“Good Eatz” in Berks County

         by Karen Houck

Located on Penn Ave. in West Reading.

Berks County is surrounded with farmland. In season, you can find any fruit or vegetables to your liking within a 20 mile radius. This is a fruitful area for business owners like Rick Allebach who try to utilize local resources. Rick owns a café, located on Penn Avenue in West Reading, called Good Eatz Green Café. The mission, found on the Good Eatz website, states: “Our goal is to provide the freshest, yummiest and most satisfying products at a reasonable price for those who cannot tolerate gluten /lactose/casein. Whether you suffer from Celiac Disease, IBS, Crohn’s Disease, or are trying to find food alternatives for your Autistic child, we hope we can be of service to you!”         

Rick is also the owner of Good Eatz Bakery, where the specialty is gluten-free, (or wheat, barley, and rye-free), baked goods including breads, pies, cookies, brownies, and flour. The Good Eatz Bakery’s mission is to “to provide a comfortable and friendly environment featuring local, organic and sustainable goods.” The bakery even offers gluten-free recipes featured on its website.           

Chipotle Black Bean Veggie Soup

My pleasurable experiences at his café sparked my interest when choosing a person to interview. I first went to his café because a friend, who knew of my lactose allergy, brought me to lunch. At first, I was unsure of going to an “organic/green” café. I hadn’t encountered a lot of experience with organic foods and honestly thought the café would be only vegetarian items like tofu (which I am personally not a big fan of). Instead, I found myself addicted after first tasting some of the some creamy soups like the Chipotle Black Bean Veggie Soup and the creamy (without fear of getting sick) Shrimp Penne Vodka Rose that are dairy-free. Fourty-one items on the menu, from my count, are dairy -free. This is the biggest selection in a restaurant that has ever been available to me. My favorite item on the menu, is not a creamy sauce, but the Bean Vegan Chili, which is gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, and dairy free. I like its taste because it does remind me of any normal chili, instead with many types of beans, fresh carrots, onion, corn, and just the right amount of spices. I seem to purchase this every Thursday in my transit from my reading clinic to teach dance. It’s filling enough that I can dance without feeling bloated.           

I began to interview Rick a deli table at Good Eatz near the register, so he could be close if need be. I first began the interview by asking about his experience, in food, before beginning the business. Rick said “I was a chef most of my life.” As he began to talk, he was smiling and you could sense the pride he had in his work. “I worked in many areas of food from working in a Berks County prison to later opening a deli in Bucks County.” Later, Rick opened a seafood house in Ocean City, New Jersey where he “worked hard.” He even had experience owning a Mexican restaurant. Rick had his hand in many types of cuisines in the food industry.           

After some time owning various restaurants, I was surprised to find out Rick “went into the healthcare system to work for the Kirbride Center.” Here, “I helped to restructure the food program where I served about 650 people per day.” I thought about how he  touched 650 people’s, mostly children’s,  lives through food. Often times, food can be a comfort for my family and I. We often gather for holidays around my grandmother’s big dining room table. My favorite tradition of Christmas Eve dinner is where my grandmother cooks her best meal and forever the memories flow through my mind of my childhood. I find that people like Rick Allebach are creating food as a comfort for children. A home cooked meal can go a long way for a young child. This may have been the child’s first and only meal of the day or even week. He alluded to the effectiveness that a diet plays into helping controlling their medical needs. I truly thought of how important diet is in children’s lives. A healthy diet can allow a child to focus…this I often see evidenced in my own classroom. Even in many states, including PA, there are healthy food laws for kids in the lunchroom and classrooms.          

Kirbride Center allowed Rick to see “the way diet affects the children that have medical needs.” This then lead him to  start research to help people in the food industry. By seeing an all vegan bakery called Sticky Fingers, located in Washington, D.C., Rick was influenced to begin approaching various health food stores in Berks County because “I wanted to find out the needs of the area.” The answer was gluten-free foods.           

Black Bean Burger Wrap

 The research paid off and gluten-free was the focus when opening the Good Eatz Café about one and a half years ago. It is just like any other restaurant offering appetizers, salads, wraps, paninis, vegan selections, entrees, and a large breakfast menu. The prices are extremely reasonable from $4 for a cup of soup vegan, dairy free, gluten-free, and vegetarian to $14 for a seafood stir-fry that is vegetarian, gluten and dairy-free. Meat eaters can even enjoy a nice six ounce Black-Angus Cheeseburger, or a Kobe Beef Slider. The menu appeals to a variety of diners, even my husband who just enjoys a good cheeseburger.  The Good Eatz Green Café offers many varieties in take-home foods or eat-in offering choices that are gluten-free, like a bagel with cream cheese and all the paninis, burgers, wraps, entrees, and some salads on the menu. Some of the vegetarian selections include Café Oriental Stir-fry with Tofu, Pasta Primavera, and many others including veggies wraps and veggie burgers. Most of the vegetarian selections are vegan as well, but there is a whole selection dedicated to vegan eaters including Vegan Veggie Lasagna, Pesto Penne Pasta, and Vegan BBQ Sloppy Joe. They also offer a Sunday brunch menu and catering services. The menu is probably my favorite part of the café because every item is labeled indicating if it is gluten-free, vegetarian, dairy-free, or vegan. The menu is also composed mostly of all local ingredients which Rick finds from the local community.  His cheese is found in Stouchburg by Debbie’s Cheeseboard and Schmidt’s Poultry located in Shillington. His labor costs are often higher because they make all of their own dressings, soups, and even mayonnaise in house because there are no cans in the café.  Even in the winter, he is able to find fresh greens from a woman in Oley who has a greenhouse for the cold months.           

Rick Allebach’s experience with his nearly all gluten-free café allowed him to begin to teach experience chefs, even in his own restaurant, how to cook gluten-free. I asked about this process because I imagined it took more prep and work. He stated that the biggest change is avoiding the contamination from other products. Believe it or not, the kitchen is mostly a gluten-free area with a small area that can be used without gluten. Also, in the kitchen all utensils are color coded specially to be used for gluten-free use or non-gluten-free. “We use squeeze bottles for any type of sauce to mayonnaise because of the chance of particles taking any gluten products airborne.” I would not have even thought about the air particles. Since Rick offers a few materials that are not gluten-free, he takes the necessary precautions. 

       

These precautions are for those especially suffering from Celiacs disease, which is the main focus of the gluten-freeness in the cafe. From Rick’s research on gluten-free foods, “I found that Celiacs was a disease that was just recognized during the past three years.” Celiacs is an autoimmune digestive disease where that interferes with the absorption of food nutrients [found in wheat, barley, and rye] caused by the small intestine being damaged by the disease which does not allow the body to absorb nutrients which can lead to malnourishment. 1 The need was obvious for Rick, it was time to bring some good gluten-free items to Berks County. He opened the Good Eatz Bakery “to take the seriousness out of the medical condition and make [eating] fun.” Rick also realizes the tie of autism and how doctors are now finding that there are benefits to a gluten/casein-free diet for autistic children.  I witnessed this myself in school when teaching autistic students and often having seen some who benefited from the gluten/casein-free diets. According to these parents, they believed it helped them have much healthier and happier years in the classroom…attributing to good grades and a steady focus.

Portabella Burger (Veggie)

Good Eatz Bakery is completely gluten-free and started by creating its own flour which took a few months to get it just right. Rick then began to use this flour to create pies crusts, tarts, everything found in his Good Eatz Bakery. This flour started to allow Celiacs in the area an option to take a tax deduction from the difference from purchasing the Gluten-free flour minus the real cost of normal flour. The more Rick got into gluten-free products, the more he learned how common Celiacs disease is becoming.             

Finding out the background of Celiacs disease lead Rick’s participation in the local chapter of the Celiacs Disease Society. From the Celiacs meetings, he found more ideas for what he calls “great tasting gluten-free products” coming from the consumers directly. More on Celiacs can be found on the Good Eatz website, http://www.goodeatz.org/html/celiac-awarness.html.       

 Rick sells his gluten flour and other bakery items across Berks County to the Lehigh Valley area, Delaware, and even New Jersey truly helping others. He has products in St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Healthy Alternatives located in Trexlertown, Whole Foods in North Wales, Nature’s Garden in Reading and about 28 other retailers. Good Eatz flour can also be found in Jules Thin Crust, which is a company based out of Doylestown. Recently, on June 1^st, he brought his products to Citizen’s Bank Park to help the Phillies organization promote a Celiacs Disease Awareness Night. Most impressively “I recently helped with National Foundation for Celiac Awareness in  a food cook-off where doctors, hospitals, and restaurants were involved and came up with twenty-seven different gluten-free offerings.” The bakery, now has shifted to be offered his Good Eatz Café.           

Good Eatz Café, not only is focused on gluten-free foods, but is considered a green café. In Good Eatz, Rick tells me “I use many biodegradable products” which contain sugarcane from Brazil and are ethanol based. “This means no oil.” The pulp from the sugarcane plants is used to create many of the coffee cups, straws, steamer bags, and take out containers. This use of pulp, which normally would be thrown away, is impressive. “Roughly about 85% includes organic items on the menu.” Some items are organic and others are from organic processes. “The only item where I finds myself walking the line is [with] coffee.” He uses fair trade coffee, a more what he calls “humanitarian aspect.” The coffee is from US Foods and he knows “from label on the package the exact farmer where each bag of beans came from.”           

The café is green for many other non-food reasons. When you walk in the café, you see what you would think to be regular black cushion chairs and normal deli tables. However, they are used furniture that Rick purchased, along with used equipment. He felt he “saved money and prevented these items from landing in a landfill.” The paints used in the café are green, meaning they are non-toxic and have no VOCs. The café also recycles everything they can. “I am looking into purchasing LED lights instead of the fluorescent lighting.” I was happy to hear that the LED lights would fit directly into the exisiting light sockets to minimize materials and his cost.  Also, this year he is hoping to start composting any scrap food materials. He also is starting to grow tomatoes and herbs for the café’s use. The café also uses many green cleaning supplies from Eco-labs. He does need to use a little chlorine bleach which is used in the most efficient dishwasher in the market, but needs the bleach for sanitation purposes. All chemicals that are mixed in the café are eco-friendly across the board. Owning the café, and remaining green, allowed him to also find out that Erlich also has a green line which he used to take care of some unwanted pests. They use Intergrated Pest Management in a form of oil which contains rosemary to get rid of unwanted insects.           

The Good Eatz Bakery and Café are involved in the community including the Reading Regeneration Group, which is a young girl who started composting, creating gardens, and educating children to make a difference. At the café,  you can find Sierra Club meetings and Thursday Open Mic Night. Speaking of making a difference, on July 12, Good Eatz was featured on WFMZ Channel 69’s news because he is helping Jim Crater, owner of Recycling Services in Pottstown, by sending healthy organic snack packs to the workers in the Gulf Coast that are working on the BP Oil Spill.           

Here is Rick

 Bottom line is Rick is able to help others throughout the community. After speaking with him for about an hour and a half, it was evident that he was excited, cared, and was humbled by his profession. Whether it be Lizzie, a young vegan, who came in and had her best meal ever and came back for her birthday, or a man who was recently diagnosed with a list of 17 items he could no longer eat, Rick helps these people find something to eat. Rick finds his newest adventure in the health food industry to be “fun-fulfilling” and has a “great energy flow”, hopefully for many great years to come. “We are a small business supporting other small businesses.” That is Rick. Humble and simply owns one of the best tasting café’s I have ever been to.            

The Truth About Hunting: An Interview with Todd Long

By: Stacey Long

               There are a lot of omnivorous Pennsylvanians, but if you ask most of them what meat appears on their dinner tables, they will tell you beef, pork, poultry or fish.  Very rarely will you hear of anyone enjoying a nice big bear steak or a burger made of moose.  Too many people see those animals as rare and inedible, but they are more common than you’d think.  Game animals in general are better for people than traditionally eaten meats, and hunting serves the added bonus of population control in state game lands. (Chart comparison of game versus common supermarket meats) To gain a better perspective on hunting, both as a hobby and a source of food, I spoke to Todd Long, my father and a sportsman of 32 years, who says he chooses “not to eat [his] meals out of a Styrofoam pack from the supermarket”.

Todd after a successful hunt

            Todd is a true hunting advocate and a perfectionist when it comes to conservation and preparing game animals for cooking.  His experiences have left him well rounded; he has hunted in Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and many parts of Canada.  He’s gone up against white-tailed deer, bears, antelope, elk, turkey, pheasant, squirrels, and even fish, armed with nothing more than a bow and a quiver full of arrows, because he says guns simply make the hunt too easy.

Todd’s living room provides a snapshot of his abilities as a hunter

              I see him get excited every year when archery season rolls around, but I never really had much interest in the sport.  While I have no issue whatsoever with other people doing it, the hippie in me maintains a “live and let live” attitude, and I could never see myself purposefully killing anything.  I can’t even squish bugs without feeling guilty, and because of this, my father and I never bonded over his passion.  This made the interview an eye opening experience into a world I had always simply chosen to ignore.  During the interview, I asked my father about his experience as a hunter, a butcher, and an eater of game animals.

S. Long: What got you started hunting in the first place?

T. Long: Family.  It’s actually because, oddly enough, even though my father did not hunt, my mother did.  She used to hunt with her father and my uncles and they were a big influence.  They used archery, rifle and shotgun, but for me, although I started with all those things, bow and arrow gave me the challenge of not necessarily harvesting game, but having to get close.  You can be upwards of 100 yards away with a rifle, but archery is up close and personal.  You have to be within 25 yards.

Todd and his mother, Gerry

S. Long: So how did you come to make that decision?

T. Long: I went on a guided elk hunt once and I saw an elk over 300 yards away. (Note: Think 3 football fields)  I had a high powered rifle with a scope and I got it, but I thought, “Gee.  How hard was that?”  I had much more fun bow hunting, even though it’s more frustrating, because if you aren’t close, you can’t kill the animal.  It’s just much more fun.

S. Long: What can you tell me about the various types of game you have eaten? Which are better?  Why do you say that?

T. Long: I’ve eaten everything I’ve hunted as well as moose when I was in Canada.  My favorites are…I would say venison and elk and moose.  My first choice would be elk.  It tastes much better than the finest filet mignon that you could imagine.  The deer out west live in areas that have a lot of sage [and] do not have as good a taste as the corn-fed animals that you would hunt in PA.  In agricultural areas, a large part of a deer’s diet is corn and soybeans.  Bucks especially seem to gorge themselves on soybeans while they’re green.  As soon as they turn brown, the deer avoid them like the plague.  According to my farmer friend, they start to get a bitter taste from the Tannic acid starting to form in the bean.  It helps with the processing when they do soy products, but the actual plant becomes so bitter that the deer will not eat it.  Anyway, without a doubt, in the agricultural areas the venison has a much better taste.  I’ve had antelope out west, and it sounds crazy, but you can almost taste the sage in the meat. 

