But then I surveyed my plot and realized that I didn’t yet know where I was going to plant the lettuce, which would need shade in a month to keep thriving, or if I was going to change the location of the chard and kale from the previous season. Did I want to keep the herbs in the same corner? What about the onion sets I purchased on a whim? Suddenly my quick start to my garden was heavy with potential complications and consequences. I had to make some decisions, and make them with conviction. At the same time I laughed a bit at myself as well. In past seasons I had drawn multiple versions of possible garden maps, had researched companion planting in books from the library, had arrived at the garden on the first day of the season with a plan. But this year I was a bit distracted.

Sleeping in the carriage taking up much of the walkway between my plot and those in the next row was my newborn baby boy. He was almost six weeks old by birth, but a preemie; my initial due date was another week away. He had arrived early, a surprise that threw my planned and calibrated final weeks of my pregnancy into chaos. I had my semester of teaching to finish, projects with due dates that weren’t so flexible, his room to set up. Plus I had intended to do a bit more reading about what I should expect with the labor, and more so, the first few weeks and months of actually having a child. He arrived well outside any plan that existed, and left me with little time to improvise.

But, as he spent his first few weeks of life in the hospital, I had time between visits and tying up loose ends to cobble together some sense of what it would be like to have him home. I read a book on parenting and asked friends and family – and the kind nurses and doctors I was spending an awful lot of time with at the NICU – for advice. Most of what they told me was to trust my intuition. Babies don’t need a fully stocked room with matching curtains and sheets. My only job was to keep him fed and clean and comfortable. It really was intuitive, if I would stop overthinking; he would let me know if something was needed, and I merely had to go down the checklist to figure out what it was. He had entered life outside of any plan I had concocted, and then arrived home amidst only a sketchy framework of what I should be doing. Just keep him fed and comfortable. Put him to sleep on his back and change his diaper when needed. People with less preparation had raised fine and happy kids for millennia.

With his arrival, it was perhaps unsurprising that I was eager to continue my new beginnings at the garden. New life was inspiring, and after a few summers full of travel and work, this season was to be the first in awhile that I could really focus on the garden, long lazy days spent in the afternoon sun, perhaps a sleeping boy in the shade nearby.

The boy was stirring, and I was beginning to decipher his rhythms and noises. I likely had little time to finish planting before he’d need to be fed and changed. So I quickly assessed the plot – I knew it well, I had been doing this for many seasons – and made some decisions. I put up the bean trellises in the back corner, and planted my rows of chard, kale, and broccoli rabe near where I had before, but closer to one edge of the plot. Tomatoes would stay in the back where their shade would affect the least real estate; herbs would stay in the front for easy access, and to be close to the perennial mint. Onions in the back corner near the garlic would leave the center of the plot for whatever else I decided to plant next. I didn’t have to plan it all out now, I realized. And wherever things ended up in the plot, they’d likely grow with a little water and weeding. The point was just to make a decision and move forward. I would never have all of the information, and if I waited until I had done all of the research, I would have missed countless days of sun and rain. So much is learned by doing, and I knew more than I realized. More about nurturing and growing than I could ever learn from a book.

Thusly, in the four years that I have been writing Locavore in the City, my views on food sourcing have continued to evolve. What started out as my commitment to eat as local a diet as possible– like many, initially inspired by the politics behind local eating – has changed to become but less rigid and also more informed. No longer is “local” the primary quality my food should possess. That is as narrow thinking as buying only “organic” or only  “fat free”. Don’t get me wrong – I think that locally sourced food is by and large a great thing – ditto with organic. (Fat free is a bit more complicated, but all of these trends came from a well-meaning place of responding to perceived issues with the “typical” American diet.) It is just the more that I know, the more I realize that simplifying my diet to only “local” foods – even only local foods that were also organic and also from farmers I trust – isn’t addressing all of my food and culture needs.

People adhere to various lifestyles for different reasons. Some may make decisions based purely upon their own health, or purely upon pleasure, or to support a set of values important to them. A lifestyle can include choices about food, but it can also encompass how often one attends a house of worship or goes to the gym or how one chooses to get from point a to point b. I choose to spend a bit more time (and sometimes money) sourcing foods that I feel good about, both for personal reasons (it tastes better and I like interacting with the greater community of people who share my food values) but also because I think I am helping the environment and the economy in a small way. Although I do believe that, like anything, when you have many people who all make decisions that help a cause in a small way, it adds up to helping in a large way.

Which is why I was both eager to read, and ultimately disappointed in, the book Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. On one hand this book does point out the reasons why blindly buying anything marked local (or organic for that matter) is not the route to solving national or global food insecurity, nor the environmental or health issues caused by global food systems. I agree that these issues are complex and require multi-pronged and complex answers. But what I fear from this book is that the author provides counter-arguments to so many of the statistics that locavores and organic- and small-farm enthusiasts use to encourage people to make these choices – which I believe are overall better for the environment and better for individual health – that someone who was looking for ways they could personally make more responsible choices can leave the book thinking that none of their efforts matter in the face of such conflicting evidence.

Not surprisingly, the chapter I found most personally compelling was the one that offered specific advice for consumers who wish for their food choices to reflect values of environmental sustainability through choices about eating land-based animal protein. His recommendations are simple: eat less meat, and the meat one does eat would be best if it came from smaller, more humane, and environmentally sustainable farms. I wish there were more specific recommendations for consumers like this.

