Cheap Food is Healthy and Delicious
Friday, April 2nd, 2010This blog began as a means to disseminate information about the process of making chocolate. It’s purpose was not only to share, but to provide a medium for me to think and refine my skills and process, and to plan a method of right action for the future. I have now approximately figured out how to make chocolate at a microscopic scale, therefore my recent posts have strayed from the principal aim of careful deliberation on the technical aspects of that endeavor. This again is such a wayward post, and my first true probes into the murky waters of apologia, however, the aims, though separate, are auxiliary to the original—together in a more abstract purpose, thoughts about technique and technology, which appear to me as two perpendicular axes to walk. The choice of what to become, artisan or outsourcer, is currently what I slowly ponder.
The genesis of this story was a meeting earlier tonight of this year’s Farmers’ Market vendors (and yes!, you may count me among them) where a sensitive nerve of mine received an electric pinch. This year is the first that folks with food stamps (here, they are tracked with a debit-like LINK card) can shop at the market. After the meeting, one colleague, I do not know who, asked the market director, “Has anyone raised the moral question of letting low-income people shop at the most expensive venue in town?” I wasn’t asked, so I didn’t respond, the director however, did beautifully, which I will relate in the argument below. But first, what statements are we refuting? I think the vendor was making two assertions, first, that the only place feasible or even appropriate for impoverished people to meet their dietary needs is at a ‘poor’ store like Wal-Mart. Behind this perceived necessity lurks the idea that ‘cheap food is bad food.’ The only way to eat cheaply is to eat poorly. Healthy food, in this case cast as the fresh, local and organic fruits, vegetables and grains available at the Farmers’ Market are, by nature of their quality, expensive to the point of being out of reach to one eating on a budget. The offering of such plutocratic fare to impoverished individuals the complainant finds highly offensive.
The market director’s response to the first idea was impeccable—all that is happening is that the suite of grocery options available to LINK card holders is being increased; one additional door opened. A tenet of the USA: no one is under duress to spend their money at this market. Similarly, no one should be forced to spend their money at Wal-Mart, which is what disbarring LINK from every place such as the Farmers’ Market would ensure. Viewed through this lens, the mandate that LINK be spent only at approved locations seems totalitarian and vague.
The more fundamental claim, and one that, with data, I will refute to the most bitter ends of the earth, is that the cheapest way to eat, the single option imposed by circumstances on the poor majority is to eat processed, eat the prepared food that’s offered and suffer the consequences of an unhealthy diet. To the adage, ‘cheap food is bad food’, I would agree, given the addendum, ‘to those ignorant or unwilling to prepare it themselves.’ Cheap, healthy food is within everyone’s grasp, if they take the time to make it in their own kitchen. It can be delicious too if they have a zeal for experimenting with recipes and flavor enhancers. It can be organic too, if they cook meals whose calories derive primarily from root vegetables and grain rather than meat. It can even be meat, if they buy the forgotten cuts (Jacob’s Ladder?!).
Consider Breakfast. As a processed food shopper at Wal-Mart, I’ll likely buy cereal; Cheerios cost $5/lb. I trade off between eating oatmeal or yogurt & fruit for breakfast, consider the former. Bulk organic oats and sugar cost at most $2/lb. Bulk organic raisins & peanut butter cost at most $4/lb, but at most 1/4 of oatmeal is made from these flavor enhancers, adding only $1/lb to the price of oatmeal. I can experiment with other things, spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom; or coffee, chocolate, apples…used in small quantities, all for similarly cheap or negligible prices. I can easily make a variety of culinarily interesting organic oatmeals for about half the price of Cheerios.
If anything should put my theory to the test, it would be the McDonald’s dollar menu. This is really bad food, but is it cheap? The best value I can find is the ‘McDouble’, which at a third of a pound, costs…$3/lb; it contains 390 calories for $1. But basing my whole 2,000 calorie/day diet on McDoubles, I would be spending $150/month on food. I beat that mark as an undergrad, can Urbana’s market?
