Posts from — May 2007

It’s a brave new Web 2.0 world out there. Time’s Person of the Year is (annoyingly) “You.” Theoretically, “You” are empowering yourself via the internet by blogging, comparison shopping, posting to bulletin boards, making new friends and business connections on LinkedIn and MySpace. Maybe you are even authoring web videos. It’s a wonder anyone has time to get in front of a stove to cook the family meal. We’ll, how about doing both? My friends at Realmeals.tv encourage the budding Mario Battali to break out the digital video camera and iVideo software, and start cooking. Submit your video recipe directly to the site, and enjoy watching yourself concoct an Apple Martini, make your own “DIY” wedding cake, or get dressed up like Elvis and make a peanut butter and fried banana sandwich that’s true to the King’s original recipe. Get a YouTube buzz going, and maybe someone with a yen for obscure cooking talent and a fat checkbook will make you the next Rachel Ray. It’s worth a shot.

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In the seven or so months that we have been producing canvas one of the greatest areas where we receive feedback is our food coverage. Folks have contacted me about doing more sustainable, organic, local and ethnic recipes. Many have asked that I lend my expertise as a professional chef to the mix and offer tips, advice, product sourcing and more.

Well, as you see, I’m only too happy to oblige. If you are here, then you’ve entered canvas’ new food site where you’ll not only find blogs from me and guest chefs and aficionados but fellow foodies from all sides of the menu. In addition to the recipes, reviews of books and products, demo videos, calendar items of local and city food events and more, you’ll most of all find that this food section is a place where you can contribute your recipes, comments and ideas.

Let us know what you’d like us to cover and write in with your cooking questions! Welcome to the table—Bon Appetit!

Ramin Ganeshram is canvas’ editor in chief and a chef professionally trained at the Institute of Culinary Education. She is a Bert Greene, Food Journalism award nominee, acknowledged expert on the foods of the Caribbean and author of Sweet Hand: Island Cooking from Trinidad & Tobago. She has contributed food articles to Saveur, Four Seasons, epicurious and more.

The debate over which is better heats up. Here’s the skinny from both sides of the farm fence.

Written by: Sharon Linsenbach

There’s a battle being waged at your local market. Perhaps you’ve been a casualty of it yourself, standing in front of, say, two displays of apples, one grown in upstate New York, the variety right next to it proudly proclaiming that it was grown in California, but that it is certified USDA Organic. Did you feel the pressure? Were you caught between conflicting media and scientific proclamations: “Buy Local!” and “Buy Organic!”? You’re not alone. Chefs, farmers, storeowners and consumers disagree, and the passionate debate continues in the kitchen, in the market and even in a recent Time magazine feature.

To make some sense of the whole debate we spoke with Long Island farmers, sellers and consumers, so read on.

A Question of Care
In Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht’s opinion, it really comes down to a personal choice based on your own individual priorities and those of your family. Kaplan-Walbrecht and her husband, Chris, run Garden of Eve Farm in Aquebogue, near Riverhead. “Some people are casting it as an either/or, but I think everyone agrees that it’s good to support local farmers, and if you can get local and organic produce, then that’s even better ideally,” she says. “It depends on what your goals are. Organic speaks to both health concerns for the consumer, but also environmental concerns about what’s being put on the ground, in the water, in the air. And those issues are not being stressed by any conventional growers—they’re using toxic chemicals. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to support local family farmers,” Kaplan-Walbrecht says. That’s the simple answer, or non-answer, as the case may be. Getting to some hard-and-fast conclusions is a bit more complicated.

First, let’s dispense with the obvious: Few will disagree that organic and local is almost always best. Local and organic is the Holy Grail, basically—but it’s very difficult to achieve. Food grown from organic seeds and without the use of chemical pesticides, growth hormones or flavor/color enhancers just can’t help but be healthier for you. And, if it’s grown locally, you’re more than likely supporting a smaller, family-owned farm, as well as contributing to the economic good of your region. Most of the time, food grown organically and purchased locally allows you to engage in your own oversight of the process. You visit the farm or farm stand, talk to the people who grow, harvest and sell the products. Perhaps you can even apprentice, do an internship or volunteer at that farm.

Where Organic Grows
Here are a few local, organic farms you might want to check out this season:

• Garden of Eve Farm, Aquebogue
• Golden Earthworm Organic Farm, Jamesport
• Sang Lee Farms, Peconic
• Quail Hill Farm Preserve, Amagansett

The downside to remaining strictly a proponent of organic and local produce is the growing season. Here in the Northeast, that season runs roughly from April until October. If you’ve got an exorbitant amount of time, energy and money on your hands, you can stock up during the growing season or jar fruits and vegetables to enjoy all year long. If, like most of us working folk, that’s just not possible, then your fruit and vegetable intake will be severely limited during the October through April period. There’s also the small matter of fruit and vegetable nativity. Bananas, oranges, avocados, peaches, lemons and limes—to name a few foods—just don’t grow in the Northeast. This can severely limit your diet, to put it mildly. And, of course, there’s the issue of knowing whether or not the seeds from which the vegetables you’re eating are organically produced and untainted by polluted soil, groundwater or rainwater. So what are the other options?