This surprised me because Michael Pollan is so adamant that cattle, which are ruminants, weren’t meant to be fed corn.  They are forced to eat this even though it’s unusual for them and the animals become unhealthy.  “The rumen is designed for grass. And corn is just too rich, too starchy. So as soon as you introduce corn, the animal is liable to get sick” (Pollan).  I assumed that the ruminant deer would have fallen into the same category, but my father insists that he sees deer willingly eat corn all the time.  When he mentioned the sage, I was expecting that he would tell me it added flavor and made them so much better.

S. Long: So when you are hunting, how can you tell that the living creature will produce good meat?

T. Long: It shouldn’t appear to have any type of wound.  You can generally tell by looking at the hide of an animal whether it has mange or a disease.  But it’s not something you come across often.  Sometimes bucks fight and get some nasty infected wounds.  I found a dying buck once that was terribly infected, and it turned out that he had a three inch piece of another buck’s antler stuck in his skull.  I can’t say I’ve ever come across one that I would have purposely missed shooting, but it’s always something to look for.

            If you do ever have a situation like that though [having shot an animal that was unhealthy] and contact the local game commission, they may reissue you a license (a hunter is only allotted a single buck each year with a license) if they deem the game inedible.  The commission really pushes people to eat what they shoot.  Out west, in some of the areas where you hunt for elk, you have to take your meat out on pack mules.  You must, by law, take every bit of edible meat out.  If you have to make more than one trip, you MUST take the meat out first and then come back later for the head and the hide.  In my opinion, no ethical hunter will kill an animal and then leave the meat.  But generally you want to take the meat out first so it doesn’t spoil.

S. Long: Why would it spoil?

T. Long: You need to cool the meat as quickly as possible.  By opening the animal and removing the inner parts, you cool the animal from the inside.  In warmer temperatures, you also want to get the hide off quickly.  If it’s not cold it’s not as much of a priority, but when it’s 50 degrees, you need to cool the meat.  [If you don’t do it] you’re in danger of having the meat spoil.  Absolute priority is to field dress the animal right away so it cools from the inside out.

As far as field dressing goes, I was privileged to know what it was because I’ve seen him come home with the animal intestines all bagged up in sections, but I’d always thought it was because he wanted to preserve the organs for later use – as it turns out, it’s just the opposite.

S. Long: Field dressing…what does that entail?

T. Long: Well, you field dress the animal in the woods.  You make an incision and remove the non-edible parts like the stomach and intestines. (How to field dress a deer (video clip)) Then you take the animal to your transportation, whether it’s a horse or a truck, to get it home quickly.  When you get home, you should hang the meat.  If it’s a situation where it’s very cold outside, you can have the meat hanging outside or in a freezer area.  It’s not uncommon to hang the meat for several days – they do it in the beef processing industry.  It’s called aging the meat and it breaks down the proteins and fibers in the meat to make it more palatable and tender.

            Most hunters will field dress it themselves in the woods and then take it to a butcher or a processor and have it cut into steaks, chops, hamburgers, bologna or sausage.  Personally, I like to do all that myself because I’m extremely fussy.  I will cut it up and I even make some products.  Anybody could master that [butchering a game animal] if they so desired.  It’s a situation where if you watch someone else do it or watch a video that is step by step or help another person, probably after that you could do it yourself.  (Butchering a deer (video clip))  I never did it before until I watched my friend Rick and he showed me how.  After that, I did it all myself. 

A clean set of knives that Todd uses for butchering

            But anyway, most of the time I cut the meat into steaks and chops, but sometimes I will take it to a processor and have bolognas made.  Every person’s tastes different because of all the extras they add like spices and such.  [One of my favorites is] a Mennonite butcher shop called Bur-Pak.  Dietrich’s Meats has some very good products too.  They probably have the best products that you could find.  They’re extremely expensive, but you get what you pay for.  Their hot dogs are so juicy that it’s unbelievable!

S. Long: I’m sure you know by now how grossed out people are by the idea of butchering something at home.  Heck – a lot of people don’t even want to think about their food as having once been an animal, hence the different terms: deer versus venison.  How do you deal with doing it yourself?

T. Long: Well, growing up with it, it becomes a second nature.  As a child, my uncles and my mom were all hunting, and it made it a lot easier.  Being a country boy you realize that it’s a part of life.

            The butchering doesn’t bother me because I grew up with it.  Sometimes, believe it or not, you have regrets after killing the animal, but not to the point where I’m going to stop hunting.  It’s why I’m out there. 

S. Long: Has there ever been a time when you felt so bad that you didn’t shoot the animal?

T. Long: Let me see…  There’s been times, like when I was bear hunting in Canada, that I had a great opportunity to shoot a bear, but she was a mom with cubs.  I knew for a fact that if I killed her, the cubs wouldn’t survive.  So I showed some ethics and didn’t shoot.  Likewise, there have been deer with very young fawns that I’ve passed over.

            There were a couple close calls too.  There was a situation with the bear I mentioned where she had her cubs and I watched them for about a half hour and even videotaped them before they left.  Later on in the day, a bear came out from behind me.  I was just getting ready to shoot it when I noticed a white patch of fur on her neck and thought that it looked very similar to the mama bear from earlier.  I didn’t shoot, even though there were no cubs around, and about 5 minutes later the two little cubs came crashing out of the bushes.  It was the same bear, so I’m really glad I didn’t shoot it.  I would have felt terrible.

I’ve always admired my dad’s ethics when hunting is concerned.  I may not have known the logistics of the hunting process, but I’ve always known about all the nice things he does to show respect to the animal that’s given a life for him.  He stuffs grass into the deer’s mouth, honoring it with a last meal for the afterlife, and in the pictures he takes, he always makes sure the animal looks nice.  He refuses to do what many hunters do and leave the tongue hanging out or blood on the animal’s face.

S. Long: Have you ever had anyone react badly when you tell them you hunt?

T. Long: Oh yes!  My wife’s aunt Helen.  She said that somebody should shoot me.  I just left it go because we were related and all.  Another time I was on state game lands and was bringing a deer out and there were two ladies who told me they thought it was disgusting that I killed a deer.  I told them that it was a good thing nobody cared what they thought.  I’ll bet that lady left and went to McDonalds and had a hamburger and thought nothing of it.

S. Long: Do you believe that more people should eat game [instead of farm animals]?

T. Long: It’s a personal choice.  I won’t say that more people should.  The people who find it repulsive I think are ludicrous when they think it’s acceptable to eat steak, but it’s terrible to eat venison.  Or they think it’s fine to eat chicken, but would never go for pheasant.  They don’t seem to have a problem with domestic game, but [they do with] wild game.  When people tell me they are anti-hunter and tell me how terrible I am for killing a deer and eating venison, I reply, “Do you eat steak?”  They usually say yes and I ask, “Why is that different?”  They often say it just is and I tell them to explain that to the cow.

He has always been very adamant about these things.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard him complain that someone at one of our picnics stood on our porch, munching on a hot dog, and complained him that he killed an innocent deer and refused to try one of his recipes.  It’s so hypocritical!

S. Long: That’s a really interesting way of putting it.  Why do you think people get like that when game animals are concerned?

T. Long: Many times, in the eyes of people, a deer is just a pretty animal as opposed to a barnyard animal like a cow.  It’s a big misconception for a lot of people.  I don’t think it will ever change.  A lot has to do with people’s upbringing, just like other things in life.  I was in a house where animals were hunted and consumed, so I have no issue with it, but other people grew up in a house where they didn’t hunt so they don’t understand it like I do.

S. Long: So do you think that people would feel bad for the barnyard cow if they thought about it enough?

T. Long: I think people would feel bad for the cows too because they don’t think about where that steak comes from.  But if they were in the situation of watching what happens at a slaughterhouse, they would probably feel different.  At least when I’m out there with it, that animal has the advantage.  Their senses are 10 times better than mine.  They have a fighting chance.  Animals in a slaughterhouse don’t have that chance.

S. Long: So is hunting more humane than raising beef?

T. Long: One isn’t more humane than the other.  [One thing that is] important in hunting is you have to have a quick and clean kill.  There can’t be marginal shots with the bow or rifle.  A clean shot with an arrow means the animal is dead in a matter of seconds.  In the slaughterhouse, they kind of do the same thing.  One thing I wonder is if in the slaughterhouse the animal knows what’s coming.  In the wild, they don’t know what’s coming so they can’t worry.

            [It may not be more humane, but] it is cleaner than processed meats.  We have the USDA approved stamp on every product out there, but you can’t hardly have a week go by without a salmonella recall or botulism products.  You can’t really fault them because they have thousands of pieces of meat to inspect, but I checked one time, and did you know that there is an acceptable level of insect parts in commercial products?  When I process my own, I don’t have an acceptable level of that.  When I butcher, I’m doing it all myself and everything I use is totally sterilized and spotless.  I’ll never have any kind of salmonella with the meat I prepare.

Todd’s friend butchers a bear with assistance

S. Long: So aside from the USDA stamp, what’s the difference between wild game and something from a grocer?

T. Long: Many times it would be like if somebody has veal versus chicken – it’s just a different taste.  Everything really comes down to preparation.  If you don’t take care of that game by field dressing and preparing the meat, it won’t taste good.  Just like if you buy the best meat in the store and don’t prepare it properly, it won’t be good.  Everything comes down to preparation [where taste is concerned].

            If you check, many times with venison it will have a higher nutritional value because it doesn’t have the fat.  Even if they are feeding in agricultural areas, they aren’t eating steroids or chemicals.  But the big thing with venison is that it doesn’t have the fat content that beef has.  That’s why we use marinades.  Being leaner, it might not have as much taste, but with marinades, we add moisture and we add taste.

S. Long: You mention not eating steroids and chemicals, but aren’t we spraying pesticides on the fields?  Do you know how those affect the hunting community?

T. Long: I don’t have an answer for that.  I would imagine they use a lot of environmentally friendly pesticides, unlike the DDT that they used many years ago.  That did a lot of damage and caused the American eagle population to drop down to dangerous levels.  The DDT was on the fields, the mice would eat the corn in the field, the eagles would eat the rodents, and the DDT affected the eagles because the eggs they laid turned out so fragile that the eagles would sit on them and they would crush.

            I think a bigger problem than pesticides that causes more trouble for the wildlife population is loss of habitat.  You might have [what used to be] a wood lot and is now 500 homes or another shopping mall.  That’s the biggest problem.

S. Long: Is there anything else you’d like to add before I close the interview?

T. Long: Yes.  One thing I always tell people who tell me how wrong I am to hunt or eat meat.  Man is a predator.  His eyes are in the front like all predators.  A wolf, a lion, a tiger, a bear – all have eyes in the front!  Prey animals have their eyes on the side.  We are predators.

Todd poses with a bear he has just shot

S. Long: I think I’ve heard you say that quite a few times. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today.

T. Long: Any time.

 

Works Mentioned

“How to butcher a deer at home Part 1.” Youtube. Web. 13 Jul 2010.

“How to gut a deer.” Youtube. Web. 13 Jul 2010.

Long, Todd. Personal Interview. 10 Jul 2010.

Pollan, Michael. Frontline. Intervew. Web. 10 Jul 2010.

Semple, Kelley. “From the Field to the Table.” Hunting for Tomorrow, 2008. Web. 9 Jul 2010.

Healthy Living from the Peace Frog

Healthy Living from the Peace Frog

This sign captures the laid back atmosphere of the store.

When you first walk into the Peace Frog, you’re greeted by the sight of shelf after shelf of healthy products. A little counter covered in health items is against the wall and the rest of the 3500 square foot retail space is devoted to supplements, personal care products, cosmetics, shoes and various things meant to make your life healthier and a little less stressful. Behind the counter you’ll find Donna J. Boyd, the owner and sole employee of her little health empire. I had the opportunity to interview Ms. Boyd on the details of her business and what I learned was an astonishing difference to what I thought I knew. I had expected her to sell produce, vegetables and organic foods, with the occasional boxed mix thrown in. What I found was an eclectic mixture of merchandise and not a fruit or veggie to be seen.

I started by asking Ms. Boyd how she got into the natural foods business in the first place.

“I had the degree in naturopathy so I, you know, it was kind of natural to open a store then. A lot of people do that once they get it; the degree,” she told me. I never even knew there was a degree in such a field. It blew me away that someone could have that measure of devotion to a lifestyle. How does a person enter such a field of study?

It turns out that Donna Boyd’s calling into the naturopath field was highly personal.

“My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.”

According to the Peace Frog website, “Donna began studying alternative remedies, ultimately earning a Degree in Naturopathy from Clayton College, when her mother was diagnosed with Stage Four Ovarian Cancer and given a bleak prognosis. With the use of alternative and traditional medicine, Donna’s mother went into remission and lived seven more years.”[1] With the doctor telling her that the outcome didn’t look good, it’s no wonder that Ms. Boyd turned to an alternative form of medicine. But what did Ms. Boyd use to help her mother?

“I gave her essiac tea…”

“And what’s that supposed to do?” I asked her.

“It’s a cancer remedy. I don’t remember the name of some of the stuff I gave her. Some of the stuff was from Canada and I don’t remember the name of it now. I had a nurse helping me with her. They were alternative…they were actually shots. I don’t remember the name of it now, ‘cause it was so long ago. It was back in 1995,” she said.

“Ok. Was the nurse, like a normal…?”

“She was an R.N., yeah. But I did a lot of regular, like glutathione, amino acids and immune boosting vitamins. Immunotherapy.”

“What do you believe the treatments did for her?”

“Immunotherapy boosted up her immune system so her own immune system could fight off the cancer.”

            The idea of supplementing led me to my next question. I had been reading a bit about supplement use and acceptable dosage, and I wondered how she felt about this issue.

 “I wouldn’t have the store if I didn’t think it was a good idea. The RDA’s are always way lower than they need to be. They keep raising it… and they don’t update their RDA’s with the times. The research is done and they don’t update it. Some of them are accurate.”

“Can you give me an example of supplements being beneficial?”

“Umka helps a lot with upper respiratory problems. That’s a homeopathic remedy. That’s one of my best sellers for upper respiratory problems. And they’ve done clinical studies on that that it improves… it shortens the cold by 40%.

The homeopathy shelf actually takes up most of the one wall.

The Cancer Treatment Centers of America use green tea, they use maitake; they both boost the immune system. Maitake is a mushroom. Green tea also boosts the metabolism. A lot of people use that to help burn fat. It also gives you some energy.”

“Do you have any specific green tea supplements that you would suggest for a person trying to burn fat?”

“The capsules.”

“What kind, just green tea capsules?”

“Mm-hmm.”

I was interested in this answer specifically because it has become my personal challenge to lose weight. I had seen commercials for green tea products (where they always exaggerated the before and after) and was curious but leery. Hearing Ms. Boyd’s answer gave me a greater confidence in natural health options.

