Where are we going with this?

I miss my chef coat some days.  I really do.  There was always that moment when I would walk into the kitchen, especially on a hot summer day and throw on my coat over my tank top, a single roll of the cuff of my sleeves and a quick tap on my left arm to know that my thermometer, my pen, and no less than two Sharpies were there.  Clean, white, pristine. The first hour of my day is sitting at my desk, reviewing sales and then ordering for the next three days.  I make a few phone calls then stuff shows up.

One of my favorite executive chefs told me once that what made him the exec wasn't the fact that he could do his job but that he could do my job and he then pointed to everyone on the line and said that he can do their job too.  I like that and want to take it to the next step.

But it's not magic.  Not a day goes by when someone doesn't ask me what we are up to with all of these "little" projects.  All of this talk about compost and worms.  I thought this was supposed to be about food?  The unstated promise of blogs like this is that this will be all about recipes and problems with guests in our restaurants.  How do we get stars and when is the next farm to table event?

We're different.  We are going back to the beginning.  We are going to where it all starts.  So what does that mean?  That means when the prep cook on the line hacks off the butt of a nice head of romaine lettuce, where does it go?  Landfill?  Buried forever and lost from the cycle for years.

We are going back to beginning of the cycle.  We are talking about getting back to how the food that
winds up on the plate got there and how to make sure it tastes good and there is more of it.  That starts with, I hate to say it, garbage.  It starts with poop.  It starts with worms.  It starts with those things that we do not want to talk about and since we do not want to talk about them we do not pay attention to them.  Since we do not pay attention to them, the things that go into our soil and then into our plants and from those plants then into our animals and ourselves; it could be anything.

When we say that we want to start from the beginning this is what we mean and that means getting our hands dirty.  Where are the seeds coming from?  What are the seeds going into?  A year from now, we will be talking about what to do with all of the things that we grew.  We will talk about various methods of roasting, pureeing, drying, canning, whatever.  Until then, we are talking about what gets it out of the ground.

We wanna believe that great chefs know their growers, the best chefs know how to grow food themselves.

Carol Jordan-McKern
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