What I think is best about the book Just Food is that it causes readers to be more reflective about their food choices. I do believe that it is easy for some people to convince themselves they are doing their due environmental diligence by buying only local or only organic food, while ignoring the big picture of food security and planet health. What James McWilliams asserts is true: locavorism by itself will not cure these problems. However, I believe that McWilliams made it too easy for readers to throw up their hands and do nothing. Information about the growing sustainable aquaculture trend is great – but that does not provide an option for someone looking to put a thoughtful and sustainable dinner on the table tonight.

The subtitle claims that this is a book that tells the reader how “we can truly eat more responsibly” – but I don’t see a clear path of recommendations here for the average consumer to undertake. I appreciate McWilliams charge of making us – locavores and not – think more critically about how to solve the greater issues of national and global food security and environmental sustainability. But I hope that this facilitates a greater conversation that includes the positive aspects of locavores and other thoughtful consumers making small, sustainable choices that add up to bigger change, rather than only focusing on large scale issues over which the average person might feel they have no control.

I was very proud this fall when I finally got to use my Nani’s heavy, lacquered earthenware crock – the same one that she used to make the cherry brandy that my cousins and I would lick pooled from the bottoms of the tiny glasses that we collected from the adults after Christmas dinner. My plan was to make sauerkraut – a decidedly non-Italian specialty, albeit less time-intensive. I had purchased a few dense heads of red cabbage at the farmer’s market, and simply searched the internet, bi-passing detailed diatribes on the science behind it, to compare a few different recipes. Sure, I knew that sauerkraut was fermented, and had even made my own kimchi and fermented countertop pickles in the past, not to mention my other forays into harnessing “good” bacteria in yogurt- and cheese-making. My thinking behind trying these methods was of course tied into my efforts to eat locally and sustainably and inexpensively: if I could make my own fresh mozzarella, I wouldn’t have to buy it, thus saving money while also being aware of exactly what went into my favorite foods. It was also, of course, anthropological – I wanted to explore traditional preservation and preparation techniques to learn more about how my food is made, and connect with the practices of my culinary ancestors.

Thus, when I started the relatively easy process of preparing my cabbage for kraut (slice it thinly, layer with salt, press down to cover it all with its own brine, add more salted-water brine to ensure that it was all covered, let sit, weighted, for three weeks), I had already understood the basic process of fermenting: microbes already present in now salted raw veggies, sitting in their own brine, would change the chemical composition to create a fermented food that would not spoil. The salt killed the bad bacteria, and the lack of oxygen beneath the brine allowed the good stuff to proliferate. I learned that this process was technically “lacto-fermentation”, thusly named after the type of bacteria present in this process. I figured I needed to know enough to ensure that my food was safe for eating and would be delicious. The process for making yogurt (also lacto-fermented), by comparison, wasn’t all too different – heat up the milk enough to kill the bad microbes, introduce the good microbes and then wait for them to take over and yogurt-ify the milk. Chill once the good guys did their work, which would also stop the bad guys from taking back over. I had never worried about anyone getting sick from homemade yogurt – one sniff or taste and it would obvious if it was not fit to eat, despite that it had to sit at warmer-than-room temperatures for more than six hours. I didn’t give much thought to the health benefits of all those microbes – despite the watered down marketing messages we had been getting from yogurt makers for the past few years, and despite the interviewing I had been doing with picklers of all stripes, and even despite the amount of reading and research I have done in general about traditional preparation and preservation methods and overall health and environmental benefits of unprocessed foods.

But then I met Michaela Hayes of Crock and Jar, who makes both vinegar-based and fermented pickles in Brooklyn, in addition to giving classes on the subject. After telling me about her Brooklyn business, she also noted that she was inspired by fermenters on the west coast, where I would be traveling a few months later. These fermenters had a bit of a different philosophy towards their food – while so many picklers I had met in New York or Boston were inspired by traditional methods taught to them by their grandparents or prevalent at their holiday table, once I started to connect to the west coast fermenters, I learned that they were more influenced by the health benefits of fermented pickles. Fermenters like Alex Hozven, owner and founder of sixteen-year-old Cultured Pickles in Berkeley, California had been long approaching pickling as much from the perspective that fermented pickles are an integral part of a healthy diet, as through her efforts to experiment with traditional fermenting methods from around the world. While she only sells her products within about a hundred mile radius (in part because fermented foods are generally sold refrigerated, as the fermenting process can continue as long as they are at room temperature, which can affect taste, but generally not safety, of a product), she was well-known to all of the fermenters to which I spoke around the country as being one of the most innovative, tenacious, and disciplined fermented pickle businesses. Others, like Crock and Jar in Brooklyn, Brassica and Brine in Los Angeles, Happy Girl Kitchens in Central California, and Firefly Kitchens in Seattle, all tout the health benefits of fermented pickles, as well as their versatility and deliciousness. Over and over I heard of ailments disappearing after starting ingesting just a small amount of fermented foods daily. These stories, and the science that backed up these claims make good sense: it has been documented how our extensive use of anti-biotics and anti-bacterial everything has limited our bodies’ own ability to fight infection introduced from air and skin, so has the disappearance of “good” gut bacteria from what used to be common foods items like yogurt, kefir, and fermented produce has been affecting our digestion and health. But interestingly, in my relatively brief encounters with fermented food on the east coast, what had been highlighted was the cultural aspect the German kraut, for example, or Korean kimchi, rather than the health aspects. And that was what I had been focusing on when I made my first forays into fermented pickles – the how of the dish, rather than the complex answer to why.