The question of supplements actually led me back around to a question of food. I have some family members who are unable to eat bread products. I was a little horrified at first when I learned this because I’m a huge fan of baking, and I mourned the many chocolate chip cookies I would not be able to make for my new sister-in-law to take away any homesickness she had while at college. Then I walked into the Peace Frog, where gluten-free merchandise is fairly common. I questioned her about this choice in product. “Why have you chosen to carry so many gluten-free products?”

“Because a lot of people are on that diet. They have to be on it for various reasons: allergies, Celiac disease, autism, ADHD.”

“What does gluten-free actually mean?”

“They take the gluten out of it. Gluten is a binder, so they use other things like xanthan gum or guar gum,” she told me.

This explained why I couldn’t make them pumpkin bread for Thanksgiving. They couldn’t digest the gluten found in the flour!

I wanted to know if there were any common ingredients that people may not realize contain gluten.

“Probably soups, because people don’t realize they add flour to soups a lot of times,” Ms. Boyd answered after a moment’s thought.

I mentioned the idea of adding vanilla extract to a gluten-free cookie mix to make it taste more palatable (specifically so my husband wouldn’t whine).

“…I think there is gluten…you have to get gluten-free vanilla.”

I discovered a Chocolate Chunk cookie mix that was gluten-free as I wandered among the shelves in the store, along with a wide variety of mixes and some ethnic foods as well, such as sushi rice. Something that seemed out of place with all this food caught my eye as I perused the shelves of the Peace Frog: cruelty free makeup, and right nearby I found myself facing the cutest pair of Ugg boots I’d ever seen. Apparently, fashion-consciousness is acceptable for eco-warriors. I questioned Ms. Boyd on the choice of these products, as well.

“I have to ask this because I love them: why do you sell Ugg boots?”

“Because people want to buy them.”

“So it’s purely a sales perspective?”

“Mmhmm.”

“I know they’re made from real sheepskin, so I didn’t know if that had anything to do with it.”

“No. It’s a hot item.”

“Great. I also noticed you sell cruelty free make up. Why is that?”

The Peace Frog also sells greeting cards (front) as well as make up (back)

“Well, it’s not just cruelty free; it’s paraben free, it’s just…really clean. I mean, there are many other selling points, cruelty free is just one of them.” Parabens are a preservative that may be linked to breast cancer, though the research isn’t conclusive.

I decided to move on from looking good to feeling good. One item that I’m most interested in at the Peace Frog is aromatherapy. But how does aromatherapy fit into a natural foods store? I asked Ms. Boyd what her idea of aromatherapy is.

“They’re essential oils that people use for different moods and a lot of people add them to massage oils. People use peppermint to repel chipmunks and squirrels and mice. They use them for all different purposes. Lavender for relaxation.”

I was blown away that peppermint repels some rodents. It could be very useful in keeping pesky intruders out of a garden. I also wanted to know how Ms. Boyd felt about the use of aromatherapy as a holistic medicine.

 “It works for a lot of people so…”

 “You think it’s something people should try more often?” I asked her.

“People get relief from all different things, so, if lavender relaxes them, why not?”

 “So it’s worth a shot?”

“Yeah. If peppermint wakes them up, why not? It’s non-toxic.”

“How well do you feel that aromatherapy works?

“I have a lot of people who use it, I don’t use it personally.” I have to pause here as she waits on a customer.

This is about half of the aromatherapy shelf.

“I have a lot of people who come and buy peppermint at the end of the summer when it starts to get cold out, because it…mice and chipmunks are allergic to it,” she tells me as she finishes with her customer. “They soak cotton balls in it and it chases them back outside.”

“I know you said last time lavender relaxes. I know sandalwood is popular. What about…”

“Ylang ylang is an aphrodisiac.” She surprised me with that answer, but I really wanted to know more about sandalwood.

“What does sandalwood do?”

“I don’t know. I know there was a shortage of it when the tsunami hit because they used it to bury the dead.” Perhaps not the answer I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless.

“What might you recommend for a general need, as far as an aromatherapy?”

“Peppermint is supposed to help make you more energetic. I’m not really into aromatherapy all that much, honestly.”

 “Which aromatherapy oils do you wish people would utilize more?”

“People buy lavender, patchouli, eucalyptus and peppermint most often. Those are the four biggest sellers. Always have been, always will be.”

“Why eucalyptus?”

“Because it clears the sinuses. People use it for colds, to open up the sinuses.”

“Ok, so kind of like, the medical equivalent being Vicks’ VaporRub?”

“Yeah.”

“And what about patchouli?”

“People just love patchouli. It’s the hippie scent.”

This answer brought me back to my original musings on who the owner of such a business would be. I wanted to know more about Ms. Boyd’s feelings about her business, so I asked her a few questions about the products she carries. “Which products are the most popular?”

“…The anxiety formulas and the arthritis formulas. And the menopause formulas,” she told me.

 Since I’d often heard our society is aging, this answer seemed to make sense.

I moved on to another question. “Which product do you think is the oddest?”

“Probably the ear candles.”

“The what? Ear candles?” I might have blinked and done a double take at this point.

“Ear candles,” Ms. Boyd said again.

“Ooh. And what do they do?”

“They draw out sinus pressure and ear wax.”

“And ear wax. Like, it melts it almost?”

“No, it just begins the…it’s a flame, you light the candle and it begins the drying process. It creates a vacuum.”

I decided to move on to a question that had been bothering me since the first time I walked into the store. “How do you feel about buying local produce and products? I kind of, when I first walked in here, expected to see some fruits and vegetables, I don’t know why…”

“It doesn’t sell. I tried it. It doesn’t sell. I belong to a local co-op myself, personally, but last year I had local produce and I lost a lot of money on it. It just doesn’t sell. I also had raw milk and it doesn’t sell. I poured it down the sink.”

Having heard this shocking answer, I asked about her suggestions for a healthy lifestyle. “I always tell people to take baby steps. Just do one thing at a time or you won’t stick with it.” That is definitely good advice.

Since my true interest was her business, I moved back to that topic to finish the interview.“What’s one of your personal goals with this business?”

“I just want to keep up with the times and keep it growing. I don’t want to get stagnate.”

“What’s one of the things you’d like people to know about your business?”

“If I don’t have it I could probably get it. I do a lot of special orders.”

            It’s funny that this little store, tucked between a gas station and a Tom McNulty flooring business, could offer a person so much in the way of a healthy lifestyle. Donna Boyd, the owner and entrepreneur, can offer advice to any who come in with questions about alternative medicine with a certainty conveyed by her degree. The store offers items for people with digestive issues, people who want to eat healthier, and people who just want to be friendlier to

The Peace Frog

 the environment. There are shelves full of bottles of oils which can help make your personal environment more inviting, more relaxing, more energizing or whatever mood you are looking for. There are even items for those who are fashion conscious. But no matter what you are looking for when you enter the Peace Frog, you will be able to get it.

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[1] Boyd, Donna. “Peace Frog Natural Foods, Pottsville, PA – Natural Foods, Earth Shoes, Supplements, Gluten Free.” Peace Frog Natural Foods, Pottsville, PA – Natural Foods, Earth Shoes, Supplements, Gluten Free. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 July 2010.

Raising Boer Goats in Berks

By Linda Werner

     Blaine Beebe is a native of Berks County, Pennsylvania. In addition to his full-time job as a custodian in the Reading School District, he works part-time at Pizza Hut. Somehow, Blaine also finds time to breed and care for 56 Boer goats. The Boer goats are bred specifically for their meat, and Blaine has been breeding and selling goats for the last ten years.

     I’ve known Blaine for nearly twenty years, so I invited him and the couple who introduced us for dinner last Saturday night. Our guests arrived around six, and as they rang the doorbell, they were greeted by the happy barking of our two dogs. The smells of roasted garlic, tomato sauce, and French onion soup were in the air. After hugs all around, Blaine uncorked a big bottle of Chardonnay and poured wine for the adults.

     “So you want to interview me about the goats? What do you need to know?” Blaine said, anxious to begin. I protested; since we’d not had dinner together since April, I wanted to find out what was new with everyone. As we stood around the kitchen talking and laughing, Blaine leaned leisurely against the refrigerator. Dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and sneakers, no one would have guessed he was a goat farmer. Farmers wear overalls, plaid flannel shirts, and John Deere baseball caps, right?  Tall and balding, Blaine is in his mid-forties. He had an easy-going personality and a good sense of humor.

     We started dinner with onion soup. It was served from a pot on the stove with crusty Italian bread and grated Swiss cheese. As we headed into the dining room, separated from the kitchen by a half-wall, I seated myself next to Blaine. “I love this soup!” he said. “What goes into it?” As I related the ingredients, I remembered Blaine loves to cook and bake; his pumpkin pies are to die for. As we finished the first course, salad and bread with roasted garlic were passed to everyone. My husband brought out the eggplant parmesan and placed it in the middle of the table; Blaine refilled our glasses. The conversation waned for several minutes as we enjoyed our meal. After we finished eating, Blaine wondered aloud when his interview would start. I assured him that I’d rather ask the questions as part of our conversation. As we returned our dishes to the kitchen, we headed for more comfortable seating in the living room. Blaine stretched out on the chaise near the windows; I sat on the couch facing him.

     “Tell me about how you got started in farming,” was all it took to get Blaine talking. He said it really began when he was a kid around five or six because his mom and dad had a few cows, some chickens, and a garden out back.  “All of us kids loved to run around the farm. It was fun to play outside, but I had really bad allergies and always got poison (ivy).”  Then Blaine told an interesting tale. His father went out and bought a goat, and he tied the goat to a tree near a patch of poison ivy. “Every time the goat cleaned out a patch of poison, my dad took her to another area with more poison. After a few weeks, when he milked her, he had me drink the goat’s milk. I guess the old remedy worked because I can use the weed-whacker with shorts on. I never get it (poison ivy) anymore.”  Blaine wondered if this was when he first realized he liked goats. Then he continued. “Growing up there was great, but when I graduated, I really didn’t want to stay at the farm.” Eventually, Blaine moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and lived there for a number of years. He had trouble finding a good job and, since his parents were getting older, he moved back to help them with their business, owning and operating several bingo halls in the Reading area. Around that time, Blaine read a magazine article about raising goats for meat and thought it sounded like an interesting way to make some extra money. He picked goats over sheep because goats can “clear a meadow in a few weeks,” but don’t eat down to the roots like sheep do.

      “I got really curious and decided to see what I could find out about breeding goats.”  The rest, as they say, is history. Resources from the internet were plentiful and, because Berks County has so many farmers, Blaine did not find it difficult to get the information he needed. He decided to raise Boer goats because they are bred for their meat rather than their milk. “It’s like cows,” he said. “There are milking cows and meat cattle. The milking goats are Nubian and Alpine.” He went on to explain that dairy goats require much more work because they need to be milked twice each day. “I chose Boers to sell for meat.” Then Blaine began to tell me a little about the breed. He said Boer goats were from Africa. They grow quickly, are easy to breed, and are usually white with red heads or markings.  A few of his goats are white only, and one of the kids born this season is brown. When full-grown, the females weigh between 180 and 220 pounds. He said his male probably weighs between 230 and 250 pounds now.

     Next, Blaine explained that the breeding females are called ‘does’ and as they get older, they’re called ‘nannies’.  The male goat is a ‘buck’ or a ‘billygoat’, and the offspring are the ‘kids’. The gestation period for Boer goats is five months, so if he breeds the does and the buck (he has only one buck) within the next few weeks, their kids should be born between Christmas and New Years. This is important because Blaine has more days off during the holidays, and he can be available when the kids are born. Apparently, all the goats go into heat at the same time, and their kids are born within a few days of each other. He uses a method called “flushing,” which causes higher egg production in the females. This results in more kids when the goats give birth, and many deliver twins. Last season, one doe had a set of triplets!  

     Blaine began to explain more about his farming choices, opting to keep all of the livestock organic. He believes the goats do better on an organic diet, and many of his customers prefer organic goat meat. The goats graze in the meadow in warm weather, and he calls them his “fair weather creatures.” The breed comes from an area where it’s hot and dry. The goats eat grain, hay, and organic feed during winter because they don’t care for colder weather and they usually won’t go outdoors. He mentioned that he has a number of other animals on the farm: chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and six cows. They eat organically too. The cows get organic grains and hay, and are also allowed to graze in the pasture whenever they choose to. All of the livestock Blaine raises is considered ‘free-range’ and ‘grass-fed’.  He sells eggs from the hens, but the other fowl and the cows will be sold at the Leesport Auction. This is also where he sells the goats. Almost all of the kids are auctioned when they are between three and five months old, but sometimes one or two does are kept for breeding. Blaine also sells the buck to another breeder after the kids are born, since it’s “bad practice” to breed a buck with its own offspring. He sells live animals only, and says, “I don’t like to think about what happens to them after they leave here. They’re almost like pets to me!”

     The barn on the property serves as home to all of Blaine’s livestock. The interior is a large open area with no stalls and is approximately 20 by 30 feet. The animals share this communal space without any problems. Blaine has them graze together and says they all seem to find their own space in the barn. When it’s time for the goats to deliver their kids, they all give birth in the same area within hours of each other. He said there is a definite pecking order that he sees within each breed, especially the does. The goats have the same routines every day. Blaine said that during the summer months, the barn door stays open from early morning until nightfall. The goats get up when the chickens do, and all the animals head for the barnyard. They graze all day, but usually return to the barn during rainstorms. By around 7:00 in the evening, the goats lead the rest of the animals into the barn for the night. This routine is repeated during spring, summer, and fall, but the goats prefer to be indoors during colder weather.

     “They have lots of personality,” Blaine explained. “They’re like dogs with horns!”  He told me a story about one special goat. “Alberta, one of my original goats, just died last week. I found her in the barnyard. She was twelve years old, and goats usually only live eight or nine years,” Blaine remarked sadly. He told me she and some of the other “girls” know the sound of his truck. “They run to the fence to see me before I can even get out of the truck. They wag their tails when I walk over. I guess they’re glad to see me.” Blaine said he usually does not name the goats, but Alberta was like a pet. He also names the buck because he only has one; this season the buck is Samson. The last goat Blaine refers to by name is Six. This goat is a favorite of his best friend’s daughter, and she begged him not to sell Six at auction. Apparently, her ear tag (given at birth) has the number ‘6’ on it! Some of the does Blaine has span four generations: great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and kid. “The girls that are related stay together in the barn. Even though they were fathered by different bucks, they seem to recognize each other as relatives. There’s no doubt in my mind that those goats are as smart as dogs.”

