a funny thing happened on the way to Syracuse,

Last week I visited Texas for a family get-together we call the Ogg-in (Ogg is my mother’s maiden name); it is a big family, close and fun. This tradition of getting together in June started about four or five years ago, and my uncle said it was my fault, it was a year when I was back in Texas and my mom wanted to try to get everyone together one more time before I moved...I’ll take the blame—this party is well worth being held responsible for. Like everyone, I’m sure, I come from a diverse, interesting and colorful family that includes CFOs and mechanics, soldiers, bankers, teachers, actors, carpenters, nurses, and more than a few food professionals and food lovers—Uncle Jim and Aunt Suzie, who host the party, have a catering business run out of a kitchen my uncle built himself on the back half of their hill country home in Marble Falls, Texas.



Uncle Jim moved to Marble Falls in High School with his parents in an intermission from their life in my home town of Bryan. The way I’ve heard the story, my Granddaddy Leo and my Grandmother Chris (Christine, as in ‘Abigail Christine’) loved the Hill Country and vacationed there frequently and finally decided to stay for a bit. They had a picture framing business called ‘The Mitre Box’ (which my uncle bought back and ran as well, years later), and my uncle (the youngest of five siblings) was the only one who actually still lived with his folks while they were there. Good thing, too, because that’s where he met the love of his life, and Suzie is assuredly one the sweetest people ever born. They are very comfortable in Marble Falls; it is a beautiful area, with probably the most rewarding scenery in Texas—beautiful slopes melting into glassy rivers and lakes, bright and quiet and just green enough to provide a spare but adequate shade from the powerful Texas summer sun. Their generosity and efficiency as hosts is only equaled by their warmth, humour, and pleasant company as people and this family event is well worth traveling from Canada to enjoy.



The drive my grandparents made from Bryan to vacation in Marble Falls is about 3 hours. From Canada, it’s more like three days, if you’re hopped up on bennies and willing to wear a catheter. Vacationing, but perhaps even more strange, living far away from home, in the age of the airplane, has come to mean a very different thing than it did in times past. Being spread out, as we are, can now mean living thousands of miles from family and loved ones, without, thanks to the internet and relatively cheap plane tickets, necessarily even feeling removed. But this separation, at least for the not so rich and famous such as ourselves, has also come to affect the ways and whys of how we vacation.



At the outset of this adventure, I coined the word ‘oblication’ to describe my attitude about the number of stops expected of us during our short visit, a visit cut even shorter by the (gasp) loss of a half days travel when our plane missed its connection in Newark on the way down. It is a weird world in which a 1000 mile trip is considered inconvenient by taking more than half a day. But that is, nevertheless, how it feels. With numerous friends, family and a month’s worth of ‘important’ stops to make in a week’s trip, the pressure to ‘oblige’ makes the desire to ‘vacate’ seem very appealing. But oblige we did, and when we could, vacate we did as well; which was actually fairly easy to do under the guidance of our excellent west Texas hosts.



We spent a day or two in Austin, where I visited my recently rebuilt old haunt of Mother’s Café, which seems to have survived the fire without having suffered much pain in the way of rebirth...we met a new young friend, a second daughter to one of my oldest friends, just hours after her birth. We visited Boggy Creek Farm and chatted with other friends of ours (as well as Uncle Jim and Aunt Suzie’s), Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler, the urban farmers who inspire me as much or more than any other two folks alive. And we took a day in Dripping Springs to play some music, grill some veggies, help build a lego city and enjoy the incredible Hill Country sunset with some other old friends and their children. We didn’t manage to do about seventeen other things that we had promised ourselves that we definitely would...but in the end, I think we did just about enough.



The weekend was spent enjoying family at the Ogg-in, introducing Abigail to her cousins for the first time and playing washers while drinking longnecks, crowding around jigsaw puzzles, eating well and smiling, laughing, maybe even crying, just a little, for a couple of folks who should have been there, and had been there in years before, and were still there, in a way...



Then a stop at home, my parents’ house, where I can’t seem to sleep anywhere except for my old room, even though my sister’s old room has a bigger bed and its own bathroom. Some habits are hard to break. I could have spent the whole week in that room—it is like visiting a younger version of my self; it is amazing how much of our inner lives are scripted in those teenage bedrooms, and how much of that inner dialogue follows us in the years that pass as we grow. I still go through all the drawers, expecting to find some document or talisman that proves that room is still mine. This time, I saw an old green blanket on the shelf of the closet—I remembered its smell on the cool evenings of my youth when it kept me warm in my insomnia, my brain racing to capture all those important things before they faded, never realizing that those thoughts would still be with me to mull over for the rest of my years...