I now have put together the larger narrative of fermented foods: the need to preserve produce before there was refrigeration and the very early discovery millennia ago that adding salt and eliminating oxygen would help do this. But I also have learned that these good microbes have been aiding digestion and bolstering immune systems for many, many generations in various ways in food cultures around the world. And that even the diluted messages we get about the health benefits of fermented foods are often negated in practice by the heat pasteurizing of most store-bought krauts. While food safety is a very good development to have come out of the industrialization of our food system, it has instilled in many a fear that traditional methods of preparation could result in illness or death. In fact, fermenting is highly safe because the process itself creates an environment that is inhospitable to the dreaded e.coli bacteria and there has never been a documented case of botulism sickening anyone through a fermented food product. Still, many, mostly mass-, fermenters, heat pasteurize their products, allowing it to be shelf-stable but killing the gut-healthy microbes in the process. I’ll admit – I too heat-processed much of my finished ruby sauerkraut before giving jars away for the holidays, without realizing how I was changing both the flavor and texture, while also negating much of the natural health benefits. Although in the past few months, I have tried my hand at new fermenting experiments, that were equally easy and just as successful. Grated carrots, salt, and ginger, pressed until submerged in their own brine and then left in a sealed jar for five days turned into a sweet and tangy slaw that was great out of the jar or atop eggs or salad.

I now look at my Nani’s sturdy crock in a new light: while using it for one of my projects does help me feel closer to the woman who has inspired me to cook and preserve and learn more about food culture – I am now also reflective on what other knowledge her inspiration has led me toward, beyond recipes and menus. Perhaps Nani didn’t give much thought to the health benefits of fermented foods – (and there is some discussion among family members if she ever fermented more than booze in her crock – her sugar-to-alcohol-fermented cherry brandy obviously not quite possessing the same health benefits as anaerobic salt-fermented kraut) – my mere possession of her crock has led me to investigate my food in deeper ways, beyond my own heritage and in a more complex light than recreating methodology. I thank her, and her crock, for teaching me that that was more to fermenting beyond the crock.

*Author’s Note: These amazing fermenters were all interviewed in support of my upcoming book Small Batch: The Fall and Rise of Artisanal Pickle, Cheese, Chocolate, and Alcoholic Spirits in America (Alta Mira, 2014). The information above is presented as a brief narrative into my research in fermenting, and there is much, much more available about the science behind fermented foods, the health benefits, cultural history, and recipes and methodology for trying fermenting at home. Besides checking out the websites of the purveyors I mentioned above, the venerable Sandor Katz is known as the godfather of fermenting and has a website and two great books on the subject as well.

I’ve spent what would likely add to up to countless hours contemplating the purchase of various cheeses at locations ranging from Whole Foods to Stinky Bklyn to a “serve yourself” fridge on a country roadside in Western Massachusetts. I clearly remember my first encounter with fancy cheese – most selections likely small batch and artisanal, but I know now that not all were. I had visited the upscale restaurant in Vail, Colorado where my step-sister was a pastry chef and she served my date and me a cheese plate, with the various creamy, salty, and fatty notes counterbalanced by homemade fruit jam or sharp pickles. It was a revelation: like a good relationship, opposite flavors brought out the best in each component. The sommelier suggested a fruity white wine to go with our platter – also a deviation from the typical bold red that we preferred. And he was right, of course. That contrast only heightened the flavors on the plate.

The cheese I remember most from that night was a Dutch Aged Gouda – super salty, with crystals that crunched. Paired with a Colorado peach jam, the saltiness was heightened, the nuances of the fruit clearly defined. We had a deeply stinky blue cheese, I recall as well. Also paired with a bit of sweet. The  funkiness of that blue – maybe it was Moody Blue, one of the first artisanal blues that changed many people’s perception of the style in the past decade – was so unlike the crumbles the fancier restaurants I had visited before that time had conservatively plunked atop my side salad. We had (what I would only know to refer to now as) a semi-soft selection as well. As we slowly savored these new flavor combinations, that cheese both mellowed and deepened – getting weirder and warmer and more odiferous in all the best ways. Eaten on its own after we took our time sipping wine and chatting, its flavor was so interestingly distinct from the first taste when the platter initially came out. Paired with a tangy pickle, the fat and funk was mellowed – a counterpoint provided to highlight its best characteristics. My date – now my husband – and I left that cheese course changed people. And today I could recreate a similar platter, that at the time had seemed so revolutionary to my palate – in three minutes flat. But what still keeps me pondering cheese is the eternal search for that same sense of discovery and surprise.

I’ve had enough moments since that day to keep me going: the evening with a group of girlfriends that featured plenty of wine and a wedge of an Italian semi-soft taleggio that sat, ignored, in an increasingly warm room as we laughed and gossiped and drank until we finally dug in to the oozing mass. I had not remembered the flavor of that cheese being so deep and unctuous until it had been submitted to that perfect alchemy of temperature and humidity and a drunken need for exactly that perfect snack. Another moment: my husband was working at a wine and cheese shop and he brought home a new offering from Utah. Beehive Cheese hand-rubs espresso and lavender on a cow’s milk round, creating a product both sharp from aging and sweet from the milk terroir – with complementary notes of flower and earth from the rub. And there have been more revelations at the hand of new cheeses: that moment in deep winter when I tasted the distinct notes of clover from a cheese made from spring cow’s milk, my first burrata, that day I first knew that I was eating a sheep’s milk cheese and could distinguish it from that from a goat or cow – or even buffalo milk selection.

