Food and Culture: The Amazing Story of Minnesota’s Thriving Food Co-ops

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As some of you know, I’m in the middle of my annual visit to Minnesota. I’m spending ten days with family and friends, and mostly with my 89-year-old mother. Although I’m on vacation, I can’t help noting the status of Minnesota’s food culture.  Two years ago, in my first blog post, I wrote about the notorious food-on-a-stick at the Minnesota State Fair. I didn’t visit the fair this year, but I did check out something which gives me a lot of hope, and that is Minnesota’s vigorous food co-op movement.

Co-ops (short for co-operatives) were brought to Minnesota by northern European immigrants in the 19th Century and thrived well into the 20th. Co-ops are businesses owned by their customers, who buy shares and either receive a discount on purchases or a percentage of the profits, and are usually governed by an elected board of directors. Fifty or sixty years ago, it wasn’t unusual for small Minnesota towns to have a co-op gas station, creamery, grocery store, even a general merchandise store. As those co-ops declined, a new style of co-op, inspired by the alternative culture movement, sprang up all around the country, really, but these new co-ops seem to have endured especially well in Minnesota.

Needing to shop for dinner, my mom and I headed to the new and nearby St. Peter Food Co-op. St. Peter is a college town of fewer than 10,000 people deep in Minnesota farm country, but this market is one any sophisticated urban neighborhood would be happy to claim. I was thrilled to see how roomy, well-stocked and beautiful a store it is.

The St. Peter Food Co-op first opened as an all-volunteer, storefront business in July of 1979. It expanded about ten years later, survived a horrendous tornado which hit the town in 1998 and moved into its present site this past April. The co-op raised $900,000 in new and renewed memberships and received a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance the more than $3 million it took to buy and renovate a sixty-year-old auto dealership into a stylish natural foods supermarket. Although the store sells a wide range of goods, they feature local and organic foods as much as possible and have some 500 items in bulk. I was impressed to see an attractive deli, salad bar, in-house bakery, and inside and outdoor seating.  In short, I wish this store were in my neighborhood!

What is perhaps more impressive is that this is just one of more than forty food co-ops in Minnesota, ranging from the Wedge in Minneapolis which operates its own organic farm (and where I used to shop), to the Countryside Co-op in tiny Hackensack (population 313) in north central Minnesota. I’m heartened to see that this healthy food movement is not confined to hip, urban enclaves, but is spread throughout the state. As depressed as I sometimes get about the state of America’s food and health, I am immensely cheered to see how people here in Minnesota are working to create healthy soil, nourishing food and meaningful work. To everyone involved in this movement, I say a hearty thank-you and best wishes for a bright future!

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Photos–Top: Locally-grown, mostly organic produce. Above: The St. Peter Food Co-op faces Minnesota Avenue in downtown St. Peter (more photos after the jump).

The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking: Curried Red Kidney Beans With Roasted Butternut Squash

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If you’ve ever pursued an interest in vegetarian cooking, it’s likely you’ve been drawn to Indian food. India, it seems to me, is home to the world’s most sophisticated and highly developed vegetarian cuisine. And no wonder, given India’s ancient culture, and its hundreds of millions of vegetarians. Although I once took cooking classes from two Indian women, my knowledge of Indian cooking is pretty superficial, coming mostly from cookbooks and an occasional restaurant meal. Nevertheless, I can’t keep myself from dabbling. Currently, I’m taking inspiration from The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, an 800-page tome which seems to me to be the most comprehensive Indian vegetarian cookbook written for American readers. The author, Yamuna Devi, is an American who was known as Joan Campanella before she became a disciple of Srila Prabhupada and began her life-long study of India’s spirituality and cuisine. This is a serious, but very usable book, with more than 500 recipes, and no pretty pictures. It’s a book I’ll refer to time and again as I share with you my interest in Indian cooking. Today’s recipe is only loosely based on one of Devi’s, but I expect it will be the first of many to be inspired by this stimulating book. My recipe for curried red kidney beans with roasted butternut squash is after the jump.

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Summer’s Harvest: Cook Up a Lovely Pot of “Sufferin’ Succotash”

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“Succotash” is one of those words that’s just a whole lot of fun to say. To my mind, the best way to get a chance to say it is to cook up a batch of this homey American dish. Succotash has deep roots in American culinary history, as first citing for use of the word dates to 1751. I’d imagined it was of Southern origin, but it turns out to be from New England, it’s name derived from the Narragansett Indian word for “boiled corn kernels.” Although lima beans and corn are the defining ingredients, quite honestly, you could substitute fava beans or edamame and still have a respectable succotash. Since we’re in midsummer, I give you my warm weather version, using fresh ingredients. When the weather turns cool, I’ll share my alternate recipe which makes use of dried corn and lima beans, along with winter squash. Eat this as a vegetable side dish, or do as I did for dinner tonight: stuff it into warm corn tortillas and top with salsa. It was a wonderful light meal. And if you can’t recall who popularized the phrase “sufferin’ succotash,” it was Sylvester the cat in classic Warner Brothers cartoons from the forties and fifties (which I must confess, I’m old enough to remember). See my recipe after the jump.