Organic Ubër All?
The organic side of the debate goes something like this: Put simply, proponents argue that it’s always worth spending more and shipping farther to purchase organic foods. According to the Organic Trade Insitute, an industry group based in Greenfield, Mass., the organic food industry reached $23 billion in 2002, fueled, in large part, by North American consumers’ demand. Many of those consumers do so because they are worried about their own health and the health of the planet. It’s absolutely understandable to shy away from food that’s been sprayed with chemicals, but there’s a common, almost romantic, misconception that organic foods come from smaller, family-owned farms. In some cases, organic farms use many of the same planting, growing and harvesting methods and machinery as conventional “agri-business” farms, leaving a considerable carbon footprint by the time all the seeds have been planted, tended and harvested. And that’s before the organic produce is loaded on ships, airplanes and trucks and sent around the globe.

The local side of the debate purports that buying local (even if the foods are conventionally grown) is better for your health because the food is fresher, has not withstood a ship, plane or truck trip from far-away lands, thus leaving a much smaller carbon footprint and providing a boost to the local economy. The downside here plays right into the hands of the other camp—it’s often difficult to discern what chemicals, flavor/color enhancers and/or growth hormones have come in contact with the conventionally grown local food you’re eating, not to mention the potentially harmful runoff into groundwater. “People are trying to be smart, and they’re trying to ask the right questions [of farmers], ‘What kind of chemicals do you use on the crops?’” Kaplan-Walbrecht says. “But if farmers are spraying, they’re certainly not going to want to be explaining all the different chemicals they’re using on the crops in the middle of the farmers’ market!” she says. “They’re giving explanations like, ‘Well, we hardly spray, or we spray as little as possible; we’re almost organic but we’re not certified,’” she says.

There’s truth in that statement—certain crops are naturally more pest-resistant than others. “Different vegetables carry a different degree of risk. There are crops that are very heavily sprayed all the time, anywhere in the country, like sweet corn, spinach, broccoli, strawberries,” Kaplan-Walbrecht says. Knowing this fact may help consumers make wiser choices when considering local vs. organic. Anne Marie Deriso, owner o f Anne Marie’s Farmstand in Setauket, gets those types of questions a lot. “Do I know if the seeds are organic? That’s a problem, because we never know for sure. Do we know if the water is organic? I know for sure that it’s not. Nothing can be 100 percent organic: Think of the rain, the wind. If a tree was sprayed in the next town, or in the next yard, then those chemicals will make their way into groundwater and the soil,” she says.

Of course, there’s another way to look at it, Deriso explains: “Most of the local farmers are doing the best they can—spraying with pesticides is expensive. Farmers themselves live on the property, usually, and they eat the food themselves. We’re more aware of how dangerous the pesticides are for us, so we don’t want to eat it either.”

Another downside is that local farms may not use sustainable farming practices. Your local farm may also be a monolithic “agri-business” farm, whose chief goal is to produce as much food as possible, regardless of the quality. This type of commoditized farming is blamed in part for the E. coli bacteria outbreaks in spinach and green onions you’ve heard about during the past year. “It’s really about scale. Look at every element that people are consuming in their lives,” Kaplan-Walbrecht says. “Pet food now with that recall, to green onions at Taco Bell—you’re always better off knowing where something comes from, where someone is responsible for making sure it’s a quality product,” she says. And, of course, there’s semantics. What is local? Right around the corner? One hundred miles? Two hundred? Since California’s in the same country, does that count as local?

A Matter of Taste
There’s another question that isn’t mentioned very often because it’s eclipsed by the health, social and environmental concerns that surround this debate: taste. Adrienne Conlan, a Woodbury resident who has trained as a chef at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, prefers to buy local for that reason only. “Buying local is my preference. You buy organic foods, and they can be traveling in a truck for about a week, and you’re going to lose a lot of the premium that you’re paying for,” she says. “The focus for me when I cook is, for instance, that the tomato that I’m buying is a really great-tasting tomato. Obviously, it’s a bonus for me if it’s grown organically, but often flavor is eclipsed in the whole organic vs. local debate,” she says.

The organic-vs.-local-foods debate isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s truly up to you, as the consumer, to find out all you can about both sides of the issue and to make informed choices about what’s best for you and your family. The organic-vs.-local-foods debate isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s truly up to you, as the consumer, to find out all you can about both sides of the issue and to make informed choices about what’s best for you and your family. Living on Long Island often means you don’t have to choose between local and organic, since there are a number of organic farms on the East End that provide produce to local farmers’ markets, restaurants and school lunch programs.

Read the Time magazine piece by John Cloud and visit gardenofevefarm.com for information on their organic farm.

Bon appétit!