Yet for all of the cheese I’ve eaten, and my relative knowledge of how cheese is made, and even my childhood growing up on a country road with a pair of brown and white Guernsey cows as my across-the-way neighbors, I was still amazed when I first encountered the green rolling fields of Marin County and its corner of the California Cheese Trail. Our first stop, as I traveled with my equally cheese-loving husband, was Achadinha Cheese Company, helmed by Donna Pacheco. Donna met me at 9:30, her morning’s work mostly finished (and mine just beginning). The hills that surround her utilitarian cheese-making building were dotted with cows and goats; this was truly a working family farm with muddy tractor treads criss-crossing the driveway and her eldest son checking in wearing work-stained denim on his way to tend to a field a pick-up truck’s drive away on their property. Her main cheese offerings are a salty goat’s milk feta, a milder cow/ goat’s milk blend that is aged for 2 – 4 months called Broncha, and the more nutty Capricious – a goat’s milk round aged 8 – 12 months. Each was distinct and nuanced, and after seeing the verdant green fields that fed the milk that went into these beautiful rounds (her aging room is a sight to behold for any cheese lover) I couldn’t help but equate these flavors with the terroir around me: wind-swept, sunny, green and lush.

    The next cheesemaker we visited was Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. Originally a dairy farm, started by Bob and Dean Giocomini in 1959, the cheese side of the business was started with the help of their four daughters in 2000, when the first wheels of blue cheese were made from the farm’s milk. While the view from the cow-dotted green fields was similar at this cheesemaker as at Donna’s just a few miles up the road, the farm also family-run, and the cheese was just as distinct (and award winning! Point Reyes’s new Bay Blue just earned a Good Food Award and is truly a unique blue – when I tasted it, I had another transformational cheese moment), the feel of the place was quite different. The daughters are now primarily in charge of the business-side of the farm, and their father Bob is mostly retired. They have hired a master cheesemaker and keep close tabs on the day-to-day of the farm, but, unlike Donna, are not making the cheese themselves. However, they are still just as concerned with legacy and quality, and while their main office and cheese making building may be a bit more landscaped, the end result is every bit as thoughtful and delicious.

Cowgirl Creamery was our last stop of our brief Marin Country cheese tour. Cowgirl’s story is different still from Achidinha and Point Reyes. They are the big sisters on the block – originally created by Sue Conley and Peggy Smith as a distributor who wanted to help promote and sell the fantastic cheeses they knew were coming out of Marin County and the surrounding area. They eventually added their own cheese offerings, including a unique Red Hawk cheese that can only be made in the town of Point Reyes where specific bacteria and climate conditions are integral to its success. On our visit, we watched a whole team of cheesemakers crafting and wrapping Cowgirl cheeses in their Petaluma production facility from behind large windows. Everything is still done by hand, with close attention to quality, although it is not the relatively small operation of Donna Pacheco’s or the family-run business of the Giocominis. That is not to say that all of the cheese we watched being crafted was not hand made or artisanal – but it does bring up interesting points about the definition of small batch and how companies can responsibly grow, all to be discussed elsewhere.

Which all gives me even more to think about as I peruse an ever-crowded cheese case, in one part of the country or another. Achidinha’s Capricious is unlikely to be available in the northeast, but Cowgirl Creamery often is. I can only hope to encounter Point Reyes’s newest Bay Blue – or their excellent tangy, but meltable Toma – on my side of the country from the best curated mongers. And now I know a bit more of what I am getting (despite their many differences) when I spy a Marin or Sonoma County cheese at my local shop. But what I love most is that I was reminded that I can still be surprised, and often, by cheese – by a unique flavor or technique, yes, but also by the passion of the maker, the beauty of the land from which the milk comes, and the experience of standing inside an aging room just inhaling. For I know that I purchase and enjoy small batch cheese – and any artisanal good – not just for the superior taste and quality, but also for the story behind its creation.

While this paragraph-sized critique notes important national issues like the mere existence of food deserts in a country rife with bounty, when they argue “Locavorism has become the newest outlet for yuppie guilt, providing a feeling of living ethically and supporting a cause, but too often the onslaught of kale and artisanal pickles blinds us from looking at the deeper problems affecting America’s food system,” I can’t help but defend local, seasonal eating and artisanal food production.

I have been spending the last five-plus months interviewing small batch food makers and visiting their production facilities and farms, and in fact am ending my west coast research effort this weekend, continually struck by passion, sincerity, and well-intentioned effort that most of these artisans (and I am convinced that whether they like this overused moniker or not, I can’t use another term because what they are creating is edible art) are making. Despite the disparity of industries that I am covering (pickles, cheese, chocolate, and alcoholic spirits) most purveyors’ reasons for turning the production of a food product into their livelihood (and for many it is not yet the one that pays their electric bill) is a similar one: they want to make a high quality, environmentally sustainable product, for reasons that are very, very personal to them. Yes, the products are expensive, but they also support individuals who work very hard, and family farms, and keeping vast swaths of green space organically worked, all while promoting the growth and relevancy of endangered vegetables like kohlrabi or food preservation methods such as fermenting.

I agree that not everyone can afford to spend eight dollars (or more) on a jar of hand-packed pickles – but the reasonable alternative is not industrial packed and chemically preserved pickles available on every street corner. The alternative is that people are made aware of how much money the government subsidizes large industry to keep food deserts in existence. The alternative lies in the vastly growing number of food coops that offer cheaper prices on produce than SuperWalmart and CSAs that offer shares on a sliding scale. There are bulk buying efforts happening in a lot of “desert”ed places like Detroit and the parts of Brooklyn that aren’t visited by Manhattan-ites looking for a New York Times- or Zagat-reviewed meal, and a huge proliferation of farmer’s markets in urban, suburban, and rural area – many of which are starting to accept what used to be called “food stamps.” And these efforts wouldn’t have happened without the incredible rise and subsequent critique of the locavore movement.