     At this point, the conversation went in another direction as I asked Blaine about the profitability of raising goats for meat. He told me he took 32 kids to the auction in the spring. All of the goats are sold by the head because they are sold live. If he were to sell the meat only, it would be done by the pound. The price Blaine gets for the kids is highest when they are between three and five months old. I wondered aloud, “Who would buy a live goat to butcher and eat?” Blaine’s answer was somewhat surprising. He said that certain ethnic groups are his best customers. These groups include Greek, Haitian, Jamaican, Latino, and Middle-Eastern. One year, Blaine sold all of his kids to a Greek gentleman who owns a local restaurant. “With all the work involved with the goats and when I add up how much I spend on feed, I just break even.”

     Blaine continued to talk about some of the other reasons he continues to raise Boer goats. He spoke about having high levels of stress both at school and at the restaurant where he works, and he talked about the therapeutic aspect of raising animals. He also said that he really enjoys the goats, even though they require daily care. “They help me relax because I stop thinking about work. It’s good exercise and I like getting my hands dirty in the barn. They make me laugh too.”

     When the subject of veterinary bills came up, Blaine told me that he takes care of all the goats himself, unless they become severely ill. Every goat needs to be vaccinated once and wormed twice each year. In addition, he trims all of the goats’ hooves every three to four months. I was advised that keeping the hooves trimmed is like cutting a person’s fingernails. It’s painless, and it helps to prevent “hoof rot.” A condition called bloat also requires treatment. When this often-fatal disease strikes, the patient is dosed with 16 ounces of water and three tablespoons of Tide powered detergent. Apparently, this mixture is force-fed to the sick goat. This results in excessive belching from the goat, which expels any extra air in the goat’s stomach. When the pressure is relieved, the bloat passes and the animal recovers. Blaine said he’s lost seven or eight goats to bloat over the last ten years. He also delivers the kids, and often has numerous sets of twins and even some triplets. One of Blaine’s least favorite veterinary jobs is to castrate any young bucks that reach the age of three months. He does this so these young males are unable to breed with their mothers or sisters.     

       When I asked Blaine if he’d ever eaten goat, he said, “I just can’t bring myself to do it. They have such individual personalities, and some act a lot like dogs. The thought of eating goat meat really makes me sick to my stomach because they’re like pets to me.” Then he added that he’d heard about some recipes from his customers. One man from Colombia told him about digging a pit and roasting the goat as you would a pig. The man said the flavor was good and the meat was “‘soft.” Blaine supposed the man meant it was tender. Another customer told Blaine how to make curry goat the way it was done “in the islands.” He said the worst recipe he heard about was from Jamaica. It was for goat’s head soup. Blaine said he couldn’t get the image of an old Rolling Stones’ album cover out of his mind. I knew exactly what he meant; the album was entitled Goat’s Head Soup, and the cover pictured the head and horns of a goat sticking out of a boiling soup pot. I guess I can understand why Blaine wouldn’t want to eat goat. It would be like eating dog or cat to a pet owner!

     Finally, Blaine remembered one food containing a goat product that he had consumed. It was goat’s milk ice cream. He told me he knew a Mennonite farmer who raised dairy goats. The man had talked about the richness of ice cream made with his goats’ milk, and he gave Blaine a gallon of milk to try. Blaine found a recipe for chocolate goat’s milk ice cream on the internet. He tried the recipe and told me it was the best chocolate ice cream he’d ever eaten. Still, Blaine said he’d never be able to raise dairy goats because milking twice a day wouldn’t work with his busy schedule. 

     As our interview came to a close, I asked Blaine to share some final thoughts. He said he would not raise goats if he didn’t feel it was beneficial in his life. They were a great way for him to relieve the stress in his jobs, and they helped him get exercise outdoors. When I asked Blaine if he thought his goats were happy, he paused for a minute, thinking about his response. “If there’s reincarnation, I want to come back as one of my goats! Hopefully, I’d live a long life like Alberta and die peacefully in a place I love.”

Rethinking Meat Choices: An Interview with Country Butcher Ted Kazmierczak

By Jodi A. Corbett 

A canonical high school reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair lays open Chicago’s meat packing industry’s unsafe and unhealthy practices at the turn of the twentieth century. The public outcry from Sinclair’s depiction of shoveled meat, men washing hands in the same water for sausage making, a rat or rat dung, and rotting meat in barrels in the basement[1] lead to our modern-day federal inspections. 

Behind the meat counter

The Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection insures, “[M]eat and poultry products are safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.”[2]  Indeed, the lengthy back row of most chain grocery stores offer glossy packages of poultry, beef, and pork portions. The USDA symbol certifies “wholesome” meat that when alive, survived on antibiotics and hormones. Michael Pollan, former editor of Harper’s Magazine and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, details the lives of cows that at six-months old are put on feed lots, fed corn, and stand and sleep in their own dung until slaughtered. [3] 

Meat has always been the center of my dinner plans.  However, in 2006, Rolling Stone’s Magazine reporter Jeff Teitz wrote “BossHog,” exposing Smithfield’s factory pig farming practices.[4]  Like Pollan’s naked-eye depictions of cow factories, Teitz’s accounts of pink lagoons from toxic pig waste was so potent a mixture that leaks into the nearby watershed have killed thousands of fish. 

Corporate farming meat was off the grocery list. 

Country Road Commutes among the Corn and Soy 

Along my Route 73 commute from Reading to Boyertown, a black sign with white-letters advertises Delmonico steaks for $7.99 a pound and boneless pork chops for $3.69 a pound as specials. Andre’s Country Meat Market[5] resides in Pleasantville, Pennsylvania, about half way between Oley and Boyertown. It’s Americana with a covered porch filled with whatever the season is offering from pansies in April to pumpkins in October. 

Owner Ted Kazmierczak

I met with Ted M. Kazmierczak, owner of Andres Country Meat Market, after he agreed to an interview while handing me my pork chop spare ribs. Until the interview, I was a nameless loyal customer on the other side of the high, glass counter. Through the small windows behind the meat counter, a band saw and cutting boards sit on a stainless steal work table. 

Our interview is part tour of his kitchen, part watching him work, and part kibitzing about local news. He’s proud of his scrapple pots and smoke house sitting behind the main kitchen. The smokehouse held buffalo bones for stock he would use in making his locally famous buffalo scrapple. Its smell of campfires caught my hair and lingered into the next day. 

Passing a Family Business over to a New Family 

A Pleasantville butcher that specializes in buffalo is not as much of an outlier as it may first appear. Michael Andre owned Andre’s from 1984 – 2005. Andre began selling buffalo in 2003 and like many of Andre’s ideas, Kazmierczak continued in his traditions. Michael Andre sold the business to Ted and Patti Kazmierczak in 2005, and Andre trained Ted Kazmierczak to be a butcher. Kazmierczak had stocked Andre’s shelves with Frito Lay products for ten years on his route and Kazmierczak had tease with Andre about “buying him out.” Kazmierczak remembers, “Mike told me he was ready to sell…and four months later, my wife and I own a business.” 

Michael Andre remains in Kazmierczak’s life, visiting the store nearly everyday. Tyler Andre, who was cleaning the band saw and washing dishes during the interview, is Andre’s grandson. Tyler said his grandfather doesn’t know what to do with himself after retirement, so Andre “goes to auction in Lancaster” for Kazmierczak three days a week. A large box of fresh cantaloupe sat on the kitchen floor; Andre’s bid of “fifty 

$1 cantaloupes, local produce purchased from Lancaster auctions

cents a piece” won the day’s finest deal.  

Work Hard and Sell a Good Product 

Kazmierczak is a businessman— ideology doesn’t register as a selling idea—quality meat at a fair price does. Yet, quality meats for Kazmierczak means purchasing beef and pork that is hormone and antibiotic free. 

His choices in meat have become a part of my family’s dinners for over three years. Berks County’s food ways are interesting, and I straddle my stomach between keeping my childhood favorites and eating healthy. My husband and I cycle and our sons swim five, mostly six, days a week.  We eat morning sausage and smoked bacon and love my mother’s potato filling. Our sons, a head taller than me, enjoy peaches, blueberries, broccoli and beans. They actually need calories, particularly lean proteins. 

Frugality is also a Pennsylvania Dutch food way. I know how to get a second and even a third meal out of a Sunday chicken dinner.  Kazmierczak doesn’t sell his meats for a premium price, because he’d lose his customer base. In a discussion about smoked cow tongue, I winced. He said, “You know it is a delicacy and sells for $10 a pound, but could you see me trying to sell it for that price in Berks County?” He knows his customer’s price points, and with his “back up against the wall” with two mortgages, buying the best product at the best price and then selling reasonably is his best business practice. 

Kazmierczak has kept Andre’s specialty recipes—apple sausage, pepper and onion sausage, meat loaf mix—only “tweaking it here and there.”  When Andre sold Kazmierczak his business, he also passed on his customers. He’s made little changes. In typical Berks County worldview, Kazmierczak stops cutting meat for a moment, looks at me, and questions, “Why would I want to change something that’s successful?” 

His two strongest selling products that fit into reducing the “oiled” food distribution chain and offer “wholesome” meats are his pork and bison products. Kazmierczak explains, “He doesn’t slaughter the animals.” His pork, which is outstanding, is from Leidy, Inc., Souderton, PA. According to Liedy’s webpage[6], they are a meatpacking company, established in 1753, which works with small Pennsylvania farms, selecting only pigs raised on an all-natural diet in a stress-free environment. Liedy is recognized by the American Humane Society for its Free-Farmed Certification. 

Kazmierczak tells me that Andre’s pork products are comparable in prices to supermarket prices. (Actually he made this claim about his produce too; “I can’t do great on bananas, but local produce like cantaloupe for $1 is hard to beat.”)  I made a few phone calls.  Wal-Mart sells Smithfield boneless pork chops for $3.98 a pound. Giant handles Hatfield brand and Nature’s Promise pork chops. Hatfield sell for $4.29 a pound. Nature’s Promise, Giant’s “organic line,” boneless pork chops sell for $4.99 a pound. The Nature’s Promise pork is antibiotic and hormone free. Andre’s boneless pork chops sell for $3.99 a pound, on special, $3.69. 

What is at stake is more than saving a penny, although this is how Wal-Mart deals with getting the best price from wholesalers. 

What is at stake is Kazmierczak’s reputation and business. 

Smithfield and Wal-Mart can afford to have shaky reputations because of their size. Kazmierczak loses his reputation as having fair prices; he loses his customers. 

What the consumer will not find at Wal-Mart is buffalo meat, which is more expensive than pork or beef.  Andre’s Country Meat Market has extra-lean ground beef selling for $3.59 a pound and bison selling for $5.69 a pound. However, it is still leaner.[7]  Kazmierczak asserts that the only local places that have buffalo are Weis, a “fatty version,” and at the Fairgrounds Farmer’s market, a “frozen version.”  He specializes in fresh bison raised in the Poconos. Bison raised on ranches might be an alternative lean protein to cattle kept in a feed lot. 

Pocono Buffalo  

Michael Andre told him: “The customers want me open eight days a week.”  And, the customers come, despite a landscape of two Giants, a Super Wal-Mart, a Redner’s, two Targets, and a Weis within a fifteen mile radius of Andre’s. 

One of his most popular draws is buffalo scrapple. Kazmierczak boasts, “We sell 100 pounds of buffalo scrapple a week.” Scrapple, by all accounts, is an acquired taste. Sausage, ground bison, and jerky come from what people in the meat industry call “grinders.”  In addition to “grinder” products, Kazmierczak went through “26 prime animals” in 2009. He shows me his two-page call list of over 100 customers requesting fresh buffalo steaks.   

Kazmierczak explains that grinders are four to  five-year-old bison; whereas, primes are 24 to30-month-old bison. These grades are determined by the USDA. The challenge with buffalo, the common name for bison meat, like beef for cattle, is waiting for the animals to mature. Pollan reports that feed lot cattle are taken to slaughter by fourteen-months-old.[8] Another reason buffalo is more expensive, Kazmierczak explains, is the feed. 

Kazmierczak and Tyler recently visited the bison ranch in the Poconos. The bison graze on hay and grains until the “finishing,” the last two months, when they are fattened with corn. Although the corn fattens them, bison, especially the prime age bison, are far smaller than prime cattle. “You just don’t get as much off a buffalo,” he states.  This is the main reason Kazmierczak stays out of restaurant sales: “Restaurants want the tenderloins and rib eyes [the best cuts]. With my call list, I just have enough supply to serve those customers. I couldn’t keep up with supplying buffalo to restaurants.”

92% lean ground bison Nutrition comparison per 100 grams of cooked lean buffalo meat:Buffalo: 2.42 grams fat, 143 calories, 82 mg cholesterol  Beef: 9.28 grams fat, 211 calories, 86 mg cholesterol  Pork: 9.66 grams fat, 212 calories, 86 mg cholesterol  Chicken: 7.41 grams fat, 190 calories, 89 mg cholesterol  Source: USDA

I am surprised there is this much demand in the Berks County. He laughs and hands me buffalo jerky, before asking, but does ask—“You like jerky, right?” It’s a little tough but has a spicy, deep flavor from the smoker. Although he started off working while we interviewed, he’s talking to me completely as Tyler is washing dishes. Excited by a product that seems to sell itself, he states, “Customers come in here looking for buffalo after their doctor told them they had high cholesterol.”   

“So buffalo is a prescription?” I ask. 

“Yes, that is it exactly”; he walks to his office and brings back a stack of pamphlets on buffalo meat. Kazmierczak says, “You’ve probably seen this USDA chart before [and I have], but bison is far leaner than any other meat.”  

Kazmierczak explains how bison is slaughtered differently from cattle. He explains, “I saw how it works on the bison ranch recently. When a bison is ready for the slaughterhouse, it isn’t like cattle that get a stun gun to the head.” Buffalo is an exotic meat. “They are not domesticated animals,” he asserts, “When a bison is ready for slaughter, it takes a few ranchers to take it down.” Therefore, manure on the hides, like with feedlot cattle is not a concern with bison. 

I seem to taste the wildness in the bison, and it does seem tougher. Kazmierczak interjects, “Whenever a customer comes in and says they had bad buffalo steaks, I ask them how they cooked it.” Buffalo steaks, unlike beef steaks, must be cooked on low heat and very slowly. It must be turned frequently rather than the usual flip on both sides. Buffalo should be cooked medium rare. 

The Meat and Cigarettes 

Before purchasing the business, Patti was a stay-at-home mom.  Now it takes both. He manages the “back of the house” and orders all meats while Patti “does everything” from balancing the books to “order[ing] cigarettes and all the produce.”   

Kazmierczak works about 10 hours more a week than he worked on his Frito Lay route. Patti works around 40 hours a week.  He explains, “It’s more profitable to own your own business [than working for Frito Lay]. The business increased 11 percent in 2007—but I was pushing. Do I see more in my pocket? I take the salary I made with the Frito Lay route; the rest usually goes back into the business. Patti still doesn’t get a paycheck. 

