Going With The Grain - Harvesting Local Wheat

Against most culinary adages, I'm going to recommend that you begin cutting with the grain. Not meat of course! But locally harvested, indigenous, grains. Last week's article was about salt; this week, we're talking about 'the salt of the earth’.

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There is next to nothing that we consider as simply satisfying and as fundamentally necessary as bread. When we're doing well, we're the breadwinners and the upper crust, when we're being punished; we eat nothing but bread and water. In recent years we've seen the locavore movement devour vegetables, fish and grass-fed meat, so grains must be the next great frontier.

These grain pioneers were out in force, earlier this month, at the fourth annual Kneading Conference! Skowhegan, Maine, hosted this year’s celebration of artisanal baking with locally sourced beans and grains. Farmers, millers, bakers, oven builders and random curious visitors brushed shoulders with Jeffery Hamelman, Bakery Director of King Arthur Flour as well as Fred Kirschenman, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, previously a member of the USDA's National Organic Standards Board, and many others. Demand for this kind of local northeastern grain is being fueled on both sides of the fence; consumers crave the nuttier, richer flavor, while bakers are excited by the challenge as well as comforted by the decrease in ecological impact. According to many of the conference’s key organizers, one of the greatest aims of the conference is to let people know they are not alone.

And they’re not. From bakeries in Massachusetts to flour mills in Pennsylvania to farms in Vermont, everyone is investigating local wheats. Cayuga Pure Organics is the first vendor to sell locally grown grains, beans and flours in Manhattan, while Island Grains, a grain-heavy Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) co-op in Vancouver, celebrates its second birthday this year. Even Californians are moving away from a total reliance on midwestern wheat. Everyone is excited about the benefits: from the obvious (reducing your eco footprint and contributing to your local economy) to the more obscure (heirloom wheat varieties, which offer exceptional tastes and unique textures, are in danger of being completely forgotten).

Of course there are still issues to be confronted. Frank discussions at the Kneading Conference highlighted the lack of info-structure (the mills and processing facilities) for this largely fragmented movement. There’s an increased cost to consider, as well, according to Cayuga Pure Organics’ liaison, Tycho Dan. If you bought Cayuga's local grains by the container full, you would be paying at least thirty percent more than traditional varieties. Additionally, like all “natural” things, consistency can be a problem. But bakers call it a joyous challenge, rightly claiming that an anonymous commodity isn’t nearly as appetizing!

So let’s face up to facts. The honest truth is that transporting supplies via road or rail is becoming less and less sustainable. We have to start investigating alternative options now, before we’re out of goods…and ideas.

In other words, completely abandon those old half-baked schemes and let’s get this local grain movement on a roll!

*Don’t forget! Bread isn’t the only great use for local grains; think about quenching your thirst with a locally sourced wheat beer.

Working with Low Sodium - Shaking Out That Salt.

Despite all that the Food Network, Morgan Spurlock, and the Slow Food movement, has done to improve our understanding of the food/body equation, North Americans are no closer to being healthy. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study showing that nearly 25 percent of American teens have abnormal 'blood lipid' levels - this includes high levels of LDL (the bad) cholesterol and low levels of HDL (the good) cholesterol, along with high levels of trigylcerides which can clog arteries - and that more than 1 billion adults overweight or obese globally. Surprisingly, much of the blame is being laid on those advocating a supposedly 'healthy' diet: Jonny Bowden, PhD, C.N.S, and weight-loss expert claims that it's the low-fat craze that's caused most our 'big' problems. Trying to eliminate edible fats brought on high-fructose corn syrup and partially-hydrogenated oils, leaving consumers with even greater physical fats than ever before.

These days, most people are catching wise to the hype, realizing that it's the false focus on starches and fats that are actually causing the problem and realigning their focus on a more insidious danger...Salt. According to EatRight Ontario, the Government of Ontario's attempt to connect their residents to registered dietitians and better resources for healthy eating, sodium's main purpose is to regulate the water balance and blood pressure in your body. Good in small doses, but eat too much and you dissipate all the water, leaving nothing behind but a sky-high blood pressure. 

The food industry has already started to step away from the ubiquitous shaker. Three years ago, ED Foods introduced Luda H, soup bases and gravies with 78 percent less salt, while at the beginning of this year, New York City unveiled a broad new health initiative encouraging food manufacturers and restaurants to curtail their salt use, and just a few months ago, Subways, Starbucks, Mars Food US and even Unilever agreed to cut the salt in their products by 10 percent over the next two years. 

Still, many restauranteurs have expressed concern over any possible mandatory regulation as it's very difficult to adjust the sodium content without losing flavor and/or general appeal. Sodium reduction has to be done on an ingredient by ingredient basis otherwise you risk an unpalatable product. Best to start voluntarily expanding your seasoning horizons... Lest all governments actually start enforcing a 1000$ penalty such as the one that New York State is considering.

But don't waste your salt on tears! Here's a list of great ways to avoid sodium based on food style and type. Although it's phrased to apply to the consumer, it could also be a great idea source when you sit down to write your menu. 

The Bottled Water Dilemma - Tap Water Still Runs Deep.

"Good Evening, may I interest you in a bottle of water?..."

It's the classic server push...and responsible for quite the added bit of income for any restaurant. Working as a server in my younger days, managers always made it a point to remind us to sell the bottled water. A glass cylinder of Voss (supposedly taken from an aquifer "shielded for centuries under ice and rock in the untouched wilderness of Central Norway") can be sold at the table for around eight to twelve dollars, while a case of twenty-four will usually only set the house back by about thirty; Nearly 90% of that Voss becomes pure profit, which can be awfully easy for a restauranteur to swallow. 

On the other hand, that sip might just choke you when you realize, asides from lucrative, bottled water may also be the most quintessential of all environmentally unsustainable choices. Seventeen million barrels of oil are required just to produce the containers that hold the 53 billion gallons of bottled water consumed annually (enough oil to fuel one million cars for the same period of time). And that's not even including the costs involved in shipping these bottle-shaped environmental bombs from Fiji or Évian-Les-Bains. In early March, the United Nations admitted that bottled water wasn't sustainable, right on the heels of Inside The Bottle's release of the animated film "The Story of Bottled Water", sparking international debate. 

So, despite the lost revenue, many restaurants are choosing to either restrict bottled water options or to eliminate the option entirely. In return, these restaurants get to ride the crest of public opinion (Giles Coren, restaurant reviewer for the London Times, claims that he will only give top marks to establishments serving a locally bottled water or none at all), they get to act in the best interests of environmental stewardship, and they get to, just generally, sleep well at night. But the money aspect is certainly not a wash; restaurants operate on such a fine financial line! So how to resign yourself to this lost income?

Well, firstly, you can write it off your budget for advertising: sites like Canada's Green Table, the U.S's Responsible Purchasing Network and Corporate Accountability International, make it their business to proudly proclaim which restaurants have made the blue-green leap of faith. Local news sources will also probably jump at the chance to do a piece on your ban (like ABC's coverage of the bottled water debate, for example).


Secondly, if you'd like to put a bit more muscle behind it, you can invest in a filtration system or a CO2 injector and offer home-filtered water or house-made sparkling at a premium, alongside the option of tap like Alice Waters does at Chez Panisse. Rather than making the lack of bottled water a liability, make it a stance, and people will drink it up. Pun definitely intended. 

(For more ideas, keep your eyes on Montreal come september. Ed's hometown is hosting this year's International Water Association's World Water Congress and Exhibition).