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Want To Have a Lovely Meal? First, Set a Pretty Table.

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It’s sad but true that we live in an era when most meals are eaten standing up, while driving, or sitting in front of a TV.  It’s rumored that some people (I won’t mention names) eat breakfast while checking email and reading the news on line.  Folks, we can do better than this! A pleasant, calm dining environment shows we respect our food, and leads, I suspect, to better digestion, and better health. I created this vignette for friends who came to dinner last night. The pastel blue and pink color scheme seemed right for what turned out to be a balmy, open-the-windows-and-doors kind of evening. Better yet, it cost me nothing, as I rummaged my shelves and cupboards for odds and ends. And though I’m not much of a gardener, the flowers came from my little patio garden. So, my point is, making things pretty doesn’t necessarily cost a lot, it just takes a bit of time and imagination. I admit that I’m lucky, I have a cupboard full of lovely dishes, many of them gifted to me by my design consultant and friend, Frank Melanson. The place-setting bowls look Chinese, but are actually English (Maddock), probably midcentury. If there’s a moral to this story, I guess it would be: whether dining with friends or dining alone, take the time to make it pretty.
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The New York Times Takes Up The Hunt For A Great Meatless Burger

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I’m often amused and delighted when the mainstream media takes up a topic I’ve written about on this blog. This week, The New York Times has been writing about veggie burgers. It seems they’ve gone from being disreputable afterthoughts to creative outlets for talented chefs: ”…veggie burgers haven’t merely become good. They have exploded into countless variations of good, and in doing so they’ve begun to look like a bellwether for the American appetite. If the growing passion for plant-based diets is here to stay, chefs — even in restaurants where you won’t find the slightest trace of spirulina — are paying attention.” New York Times readers were paying attention too. For a time, the featured article (here) was among the ten most emailed articles on their site, evoking dozens of comments. Photos of six burgers being served in New York and L.A. restaurants are here, and a recipe for a Thai carrot burger, along with reader comments (and more recipes) are here. My entry into the meatless burger sweepstakes (pictured in the photo above, from a July 2010 post) is here. It’s always great see that good food is getting the recognition it deserves–who knew meatless burgers had become so cool?

A Famous French Chef Comes to Dinner

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Chef René Verdon (1924-2011) earlier in his career.

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When our mutual friend Annette Bonnell sent word last week that chef to the Kennedy White House René Verdon had died, it set me to remembering the night a decade ago when René and his chic wife, Yvette, came to dinner at my little San Francisco apartment. I’d only met René and Yvette briefly a couple of times, so I was surprised when Annette mentioned that they would enjoy being invited to dinner. While I was excited by the prospect of cooking for such a renowned couple,  I was also a bit intimidated.  What do you serve to the chef who created elegant dinners for Jackie Kennedy and who later operated Le Trianon, a legendary San Francisco restaurant where Julia Child dined? Turns out, René was sincerely interested in vegan cuisine and wanted to sample the kind of food we cook every week for our vegetarian dinners in Palo Alto. And so, a date was set, I devised a menu and at the appointed hour, Yvette and René arrived, accompanied by Annette and her husband Robert. Thankfully, the evening proceeded smoothly, a couple of bottles of wine were drunk, both René and Yvette revealed themselves to be humorous conversationalists and accomplished story tellers. Perhaps René recalled how he resigned as White House chef when Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson ordered him to serve frozen vegetables and Texas barbecue (he left in a “Gallic huff,” Time magazine reported). Most importantly, for me, everyone seemed to enjoy the food and the evening was declared a success. For René, it was, perhaps, one very small moment in a long and eventful life.  For me, it was an evening I will always remember. That a chef of René’s standing would come to dine on my simple food, and would praise it, meant a lot. In fact, René had a history of generosity in encouraging and supporting younger chefs. Annette, who has been friend to the Verdons for twenty years, describes René in one word: “adorable.” I can’t say I disagree.

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Here is the menu for our dinner honoring René and Yvette Verdon, May 8, 2000:

Red Bean, Mushroom, Vegetable Soup

Tofu-Garlic-Tahini-Miso Spread for Bread

Alsatian Onion-Tofu Tart

Wild Rice and Quinoa Salad with Pine Nuts, Turkish Apricots and Kumquats

Steamed Baby Bok Choi and Carrots with Ginger Vinaigrette

Apple and Cherry Crunch with Vanilla Rice Dream

Red Wines Brought by the Guests

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Read René Verdon’s obituary in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Great Grains: Turning Buckwheat Groats into Kasha Varnishkes (a Warming Dish for Cold Winter Days)

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Making Kasha Varnishkes from buckwheat groats is as easy as 1, 2, 3. (Toasted buckwheat groats are widely known as kasha in North America.)