Don’t forget that the term locavore was invented less than eight years ago, and has exhibited the same growing pains as many trends – food and otherwise – of the same age. I, too, adopted a near-militant locavore stance (as a poor grad student and then an adjunct professor, all while living in a small apartment in a large urban area) before softening my understanding of the term as more of an eating philosophy than an ardent set of rules. I believe that many self-proclaimed locavores feel the same: that they will make food choices based upon values that the original locavore movement was responding to, including knowing the farmer or purveyor as often as possible, organic or environmentally conscious sourcing, eating fewer processed foods, and, above all, seeking community in many forms through food. For me, this may mean occasionally buying food of unknown provenance from the local Trini take-out joint down the street. But this choice is also supporting sustainability and community in a way that I feel comfortable with and proud of.

And while I do not have a large disposable budget, I do know that I can afford to spend more on food than many others in this country (although I also believe that we, as a nation, have it so ingrained in us that food should be unnaturally cheap – that some, but certainly not all, people who say that can’t afford the sometimes more expensive organic or local or less processed food item at a store find room in their budget for other non-essentials). Instead, I look at my food choices – and that of my “rich, white” counterparts as a tax of the kind we have been so hotly debating for the past year. I spend my money on organic, local, artisanal goods to help subsidize their presence. Because there is more kale in the marketplace overall (which is actually quite cheap and incredibly easy to grow, I will add, and is one of the most traditionally “peasant” of all foods) if I spend more money on organic and locally grown produce no matter where I buy it from. Because when I choose to buy cheese from a small, organic artisan, they are able to keep purchasing organic milk from their dairy-farmer neighbor and he or she can afford to keep their cows pasture-raised. Because if I decide to buy that (relatively) expensive bar of chocolate, I know that there is no young kid in Africa who was forced to pick the cacao beans for free just so I can eat an unnaturally cheap and overly sweet few bites of cocoa-flavored indulgence.

The bottom line is that local and artisanal foods represent the products’ actual cost, since most purveyors are getting little to none of the subsidies that the large industrial farmers receive to keep their often environmentally-damaging food so cheap. And their presence in the marketplace reminds us of what a wide variety of high quality produce, meat, and goods is like – and that the real fight is in ensuring that the playing field is made more equal across the board. So the “onslaught of kale and artisanal pickles” does not, as these authors note, blind us “from looking at the deeper problems affecting America’s food system,” but rather it highlights this fight. That jar of pickles or wedge of cheese is saying “this is what you deserve, America. You deserve a wide variety of quality produce at a price that is fair to both you and the farmer. You deserve dairy that isn’t laced with bovine growth hormones and even coffee and chocolate that pays the source a fair wage for their efforts. You deserve a world where your food choices don’t reflect large industrial farms getting rich through subsidies and poor environmental practices that are paid for by your taxes and health.” I’ll gladly pay for that, and the authors of this article should as well.

When I was planning my west coast research trip in support of my upcoming book Small Batch: The Fall and Rise of Artisanal Pickle, Cheese, Chocolate, and Alcoholic Spirits in America (Alta Mira Press) – I almost didn’t plan to stop in Portland. This, despite that my project proposal actually included a clip (for better or worse) of Portlandia on pickling. Sure, I thought, Portland had hipsters and plaid, DIY-ers aplenty and really thoughtful coffee. But so does Brooklyn. What could I gain from a visit that I couldn’t get from a few phone interviews? Then I discovered that Portland was also home to distillery row – a collection of five craft liquor distillers spread out over just a mile or so in the very cool Buckman neighborhood (or thereabouts, I discovered). After visiting and speaking with a handful of New York area distillers, I had gained a great appreciation of how unique state by state regulations and agriculture can affect craft distilling and I knew I had to visit and find out Portland’s story for myself.

New Deal Distillery is the oldest distillery on the row – and was, fittingly, the last with whom I spoke. They were conceived of in 2001 in large part because owner Tom thought that the economy was headed into a recession and he wanted to make sure that he had high quality vodka to drink during what he thought would be dark days ahead. His goal, like all of the distillers I spoke to, was to focus on quality. While some products, like the extensive offerings from Stone Barn Brandyworks who use primarily local produce and grain, unlike the agricultural requirements for New York State farm distillers (who must often use as much as 70% state-produced ingredients in their spirits) Oregon law allows distillers to source from around the world. This means a wider breadth of liquors coming out of the city. The relatively (and I’ll stress relative, as Tom emphasized that it took him three years to get his distilling license, although he helped pave the way for the rest of the row) easy regulations and sourcing requirements, as well as the excellent cocktail and food scene which supports local distillers through pairing events and featuring on menus, has helped make Portland a hotbed for urban craft distilling around the country. This industry is only poised to continue growing.

The slightly more forgiving Pacific Northwest growing season does allow for more local produce to be grown year-round, but pickling in Portland is still greatly affected by the limitations of the harvest season. I spoke with Betsey of Our Favorite Foods which makes amazing jars of pickled cucumbers, green beans, and carrots based upon her grandma Rose’s brine recipe. Betsey still commits to sourcing all of her produce locally, which means she has a a month or so of frenetic pickling time, and focuses upon selling her stock the rest of the year. She also notes the strong entrepreneurial spirit of Portland as supportive of her and her three-year-old business and she still finds support in a group that took part in a small business incubator through Portland Community College. There are other great local picklers as well who I hope to connect with in the future, including Moonbrine fermented pickles, Unbound Pickling, and Picklopolis. Three days was just too short to meet them all.