Ted Kazmierczak, like many entrepreneurs, risks owning a small business and competing with chain supermarkets that often sell factory farm meets.  A hundred years after meat inspection became common place, the USDA stickers can create the illusion that the meat we eat is “wholesome.”  As corporate farm engineers continue to learn new ways to shorten the time it takes to grow an animal for slaughter, we the consumer need to examine our own ways in which we purchase meet and take the extra time to buy meat without additives. 

Meat and the day’s stories remain the center of our dinnertime. We gather, fold our hands, clink our glasses with “Nostrovia,” invoking my husband’s Polish grandmother, before we begin our last meal of the day.  These rituals mean something to me, and so does shopping for the best food that I can afford to feed my family. Andre’s Country Meat Market on Rt. 73 will be around for many years and hiscc pork chops will be on my table.   

---

[1] Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, 1906. 

[2] United States Department of Agriculture. “Fact Sheet: Production and Inspection.” Food Safety and Inspection Services, 2008. Web. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/inspection_&_grading/index.asp. 

[3] Pollan, Michael, “Modern Meat: Transcript.” Frontline. Web. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html. 

[4]  Tietz, Jeff. “Boss Hog.” Rolling Stone 14 Dec. 2006: 89-139. Print. 

[5] Andre Country Meat Market - 2638 W. Philadelphia Avenue, Pleasantville, Phone: 610-689-9181 

[6]  ALL Holding Company Inc.  http://www.alderfermeats.com/ 

[7] USDA Nutrition Chart. “Andres Country Meat Market.” Reading Eagle. http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=103499 

[8] Pollan, Michael, “Modern Meat: Transcript.” Frontline. Web. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html.

The Chemistry of Wine

An Interview at Pinnacle Ridge

by Angie Wakeman

One of my most distinct memories with wine dates back to a few months after my twenty-first birthday.  It was pretty well established that I did not like a dry, red wine and preferred something lighter and fruitier.  A few days before Christmas, my sister and I headed into New York City for a girls’ night on the town.  We found ourselves in Little Italy and arbitrarily chose to eat dinner at one of the handful of restaurants that line the street.  We perused the wine menu, thinking we could split a bottle.  I knew I wanted a white zinfandel, and my sister, the wine aficionado, wanted anything but.  White zinfandel wasn’t real wine in her opinion, and we were unable to reach a compromise; we had to order by the glass instead.  A wine neophyte, I sipped my wine slowly over dinner.

Since that night in New York, my wine tastes have matured.  Though I generally choose a semi-sweet white or red, two of my favorite wines are malbec and pinot noir.  In the wine store I am always hunting for a different flavor to try, feeling restless with the same bottle of white merlot or pinot noir.  When I discovered the local wine scene a year ago, it not only provided me with a wide range of new wines to experience, but also opened my eyes to all that is involved in creating wine.  I have visited Clover Hill, the largest winery in the Lehigh Valley; Franklin Hill, one of the oldest wineries in the Valley; and Pinnacle Ridge, the smallest and newest of the Valley wineries (though it has experienced significant success and growth).  My trip to Pinnacle Ridge has become an annual outing with my husband’s family for Father’s Day.  When we arrive on that warm day in June, the sound of bass reverberates from a Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse as we walk down a street lined with cars. We grab a plate of barbeque from a counter next to a roasting pig, a glass of wine, and sit down at picnic tables to bask in soul-stirring blues.  I have a habit of inhaling the scent of wine before I sip to see if I can guess what it will taste like, and as I breathe in the rich aroma of a Pinnacle Ridge wine, I have no way of knowing the story behind this glass of Cayuga.  The unique wines with their beautifully designed labels—my favorite is the bright blue bottle of Cayuga with a golden sunflower on the label—make me want to uncover the story of a locally made wine.  I met with owner and wine maker Brad Knapp in the rustic basement wine store and to learn about what goes into farming grapes and producing quality wine.  Brad is a hard-working and conscientious wine maker, and the thought and time he puts into producing his wine makes Pinnacle Ridge a noteworthy vineyard and wine producer.

I read on your website that the winery was founded in 1993.  Tell me a little about Pinnacle Ridge’s history.
We bought the property in 1990 and were licensed in 1993.  Before we bought it, it was a dairy operation and then grain farming.  I had no agricultural background when I bought the farm.  I started from wine appreciation in grad school in Wisconsin.  I started brewing beer with a friend in grad school and then started making wine.  I backed into the agricultural side. To make wine, I found it was important to grow your own fruit.  I was forced by the industry into farming if you want to do a good job. I’m a PhD chemist by training.
I read in the Lehigh Valley Style magazine that Pinnacle Ridge is a family business.  Who else is involved in the business?
I started it with my ex-wife.  I worked full-time until 1998 and did this on the weekend.  In 2004 I went full time with wine making.  It’s family in the sense that my ex-wife worked here and my wife works here.  It’s a small production.  My wife does the marketing and stuff.  All retail people are part-timers and there’s one other full-time employee who helps make wine.
How many people work in the vineyard?
Two work in the vineyard.  There’s one intern from Kutztown University who works ten hours a week. During harvest part time people come to pick grapes.  We have a three acre vineyard here and my friend has a fifteen acre vineyard in Kempton and I buy fruit from them.  The farm in Kempton is not in the wine-making business, they just sell the grapes from the vineyard.
Is it common to grow grapes but not use them to make wine?
Yes.  There are more vineyards than there are wine makers.
What types of grapes do you grow?  Do you grow all your own grapes, or do you get some from other places?
Concord and niagara aren’t grown here—they’re grown up in Eerie.  Welch’s vineyard is in Eerie and that’s where we get our concord and niagara from.  It’s cheaper to transport juice than grapes so most people buy juice from that vineyard (the concord and niagara juice).  Then we ferment and bottle it.  The grapes we grow on site are: chambourcin, pinot noir, chardonnay, a small amount of cabernet franc and cabernet sauvignon.  In Kempton they grow all of the above, as well as cayuga, vidal, one type of pinot we don’t have here, merlot, syrah, riesling, and pinot meunier.  I also have a grower in Manheim who grows pinot for me.  Our two vineyards supply about 70% of what we do.

Grapes on the vine, two months before harvest

Explain a typical grape-harvesting season.
It’s long and tiring.  It depends on what you grow and how much of each type you grow.  The varieties ripen at different times.  Our harvest starts in September and goes to the end of October.  We sample fruit as we approach harvest, we check sugar, pH levels, acid levels, and we taste them.  We look at the weather and birds and rot, and then we decide when to pick.  If we decided to pick on Wednesday, we start making calls to get a crew built up, they show up on Wednesday morning around seven or eight and we put them in the field with containers and they snip clusters and we pick up the trays of fruit and process the fruit up above (in the barn).  We pick two to four times a week and we generally don’t pick on the weekends.  It gives me a chance to deal with the fruit on the weekend. We do that until it’s done.  Some weeks are not so bad and others are brutal.
What factors determine a harvest’s success?
The plant—what condition the plant is in going into the growing season.  If it was treated well the prior season and the rain is right then it goes into the season healthy.  Weather is huge.  Last year was bad—it was cold, it was wet, fungal disease, rot, there’s a list of diseases. Dry weather versus wet weather.  Grapes like heat, we like it dry.  Bird pressure, insect pressure, fungus, the pickers (when the economy is bad it’s easy to get pickers because more people need work).  The weather as we are approaching harvest is important.  Hurricane after hurricane can rot the fruit.
I also read that your grapes are hand-picked.  How might other vineyards harvest their grapes?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of hand-picking grapes?
The other way to harvest is machine picking.  Not too many people use the machines.  They are very expensive.  Up in Eerie they use the machines.  Wine grapes are a much higher value crop than concord and niagara grapes, if you can grow the wine grapes.  They are much harder to grow (than juice grapes), more disease-prone.  The advantages of hand picking are: it’s gentle, the fruit comes in on the stem, there’s no opening on the fruit, so bacteria and yeast can’t get into the fruit.  You can refrigerate them and deal with them the next day if you have to.  The disadvantage is: it’s slow.  If rain from a hurricane is coming and you want to pull in three acres then it’s hard to do.  You have to do it in the daytime instead of at night.  Machine picking is faster, you can do it at night.  A disadvantage of machines is getting materials other than grapes (MOG), like leaves and stems and bugs, that fall into the bins.  Most small producers hand-pick.
You told me about a harvesting season, but from the time the vine is planted, how long does it take for a grape to actually be ready to be harvested?
If you get sufficient growth, third year you’ll get a good crop.  Without enough water because of a dry year it takes four.  My longest crop was six and seven years.  You can lose a crop to dear, raccoons, birds, disease.  There are a lot of risks in farming and growing fruit.  We had rabbits one year that gnawed on young vines in the winter.  Deer eat young growth, so they can be devastating in the spring.  
So from the time the vine is planted, how long does it take for a grape to actually become a wine ready to be consumed?
If you do things well, fruit at year three and a normal crop at year four.  From the time you harvest grapes, typically types that are lighter and fruitier they can be ready in January, so four months after harvesting.  Harvest is usually early to mid September until the very end of October, or sometimes even early November.  This year it was very hot in early April so the bud break was on April eighth so we are ahead of time.  That means we are ahead of hurricanes and they dump water, which is bad for the grape because it dilutes it.  We love this weather—dry and hot.  I love seeing brown grass.
Is it dangerous for the fruit to break so early if it gets cold again?
Bud break in April increases the chance of frost.  Chardonnay broke early this year.  Kempton lost half their crop because of the warm weather in early April.  We are more frost resistant because of our location.
I would also like to know a little about your farming methods. My understanding of farming is it’s good for the soil to switch crops.  Since you are clearly invested in one crop, what steps might you have to take to replenish the soil?
The viewpoint that I think more and more people are buying into is to not poison the soil, first of all.  A lot of vineyards will keep it squeaky clean below the vine by using pesticides to keep weeds out from below the vine because the weeds compete for water and sun.  Something you have to think about is where is your soil when you start.  So what we’re doing we’re allowing the cover crop such as wild grasses as much as we can.  There are a couple of varieties that hurt the vine, so on those we are using Round Up that is based on contact so it doesn’t go into the soil (they are called contact herbicides). There’s old school farming where you beat the crap out of anything that goes against the crop.  The next step beyond that is you think about what you’re putting on the soil.  The next step is organic.  The next step beyond is biodynamics.  An Austrian scientist came up with it.  It’s about doing things to the soil to encourage bacterial growth…make compost out of cow dung.  It’s being adopted by some wineries, in California, in France.  In organic and biodynamic it helps to have a dry climate.  It doesn’t work in this area because of the weather.
Would you say your grapes are grown organically?  Why or why not?
They are not.  My two minute spiel on organic farming: To be considered organic a number of criteria have to be met.  You have to be somewhat isolated from other farms (if they use pesticides). You are allowed to spray copper and sulfur—they are inorganic but you are allowed to use them; they are not particularly any safer than some of the softer, newer chemicals that have been developed.  Metals are toxic, period.  But organic allows that.  If it’s labeled organic it means it has met some criteria but the criteria aren’t awesome.  We definitely try.  We use integrated pest management (I.P.M.): it means not pulling out the bag of chemicals on a fixed schedule. We stopped using herbicides where I could, and when I do, I use ones that don’t go into the soil. We try to use as much of the softer chemistries that we can.  I do use sulfur because it’s effective and cheap.  With insects we are reactive, so we wait until we see something going on and then we deal with it.  For example, Japanese beetles aren’t around this year so we haven’t used anything.  With fungus diseases you have to be preventive.  If you wanted to be an organic grape grower, you would want to pick which grapes to grow very carefully.  For example, a concord would see four sprays a year; pinot noir and chardonnay would be sprayed fourteen times a year.

What is unique about your grapes and/or farming methods?

We think a lot about it.  We are very quality conscious.  We pull leaves, we hedge…  Hedging has to happen when the vines grow up the trellis (six feet tall)… the vines grow up and above the trellis, the vines shade everything, prevent growth, so hedging is going out and hacking off the top of the vine.  When it’s dryer the growth of the vines is restricted.  With pinot noir we throw half the crop out because the grapes get more of what they need when they aren’t competing with other grapes.  You get better fruit if you do that.  We go out in the winter and weigh the vines and that determines how you train it to grow up (trellis it).  We hired a consultant from Australia who analyzed our vineyard and as a result we got bigger yields of better fruit.  We think a lot.  We approach it academically, we read research, we keep up with newer developments in grape growing.

Grape vine on the trellis

So with all this work it takes to grow and harvest grapes, how many grapes does it actually take to make a bottle of wine?
Let me work backwards.  There’s 150 gallons to the ton…2,000 grapes. Twelve to fifteen pounds of grapes per gallon and a gallon is five bottles.  Three pounds of grapes per bottle.  It’s twelve clusters of grapes.
Now that we have talked about farming and harvesting grapes, how do they become wine?  Explain the actual wine-making process.
To make white wine: take the clusters, put them through a machine that takes the grapes off the stems.  We have a sorter that removes anything smaller than the grapes.  The fruit then drops into a pump and we let the pump break up the berries.  In the next step, the press separates the skin and seeds from the juice.  The juice is brought into tanks, chilled, settles for one to two days.  Then it is pumped into a fresh tank that removes some of the solids.  Next it starts fermenting with yeast and this takes four weeks.  We let it sit, the yeast falls to the bottom, and the wine goes into a new container and then can bottled.  To make red wines, the process is the same except you ferment the whole fruit—skin and flesh.  Then the juice is separated from skins, etc. and then the wine goes into a barrel and sits for one to two years.
What ingredients go into the wine besides grapes?
Not a lot, typically.  Sometimes we add sugar; sugar gets converted into alcohol, so if we need more sugar than what is already in the grape, we will boost it.  Sulfites, which is an anti-oxidant and anti-bacterial and suppresses the growth of wild organisms.  99% of the world’s wines are done this way—it keeps them clean and keeps them from spoiling.  Some of the sweet ones have sugar added after fermentation.
I always read on the labels on the back of wines that the wine has a flavor of vanilla or berries or something.  What does that mean?
The wine descriptors are based on things people know. You can’t tell someone a chambourcin takes like a chambourcin. It’s typical to describe wine based on things people know, such as cherries, berries, vanilla from the barrel.  Those things aren’t actually in the wine.
Do you have to put anything in to make the wine a certain color?
Color of the wine is from the color of the grapes.  If it’s labeled merlot it can have up to 25% of another grape in it.  Adding a different grape to a merlot, for example, can add more complexity, it can change the color, but you want it to taste like what is on the label, so you can add depending on that.  That part of wine making is like cooking.
Once the wine is made, how do you have to store the wine?
Temperature control—it can’t be too hot.  During fermentation you need to control the temperature.  We have a warehouse for our bottled wine that is at 65 degrees in the summer and 51 degrees in the winter.  This building is air-conditioned.  Bottled wine should be quiet, dark, on the cork.  Temperature is a big issue.
I often hear someone say, for example, “The 2001 or 2002 Merlot is much better than the 1999 Merlot.”  Why is this?
That means the weather was good that year.  Quality of the fruit is everything.
How’s the weather this year?
This year is shaping up to be an outstanding year.
That explains why I heard on NPR the other day that the wine being made in Bordeaux this year is already being sold to Asian customers and shareholders for over $1,000 a bottle.
This is called futures—the winemakers get money before they bottle the wine. The 2009 vintage from Bordeaux is great.  With futures it insures you’ll have the product when it comes out and a good product.  If the Asians hadn’t stepped in, Bordeaux would have eventually crashed.
Which of your wines would you recommend to the wine neophyte?  Which of your wines would you recommend to the connoisseur?
Neophyte: There are different flavors of neophytes.  Usually those who aren’t accustomed to wine like a sweeter one.  People usually start with a sweeter white, then move to a dryer white, and eventually to reds.  The ones I think are good introductions to wine are riesling, quaff, even the vidal.  They aren’t too sweet and they still go well with food.  Connoisseur: We have some nice reds.  I love the pinot, the riesling, the Trio.
What is your favorite wine that you make, and what would you pair it with?
I like the Pinot Noir.  I would pair it Mushroom Lasagna.
Growing your own grapes and making your wine is a lot of work.  If you had known how much goes into this, do you think you would have gone into farming grapes?
It’s impossible to say.  I probably would have.  One of the best things about this industry is the industry is growing.  Mushrooms and grapes are agriculture that are growing.  Most others are flat at best.
Why do you think grape agriculture is growing?
We’re in a nice industry right now.  A couple factors contribute to the growth. 1. Americans don’t really drink wine.  If Americans drank as much as Italians and French, the amount we would have to produce to meet the demand would be outstanding.  2. The local movement is good for us.  3. We are cheap entertainment.  We have a lot of big areas (Philly, Baltimore, L.V.) and we just get more and more people out (we are on two wine trails).  In this economy we are growing.  We grew 25% in 2009.

