Tyree Learning Center in Weinland Park explained: “Because of Local Matters I think that [my son] has become a lot more conscious about what he’s eating, and he’s definitely started asking a lot more questions about where food comes from and the health factor.”

Local Matters is now trying to integrate the whole family into the conversations about food and nutrition. It currently reaches the parents and teachers of Food Matters students through weekly newsletters about the program with recipes and nutrition information, hosts regular workshops and plans to begin offering cooking courses for adults as well. This approach increases the chances of success of Food Matters because it gives parents the resources to cook healthful meals at home, thereby reinforcing the material students learn in their classrooms.

To learn more about Food Matters, visit local-matters.org.

A home cook's Diary

Green with Envy Fall greens for a contemporary crop of home cooks Story and Photography by Molly Hays

I

don’t like greens; I adore them. Fall greens—kales and collards, chards and mustards—are absolutely chock-a-block with vitamins. I worry, though, that all of this healthy-glow banter might get in the way of mass adoration. We’re funny in this country—all unnecessary dichotomy, thinking good-for-you and good-to-eat are two different camps. Silly us.

I thought of this when I had the good fortune to visit with Lisa Schacht, co-owner of Schacht Family Farms. We talked of her family’s 120 tillable acres, of farming in Canal Winchester, of constant innovation in the face of change. We talked of their greens, hardy fall varieties, of collards and rape greens and three kinds of mustard. We talked of how Schacht’s U-pick greens customers have changed.

Twenty-plus years ago, to hear Lisa tell it, Schacht’s main market was an older, resourceful, greens-literate generation. Deeply grounded in the tradition of long-cooked greens, of gathering in the fall, of putting up for winter, these women would clean out six acres of leaves.

Today, this generation has passed. Greens acreage has gone down, but efficiency is up, so net demand may have only nudged down a bit. This heartened me, deeply. It is no small thing to pass the baton.

Schacht’s new greens customers are a mixed lot: different ages, professions, ethnic backgrounds. Some come for the leaves; others for the stems. Some pickle. Some preserve. As many preparations as there are people who pick them. There’s diversity there, and therein lies my hope: The original U-pick customers may be gone, but a new generation of greens fans have taken their place.

Count me among them.

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I can’t recall when exactly I fell for greens, only that I loved them first and foremost for their flavor. On their own, they bring a bright fresh minerality, sometimes rimmed—depending on the variety—with a faint spicy, or bitter, or oxalic edge.

I could eat dark leafy greens several times a week, and often as not, I do. Choosing a favorite dish is like choosing a favorite child: hopeless— and, anyway, entirely moot. But here is a lovely I always return to: kale crostini, or in our vernacular, “those greens on toast.”

I suppose it looks like an appetizer, but we’ve always called it dinner, since no one can ever eat just one toast. There’s the base of barely crisped baguette. The plump, snowy layer of creamy ricotta. And then, the main event, the heart of the matter: a swipe of deeply savory, velvety kale. It’s a little like pesto in assembly, this kale, blitzed after braising until it goes plush. But without nuts or cheese, its flavor’s more pure, which is not to say lacking, not even close. There’s a gold puddle of olive oil for supple richness, plus garlic and chili for punch and spine.

And—shhhhh, don’t tell—anchovies, which entirely disappear and completely make the meal.

Have greens’ impeccable rep kept you away? Have you never hurried along summer, antsy over fall greens? I envy you. You are in for a treat.'

Molly Hays graduated from the University of Washington with two degrees, one Mellon Fellowship, and no idea when to buy a melon. Since moving to Ohio in early 2009, Molly and her family of five have been getting to know Columbus one ice cream scoop at a time. Molly writes about food and life at remedialeating.com.

Greens on Toast with Fresh Ricotta Inspired by Italy in Small Bites, Carol Field

Schacht Family Farm U-Pick Greens

Yield: 1 generous cup kale pesto

When: mid-late September through late October*

Buy the freshest whole-milk ricotta you can; small-batch ricotta outshines mass-produced by a mile, here. Stir leftover kale pesto into eggs, soup or pasta.

Where: Schacht Family Farm, 5950 Shannon Rd.

5 tablespoons olive oil 5 large garlic cloves, sliced 5 anchovy fillets Generous pinch Aleppo or red pepper flakes ½ teaspoon salt 2 bunches kale, washed, ribs removed 12 ounces whole-milk ricotta 1 baguette Additional olive oil

Prepare Kale Roughly chop kale into 2-inch slices. Blanch in well-salted boiling water 1 minute, beginning count when water returns to the boil. Drain, and set aside.