I did get a chance to meet Portland’s only urban cheesemaker, however. While the number of artisanal cheesemakers in Oregon is growing, almost all of them are making their cheese on farms outside of the city. Only Liz Alvis, owner and founder of Portland Creamery is working with a herd of goats not far outside of the city with a goal to be the first creamery within Portland. I met Liz at one of the area’s few winters markets and her enthusiasm for her cheese – and that of repeat customers who kept stopping by to tell her about the rave reviews her chevre received over the holidays – was hard to ignore. And her cheese held up to these expectations: the chevre with Oregon truffles is just as decadent as one would imagine, and the Sweet Fire, packaged with a fruity-spicy jam could be eaten as part of a cheese plate or just with a spoon. Liz also notes that local chefs have been very supportive of her product, especially her small-run goat milk caramel cajeta. She is focused on responsible expansion, and represents just the start of Portland urban cheesemaking.

Woodblock Chocolate is the only bean-to-bar chocolate maker in the Portland area, and owner Charley Wheelock cites Portland’s unique environment as integral to his success. Charley is nothing if not passionate about his product, and the chocolate is some of the best I have ever tasted. He sources his beans from specific areas to focus upon the terroir from where they are grown – an idea that has long been present in wine, and even in coffee, but is just starting to take hold in the world of high-end chocolate. This enables him to be very involved in the sourcing of his ingredients and work with their natural characteristics to create a unique bar. Charley also sang praises of Portland as a great place to start a small business like this, with many chefs and local retailers supporting his chocolate. And in fact, I saw Woodblock Chocolate as a main ingredient in one of the specialty flavors at Salt & Straw ice cream and ran across Charley’s bars in Manhattan at a pop-up shop celebrating quality products from Portland.

I worry that this reportage from Portland, OR doesn’t do emotional justice to the city that I truly enjoyed. The food scene is great: I ate at amazing restaurants that featured local meat and produce with inventive cooking, as well as simple ethnic food from some of Portland’s many food trucks or pods spread around the city. I had hearty breakfasts and vegan lunches from some of the numerous unique cafes dotted among the many charming neighborhoods. These were truly local joints, unlikely to make any national “best of” lists, but still producing really great food with care that was a pleasure to eat. And many people I met, including local cheese guru Tami Parr, generously gave their time to talk about many subject about which they are passionate (and very knowledgeable). I could have stayed and eaten and met with people for a month and not gotten all of the stories from this amazing, and sometimes (at least to this east coaster) under the radar city. I only scratch the surface of Portland here, so check back on more food stories from the city to be published here and elsewhere. I’ll happily say that I stand corrected.

The term locavore was coined in 2005 by Jessica Prentice, who, along with Sage Van Wing and Dede Sampson, made a commitment to eat only food sourced within a one-hundred-mile radius of their homes in Northern California. This effort was publicized in the media during World Environment Day in San Francisco, and subsequently entered the lexicon. Originally conceived as a movement against industrial farming and the high food-miles (and subsequent carbon footprint or total carbon emissions created by a product via production and transportation) that a typical supermarket meal racks up, focusing on locally-grown food was a way to ensure that the farmers growing one’s produce, meat, and dairy were using methods aligned with one’s values. This was especially of interest to those concerned with the provenance of their food in a landscape where “natural” had become a packaging buzz word with no real meaning and large-scale organic farms were being reported as causing new kinds of environmental damage, such as water mismanagement and faulty oversight of practices.

I know for me, in this world of CAFOs and ultra-pasteurization and GMOs, the ability to visit the farm or talk to the farmer helps ensures that the food that I eat is grown in a manner consistent with my own values. As hard as it might be for me to spend the extra dollar or so a pound on locally-grown onions and apples, I am almost always rewarded in the end. The bland apple taste of granny smiths grown a continent away will never be as interesting or enticing as the empire grown a few towns away. While the nuances of the onion will be hard to detect after cooking, I can almost imagine the flow of my few dollars staying close to home as I wipe away the northeast dirt from the transparent burgundy skin as I peel it before slicing. With the meat and dairy I purchase, I insist upon no hormones or antibiotics, humane treatment and low pasteurization – ideals I can often only ensure if the items are from local, known farms.

But yet, more and more, I have ceased looking for the place of origin if these other criteria can be confirmed. With produce, yes, the local farmer’s market is my go-to place to shop. But I also belong to the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, which has made their national reputation on vetting each of their products and purveyors for adhering to similar guidelines. I often buy red peppers or fair trade pineapples from them year round. When in Somerville, I shop as often as possible at Sherman’s Market for dairy, meat and seasonal produce, but those are not the only items in our home. Quinoa, purchased in bulk, is a frequent staple on my grocery list, as is Revere, MA-based organic Teddy’s peanut butter. But I also indulge in the fantastic new ramen place in Cambridge, whose roast pork is tender and juicy and of unknown origin, but clearly of high quality and made with the utmost care, as is the rest of the only dish on the restaurant’s menu. In Brooklyn, I’ll gladly hand a few dollars over to the woman behind the counter of my favorite doubles joint for two handmade fry-bread-and-spicy-chickpea sandwiches. The beans and flour were most certainly purchased in bulk and are not organic, but the food is inexpensive and filling and I know the money supports a small local business while providing a welcome peek into the culture of my Caribbean-American neighbors.