It is getting to be early in the morning, so it is time to wrap this initial post up, but let me note that this subject is not new, and some are singing my chorus, but the adage persists. Here are two items from the Champaign landscape. First, beating me to every punch, This Little Piggy already posted about the controversy over Olympian drive and our Urbana mayor’s untactful comments which attempted to cast local purveyors of artisan cheese as out of touch with the hoi polloi who cannot afford their cheese or farmstead dinners. Behind the mayoral assertion was the assumption that their good food was in opposition to those who out of necessity ate cheaply or poorly, who ate at the food bank. Not all of the arguments, however, are reactive, responses to perceived untruths. One that gives me the greatest amount of hope is our local food coop’s ‘Food For All’ program. They actually designate specific actual food ingredients (not prepared/processed foods) in the store as ‘Food For All’, take lower margins on them, and give people the recipes to make them into meals on a low budget. One plate at a time, they give people the knowledge to assert that for them, ‘Cheap Food is Delicious Healthful Food I Just Cooked Myself!’
’twas back in old September that I
Those who’ve watched me grow from infancy will remember the samples of batches #1, 2 and
Beneath the city din and adjacent to hasidic curls, a craft food community is encircling the mainstream. Characterized by
What does one find in this triad beginning with whole animals, and ending with whole meals? In Marlow & Daughters—unobstructed and in plain view—in the front of the back end of the shop, is a table surrounded by several laborers, various knives, and an unapologetic display of, on the day I came in, hunks of beef being carved into cubelets. In the glass deli case which doubled as a counter, pieces of pig freely-ranging from ‘lardo,’ ie: fatback, to ham in the form of life-sized whole thighs, to ‘trotters’, legs (with feet!), streching even to
Wending our way back to cacao, the siblings at Marlow & Sons, in addition to other fine goods, brought a fine selection of chocolate to the pantry, including:
Still! The craft does not end there! There are yet food-related-but-not-edible-food artisans in Brooklyn! Most notable there are artisan kitchen knife makers producing knives with the individual character of this bounteous borough. My last stop in the whirlwind tour was to supply-shop
From the roughly unbounded number of artisans, the diamonds that I most wanted to see were the Chocolate Makers of Williamsburg, NY. They are
I introduced myself to whom I recognized as Rick Mast,
Most interestingly, along the brick wall next to the winnower were four stone and steel grinders, each capable, over the course of three to six (!) days, of grinding 50 lbs of nibs into a paste palatable as chocolate. Seeing this quad justified the entire trip, since my partner and I are planning to scale up our capabilities with one of these exact grinders. That it comes with the Masts’ approval gives me confidence in the investment. One quirk is that these beasties take 220V, three-phase power, and as will I, the Masts had to modify the electrical capabilities of the building to accommodate them.
After the chocolate’s stead in the grinder, the Masts pour out their untempered 45lbs into a large metal chafing dish, wrap it with plastic, label and date it, then let it age for a bit while waiting for the pipeline to get around to tempering and molding. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve heard that it is common among craft chocolate makers to let their chocolate age while the flavors complete their development and mellow slightly. From my experience it is true that chocolate right out of the mold tastes much different (and in the case of Papua New Guinea, almost scarily unpalatable) from several weeks old chocolate—Because of brisk demand, I don’t have any data on anything more mature! Apparently the Masts have the same problem, since unlike Patric Chocolate’s schedule of a several months rest, the most elderly chocolate I could find was just one and a half weeks young.
When I finished touring the factory’s four rooms with Ardo, I excitedly finagled Rick into showing me their specific wrapping technique, as I am a little dissatisfied with some of my chocolate origami. He illuminated the one fold equaling the difference between our two styles, and I should be able to make my bars look even more spectacular now. I just returned to Urbana, so I haven’t yet unleashed the new methodology, but in the sequel, I’ll post some before/after wrapping photos.