Thoughts like how we live and love and what it means to be alive and live well. What it means to be good and to be happy. What it means to be successful. Thoughts about God and atheism, about sneaking out the window (the screen is still broken, another reminder...), and thoughts about things like drugs and sex, even death, and about what it means to feel good and how.



Abigail was a champ, she flew well, and (with maybe one exception) was in good spirits for the duration of the often blisteringly hot, sometimes chaotic and always completely new to her experience of the whole adventure. Even when we hit the worst of it.



We can’t seem to fly through Newark without some glitch...even on previous trips, that airport has tripped us up with delays, weather issues and the like. Our trip home looked OK, we had a mechanical issue with our scheduled plane, but the airline kicked us over to another small jet at another gate in record time—even the flight attendant seemed impressed. We took off on schedule and seemed to be moving well...we were about halfway to Syracuse when the weather hit. Nicole, Abigail and I were in the last row, which is, I understand, the worst spot for a bumpy ride, but this seemed even more violent than usual, it didn’t help that a pilot on the next row looked visibly alarmed by ‘the ride’, the seatbelt lights were on and the flight attendant was buckled in and using phrases like ‘a little rough’ and ‘looking for a better route’. Nicole had her head between her knees and was breathing like she did the day we met Abigail and I realized I couldn’t keep reading and should probably put my book away. The tension was palpable. The pilots were quiet, focused, and the plane was loud with sound of whitening knuckles and gritting teeth. I was feeling something I knew I was supposed to feel, anxiety, tightening in my neck and tensing my arms around my girls. Fearing for my daughter, coaching Nicole in her breaths; but then, suddenly, calm.



Suddenly I was back in my old room, smelling that blanket, staring out the broken screen. I was thinking, what if this is it?



The plane hit a hail storm; it was a quick, loud metallic ripping noise. Not a noise you want to hear 20,000 feet in the air. The pilot in the adjacent row lifted up in her seat. The wingtip pointed down and our (excellent) captain swung us around and out of there. A minute later, the flight attendant told us that we were going back to Newark and blah, blah, blah. I was still lost in my calm.



What if this is it? I have the best job in the world. I have the most beautiful daughter in the world. I have found the love of my life. I have few regrets and I have just spent a week in the company of many of the people I love most in the world. What if this is it? Well, OK. I’ve done quite well—better than that teenage kid could have ever imagined. More than lucky, I am blessed. I don’t crave death, this is not some sick wish, I just realized, all over, with a sense of shock that no matter what happened, I couldn’t control it, and if this was it, well, OK.



Suddenly ‘oblication’ felt like far too harsh a critique. I felt lucky, so damn lucky for every moment I had spent in the last few days with the folks I loved so much. I felt so lucky for the last several years, in fact, for the whole life I’ve had. Much of me knew that we weren’t going down, but I did know that we could, just as we could all meet our moment at any time, whether we liked the idea or not. The important thing was that something about that moment reminded me to think about those big thoughts, the ones I used to chase wrapped in that old green blanket on those sleepless nights in my room at home. I knew that we probably weren’t going down but I also knew that if we did, that if this was it, there wasn’t one thing that I could do about it.



The plane leveled out and left the clouds. We found our way back to Newark and were ‘inconvenienced’ by another six or seven hour wait. Eventually, we made it home; back to Kemptville, to the branch, to our other family, here.



Abigail slept through the whole thing, safe in her daddy’s arm, my other arm around Nicole, reminding her to breathe, calm, and smiling.

entering the foie gras fray:

I submitted this letter to a call-in about foie gras on Tuesday's 'Ontario Today' show on the CBC. They read an edited version of the letter, here is the full submission:

In regards to Wednesday’s foie gras conversation, I’d like to submit the following: as a chef and a former vegan, (I was the co-author of a vegan cookbook!) I visited a foie gras farm in Gascony while travelling and working on organic farms. I came to the farm as a chef, not as a vegan or an activist, and my tour was conducted with mutual respect and genuine curiosity. I was walked through every aspect of the operation and was not disgusted or horrified by what I saw. I saw a small farmer using traditional methods, I saw ducks that were happy and quacking within seconds of the feeds, which were conducted individually, by hand--and yes, at the end of the line, I saw a slaughterhouse where ducks were killed and processed for meat, which is, I know as a former vegan, what this conversation is really about, anyway. There are probably terrible farms out there where the ducks are handled with less care than the farm I visited, but I know in my heart that every factory farmed chicken (and that means most every chicken that costs less than 4 bucks a pound) is handled more inhumanely than the ducks I saw. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is not a real victory to target small restaurants who are the front line of the battle for ethical purchasing by already choosing small, artisan farmers. As someone who has been on both sides of this issue I’d like to say to the vegans, choose your battles, it is the CAFOs and the giant centralized meat processors that supply the big chain restaurants and fast food joints that are robbing us of our humanity--not small traditional farmers. As a chef and a small restaurant owner, I don't serve foie gras, but I have, and I would again under the right circumstances—but, for now, I don't have a fine dining restaurant--I can't afford the stuff, and as a small restaurateur, honestly, I can't afford to alienate my vegan clientele over a subject on which we happen to disagree. But I sure wish that all the energy my former co-vegans spent on these hot button issues was directed at the real culprits at the big cheap corporate feed troughs that populate the mall food courts of our collective popcorn reality instead of at these little guys. Choose your battles. Everyone is watching and the more people you alienate with hollow victories the less will stand up for you when the real battles begin.
--Chef Bruce

sore loser...

I am not a competitive person. Which is what you say when you are, in fact, a sore loser. When I was a kid, my brother was just enough older than me that he was always physically two steps ahead—a condition that has a tendency to level out eventually, but also one that can be a source of much anxiety through the younger years. Our neighborhood friends were also his age (and size), so in the games that boys play...soccer, football, baseball, basketball (I suppose it would have been hockey had I been born somewhere a little less, well, Texas-y)...I guess you could say I had a tendency to lose. I was probably fine with this for a while, I honestly don’t remember, but eventually, it started to tick me off. Loss after loss became a source of manifest frustration. Screaming tantrums, crying jags, the whole bit. Little kid frustration at the fact that the world didn’t seem to work the way it did in the Disney sports movies. I wasn’t upset that I was losing; I was upset that the whole thing seemed so unfair.

Being the runt made me agitated, and I say that I was not competitive, but I was actually the worst of the bunch. But losing time after time made me hate the games, made me throw up my hands and eventually walk away in disgust. Finally I just quit playing, if anyone asked, I just said I wasn’t competitive, I found other outlets, comfort zones where physicality wasn’t critical; books, music, things like swimming or theatre, places where I played alongside rather than against.

Business is not a comfortable or un-competitive space. Even before I was a business owner it had become manifestly obvious that competition, even ruthless competition, was a fact of business life. Just like big kids dominate little kids, big fish swallow small fish, corporations will feast on small businesses. Only the biggest, strongest or sometimes the most creative, quickest or smartest survive in the big game—unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean the best.

Being ‘non-competitive’ in my youth gave me some perspective. It helped me distance myself and observe—it helped me to look for the merit in things that existed beyond the usual benchmarks, the trophies, the material successes.

As a restauranteur, for instance, my obvious goal in a purely competitive mode would be to become McDonald’s, arguably the most successful ‘restaurant’ concept in history. Money, power, market share...it’s all there. They are the Superbowl champs of food. And they are also a blight upon the land. I feel no love for this monstrous beast—It has leveled rainforests in its quest for cheap meat, it has created an entire industry where genetically modified corn fattens grass eaters beyond reason in concentrated toxic spaces that have made me, at times, question whether or not humanity has lost its soul. And then there’s what they’ve done to the cattle (wait for it...). But seriously, McDonald’s is all plastic and disposable in a world where every indication is that plastic and disposable will eventually choke the life from our oceans, our land, and, inevitably, ourselves. This competitive edge has brought them fortune, but we have all lost much for their gains (even as we have gained much from their fries...) All because they are very, very good at winning. It is as if they have successfully mastered the sport of feeding us our own feet, the better to keep us from walking away from this destructive path.

What would be an alternative? Is there one? Or is competing so aligned with our nature that we are trapped into this Sisyphean game forever?

When I lived in Oakland, California—I was down the street from an awesome coffee shop—they used to make an iced mocha with chocolate ice cream that would kill you dead on the spot, and then restart your heart at double speed all in the space of one quick gulp. Let’s just call it delicious. One day Starbucks decided to open a shop on the same stretch of road. Next door. It’s vicious. I mean, my little coffee shop was good, but not so good that it could afford to share a small market. It was pure predatory behaviour—That Starbucks didn’t need to succeed, it just had to outlast...I’ve got a dozen stories like that, and so do you. And the fact is that there is a twisted logic to it all, that is to say, when the object is to win at all costs, anything goes.