I am proud to be the locavore in the city, but I am equally proud that my own definition of locavorism has evolved. Focusing on local farmers and purveyors has helped me to understand the seasonality of food, the quality that comes with both freshness and care, and the community that can be created when consumers take the time to get to know each other and those who help feed them. But focusing on the local has also reminded me that I live among a diverse community as well; my neighbors are not all farmers and cheesemakers. They are also laborers and teachers and mechanics and office workers and ethnic cooks. And when I travel – something I think is so important for understanding the larger world and being inspired and learning more about myself – local will mean something completely different. My new goal as a locavore is to be conscious of my global footprint while also being inclusive of what I can learn from others. Food, for me, is a universal language. While my husband may connect to others through music, or a photographer through images, I connect through food.

My own definition of locavore has evolved as more and more studies have come out that question the environmental single-mindedness of a strictly local diet. Yes, a local diet keeps money in the immediate economy. Yes, it can lower the overall carbon emissions from food procurement. But there are other factors at play when looking at the feasibility of a strictly local diet – from affordability to individual health to persistence. Some of these factors have to do with the larger culture we live in: we don’t yet have a food system where small and large players are treated equally, or where organic and local foods are equally accessible to all who might want them. Further, foods that reflect the values of diverse cultures and help them connect with each other and their greater community are not always available locally, and other non-local products are so ingrained in the typical western diet that for a large population to give them up for ideological reasons would have drastic personal and global effects. These are valid arguments against focusing on local-only procurement – and perhaps can lead us to focus upon a more expansive value system that can help create greater change beyond our individual communities. Buying fair trade coffee, chocolate, and exotic fruit is one avenue. Yes it costs more, but I also know that my values are represented from grower to table, much like the onions I buy at the farmer’s market. And like that local apple, it tastes better.

Over the past year or more I have been moving towards a broader interpretation of “locavore” – and I am not the only one. Locavore is now often taken to mean food procurement that is often or mostly local, but always embracing sustainability and quality, community and environmental soundness. Reflecting on this change as we move to the new year, I am still proud  to call myself the Locavore in the City – even if how I define myself has evolved.

I shouldn’t have been surprised in the least when Michaela Hayes, owner of Crock and Jar, a Brooklyn-based company that specializes in making pickles and the teaching the art of pickling and canning, said that a main tenet of her business philosophy was a belief in “co-opetition.” After all, she was taking a few hours out of her day to sit with me, and less than twenty-four hours previously and barely a half-mile away, Shamus Jones, founder of Brooklyn Brine, was touting the same idea, on both the giving and receiving end. After all, my memories of both of my grandmothers’ canning efforts involved numerous family members, with as many jars given out as kept for the longest nights of winter. I’ve never met a home canner proprietary with their process or recipes – and have willingly shared my limited expertise with friends and strangers alike. Another friend was also recently sharing anecdotes from her childhood in Minnesota where she and her family lived on a small farm and would often bring their goods to a local coop, sharing and trading their bounty with neighbors. Small-scale farming, canning, and other traditional methods of artisanal food production and preservation were often born of this cooperative mentality – it made more sense to make twice as many pickles as one could use and trade them for a good one didn’t make. For, anyone who has canned can attest, whether the goal is five jars or fifty, the mess is about the same.

But I suppose what did take me back a bit, was that this idea of coopetition (an obvious hybrid of cooperation and competition that was coined by Hayes) was so alive and well in Brooklyn, of all places. Brooklyn (and its west coast sister hipster mecca Portland, Oregon) have been considered by many the birthplaces of the new artisanal food movement, so much so that articles have turned Brooklyn pickling into a meme and television shows have been created just to simultaneously celebrate and mock Portland’s handmade earnestness. While artisanal food – or food made by hand, with intention and attention to method and quality ingredients – was the norm across the country for centuries, once population shifted to urban centers, industrialization made mass production cheaper and easier, and sanitary and business regulations all but halted food sales from non-commercial kitchens, small batch canning, preserving, and otherwise making specialty goods dipped sharply. For as already noted, canning and other efforts can be mess-inducing and time-consuming and the more one can make at once, the better. If fifty jars of pickles weren’t going to be eaten, sold or traded, then maybe it made more sense to buy what one needed off the shelf, even if they weren’t as good as their homemade counterpart.

Yet the artisanal food scene has been rapidly growing, at first slowly, influenced by the counter-culture movement a few decades ago, and bolstered by the growing environmental movement in the 1980s and 1990s. But it wasn’t until the mid aughts, when the looming recession provided the tipping point for many urban mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings to turn their hobbyist artisanal food interests into a full-fledged business. So it makes sense that with all of these fledging businesses being born at once, coopetition would be born. For, as Jones put it, “It’s like being the first restaurant on the block.” You actually look forward to having someone else open up down the street – it brings more business for both of you. That’s how Bob McClure of McClure’s pickles must have felt when he answered Jones’s urgent calls for help with purchase orders when Brooklyn Brine started its exponential (yet responsible, Jones would note) growth, and how Jones feels when he willingly answers questions and gives advice to small businesses at the place he was just a few years prior. It’s coopetition that drives Hayes to keep teaching classes on canning, pickling – and even food business development – despite that, as she laughingly notes, “I’m basically training my competition.”

Because artisanal food production was always based upon the tenet that what one artisan was doing could not be exactly replicated. What they are creating is with intention, with particular attention to detail, and unique to their ingredients, process, recipe and method. Artisanal food production was born out of necessity, sharing and cooperation. And just because it is now a business – and with the advent of industrialization, not quite a necessity anymore – does not mean that the tenet of cooperation should also disappear. Of the food artisans with whom I have spoken within Brooklyn and across the country, most have noted that it was the support, advice, or general community of other like-minded artisans that helped them get their start; many would not be in business today without it. It is likely this sense of coopetition that fostered the greater artisanal communities in Brooklyn, Portland, and other growing scenes as well. And besides giving us delicious, thoughtful, even innovative products, we should let this ideal inspire other aspects of our lives – when we cooperate and share with other like-minded folks, there is only greater chance at success.

