by Carol Navarro
“Eating is an agricultural act.”
These packages of granola from Suz McLaughlin’s
Still Grinning Kitchen are packed with ingredients beyond what the taste buds can experience and what the eyes can see. These are of course what one would expect: organic ingredients from as many local producers as possible. But like any work of art or craft made with the labor of love, it comes with history, or in this case, Suz’s story.The Northern Michigan residents, who enjoyed the 300 pounds of granola she made last season, might think of it as Benzie County’s own ethnic food. And when Jim Barnes approached her about developing a new flavor based on Northern Michigan products she took it all in the evolution stride that goes back to her "Diet for a Small Planet" days in Ann Arbor.
“I worked at the Wildflower Bakery Coop,” she says, “and we all contributed our own variety of recipes. We were very young and this is where the whole rethinking about our diet comes from. We learned from one another.”
For Suz, her special recipe was her granola. When she moved to East Lansing to go to college she introduced it to the food coop she worked for. It sold so well that it was hard for her to keep up with the demand. By the time she moved to Benzie County with her partner, Steve, in the early 1980s, it was well evolved into a labor of love for food, and a love for friends.
Health-Imbued Local Foods
“Years ago I had a friend who was very ill with cancer,” she says. “I would make him granola, making sure I was packing in as much nutrition as I could. It was the only thing he wanted to eat. It was also easy to carry to all the clinics and appointments he had to go to.”
This season, her granola includes only liquid sweeteners; honey and maple syrup. It’s easy to package, easy to mail, and it has a long shelf life. She refers to it as her weather sensitive granola because it gets sticky in hot weather.
In addition to her granola, there is a seemingly endless amount of culinary magic in her pies, cookies, tarts, spinach lasagna, soups, appetizers and veggie and fruit dips. Her products are all offered with her instinctive flair for the art of presentation, because her epicurean green gifts are packaged using whatever recycled materials or seasonal flora are available, nourishing the visual appetite as well.
Does she have a favorite dish?
“I have a flavor of the moment all the time. I think it comes from a lifetime of my mother telling me not to play with my food. So of course I have to. I never grew out of it.”Alice Waters, Julia Childs and Michael Pollan are her guides.
Alice Waters inspires her to eat fresh and local. Waters also developed a social program which introduces urban public school students to the concept of food from seed to table. The original Edible Schoolyard is located at Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Berkley, California. With a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen for the classroom, students learn to grow, harvest, and produce nutritious meals.
She loves Julia Childs for her unashamed awkwardness and having fun in the kitchen. She recalls watching a televised show where Julia dropped a whole prepared turkey on the floor. In front of the camera she let out her distinctive laugh while making fun of herself.
“I loved seeing an adult behave that way who didn’t care and made it work for her,” she says.
The Past and Future Challenges of Local Food and Agriculture
Julia also earned her admiration when, in her late 80s, she went to the inner-city schools of Boston and taught students how to bake bread.
In recent moments she says, “I’m all things Michael Pollan right now. He’s the one who has me excited about food.”
Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma and more recently, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, wrote an open letter to the next "Farmer in Chief", directed at presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama in October for the New York Times regarding today’s serious food issues. He reminded Suz of a fact she realized she knew very little about.
“In World War II ‘Victory Gardens’ were 40 percent of the nation’s food source,” she says. “I remember hearing from my grandparents that people got rid of their front lawns and grew gardens for food. It was a simple thing to do. If they didn’t need the food, they shared it with others.”
This is what she feels Americans haven’t been asked to do yet: to contribute. And yet, something like that is a very simple thing to do.
Local Food Regaining its Former Prominence
In times when many are feeling negative effects of hard economic times, she is excited about all the possibilities from developing a local food culture and economy.
“There is tangible evidence how local food products, entrepreneurs and artisans have actually strengthened the economy in many communities throughout the United States,” she says. “Locally, we have a lot to be excited about.”
She refers to the numerous farmers' markets, organic farmers, the new community garden, ‘Grow Benzie’ (now in the early stages), and Northern Michigan College’s Culinary Arts program.
“It’s a great program for local kids finding a skill that can take them anywhere in the world,” she says.
There is a resurgence of looking at farming she says. Agriculture is the original green job. Local is better. "It gets away from monoculture and it creates a cyclical community with the thinking, 'If I do well, then my neighbor does well,'" she says.
When she sees people visiting local farmers' markets, cradling the produce in their hands as they converse with the farmers who brought it and produced it, she is reminded of her one of her favorite food quotes by Wendell Berry: “Eating is an agricultural act.”
On The Web:
Link to Michael Pollan’s article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
MLUI's Taste the Local Difference Campaign
http://localdifference.org/
Two other links describing the value of agriculture, food, and art in changing a community’s economy and quality of life:
http://paducaharts.com/about_paducah.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/dining/08verm.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
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