As I sit on my back deck and savor a glass of Pinnacle Ridge’s Reisling, I mull over everything that went into making this bottle of wine.  It’s clear from talking to Brad that he has not emerged as a Lehigh Valley winemaker because it’s easy or highly profitable.  It takes someone with a lot of tenacity, understanding, passion, and character to grow the grapes that yield a bottle of wine with just as much character.

Pinnacle Ridge's Reisling

More information on Pinnacle Ridge:

Pinnacle Ridge’s website: http://www.pinridge.com/

An article from Vineyard and Winery Management: www.berkscountywinetrail.com/VWM_PinnacleRidge_MarAprl2010

A Certified School Lunch “Mom”

A Certified School Lunch “Mom”

We all have fond memories of our school years: favorite teachers, best friends, academic triumphs and extra curricular accomplishments. Looking back, this is what we remember, yet ask any current student what the best part of school is and you will likely get one of three answers: recess, gym, or lunch. Let’s consider the latter for a moment: lunchtime. Is it the appeal of sitting with friends, trading fruit snacks for Oreos, or the freedom from teachers that makes lunchtime so enjoyable? If I remember correctly, it can’t be the food that makes a kid go running for the school cafeteria, unless of course it was chicken nugget day.

I can’t ever remember coming home from school and telling my mom that the cheeseburgers in the cafeteria were the best thing I ever had. In fact, I wouldn’t even buy school lunch until second grade. My mom’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lovingly cut into a heart shape (so as to remove the awful crust) were too delicious. When I think about it now, I wonder how healthy school meals truly were. As a parent, teacher or anyone with a vested interest in a child’s health, do you ever wonder what they are really eating during school lunch? I’m sure you know what the menu says they should be eating, but have you considered how much they actually eat, where the food is coming from, how it’s prepared or what nutritional value it carries?

My students at lunch…mostly packers. This is common in first grade.

What children eat, directly affects their health and performance in school. A healthy breakfast is a start, but what about the meal that children eat away from a parent’s watchful eye. Who is there in the school cafeteria to help them make healthy choices and encourage them to eat all of their vegetables before they have the cookie? At S.S. Palmer Elementary School in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, Kay Goodhile is that person. Not only is she the cafeteria’s manager, she is the certified school lunch “mom”. Kay offers some insight into the workings of today’s school cafeteria and the current push toward more wholesome, balanced meals and snacks.

Kristin: How long have you been working in the cafeteria at S. S. Palmer?

Kay: I have been in the cafeteria, now wait, let me think, 5 years.

Kristin: You started when I began teaching, then. What are your main duties there?

Kay: I am head cashier, I do the book keeping and help with food prep. For the first three months of school last year I was a cook. And I do whatever else needs to be done.

Kristin: I see. I know we have recently begun working with The Nutrition Group as our food service provider, how do you feel it is going?

This year, Palmerton Area School District has changed its food service provider from Sodhexo to The Nutrition Group, which is a Pennsylvania based company that pledges to provide “the highest quality of meals to every customer every day”¹. I’m wondering what exactly a high quality meal consists of.

Here’s a video from The Nutrition Group. It’s a nice overview of the services they provide and how they promote nutrition. The food looks a bit different than the quality I see in my school, but this video focuses mostly on a High School cafeteria. It is a sales video so the end is primarily for administrations who are interested in using They Nutrition Group.

http://www.thenutritiongroup.biz/videos.shtml

This is a link to The Nutrition Group’s newsletter. It is 24 pages of stories from various schools who use The Nutrition Group and the unique things they are doing in their cafeterias like the school that set up fruit and vegetable taste tests for students.

http://www.thenutritiongroup.biz/pdf/Nutritionink-Spring-Summer2010.pdf

Kay: Yea, since October. I love them. I like the fact that they offer different kinds of foods: casseroles, wraps and tatertot bakes. What I didn’t like about them is that do not change their alternates. Everyone Monday is a cheeseburger, every Tuesday is chicken nuggets, and the yogurt and peanut butter and jelly options never changed. Sodexho changed the types of sandwiches daily. They would have turkey and cheese or ham and cheese.

Kristin: Yes, a variety is essential, especially for picky eaters. How many lunch options do students have daily?

Kay: Well, for lunch there’s number one, that’s the hot choice that changes daily. Number 2 is the hot alternate -

Kristin: And this is the one that didn’t change throughout the year, right? Mondays was cheeseburger, Tuesdays -

Kay: Right, number three was the triple decker peanut butter and jelly. Number four is yogurt, which is served with a whole wheat roll. Fifth is the chef salad, which is also served with the roll.

Five options! I can remember two and usually I didn’t like either. This must appeal to a broader group of students.

Kristin: So overall, students have five options daily at S.S. Palmer. That should cover many of students’ tastes. Now, what kinds of sides are served?

Kay: See, a child comes through line and they should have five items. [These items should represent the five food groups.] The main entrée counts as two items plus milk is the third. The Nutrition Group has it so that the main menu option and the alternate option always count as two items whether it’s the tatortot casserole or macaroni and cheese, which is made with real cheese and milk. As the sides, we always have a steamed vegetable, two raw vegetables, and a fruit. Students may choose two additional sides to reach their five items. However, the state says you can not force them to take all five items. For it to be a government reimbursed meal, students need at least three items. So, they will at least have the main menu item and milk.

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) “provides funding that makes it possible for schools to offer a nutritious school lunch. Schools receive Federal funds for each breakfast and lunch served, provided that the meal meets established nutrition standards”². These standards require lunch options to include “two ounces of meat, ¾ cup of fruit and/or vegetables, and ½ pint of milk”³. I knew that the government funded the Free and Reduced Lunch Program for needy families, however, I did not realize that they provide other funds to support nutritious options. Later in this interview, you will see that the government regularly supplies school cafeterias with food, such as blocks of cheese and meat. While the government aid is valuable, I wonder how they define “nutritious”. Does nutritious mean local, organic meat and produce, or merely an offering of the five essential food groups regardless of where the product comes from.

More information on the NSLP:  http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/

Kristin: Hmm, that’s interesting. The state considers only three of the five items a reimbursable meal, and says that you can not make them take the sides. Do most students take them regardless?

Kay: The majority. Once students are up in third through sixth grade, they aren’t really picky, just hungry.

Kristin: So there is a daily effort, well requirement really, to offer the five food groups with each meal. Who prepares all of this food?

Kay: Karen [the head cook at Palmerton Area High School] or Cheryl depending on the prep or what ingredients are needed. The high school cafeteria houses most of the ingredients. If Karen makes the meals, then they are delivered down to us to keep warm until serving begins. Everything is kept in warmers and temperatures are taken upon delivery.

I was unaware that the cooking sometimes takes place out of our cafeteria. The high school is one mile away, so it makes sense that this is done. I wonder if less food is wasted?

Kristin: I had no idea that food was made at the high school and then delivered. How is the food prepared? Does the food come frozen?

Kay: Yea, a lot of the meat comes frozen, the patties, hot dogs. We bake most things that we make: hotdogs, meatloaf. I was really surprised by what was cooked in the oven: bacon, hotdogs. Cheryl will steam the meatballs in the sauce. Everything is either baked or steamed, not fried so no oil is used.

Steaming and baking are healthier options, but the calories in the actual menu items (e.g. bacon, hotdogs, ground beef) are still high and not necessarily healthy. It’s like telling yourself that ice cream is good for you because it’s made from milk. We all do this.

Kristin: Now, who chooses what is on the menu?

Kay: That would be the Nutrition Group head, which is Krista Avillion. She is the one who makes the menu. The menu is available online. There are many different things this year with the Nutrition Group.

The reason why I asked is because I was curious to see if a nutritionist was creating the menu. Upon looking at The Nutrition Groups’ website, I learned that the company does have corporate dietitians, however, an on-site food director, which is Krista’s position, does not necessarily need to have a nutritional background. Their website does state that “[Their] team of corporate dietitians consistently reviews nutritional guidelines to support and promote wellness to our customers”¹. A comforting aspect of the program.

A link to our school lunch menu http://www.palmerton.org/CafeteriaServices/TheNutritionGroup.html

Kristin: I know you mentioned some, but what kinds of food are on the menu? Lunch and Breakfast

Kay: Well, for lunch, the first choice changes daily. There’s the usual: cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, pizza, grilled cheese and soup, and macaroni and cheese. But, The Nutrition Group has really brought a variety. We make a wrap, the “Bomber Attack Wrap”, which is a burger sliced in half with cheese and lettuce and a special sauce made from scratch. They love the sauce. The kids put ranch and ketchup on everything: vegetables, salad, and pizza. There’s a grilled ranch chicken sandwich, stir fry with rice, turkey barbeque; I think it’s a nice variety.

For breakfast, well, cereal was always an alternate, bread is offered, and we have either a juice cup or ½ cup of fruit. There are egg and cheese sandwiches, hot pockets with egg and turkey sausage. We use turkey a lot as an alternative to beef or pork. We use turkey sausage and turkey on chef salads. It’s just healthier.

Kristin: That’s wonderful. It sounds like the cafeteria is aware of the need to provide healthier options to the students. Speaking of health, do you know where all of the food comes from?

Kay: Everything comes from The Nutrition Group. But, when we had Sodexho, we would get a separate delivery from a produce truck. I don’t know who they [The Nutrition Group] deal with, but everything we get, produce, meat, paper products; it all comes off of The Nutrition Group truck. I do know that we do get some government food that comes: block cheese, burgers, frozen beans, turkey, ham.

Kristin: Hmm. Is that because of the amount of free and reduced lunches that we serve?

Kay: No it’s just offered to all school cafeterias. Now whether or not you take it, but I would think that all schools would.

Kristin: That makes sense. So the ingredients, from The Nutrition Group, where do they come from?

Kay: Whoever The Nutrition Group orders from, I know that Krista has a 100 page book from this company where we get everything: condiments, fries, paper products, cereal, snacks, etc. Everything comes from there except the ice cream, which comes from Hershey.

I ask because I wonder how far the food, mainly the produce, has traveled. I also wonder how much of it has been processed and what kind of ingredients are added to allow for the transportation and preservation of these items. I am interested in this because I’ve recently learned of the benefits of locally grown products versus commercially manufactured ones. The latter can be laden with additional additives that are not healthy for our children or adults. .

Kristin: Hershey’s is the only other delivery?

Kay: Well, Zimmermans brings our milk and iced tea. Other than that, everything gets funneled in through the high school from The Nutrition Group.

Kristin: After lunch then, do students have the option for snack? What grades?

Kay: Second through sixth grades can get snack. The students who want to must have at least half of the main menu item eaten and half of the milk gone before they can get a snack. I’ll walk around to check on what they are eating. There is lot of waste in the cafeteria. Some students throw away whole lunches. I’ll try to encourage them, but I don’t say “you need to eat”. I’ll just say, “Oh you didn’t drink your milk, you didn’t open it yet, are you gonna eat some of that, you’re belly is gonna rumble later and you won’t have anything to eat”.

The quintessential mother talking. 

Kristin: And that is easy to tell, because the children don’t dump their trays until the end of the lunch period. What types of foods are offered as snack?

Kay: Baked, everything is reduced fat or baked, like the Lays chips, Doritos, Cheetos are all the baked kind. We have granola bars, fruit snacks, 100 calorie packs, Smartfood White Cheddar popcorn which is reduced fat. There are cereal bars, goldfish crackers and ice cream which is also reduced fat. There is flavored water with Splenda, too.

Kristin: So those aren’t a lot of calories in their snack items then.

Kay: No, I do the ordering for the snack items. We can not carry anything as a snack that is not reduced fat or baked.

Kristin: In your opinion, do you feel that the food served is healthy in regards to calories and freshness?

Kay: I think so. I feel they get a nice choice whether or not they take the choice – I don’t think that five nuggets and milk is lunch, but the state considers it so. Those students are the minority. We call them the chicken nugget, pizza kids. Then, there are kids who only eat number one or two to try new things. As they get older, they try new things. They are pretty good eaters. They love raw vegetables and Cheryl’s carrots with honey, butter, and brown sugar. I’m sorry, margarine; they use margarine. Cheryl will try to doctor up some of the food so that the kids will eat it, like the pork and beans, she’ll add ketchup mustard and onions to give it some flavor. They’re eating the stewed tomatoes more, too. She’ll add peppers and onions with a little powered sugar and cornstarch. And now we have the whole wheat dinner rolls; at first the kids squawked but they love them.

I was a nugget and pizza kid. I still am. I eat the same lunch daily (yogurt with granola, though I’ve begun to branch out and add fresh fruit, too). Actually, my first year of teaching I would buy a skim milk in the cafeteria daily for my lunch: Special K Almond cereal. Kay still remembers that because when I told her I’d be returning to S. S. Palmer this year, she said she would have my milk ready. She truly knows these students. She can tell you what each one eats daily, who packed everyday of school from first to sixth grade and who will buy which snack. It’s obvious that she takes pride in her work and cares about the students and their health.

