FOOD COLUMN

ZERO FOOTPRINT | EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD | SLOW FOOD WORTHY GOALS

Words by Josh Niernberg | Photo by Cat Mayer

We are coming to the end of yet another busy summer. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of our scheduled events. Last week I was one of a group of chefs called the Colorado Five who were cooking an eight-course Japanese Kaiseki-themed menu to help raise money for charity. This event was held at Knapp Ranch in Edwards and it was the most beautiful table setting I’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of. The FIVE team used Colorado-grown ingredients, Colorado wines and spirits and Colorado themes throughout the ambitious menu inspired by Chef Bryan Redniss of The Rose in Edwards. The previous week, the team was at the Crested Butte Food & Wine Festival. We were raising money for the Crested Butte Center for the Arts by cooking a menu inspired by European ski culture. Swiss and French traditional classics reimagined with — you guested it — Colorado ingredients. In midJuly, I was in Denver with the FIVE cooking at the Colorado Fare party at Slow Food Nations; their motto is “Good, Clean and Fair” food for all, and the unofficial theme of the event was how. If you aren’t already familiar, Slow Food Nations is an annual festival which takes place in downtown Denver. This year there were 30,000 participants over the week of events.

One of those events was the Slow Food Chefs Summit which was hosted by a panel of experts within the field of responsibly-sourced food. If you have been an avid reader of this #thenewwest column in Spoke+Blossom, it should come as no surprise that I am an avid supporter of the Slow Food Movement and a member of the Slow Food

Chef’s Alliance. This panel was important to me as two of the speakers of the panel, Alice Waters and Anthony Myint, were there to promote their work within sustainable agriculture. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse has pioneered local and sustainably-sourced food for over 40 years and created the Edible Schoolyard Project in 1995. The Edible Schoolyard, in a nutshell, is an outline that allows students to farm vegetables for use within the schools, then compost from the school’s cafeteria to help sustain the farm. Anthony Myint of Mission Street Food has been working to push this agenda one step further with the ZeroFoodprint initiative: a program allowing restaurants to analyze their carbon footprint, then offsetting that footprint to carbon neutral through credits used to support community and statewide composting projects.

In July, our restaurants made a commitment to moving towards a carbon neutral model through ZeroFoodprint. However, here in western Colorado, the infrastructure doesn’t yet exist to allow us to do as much as we could be/ should be. On one hand, here we are, all of us collectively in a day and age that our convenience store salads are locally sourced. We are able to source local and regional ingredients (more on regional sourcing soon) from the least expensive menu item, our sweet corn ice cream to a $300 per person seven-course Japanese-themed dinner on a mountaintop outside of Vail. On the other hand, our farmers are doing all they can to keep up with the never-ending demand of more food, higher yields and rising costs. Somehow what we’ve all been creating to improve our economies and provide better products to our guests is also taking resources from our soil and is only replenished by our dwindling water supply.

Grand Junction, like most smaller western Colorado communities, currently does not have a commercial community composting facility in place. Composting is the easiest, least expensive and ultimately probably the only way to improve soil health by introducing life (microbes) back into the soil which we farm upon. The ability to increase soil biodiversity allows us to grow better produce and at a lower cost, but it also contributes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. If 50 restaurants/coffee shops/ universities/ bars throughout our region were to compost our food waste, we could transform the small farms that support us.

Let’s take that one step further. The five farms we work with the most within the restaurants combined probably total less than 25 acres combined. Meanwhile the small hemp farm down the street is likely 50 acres. I’ve written about CBD in the Western Slope in the past — we are having an absolute boom of hemp farms, all of which rely on soil health and biodiversity. Let’s enlarge that 50 commercial composting accounts into 500 households and add the acreage being converted to hemp to continue to help offset our carbon emissions and improve our air quality in doing so. In other words, let’s take inspiration from the public lands which surround us and do our part to leave no trace before we love our local land to death! :

ZeroFoodprint: zerofoodprint.org Edible schoolyard: edibleschoolyard.org Slow Food: slowfoodusa.org

THE MANY BENEFITS OF R.E.S.T. FLOAT

Words by Kimberly Nicoletti | Photo courtesy Body Therapeutics

Warm water envelops your entire body as you slide into the shallow, salty aquatic tank. As you float, your body becomes weightless. The outside world slips away; you’re sheltered from random noise, scents and visual stimuli. Muscles loosen as they cease to fight gravity. Your body feels so expansive that your mind can’t help but follow.

Float therapy, also known as Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST), is becoming a popular way to not only de-stress, but also heal from chronic pain, addiction, injuries, illness and emotional issues, as well as expand consciousness in meditative states. REST researchers have found that removing outside stimuli promotes the meditative state of stillness, mental clarity and improved thought processes.

Dr. John Lilly, a neurophysiologist, developed the first floatation tank in 1950 and perfected it into its modern form in the 1970s. He invented today’s 8.5-foot long, 4- to 5-foot wide “pod” filled with over 1,000 pounds of Epsom salts to investigate what happens to conscious activity in the brain when external stimuli ceases.