The term artisanal comes from the Italian word “artigiano”, which means an artisan or craftsman, and is understood to mean someone who makes a specific product or provides a specialized service with a high degree of skill. Artisanal thus is defined, in its broadest sense, as a product that is made by an artisan, and is most properly used to describe something that is hand-made, unique, and high-quality – the very opposite of mass-produced. It was the industrialization of America’s food system – with its cheap meat and dairy, bland vegetables and proliferation of processed foods – that many believed sparked a growing revolution back towards personal gardens, small farms, and traditional forms of food preparation and preservation.

The dozen or so artisans (who don’t always embrace that moniker, I’ll note, in part because of the recent bastardization and/or perceived connotations of the term in recent years) I’ve interviewed – and I will be interviewing perhaps a dozen more –share certain values, despite the sometimes disparateness of their industries: they all have a desire to be as close to the ingredients and production of their end-products as possible and they all have a deep commitment to quality.  For almost all, this includes close attention to all aspects of production, from sourcing of ingredients to grinding, mashing, mixing, distilling, fermenting, and aging, to the literal and visual aspects of packaging. Many artisans had a close connection to their chosen industry – whether it was a recipe passed down from a grandmother, or an industry once important to an ancestor’s way of life. Others developed a more recent love or appreciation of their product, and sought to find ways to produce something they felt proud of, and represented their own values surrounding this food or drink item that they – and countless others – love. And all, without fail, have learned to become very conscious of the business aspect of being an artisan. For some that meant starting their company with a strong business plan, for others that meant a crash course in accounting or marketing along the way.

Which brings me to the idea of sustainability. As my ideas and ideals on local eating have evolved, I have come to embrace the term “sustainable” to describe the food system I strive to support. Mirriam Webster has updated their dictionary definition to include sustainable as “a : of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged; b : of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods” – which is the spirit in which I use the term. However, the definition of “sustainable” meaning “the ability to keep, prolong” is often the manner in which many of these small businesses use the word. Frequently the founders to which I spoke noted that they believe in sustainable resources or a sustainable industry – with the intent that they wanted to preserve high quality of resources needed to make their product, contribute to a more positive physical and working environment for those who help harvest these resources, and are committed to both the history and longevity of many perspectives expressed in their chosen industry. However they recognize that to be able to do so, they must make their business sustainable in the more often used sense of the word: they must be able to stay in business. Or as one artisan put it – “we won’t be helping anyone if we don’t have our own platform to stand on in the form of a sustainable business model.”

These issues and others I am pondering and addressing as I continue to write this book and interview and profile more artisans. What I do hope to answer – and what I have gotten many similar perspectives on – is the current definition of artisanal, as it has been reclaimed in the past decade: “highlighting resources and ingredients,” “telling a story with your product,” “an art, a personal touch,” “a sense of hand-made-ness” – along with a not-infrequent sentiment of “not-always accessible” and “can sound elitist,” despite the similarities in philosophy of production.

But, whatever we call the goods themselves – “artisanal”, “craft”, “small batch”, or something else entirely – the philosophy among the crafts-men and –women is very much the same: to produce something with thoughtfulness, quality, attention to detail and care, to others who also care about the same thing.

*If you have any favorite artisanal or small batch pickle, cheese, chocolate or alcoholic spirits makers in the United States, please let me know at locavoreinthecity at gmail dot com!

To the pot I also added a cheesecloth bag with cleaned carrot ends and onion skins and parsley stems, and boiled it all, having to skim the natural scum from the top just once or twice, until it was cooked in less than an hour. Once cooked through, I removed the cheesecloth bag of ends and stems and the chicken and let it rest a bit, adding chopped carrots and onions and celeriac to the pot – all items available at the local farmer’s market in mid-fall. For lunch that day, we would have large hunks of chicken, with a bit of broth and boiled vegetables – for that is what veggies cooked in broth amounts to – served with day-old toasted bread topped with beet green pesto (think traditional pesto made with flash boiled beet greens in place of basil), warmed and softened in the broth. The rest of the chicken would be picked, some added back to the pot and returned to the fridge for a few more meals of soup over the ensuing days, enough for cold chicken salad reserved for one more meal.

Boiled chicken, stale bread, chicken salad (which I would later fancy-up with homemade aioli, the making of which involves just a few minutes of efforts for an infinitely elevated lunch counter staple) – all items that seemed pedestrian, the dishes that over-worked and under-inspired cooks prepare. But, thanks to Tamar Adler, reminded me of the purity of ingredients and – better yet – simple but delicious ways to ensure that every ounce of flavor is being eked from the items I am so careful to source from the farmer’s market or local shop.

Those few days of meals – which also resulted in a container of rich chicken broth that I froze for a future effort – inspired me to boil another chicken in preparation for a busy week. This one, shockingly, came with normally removed appendages, that, when boiled with the rest of the bird, made the broth deeper and richer than I would have imagined. For one meal, I chopped kale from the garden and braised it in the heating broth, which added a great color and texture to the soup for minimal effort. And as I warmed myself with a steaming bowl on another sunny but increasingly chilly fall day, I was reminded that the best meals really are the most simple. The ones that make the ingredients stand out, that warm from the inside, rather from their outward posturing. And I have Tamar Adler’s lovely prose to thank for that.