Kristin: How are students encouraged to make healthy choices during breakfast and lunch time?

Kay: The food pyramid is posted throughout the cafeteria. We have signs in picture frames of what a healthy lunch should be. I think they are getting it whether they realize it or not. With whole wheat pasta and breads, it was an easy transition for them. The types of snacks offered are all baked and they don’t mind. They are eating it.

Kristin: So, the options you provide are healthier than before. Since you are controlling the healthier options, they are forced to eat them and end up enjoying them! Kay, there is a program called ‘Farm to School’ where local farms sell their crops to schools. Do you feel that this program may work here in Palmerton?

More information on the Farm to School Program: http://www.farmtoschool.org/

Kay: I wasn’t aware. There’s not a whole lot of local farms and with being off in the summer when most things grow, I’m not sure it would work, but it’s a nice idea.

Kristin: I’ve been reading a book called, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in which the author talks about the benefits of eating locally. It’s really interesting and I wonder if our school would be willing to look into these options. I know the cafeteria has already done a lot to improve the quality of school lunches since I’ve been in school.

Kay: Definitely, and maybe you can talk to Krista about the “Farm to School” program.

Kristin: Thank you, Kay. I really appreciate your time.

Kay: Anytime.

It is encouraging to hear some of the improvements that the school cafeteria has made in an effort to promote a healthier lifestyle for children. Even the government has recognized a need to moderate what is being served to children in the school setting. According to Kay, The government has put limitations on the types of food and snacks that can be served, all five food groups must be offered daily and all snack items must be reduced fat.  Recent research has indicated that children’s health is suffering due to poor nutritional choices and a sedentary lifestyle. The convenience and allure of fast food, soda, and processed foods, has contributed to a generation of children who have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Poor nutritional habits are linked to chronic diseases such as type II diabetes, hypertension and depression⁴.There is a communal need for school cafeterias to take initiative in both serving healthier options and promoting healthy food choices.

This theme is present throughout the book that I’m currently reading, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. I have discovered the benefits of eating locally produced, organic food as opposed to genetically modified, processed foods. The differences in nutritional value and taste are astounding not to mention the recent link of high levels of pesticides used on fruits and vegetables to children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder⁵. It seems essential that school programs explore alternate food options other than an all encompassing food wholesaler. We owe it to children to provide them with the healthiest food possible, no matter what the cost. Those expensive new football uniforms and the new artificial turf aren’t going to be very beneficial for children who aren’t healthy enough to use them. Nutritional excellence should be at the top of the budget list for school boards nation wide.  

1. http://www.thenutritiongroup. biz/pdf/TNG-Pledge.pdf

2. http://www.govbenefits.gov/govbenefits_en.portal;jsessionid=xWGNM18

3. http://www.parklandsd.org/departments/food-services/frequently-asked-questions#reimbursable

4. Lobstein, T., L Baur and R. Uauy, “Obesity in Children and Young People: A Crisis in Public Health”, Obesity Reviews 5(1) (2004): 4-85.

 5. http://pediatrics. aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/125/6/e1270

A “Mother Hen” Tends to Fleur de Lys

A “Mother Hen” Tends to Fleur de Lys
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by Destiny Van Kooten

There is a local gem in Kutztown, along the shortcut between Allentown and Reading where Eagle Point intersects with Hottenstein road. Fleur de Lys farm is marked by a periwinkle and yellow sign conveniently advertising offerings, such as garlic, greens, squash, honey, range eggs, and potatoes. Owned and tended for by Paul and Laurie Lynch, Fleur de Lys offers a “piece of France” as you travel along the scenic route.

As Laurie and I weave our way through the herbs and flowers, we end up in a shaded clearing the family appropriately deemed “Stonehenge,” for the rock slabs encircling a fire pit underneath the large shade trees. I choose one of the cool rocks to sit on and take in the beautiful surroundings of the farm. I begin to regret never visiting here before since I’ve passed it countless times on my commute to Kutztown. I realize I even have pictures of myself here in front of the carriage barn with my college friends because we found such beauty in the rustic structure. So often things do come around “full-circle”, as they say.

Laurie has the aura of a quintessential gardener. Her dusted knees and beaded brow illustrate her day began much earlier than my arrival. On a typical day, Laurie rises with the sun and feeds the livestock, collects eggs, and makes local deliveries of the fresh egg cartons. The stalls and coop must be cleaned and the field must be tended. It didn’t matter that this July afternoon was on the brink of 100 degrees or not, the farm must go on.

She brushes her hand along her forehead moving her short brown hair from her eyes and begins at the name. Fleur de Lys was selected for a
few reasons, including the reminder of their family roots. Laurie’s father-in-law was born in France and right before purchasing the farm, Laurie and Paul traveled abroad and fell love with Provence. So ideally, the name would be French-inspired. Ultimately, the land itself also proved to be great inspiration. “We decided on Fleur de Lys because we have this stream running down here (gestures behind me) and Fleur de Lys means ‘flower of the Lilly.’ But it’s actually a water iris they take the design from and we have those growing in the stream, a pretty yellow flower.” So while the name conjures memories of their family’s descendants, the flowers literally line the stream that babbles through their farmland.

The farm was purchased thirteen years ago and Fleur de Lys has been in business since 2002 and is best known for their fresh eggs, garlic, and their “Easter Peep” program. Laurie says, “…it’s the nice thing about this farm. It’s very small, we have 8 acres and I’ve tried almost everything. I have not tried peanuts here, but I’ve tried in Coplay and was not successful [laughs].” Learning the land takes years to master because, “After awhile, you know what grows best, where…but I’m always learning.” Laurie tried planting celery root for the first time this year and only after experimentation and research did she discover where it liked to grow best. Turns out, celery root prefers the moist soil and so Laurie relocated it to the wet meadow garden where it thrives.

One thing Fleur de Lys is certainly not lacking is the unusual varieties covering the color spectrum, “..because [the farm] is so small, I have to plant unusual things. Like this year we have Green Zebra tomatoes. We have a tomato called Egg yolk…one called Carbon, that’s black…You know, I used a lot of different colors. Our beans are everything from purple, yellow, to green. Small amounts, but a lot of different things.”

Knowing that they grow heirloom varieties, I asked Laurie to shed some light upon what that actually means. “An heirloom variety is basically an old-fashioned variety. I don’t know if it’s antique if it’s 50 years or older. I get seeds that’ll say, ‘An old heirloom from France, dating back to the 1700’s.’ The actual seed isn’t, but that seed saved over the years. When you have things like that it not only has good flavor but it has historical impact.” If you are interested in growing your own heirloom varieties for your garden, Laurie recommends her favorite catalogue, Baker Creek. Baker Creek offers 1,400 heirloom varieties and promises their seeds are “pure, natural, and non-GMO” (Genetically Modified Organisms). Laurie says you can also just swap and share, as she does with local friends and her sister in Peru.

While Fleur de Lys is not certified organic, they are natural. Laurie defines the process of organic farming as a great deal of record keeping in order to become, and remain, certified. There are strict requirements of the record keeping process outlined on Penn State’s Agricultural Marketing website. Although she does keep some records, it can be tedious work. “My whole philosophy was that I’m growing food for my family; to sell to friends, neighbors and customers. So what I feed my daughter and son, I don’t want pesticides on that, so I’m not gonna put pesticides on anything.” Laurie confirms my recent realizations that, “Basically, a lot of the plants and vegetables are bred for shipping and storage and not for taste,” though she does recognize that with more education that is changing in the chain supermarkets.

It must be said that Laurie does not fear the practice of pesticides as she has been professionally trained in the process and she even encourages it for the right farmer, in the right circumstances. Fleur de Lys is unique in that the wide variety of things grown there prevents much of the need to spray. “If Flea Beetles come in and eat my eggplants I know they’ll leave the garlic alone. I’m not growing eggplants this year because of those Flea Beetles; I’ve banned it from the garden [laughing]!” So in the end, it’s a little give-and-take.

Without the use of pesticides, local farmers have to become creative in their weed and pest prevention tactics. Laurie lines the seed-paths with newspaper clippings, though she says cardboard is best, but you use what you have. For their main garden, she uses black plastic mulch and Paul mows the grassy paths between to minimize weed growth. To promote growth, they compost the manure right from their own livestock. Lastly, but certainly not least, is the hand pulling. Laurie provided some humor as she declares, “Before we got the farm, I used to love to weed; it was one of my favorite things. I thought I could never get enough weeding. But now I know that I could get enough weeding [laughing].” I notice she isn’t kidding as we pass her asparagus patch with weeds taller than both of us.

As far as fruits are concerned, they are another matter regarding the pesticides. “Fruits are a hard way,” Laurie says, “I’ve specifically not grown certain fruits because you need to spray them,” such as apples, which often become worm-eaten. So rather than apples, Laurie offers Asian pears and a variety of wild berries. Laurie admits, “I choose things that don’t need a spray schedule and that comes from a lot of research.”

One of my favorite elements of this farm is their involvement with children. When children visit Fleur de Lys leave knowing many new things. Laurie teaches them the green bean “t-shirt test.” All you do is slap a green bean against your t-shirt and if it doesn’t fall off, it’s fresh! Little hairs on the beans act like Velcro, keeping it attached to the shirt. “We [also] have what I call ‘fairy berries’, they’re Alpine Strawberries, they’re that big [makes a circle with finger], and they are just morsels of ‘melt-in-your-mouth’ goodness. There’s no way I could sell or ship them; as soon as you pick one you put it in your mouth and they’re great. Well, kids love to pick the fairy berries and that’s one way of getting them into the garden and excited about food.” I ventured over to the stone wishing-well where the “fairy berries” grow, snapped a quick photo, then popped one of them into my mouth. The shot of sweetness along my jaw-line experienced only with the sweetest of delicacies confirmed Laurie’s rave review.

The most influential program for children offered at Fleur de Lys is their “Easter Peep” program. It seems only natural for the farm to raise hens as Laurie remembers, “My nickname from my family growing up was ‘mother hen’ because I had four younger sisters and I was always kinda the bossy one.” As a child, Laurie could go to the Five and Dime and get a colored Easter Peep, and thus her farm’s tradition was born. This annual program allows families to rent two chicks for only $40.00 and they get to keep them for two weeks. They are provided with a water bottle, feed, bedding, box, and the instructions. After two weeks they return their chicks to the farm to be pasture-raised, soak up endless sunshine and roam the acreage. Children learn more about farming while simultaneously bonding with their family.
Laurie also notices the program seems to improve the temperaments of the roosters who are cared for and played with for their first two weeks of life. This program leads to a cyclical notion that is quite endearing because “…if the kids can come back one day and see their little chicks grow up and lay eggs they’re gonna love those eggs,” which encourages them to become local buyers themselves. And these children do come back, she says, and as they call out “cupcake” or “brownie” at the fence, hopefully Fleur de Lys has inspired a lifelong respect for what our local farmers do.

Besides the increasing passion to educate myself more on this lifestyle, I realize it has to start early-on. Seeing what my student’s eat for lunch every day at the school where I teach makes me understand why children’s diets are a growing concern. I wanted to know Laurie’s thoughts on how we can better educate children in our society about the right way to eat. Even if they are too young to make those decisions now, perhaps guiding them toward the right path for when they can make independent food choices later. Laurie begins with laughter, saying her two children are now both adults and have never been to Disney world, “So I don’t know that I’m a normal parent.” However, Laurie offers that children need to have access to the fresh markets and farms and should have the knowledge about where and how food becomes part of our daily routines. As a mother herself, she says she found much inspiration from Sharon Lovejoy’s books on getting children involved in gardening. She gazes out into her farm remembering a moment when her daughter was young and would pop a green tomato right in her mouth and eat them. “I want to engage kids in the garden and I have a quote somewhere here, ‘You don’t teach children about gardening, they catch it,’ or something like that.”

Looking around at what seems to be a relatively smaller farm, I’m just beginning to understand the magnitude of work involved in keeping Fleur de Lys alive and thriving. Between the weeding, egg-collecting, mowing, planting, and the like—yes, Laurie even has time to research. She has a huge library of books on plants and there are many guest speakers and trainings in our area for the interested. This research has a deep foundation, however, in Laurie’s inherent passion for nature and gardening. “When I was growing up I liked to garden. But it’s been a consuming passion [for] the past 20 years. When my daughter was two weeks old I started the Penn State Master Gardener Program.” Laurie served Lehigh and Northampton Counties as the former Master Coordinator and she remains involved part-time for Lehigh County. For more information on this program visit the Penn State Gardener’s Program’s website .

If you are also an amateur embarking on a local food-quest, Laurie provides some useful tips. “Know what your passion is and follow it. It’s such a neat world out there, different ingredients, try new things.” While the best thing to do, she says, is just get a pack of seeds and try it, there are some practical things we can start doing right away. Laurie says there is so much information provided to the curious, so she recommends, “When you Google [because] you want to learn how to grow beans, type in “beans” and then “cooperative extension.” Then you will get research-based information, whether it’s from Penn State, Rutgers, Cornell, or UCLA. You’re not gonna get some anecdote…you need the basics to start with.” This is incredibly powerful advice for the amateur gardener seeking the fundamentals.

We also need to make this passion a priority in our homes if we want to be successful. Laurie says, “I love to cook, I love to eat. Some of my fondest memories are from different recipes my mother or my grandmother made. I’ve passed down a lot to my daughter and it seems like we’re always talking about food in some way.” The Lynch family practiced food traditions when their two children, Marina and Richard, were young. Paul was the leader of their Friday night pizzas. Marina and Richard were involved in the cooking-process and used to say they were, “washing their hands in dough.” It’s a sweet image to conjure of two children spending time with their family elbow deep in fresh, home-made pizza dough.

What led me to Fleur de Lys farm in the first place were the passionate reactions I had after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (here), several Michal Pollan interviews, and famous Chef Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution(here). Oliver is overly passionate and borderline cruel about the truths of American cuisine habits (his episode on over-sized caskets becoming a booming industry is highly enlightening).

I grew up in a household where our food primarily came out of a can, box, bag, or freezer that could be prepared relatively quickly, without fuss. I began reflecting on how I was raised concerning the dinner table and discovered I knew very little about food itself, let alone where it actually came from. Even as Laurie was discussing the various tomato varieties to me earlier I was puzzled, “There are tomato varieties other than just, red tomatoes?!” I have much to learn.

As I prepare to get married in a few months and start a home of my own, I discovered I don’t want the same things on my dinner table that I grew up eating. While I feel envious of individuals who were raised in an environment of fresh foods and the talent of real cooking, I know I can begin making changes now. I have vowed to make daily changes in my eating and food preparation lifestyle after reading the truth about where our food really comes from.