Canal Winchester, OH 43110. Phone: 614-837-4663 or 614-833-1932; schachtfarmmarket.com What: collards, kale, turnip greens, rape greens and

three varieties of mustard greens How It Works: Schacht provides large (12- by 24-

inch) drawstring bags, and opens its greens fields to picking. Customers pick their choice of varieties, fill their bags to capacity and pay a flat fee of $4 per bag. *Call ahead to confirm availability and dates.

Collards: Collards are a large, flat, round-leafed green

Pour olive oil into a large, heavy, lidded skillet, and add garlic to cold oil. Turn heat to medium, and gently heat garlic in oil until fragrant, gold-edged and shimmering, 5–8 minutes. Add red pepper and anchovies, mashing fillets with a fork against pan. Cook, stirring, 30 seconds.

with a mild flavor and an inedible stem. Collards are particularly thick, and benefit from a minimum of 15–20 minutes of cooking to soften.

Add blanched kale, toss well to combine and braise over low-medium, stirring occasionally, 10–15 minutes.

Kale: Kale is a mild-flavored green with an inedible stem.

Kale can be curly- or flat-leafed and comes in a wide range of shades, from gray-blue to purple to deep emerald green.

Crostini Meanwhile, prepare crostini. Preheat oven to 350° and place rack in middle. Drizzle ½-inch baguette slices with olive oil, arrange in single layer on sheet pan and bake 10 minutes, until slices are gold-edged and crisp but still soft in the center. Set aside.

Turnip Greens: Young turnip greens have a sweet, mildly spicy flavor and stems tender enough to cook with the leaves. Mature turnip greens have a more pronounced spicy flavor, and should be stripped of their tough stems.

To Finish:

Mustard Greens: Mustard greens are the most assertive

Purée braised kale with stick blender or food processor, stopping to scrape sides and incorporate errant leaves, until smooth, velvety and nearly whipped, like pesto only more so, about 2 minutes.

Taste for salt and heat, and season further if needed. Place kale in one bowl, ricotta in another, and serve with crostini. Spoon cheese onto bread and greens onto cheese, thick and high as you dare.

greens here, with a pronounced mustard-like heat that holds up to cooking. Like turnip greens, they have an edible stem when young; large, mature leaves may need their stems removed.

Behind the BOTTLE

Brothers Drake Meadery The honeyed taste of success from locally grown ingredients

By Megan Shroy | Photography by Jessica Opremcak

I

n ancient Babylon, a bride’s father supplied his new son-in-law with all the mead, or honey wine, he could drink in one lunar month— hence the term “honeymoon.”

Mead, which is wine made from honey rather than grapes, is an unfamiliar drink to many. Yet here in Columbus a local meadery is brewing up some pretty incredible blends that would make for quite the honeymoon, Babylonian or otherwise.

Brothers Drake Fine Mead, originally started by brothers Eric and Woody Drake, is located in Weinland Park just outside the Short North. As the sole developer of mead in the Central Ohio area, Co-owner and Head Mead Maker Woody Drake is always looking to educate people about the unique flavor you find in mead.

Now, with a new location and a new tasting room, the folks behind Brothers Drake have the opportunity to introduce locals to a drink they probably haven’t heard of.

“Basically, people don’t consider mead because they don’t know what it is,” said Woody. “We are on a mission to change that.”

Brothers Drake officially opened in June 2008, though Woody has been experimenting with mead since the early ’90s.

“I started brewing my own beer, mainly as a hobby,” Woody said.

“I bought a book called The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing and discovered mead. When I went to the store to buy it, I couldn’t find the stuff and I knew I had to try to make my own.”

According to Woody, the process is much like brewing beer or making wine. “Mead at its simplest form is honey, water and yeast; after that, the fermentation takes over.”

It is a process he’s gotten down to a science. Since discovering his passion for mead over 16 years ago, Woody has turned his hobby into an awardwinning business. Developed through a two-step fermentation process, Brothers Drake Mead can take anywhere from six months to a year and a half to complete.

Woody says that it’s all about finding the best ingredients and the right equation—what started as learning by trial and error turned into quite the science. His recipes have altered over time and, as with wine, the final product will vary based on the ingredients.

“Our goal is to be as local as possible,” said Oron Benary, co-owner and general manager at Brothers Drake. “We recently started exclusively sourcing our honey from Marysville; we’re also getting our lavender and fruit locally.

Basically, we have made it a serious priority to source our ingredients closer to where we’re selling our product.” According to Benary, the company’s local philosophy is what makes the business unique.

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Left: Mead in the making.

