Artisan Modern

Our neighbor here in the countryside of France raises organic sheep.  I asked him how much extra he earns for the organic label. He said he loses money because of it. The certification costs more than the price increment. Furthermore, only the most elite restaurants will buy French lamb. New Zealand lamb is cheaper. Another farmer who is not in it for the money. Our young neighbor is a first generation farmer from Belgium. His family didn’t farm, but as a child he fell in love with farming. After a university education as an engineer he visited the south of

What people are likely to do is what their friends are doing, and this is how the hipster movement has helped countless artisan roasters, brewers, bakers and bicycle-builders to build viable businesses.

A tableful of Italians are congratulating me for microfoam. I try to raise my voice above the clamor to explain that I would have made it before but I just didn’t understand why it would matter when you’re using cheap coffee and UHT milk. I’m learning that pride in appearances is more important than other qualities, including flavor. When I complain about not being able to speak at the table, the host writes to me: “A latte with coffee is different from a cappuccino, even though it is the same milk and the same coffee. Moreover, if it were not

Success is a wage. Giving is a wage. And when these are denied, the cash is not enough.

He doesn’t understand that this quality will look bad in 10 years even if he succeeds in protecting it from signs of life.

I brought zucchini directly from the farm. I had even picked it. Sunshine yellow, striped, and deep emerald. Too abundant in some places I’d lived, too expensive in others. I sliced them lovingly. We discussed the oven, settled on a skillet. I preemptively sloshed it with the good olive oil, then left him to induction jockey and turned to set the table. I appreciate home grown chilis, however hot. And I eat herbs like salad. But the bit of chili and the shower of cannistered herbes de provence displaced the delicate zucchini. My friend Nigel once deconstructed an unconvincing dinner

She turned from the table and walked back to the kitchen. It looked, as is to be expected at this point in the service, as if a landslide had passed through.

Valentina is 78 and almost always smiling. She is a workaholic. As her daughter takes the first bite of dinner, sitting down for the first time all day after serving 30 guests, Valentina is standing behind her chair and asks “what will we cook tomorrow?”

I’ve always liked whittling but I’m usually more fond of the practice than the outcome. Until recently I used a little pocket knife and sometimes a gouge. This month I’ve taken it to the next level, thanks to a birthday present of two Swedish whittling knives.

And I’ve decided to push through the ‘meh’ barrier*.

Do we have super foods now because most of what we eat isn’t food? I posed this question a few years ago when there were new-to-me exotic fruits around, such as Jaboticaba, labelled as super foods. I was postulating that super foods used to be just everyday food, but they’ve had to be elevated because now we eat other things that we call food and they can’t all exist in the same category.

There is a lot to hate about supermarkets: how they treat farmers, deceptive pricing, seductive processed foods, degrading working conditions, chemical smells, and just plain ugliness. I’ve detailed these points with links to research and a guide to alternatives in my argument to criminalize. In Switzerland a supermarket duopoly dominate not only the food landscape, and sell gas, hardware, liquor, and banking. Riding high on Swiss exceptionalism, the locals have great faith and trust in these two 30Billion corporations. The faith is rooted in a benevolent history, reinforced by saturation advertising and . Both were legally structured as cooperative. Every

If an ingredient has no context –no story, provenance, maker, conversation, memory– then I’m not inspired to cook with it.

“I remember saying to somebody very early on that I just want to make furniture and talk to people about it. And I feel like now I might take the word ‘furniture’ out of it… The customers I’m thinking of can enunciate what they’re looking for in a piece of furniture beyond price. They have an experience in mind or a material connection or an aesthetic. Or they understood the slow movement and they liked the origin story.

Around the world is a crisis of modernization in which younger generations do not want to inherit the farming and other artisanal work of their families. When farms and value-added productions are closed, we lose not only the quality, but also the knowledge of ecology, technique, tradition, and sustainable technology carried for generations. According to one study in the US, 2/3 of farms did not have a designated successor. In 2017, 92% of Canadian farms had no successor. At the same time, a subculture is burgeoning of young people and ex-office workers who want to work with land, agriculture, food,

“I never wanted to be in the family business. So I went to London. I was cooking for Barclay’s Bank. But those people were both very demanding and not very appreciative.