After spending the afternoon at Fleur de Lys it is easy to see that the farm thrives because there is almost a tangible love that emanates from Laurie as she interacts with her farm. The way she’ll brush the leaf of a plant, her interactions with their horse Griffey, and the nuances in her voice as she remembers her favorite rooster, “His name was James Bond. He was so sweet. I don’t name most of my chickens, but I named him.” When asked about her favorite recipe from her farm she shares an anecdote that is just good for the soul. “When I make Pesto and my daughter would come home from school, she walks into the house and she says, ‘It smells like love,’ so that would always be my favorite dish, that’s her favorite dish.” I don’t think that it’s just the Pesto that smells like love here, but every element. What we have in our midst is a local farm that is rooted in the French style that shares their passion and bounty with their community. With a warm laugh Laurie adds, “I try to grow a lot of French varieties just because…we’re French! So, we have a little piece of France here in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.”

Locally Grown: A Chef’s Perspective

Locally Grown: A Chef’s Perspective

by Kristin Jacoby

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Cora Ruiz, outside the Blue Parrot

When I first met Cora Ruiz, I would never have pegged her for a chef.  Despite my penchant for “Top Chef” and its array of diverse contestants, I had a pre-programmed visual of a chef: somewhat stern in appearance, usually round, and stuffed into that familiar white jacket.  Like many of the heavily tattooed, alternatively-styled contestants on “Top Chef,” Cora defies the standard preconceptions of what a chef should look like.  She, too, is tattooed, and saunters through the kitchen in knee-length cut-off jeans and a t-shirt, a brightly colored bandanna often keeping her fair off of her face, that familiar white jacket seemingly saved for appearances only.  Her smile is constant, her laughter easy.  While she clearly loves food, it certainly doesn’t show in her thin former runner’s form. Cora is just twenty-seven years old but has already gained the accomplishment of running the kitchen as chef of Blue Parrot, an American bistro-themed restaurant situated in Port Jervis, New York, just beyond the Pennsylvania border.  Blue Parrot has recently closed its doors and may re-open under new ownership; Cora, however, packed up her knives and left Blue Parrot in May of 2010 and relocated to Myrtle Beach, S.C. to seek fresh opportunities.

I’ve always found Cora’s food-perspectives to be interesting and conscientious, especially regarding locally grown products.  Her positive attitude toward locally grown produce is contagious, and helped to open my eyes to a world beyond Wegmans.  Partly due to Cora’s influence, I aspire to fuel my body by cooking with as many locally grown products as possible.  Of course, I have a litany of excuses as to why that doesn’t happen; most often, the convenience of dining out is too difficult to ignore.  That being said, I do wish that I could be assured that even when dining out, the freshest, most local foods are provided to me.  An ideal world, for sure, and considering my interest in the divide between eating well at home and attempting to eat well in restaurants, I asked Cora to sit down and chat with me while she was visiting family in New York.  My hope for our discussion was to better understand the position of the chef, someone who builds a career and life out of creating food for other people during a time when eating at home is being praised for being the healthier option.  I also wanted to learn first-hand  how much of an impact chefs and restaurants place on locally grown produce, as well as what benefits exist for restaurants that use locally grown produce.

KJ: Hey, Cora. Thanks so much for sitting down with me; I know you’re busy with family.

CR: No problem! I was hoping to catch up with friends while I’m up here.

KJ: Great. So, you’re a chef.

CR: I am, but I’m taking a break at the moment.

KJ: Right, you’re not currently cooking in Myrtle Beach.

CR: No, I went back to serving for a while. It’s good to do that, for me, every so often. I like to remind myself what it’s like to be in the front of the house.

KJ: But you’d say that cooking is your passion, not serving, right?

CR: [laughs] Absolutely. I love working with food. Sometimes, really, I don’t think there’s anything that makes me happier.

KJ: I know you’ve been working with food for a long time, especially since you’re only 27. What was it that drew you to food and cooking?

CR: There are two main reasons I got into cooking and they both have to do with my family upbringing and [my family's] large emphasis on and respect for food. If we weren’t cooking dinner together, we were usually going out. Living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, there were and still are a lot of options as far as cuisine goes. My mother had one simple rule of try it and if you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it but unlike the majority of kids, 99% of the time we enjoyed it all and went back for seconds or thirds. As far as actually cooking, I don’t know, I think I just had a knack for it. At a young age I was comfortable with a knife and went from making salad to filleting fish.

KJ: That’s a pretty big jump! Do you prefer to work with seafood?

A Cora Ruiz Original Dish: mussels with locally grown baby red potatoes and eggplant

CR: Yes, [lately] I have preferred working with seafood. Seems more non-processed, I guess because seafood doesn’t have a lot of preservatives. Seafood should be cooked when it’s fresh, which leaves less time for it to be, you know, manipulated with all the [preservatives].

KJ: So seafood is more organic, then, in a way?

CR: Basically, yeah. Actually, I watched Food Inc. and it’s eye-opening [to learn] how ignorant I am, as well as many of us are, to the way food is mass produced as far down as to the raw protein we eat. There are often a lot of hidden preservatives and other additives hidden in food.

KJ: That’s scary; even when you think you’re eating well, you may not be. Also, you’re the second person that’s mentioned Food Inc. to me in the last couple of days.

CR: You should watch it. Seriously, it’s so eye-opening.

KJ: Is it going to make me think twice about everything I eat?

CR: [laughs] Maybe. But it’ll probably help you make better choices.

KJ: Okay, before I decide to never eat again… seafood, you enjoy working with. Is there a special type of cuisine you enjoy preparing?

CR: Cuisine… nothing necessarily more than the other but I [enjoy] American comfort food. Hence why I wanted to move to New Orleans and learn Southern comfort food, which is still my goal.

KJ: Your cooking career started in New York, right? Can you tell me where you went to school?

CR: New York Restaurant School which is now the Art Institute of New York. It’s on Canal and Varick, a few blocks from Chinatown and Little Italy. I was there from 2000-2002 and received  an A.O.S. in Culinary Arts & Restaurant Management.

KJ: In your training there, was there any emphasis placed on using locally grown produce?

CR: When I was in school I don’t really remember there being a great focus on locally grown produce, to be honest. There was mention of places like Sullivan Street Fish Market and Union Square Market [open 3 times a week during the summer and 1 or 2 during the winter]. You can get all local or seasonal produce, flowers, cheese, fish, sausage, herbs… there was a great emphasis on the availability to so many different markets in NYC as far as Chinese and Indian spices and ingredients. Just because they’re local, though, didn’t make it easy to get them.

KJ: You mean you had to hunt them down?

CR: Sometimes, yeah. But even outside of New York, it can be really challenging to get certain spices and ingredients. You don’t want to settle, though, for something other than what you’re looking for. It’s always better to, you know, track down the ingredients from the [obscure] store in Chinatown than it is to just go to Whole Foods. It’s more authentic and tastes better, I think.

KJ: Okay, so you worked as head chef at Blue Parrot. Where else have you cooked?

CR: I was a sous chef at Lever House Restaurant in Midtown [NYC].

KJ: And you had an… externship when you were in culinary school. Did I use the right term? Can you tell me about that?

CR: Yes. And yes. I got really lucky with my externship in culinary school because I was placed in an amazing restaurant called Fleur de Sel [21st between 5th & Broadway]. It was walking distance to Union Square and our chef worked with a seasonal menu. When working at Fleur de Sel, another sous chef was so influenced by the chef’s seasonal menu and use of local fresh produce that he now lives with his very talented wife in New Orleans and they have the luxury of having a farmer who grows all of their fresh produce.

KJ: That must have introduced you to the whole locally grown idea. How was your locally grown experience with Blue Parrot?

CR: Blue Parrot was a great learning experience for my first time because being in an area that has local farms minutes away, I was able to take advantage of farm-fresh produce and the prices were so much better when cutting out the middleman/food purveyor.

KJ: Interesting that it’s cheaper. So many people complain about the price of organic food, but not necessarily all locally grown food is organic, right?

CR: Right. And I think restaurants are more concerned with using locally grown than organic.

KJ: Any particular reason why?

CR: I really don’t know. I mean, locally grown is fresher and easier to get, usually. Organic is more expensive and may not be easier to get. I think organic farming is more difficult than regular farming.

KJ: Being a chef, do you notice the different between organic vs. non-organic food? Taste, texture, ease of working with?

CR: Honestly… no. I can’t tell much of a difference.

KJ: Okay, so we’ll scratch organic off the list for now. I’m more interested in the locally grown aspect. Do you prefer to work with locally grown foods?

CR: Absolutely, it’s like you scratch my back, I scratch yours, I guess. Buying from local farms is a win-win situation. [It] helps your community monumentally. And less fuel is used for the shipping. It’s better to support local growers, and it’s always a fresher product.

KJ: When you were at Blue Parrot, how was your cooking style influenced by locally grown or seasonal produce?
CR: I always took advantage of what was freshest and most available. I was lucky, too, because I had flexibility with the menu at Blue Parrot, and the specials as well as special events, so I could really take advantage of seasonal, local produce. The food just tastes better when the produce is honestly fresh, not fresh from California, but like, fresh from your neighbor’s backyard.

KJ: Was it difficult to constantly change the specials, or alter the regular menu, depending on what local produce was available?

CR: Not really. It was fun, like an experiment. It gave me a lot of flexibility and reasons to try new things.

KJ: In your cooking history, how many of the restaurants that you’ve worked at have purposely purchased locally grown foods?

CR: Two or three.

KJ: That’s pretty much all of them, good.

CR: I don’t really see a reason not to. There are even some food companies that focus on providing local produce to restaurants. I mean, cooking is a demanding job, and sometimes putting in the time in to do your own leg work can be hard but I believe that it could be done if you really wanted to.

KJ: You mean working with a mostly locally-grown base of food?
CR: Yes. Sometimes you, the chef, have to go get the ingredients.

KJ: [laughs] I remember you used to go to farms yourself when you worked at Blue Parrot. For peaches!

Cora's fruit tart, made with locally grown blueberries and peaches

CR: I did! I needed peaches! I also would make extra time on any day to stop by farms around the area to pick up veggies, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes.

KJ: And, be honest, was it worth it to have to spend your time running around to farms? Did it make your work days longer?

CR: Totally. I knew I was getting the best available product, and the freshest. And, of course, I was helping out the local farms. But yeah, my work days were longer. Sometimes I’d be out at farms by 9 or 10 in the morning and I’d have to be in the kitchen by 11 or 12, and be there until closing. So those were long days.

KJ: I’d say that’s dedication to using locally grown produce. You were lucky at Blue Parrot, having so many New York farms around. What about now, in Myrtle Beach? How logical/possible is it for chefs in Myrtle Beach to rely on locally grown food? [We view on my laptop: https://agriculture.sc.gov/UserFiles/file/PDFS/harvestcalendar1108.pdf]

CR: Looking at that [the link above], I’d say it’s pretty possible. We have enough produce that grows here to be mostly satisfied. But people have gotten so spoiled with being able to eat what they want when they want it, so sacrificing to solely rely on local produce is a lot to ask of people. It’s as simple as not having a tomato on a burger, sandwich, in a salad, like, eight months out of the

year. I don’t think that tomato is always necessary; it’s going to taste better when it’s actually fresh from a farm down the street instead of being shipped across the country.

KJ: I could do without the tomato in December, but when it’s offered to me on a plate, I feel like I should eat it. I think eating produce only when it’s in-season is a long term adjustment people would have to make; it’s also something restaurants would need to pay more attention to. Many Americans gravitate toward eating out rather than spending the time cooking in their own homes. What are your thoughts on that?

CR: Eating out means less hassle at home. No mess, everyone can order what they want instead of having to agree on one meal at home. Most restaurants have repeat customers that have gone there for years, people that I imagine still come just because it is part of their weekly routine or way of life. I don’t know how worried they are about chefs using locally grown produce.

KJ: So how important is it for the customer to know where their food is coming from?

CR: It’s important to know that they are getting the freshest food possible, and it may entice them to know that we do our best to support local growing and the community. Using local produce helps to give [customers] the freshest meal possible, which is a comfort as a chef as well as it is for a guest.

KJ: As a chef, people are counting on you to give them a good meal. How do you make sure that you do that?

CR: I would never serve anything that I wouldn’t eat myself. [While] cooking at Blue Parrot, I became close to the regulars and cooking for family for years; it just feels like the same thing. Proper rotation and ordering of food keeps fresh food in house and on the plate.

KJ: Knowing that fresh food is available at restaurants, why or why not is dining out a good alternative to good old home cooking?

In the kitchen at Blue Parrot, which is not a chain!

CR: At home you know where the food came from and how long it’s been around. Plus, when you cook at home, you know exactly what goes into your meal. Dining out can definitely be a good alternative as long as you’re going to a restaurant that you know uses fresh, non-processed food. No chains!

KJ: There’s the catch! No chains.

CR: Chains are evil.

KJ: Your current restaurant — is it a chain? I know you’ve served at Applebee’s, which is–

CR: Yeah, yeah. I know. But I didn’t cook there! Right now I’m serving at Capriccio’s, an Italian restaurant. It’s small, only twenty-five tables. We have one head chef, two cooks, one salad person, and one prep person.

KJ: About what percentage of Capriccio’s food is locally grown?

CR: Well, in South Carolina, there are usually two harvests since the warmer weather starts earlier in the spring season and remains warm through September. So we benefit from local produce like tomatoes, lettuce, and fruits like watermelons, peaches, and peppers. I’m not sure about the percentage, but I know we use what’s available to us. The rest of our food is purchased through Fresh On The Menu [http://www.certifiedscgrown.com/FreshOnTheMenu/Members], which supports locally grown produce.

KJ: How open is the restaurant to using more locally grown produce?

CR: With restaurants, cost is always an issue when trying to profit and pay the bills. We do want to do our best in supporting local farmers, but sometimes it’s hard. We do what we can.

KJ: Sometimes that’s all you can do. Okay! One last question: tell me about your Dream Restaurant.

CR: As I watched Food Inc., I was calculating the number of chickens I would need to have to keep up a restaurant. [laughs] I would love to live in an area that could provide local produce for me year round. There are many veggies we get from Mexico that are grown year round and I would probably still take advantage of that. In the next few years, I am really going to buckle down and educate myself on regional crops and specialty items throughout the U.S.. Free range chickens are going to be something I place on my menu, and grass-fed cows. So what kind of restaurant I would have… definitely a seasonal and always-changing menu. Yes, like at Blue Parrot, I had a lot of flexibility on the menu and adapting to seasonal crops would be something that would be a huge focus for me. [The] cuisine would be contemporary American comfort food, which means I can do so many things.

KJ: And I will happily eat there, as I can attest to your culinary prowess.

CR: Really? With the vocabulary?

KJ: You know me, I have to throw it in there. But, hey! Thank you so much for sitting down with me and having this informative little chat.

CR: Anytime. Now make me famous. [laughs]