Left to right: Orlan Clasen, production intern; Woody Drake, co-owner and mead maker; Sarah Jones; Oron Benary, co-owner and general manager; Eric Allen, director of sales.

Sarah Jones pouring mead.

“Brothers Drake will not grow outside of the greater Columbus area.

That is our philosophy, the principal on which our business is founded,” he said. “We all live in this area; when you live close to where you work it creates a sense of community. This area is hip, this area is fun, and mead is supposed to be hip, fun.”

Woody says he imports only the ingredients he can’t find in Ohio— exotic flavors like eucalyptus, blood orange and wildflower. The variety of fruit and spices come together beautifully.

A perfect example is their Apple Pie bottle, made from a custom blend of locally grown apples, fermented with rich spices and honey. The recipe uses an organic cinnamon from Vietnam that tastes so warm you’ll feel like you’re biting into fresh pie.

Talk about perfect for fall.

“This mead is developing a cult-like following,” said Woody. “You can drink it cold for dessert or even warm it up and serve in a mug.”

However, mead isn’t just an after-dinner drink. A common misconception is that all mead is sweet, and that’s not the case.

it can be served with appetizers, paired with fish or poultry for dinner or could be served with dessert like fruit or cake.

The Wild Ohio variety is Woody’s first exclusively local bottle.

A combination of Ohio wildflower honey, yeast and “pure craftsmanship,” Woody says this simple flavor is another great complement to most foods.

“I take Wild Ohio to people who’ve never tasted mead. And they love it,” said Eric Allen, director of sales for Brothers Drake.

Allen, who conducts tastings around the city, encourages those unfamiliar with mead to come and sample a variety of flavors. “You have to have a sampler. If you’ve never had mead before, you have to develop your palate. This is an entirely different experience than wine, than beer,” he said.

Since it relocated earlier this year, Brothers Drake has gotten a lot of street traffic, typically a dozen or two people nightly. “Community festivals are big for us, Gallery Hop or Comfest, but we have regulars too—those who just stand at the bar and drink,” said Benary. “In Europe communities are much tighter because people meet and gather together, that’s how we want our bar to be … come, socialize, talk, exchange.”

According to Woody, it is amazingly customizable.

“Chefs have come to us and said, ‘Here is a new dish I’m making, what can I pair it with?’ This is a whole new genre of beverage and there’s something for everyone—for every dish.”

Latitude 41 recently started serving a pear poached in Brothers Drake VO Mead on its dessert menu—described as a taste of Belgian waffle, pear Riesling sorbet and almond praline feuilletine.

Woody believes that once people discover mead, they will learn that it stands up well to food, even to fresh meats. He is quick to point out that it offers the benefit of wine without the bitter tannins.

“Wine drinkers who don’t like the aftertaste of tannins can turn to mead,” he said. However, Drake is confident that wine lovers can enjoy it just as well.

One unique flavor called Pillow Talk incorporates lavender and chamomile. According to Woody, the flavor in the wine is so versatile

You can stop by Brothers Drake tasting room Wednesday and Thursday 4–10pm, and weekend nights until 1am. Or find it at local retailers like Whole Foods, Vino 100 and the North Market.

Best of all, with prices starting at $20 a bottle, you won’t have to rely on your father-in-law to pick up the bill.

Brother’s Drake Meadery: 26 E. 5th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43201; 614-388-8765; brothersdrake.com

Megan Shroy is a writer, publicist and self-proclaimed “Columbus Guru,” authoring the blog Columbus a la Mode, which covers trendy restaurants, events and hot spots in the capital city. During college she traveled abroad, studying Italian food, wine and culture at the Umbra Institute in Perguia, Italy.

Megan earned a B.A. in communication from Wittenberg and received a double minor in journalism and business management. Since, she has been growing as both a writer and a community activist. She resides in Grandview, Ohio, with her husband Brent.

edible COLUMBUS.com

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edible ADVERTISERS Please look for a free copy of Edible Columbus each season at the businesses marked with a star. You can also subscribe to the magazine at ediblecolumbus.com.

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Dental Reflections* 614-459-0011 dentalreflections4kids.com

Franklin Park Conservatory*

Snowville Creamery 740-698-2340 snowvillecreamery.com

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Cambridge Tea House*

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Photo Kitchen 614-309-3515 photokitchen.net

Purely Simple Raw 614-404-5366 purelysimpleraw.com

Shaw’s Restaurant & Inn 740-654-1842 shawsinn.com

Whole Foods Market* wholefoodsmarket.com

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Worthington Inn* 614-885-1283 worthingtoninn.com

Yoga on High* 614-291-4444 yogaonhigh.com

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edible COLUMBUS.com

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Last SEED

Resurrecting

Kohlrabi

By John Gutekanst

“Nowadays, not many folks know what this is,” Matt says, pulling at a kohlrabi. “In the olden times, farmers gave this beauty a lot of respect.”

