Mailing List
Sign up for updates in your city.
HI, HI, MISS AMERICAN PIE
Submitted by KAT on Mon, 09/10/2007 - 8:37am.
Just when you think globalization’s gobbled up every last morsel of Made-in-the-USA goodness and led us down the low road to China, along comes Sustainable Table’s Eat Well Guided Tour of America to prove that where there’s pie, there’s hope.
And there’s an awful lot of pie out there, as the folks from Sustainable Table discovered on a five week-long ethicurean odyssey that took their bio-fueled tour bus from West Hollywood to the Hudson River Valley, making truly local stops along the way and holding pie contests from coast to coast.
Sustainable Table set out to show that even though the average American pantry’s been hijacked and held hostage by industrial agriculture and its partner in crime, Big Food, we still know how to whip up a sweet or savory pie using fresh, seasonal, locally grown ingredients.
Our nation dropped the ball and put a massive dent in our civic psyche when we started bowling alone, but the Eat Well road trip proves definitively—and deliciously—that a humble crumble has the power to bring us back together, sharing new recipes and old, rare heirloom and garden variety produce, fresh from the earth we’ve been treating like dirt in recent decades.
Millions of movie goers this summer watched the sour, spindly food critic Anton Ego catapulted back to his happy childhood by a bite of Remy the rat’s Ratatouille, reminding us that wholesome, homemade food contains the one ingredient that money can’t buy: love.
I’m not saying that all you need is pie, but it’s a tasty place to start, as Sustainable Table’s founder and director Diane Hatz discovered along the way. Hatz, the indefatigable idealist who dreamed up the Eat Well road trip, was already overwhelmed by the response the Eat Well road trip was receiving in its first week as it stopped at local farms, markets, and restaurants to rally the foot soldiers in the real food revolution:
As we explained that we were traveling across the whole country to show people that sustainable food is here to stay, that this is now more than a movement, it’s a way of life for many people, they started thanking us. When we mentioned that we were on the road to promote sustainable, local food and to support small family farmers, more people thanked us. And I mean sincerely, from the bottom of their hearts thanked us...
…That sense of gratitude and thanks has been everywhere we’ve gone…In West Hollywood, I was hugged by quite a few who think that what we’re doing is so important not just to the food movement, but for everyone in this country. We all need to know that we can eat healthier, and that even though there might be problems with our food system, there are a lot of people out here under the radar who are doing amazing, dare I say revolutionary, things.
Of course, Hatz herself would have to be high on that list, having played a key role in producing the Meatrix movies, the Eat Well Guide, and the GRACE Factory Farm Project--three influential campaigns that have raised awareness of the flaws in our food chain while promoting sustainable solutions.
We joined the Eat Well road trip for the final leg of their tour last Friday, setting out from midtown Manhattan in the morning and taking a tour of several Hudson Valley farms and a vineyard on the way to a big blow-out barbeque in upstate New York where a few hundred urban and rural foodies, farmers and regular folks feasted on the finest foods our local producers and purveyors have to offer. This is how you sell sustainability; as our friend Andrew noted, savoring the exceptionally delectable pasture-raised heritage pork, “It just tastes better!”
Having followed this transcontinental pie pilgrimage for the past month via Sustainable Table’s website, I got a bit of a thrill when I actually boarded their rock-star-style bio-fueled bus. With everyone from Barbara Kingsolver to the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnick hopping on to the eat local bandwagon, it’s clear that ‘good food’ movement movers and shakers like the folks at Sustainable Table are changing the way we think about food in this country. Under the radar? For now, maybe, but as I sat on the tour bus and talked turkey (free range, naturally) with Hatz and her crew, I had a sense of history in the making. And Hatz does, too. From her own on-the-road blog of August 8th:
I remember the 80’s being a decade of greed and wanting only for oneself; the 90’s perhaps a decade of confusion and despair to some degree, but I’m here to tell you that the start of the 21st century is a decade of hope…
…Perhaps this era will be one of reconnection and community. Maybe what we at Sustainable Table picked up on - our belief that local sustainable food is about community, that eating and sharing pie is simply a metaphor for that connection people are now seeking – perhaps people are feeling that everywhere. All I can say is that I’ve seen it everywhere I’ve gone so far.
Is a more humane and sustainable food chain just pie in the sky? Joe Hill, the legendary union activist who coined that phrase back in 1911, wouldn’t think so. Hill, a member of lefty labor union Industrial Workers of the World, had tremendous faith in the power of grassroots activism to foster social change. And so do I. To paraphrase Morrissey, Pie Lovers of the World, Unite and Bake Over!
Pie,
Nothing better
Post new comment