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Maybe you need to have grown up in some wind-swept northern clime to fully appreciate the hearty, warming quality of buckwheat (if it isn’t a necessity, I’m pretty sure it helps). You won’t be surprised to learn that Russia grows more buckwheat than anyone else, with China second, and Ukraine third. While in East Asia, buckwheat is most often consumed as a noodle (think Japanese soba noodles), in Western Europe and North America we know buckwheat best as an ingredient in pancakes and crepes. But it’s the whole grain buckwheat groats of Russia and Eastern Europe that I want to celebrate today. Buckwheat’s ability to thrive in poor soil and a short growing season endeared it to our Eastern European ancestors, many of whom likely would have starved without it. It’s peasant food, pure and simple, but nutritiously rich in iron and a balanced concentration of all essential amino acids.

Toasted whole grain buckwheat groats

Immigrants from Russia, Poland and other Slavic countries, many of them Jewish, brought buckwheat to the U.S. From the 1880′s to the 1920′s, tens of thousands of these folk settled in New York’s Lower East Side, where I lived in the late 60′s. It was in one of that neighborhood’s thriving Jewish dairy restaurants where I first encountered kasha varnishkes, the Yiddish name for a much-loved dish which consists of little more than buckwheat groats, bow tie noodles and onions. The dish’s simplicity invites variations–some versions calling for eggs or chicken stock, or a rich gravy on top. These days, kasha varnishkes is mostly served as a side dish, but doubtless during times of scarcity, it was the entire meal. My vegan version sticks close to the pared down original, with only the addition of mushrooms.  So, some chilly day, eat like our ancestors ate, bring the past into the present and cook up a warming batch of kasha varnishkes (recipe after the jump).

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It’s That Time of Year Again: Will a Turkey Be Involved?

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It is that time of year again.  Sometimes I feel like I’d rather be on a desert isle somewhere, and just skip this whole Thanksgiving thing altogether.  Other times, I look forward to it. This year, somewhere in between. Thankfully, my friend Bob has decided to treat several of his friends to Thanksgiving dinner in the Napa Valley, and I won’t have to cook or even think about it. Although I’m not a vegan, Thanksgiving is always more about the stuffing, cranberry sauce and mashed sweet potatoes, than it is about the turkey.  Will I partake this year? Most likely, yes.  Tradition counts, as I learned when I lived with macrobiotic teachers Herman and Cornellia Aihara one winter. Cornellia, ever the prodigious cook, did a turkey with cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, because,  well, that’s what you do on Thanksgiving. But if you don’t do turkey, I think a wonderful meal can be made of the sides, some of which I’ll be featuring in the next week or two on this blog. If you feel the need for a vegan turkey substitute, Jessica Porter, has a recipe on her blog for a tofu turkey.  It looks good, a little bit complicated, but not too difficult–so I commend it to you. And after Thanksgiving, I’ll report back on whether that Napa Valley feast was all it was cracked up to be.

Celebrate Corn with This Rich and Savory Pudding

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I’ve heard that you like corn.  Good, here’s corn times two: fresh sweet corn combined with cornmeal. Serve this as a main dish for a vegan or vegetarian holiday dinner or as a side dish for any meal.  If possible, make it soon while late season corn is still around. If you’re feeling it, you could enrich this dish by adding a couple of whisked eggs, and substituting dairy cheese for the vegan cheese. It would still be low in fat compared to conventional recipes. (By way of contrast, Food Network presenter Ina Garten’s recipe rich with eggs, milk, half and half, butter and two kinds of cheese is here.) This is really nice served with a simple fresh tomato salsa. ( Recipe after the jump)

Want to Live Happily to 100 years or More?

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DIET AND LIFE-STYLE CHOICES MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE

Perhaps it is just a sign that I’m getting older, but recently longevity interests me more and more! In this TED talk, National Geographic writer and author of the book “Blue Zones,” Dan Buettner talks about three communities where people live much longer than the average in the U.S. The first is in the highlands of the Italian island of Sardinia where the elderly are held in high regard.  The second is in the northern part of the main island of Okinawa, Japan where people have one-sixth the rate of cardio-vascular disease that we do. The third is actually in the U.S., the Loma Linda community of Seventh Day Adventists in Southern California where men live on average 11 years longer then other American men.  These communities have much in common, a largely plant-based diet for one thing. Exercise, particularly walking, tends to be built into their lives. Family and especially, friendship come first.  One circle of five women friends in Okinawa have known each other for 97 years, and their average age is 102. They stay active, retirement is mostly unknown.  One 97-year old man in the Loma Linda community still performs 20 open-heart surgeries a month. Also important is knowing why you are alive: having a reason to get up in the morning.  It’s an inspiring talk which covers some of the same territory as John Robbins does in, “Healthy at 100,” a book I’ll discuss in a later post.