The ostrich-egg-sized bulb Matt holds is spiked with long, skinny stems that curve upwards to the broad leaf they support. The root looks too small to support all this weight.

Matt greets me with his trademark smile and a strong sandpaper handshake that only a farmer can have. It’s only 10am and his shirt and hat are already dirty from this laborious work. As we walk down the perimeter of this lush field, the rows of taupe-colored soil peek out below a forest of soonto-be-spent plants. In the wet furrow in front of me is a hose system that dribbles fresh spring water to a row of the bulbous purple and green kohlrabi of the Vienna variety.

“First, it’s a double crop. It comes up in the spring and now, the fall. That was very important for oldtime subsistence farmers. The tuber grows above the ground away from rot and burrowing pests, which was a huge advantage to pioneers who grew vegetables without pesticides.” Matt says. “Plus this offers 140% of daily recommended vitamin C, reducing scurvy, it has a lot of potassium, and you can boil the leaves like kale.”

Over the past 30 years in restaurants, I’ve watched chefs treat kohlrabi like a second-string vegetable.

The two most widely used culinary interpretations I’ve witnessed were either as broth, (with more chicken stock than juice) or a mushy mashed pile (with more butter than nutty flesh.) Even today, after perusing numerous vegetarian cookbooks, if there is a reference to kohlrabi at all, it’s as matchsticks with a radish salad or as … guess what?

Yes, a broth. One of my cookbooks even instructs the unthinkable: “”Never buy kohlrabi that is larger than a golf ball.”

Despite all the wives’ tales about this crunchy vegetable, the tangy, sweet cabbage taste and applelike texture are perfect for so many preparations.

After using kohlrabi for years, I’ve found that the larger bulbs that often weigh as much as a grapefruit have a mature woody pear texture and the flavor of a turnip or rutabaga. These larger kohlrabis are my favorite because of the amount of flesh they present while roasting slices in a 500° pizza oven. This creates a beautiful golden hue perfect under heat with dusted Parmesan, while the smaller bulbs get dark brown because they contain more sugars.

Kohlrabi is spectacular with extra-virgin olive oil, dill, broccoli and lemon or sesame oil and Tamari soy sauce. The smaller purple bulbs have a tangier up-front taste and a cauliflower back-palate linger that makes the flavor really pop when roasted and paired with Gruyere cheese. (My secret affinity is with chicken livers, but that’s just the carnivore in me.)

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“But is it ugly—kinda like the monkfish of the vegetable world.” I chuckle.

PHOTO BY © JOHN GUTEKANST

“Respect, why?” I ask.

Kohlrabi is indeed an important vegetable in the rest of the world. The name is German for “cabbage-turnip” and its origin is believed to be Northern Europe. In Italy, it is called Cavolo Rapa and a favorite in the Puglia region, where it is boiled and dressed with butter or Mascarpone cheese or olive oil and vinegar. In India it is called Ganth-gobi or “knotted cabbage” and served with mustard oil, ginger, chilies, coriander, cumin and turmeric. But nowhere else in the world is it used more than in the Kashmir region, where it is called Manj and is the most eaten vegetable in every household.

As we walk back to my car with my organic booty, Matt says, “Sometimes, I just take it out of the ground and eat it like an apple with a spritz of lemon and salt.” I thank Matt for the wonderful hospitality and drive off tempted to grab one from the back seat and take a bite. But no, I’m gonna save it for a great pizza, with chicken livers this time.

John Gutekanst is the owner of Avalanche Pizza Bakers in Athens, Ohio. He has won 10 international awards for culinary excellence, including Best Pizza in the U.S.A. at the World Pizza Championships in Italy. He has appeared in Pizza Today, Food Arts, Wine Spectator, National Geographic and on the Food Network. Learn more about Avalanche Pizza at avalanchepizza.net.

Top: John's kohlrabi before being prepared for pizza.

Bottom: A growing kohlrabi plant.

PHOTO BY © CAROLE TOPALIAN

I

t’s late August, but Starline Organics is still producing the last bodacious vegetables of the season without the use of herbicides, chemical fertilizers or genetically modified seeds. Matt and Angie Starline’s farm sits on a plateau above the Hocking River near Athens, Ohio. This autumn day I’m here for a misunderstood vegetable to use in my pizzeria: kohlrabi, or what most Americans usually refer to as, “What’s that?”

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