While some pods and open floatation pools do offer soft music and colored lighting, the main premise of floating revolves around sensory deprivation and weightlessness.

Removing external sounds, visuals and aromas gives us a much-needed break from daily sensory overload. The silent environment significantly reduces stressors upon the central nervous system, allowing the body to settle into a peaceful state and balance itself chemically and metabolically. The abundant Epsom salts also support physical health.

In addition to floating to promote physical healing, many people use it for spiritual or meditative purposes; floating helps the brain deepen into a theta state, which often results in creative inspiration, insights, vivid memories and feelings of serenity and oneness, accompanied by the release of endorphins.

FLOATING AWAY WHAT AILS YOU

Floating helps people physically and emotionally as they absorb magnesium, which the majority of Americans are deficient in, says Catalina Carrion-Kozak, who helped open VIVE Float Studio in Frisco. Skin pores easily absorb the magnesium and sulfate in Epsom salts. Magnesium regulates more than 325 enzymes, reduces inflammation, helps prevent VIVE Float Studio 720 Summit Blvd. artery hardening and aids Ste 101A, Frisco muscle and nerve function. 970.668.0136 Sulfate helps flush toxins and 50 Steele St. forms proteins in joints, brain Ste. 110, Denver 303.377.8483 tissue and the walls of the vivefloatstudio.com digestive tract. Dream & Dreams Float Spa

Carrion-Kozak suffered 70 W. Benchmark Road, Avon from such severe rheumatoid dreamsfloat.com arthritis she had days where 970.364.3801 she couldn’t even get out of bed Body Therapeutics — and she lost jobs because & Medical Massage 2500 Broadway, Grand Junction of it. She hadn’t snowboarded bodytmm.com for nearly five years, but 970.644.5255 after floating once a week for Blue Mesa six months, she successfully 24 N. Uncompahgre Ave. returned to snowboarding. Montrose

“Through float therapy, I bluemesafloat.com 970.964.4488 was able to dive deep into what are the most important things for my health, and one of those was floating — and the magnesium helped me absorb water better,” Carrion-Kozak says.

Dimitar Minkov, owner of Dream & Dreams Float Spa in Avon, says floating provides “one

of the biggest benefits” for chronic pain issues, including arthritis and fibromyalgia.

“All those joints and muscles are relaxing, and the effect lasts days,” Minkov says.

People love floating after workouts, because once weight is removed from strained bones, joints and muscles, blood flows more efficiently, so they recover from physical exertion much quicker.

Paul Copper, owner of Blue Mesa Float Center in Montrose, opened his studio after discovering that floating alleviated his nerve pain from stump neuroma. He had tried just about every treatment, from injections and surgery to energy healing.

“Floating is the most effective and most instant thing [for pain relief],” Copper says.

“With 1,400 pounds of Epsom salts, the effects on the body alone are amazing and leave our guests feeling free of aches and pains,” says Megan Kingsbury, owner of Body Therapeutics in Grand Junction. Her float center offers a different form of floatation; rather than using pods, which some claustrophobic people avoid, (though once they see the 4-foot high pods, they do tend to relax, according to pod owners), Body Therapeutics employs 8-foot round pools under 9-foot ceilings.

Floating can also aid in treating addiction. Carrion-Kozak’s friend floated at VIVE to kick a prescription drug addiction, since floating releases endorphins that can ease withdrawal symptoms.

“Float therapy gave her the strength to go through that,” she says. “It allows you to go through some really tough things that you’re going through in your mind. It gets you to a theta state, which is a super-creative state.”

VIVE has accommodated Olympians and Para Olympians, who use floating to enhance visualization before competitions, because in the theta state, the brain becomes more receptive to suggestion. They also use it for post-competition recovery.

And, floating helps emotionally. A study by Laureate Institute for Brain Research showed floating reduced symptoms of PTSD, anxiety and depression by 50 percent after just one float, likely due to increased levels of dopamine and endorphins and reduced levels of stress-related neurochemicals. Both Copper and Minkov said many of his clients find relief from anxiety.

“People who’ve been struggling to make it through the day, after floating, they’re way better and able to function,” Copper said.

Most everyone — from pregnant women seeking relief from back pain, or people who are overly sensitive to stimuli, to people searching for higher visions — seems to benefit from floating.

“It gives more resources to your brain because for the first time in your life your brain is not taking care of any noises or light,” Minkov says. “It doesn’t have to think about fighting gravity. It clears up your mind like nothing else.”

Every float differs each time a person relaxes into the buoyant, 10-inch deep water because the brain responds to the theta state differently.

“Some floats, I have crazy visuals,” CarrionKozak says.

Even without reaching the theta state, Epsom salt does wonders for the physical body — as does floating weightlessly.

Floating has so many benefits, it’s no wonder it’s becoming more popular to float your troubles away. :