Are these corporations evil? No, just good competitors. A positive case could even be made for McDonald’s, Starbucks or WalMart; these guys are huge and generally irresponsible, but when they do make a choice on the side of angels, it can have massive effects...McDonald’s has implemented programs certifying and only using slaughterhouses that kill humanely, has had positive effects on millions through charitable actions such as the creation of the Ronald McDonald houses or their sponsorship of the Special Olympics; StarBucks has made choices like providing the options of Fair Trade or organic coffee, even turning these formerly fringe products into household words (without necessarily always being the best at choosing them...) Even WalMart stands poised to completely inflate the market share for organic foods, albeit at the very real risk of diluting the meaning of that word to the point of meaninglessness. The point is that when a corporation is a good citizen, its impact is on a scale that few small businesses could ever hope to achieve.

So why do I despise these places so much? If we are hardwired, if it is inevitable that we compete, and if, within the competitive world there is always going to be a winner, why can’t I just accept it and move on like everyone else seems to have? Maybe it’s because I am a sore loser. I can’t stand to see that smirking jerk in the winners circle with the babes and the trophy, knowing full well that he cheated his way to the top; it is the unfairness of the game that irks me most. And maybe, just maybe, it’s because I know there really could be a better way. I feel like the corporate big kids all acknowledge it, with these charitable acts, these nods to environmental responsibility or to social justice. They realize that some large part of our success as humans is contingent upon the interconnected nature of our actions.

When it comes to how I spend my dollars, I always prefer the quirk to the quick, the creative to the consistent, the human to the machine. Give me greasy spoons and mismatched forks over McStyrofoam™ any day. I love to see the kinds of restaurants where people sit and talk and feel like they own the place—and I don’t feel any sense of competition with them, even when they are next door. Little restaurants like the ones we’ve got (and have sadly sometimes lost) around our downtown are special, as are the bookshops, bead stores, thrift shops, yoga studios...we are blessed with a host of real and worthy businesses around here. The kind of spots that are worth supporting and the kind that deserve to win—even though you can also choose cheaper, faster and less thoughtful versions of anything they sell at franchise version of the same around the corner or up on the highway. Maybe what I like is that these little places exist in the same way that healthy people and ecosystems work, with diversity, interconnectedness, care and love.

When I was a teenager, I met Bob Atkins at his house long before I entered his homey little health food store—he had two beautiful daughters about my age and I was lucky enough to spend enough time with them to at least meet dad (if too unlucky for much else...), and though they were cute, but it was on my first trip to the health food store that I really fell in love. Rows of bulk bins, bags of flours, seaweed, tofu, sprouts...I had never found such an array of strange and wonderful delights—I felt like a young wizard in an alchemist’s laboratory. Brazos Natural Foods had the particular smell that I have since come to associate with every health food store: that blend of incense, musk, patchouli, yeast and garlic, that rich, savoury scent which I have found again and again in my life, in tiny shops and in giant groceries, scattered throughout a hundred small towns and sprawling cities, in Canada, throughout the U.S., even in Europe. It is a particular and comforting scent for me and every time I smell it, it always feels like coming home.

One of the things that attracted me to Kemptville, in fact to the area in general, was that every small town around here supports at least one if not more of these quirky little health food shops. It was a big factor in helping me have the faith that this community could also support an organic foods restaurant. Kemptville has a particularly nice one, Nature’s Way, which I have shopped at regularly since moving here, and where I am now known well enough that I am always greeted by name by most of the staff, a gaggle of sweethearts who genuinely care about the health of this community (and who definitely care less about me and more about my baby daughter...). I’m not going to say anything rude, but I couldn’t help but notice that recently a local grocery store, which although Independently (oops, sorry!) owned is still part of a much larger entity, which also happens to be practically next door to our little shop is adding a ‘store within a store’ health food area...and, well, I’ll just say that I’m a little peeved. The grocery store doesn’t need that market segment to survive, at least I don’t think it does, and, well, I guess the whole thing just feels fishy to me. It seems like that predatory, anything goes, play to win sort of nonsense that made me such a sore loser in the first place. Part of me says ‘Well, think of the positive, think of all the folks who would never go to a quirky little health food store who will now be exposed to organic foods, maybe even for the first time.’ But part of me, that sore loser side, sees a problem on the horizon for a cool little shop that deserves to win but has a big brother that’s always going to be a little stronger and a little faster.

I mentioned earlier that big brothers don’t stay bigger forever. There came a point for me where I certainly could no longer use that excuse in my losing to mine. Not being competitive is a nice idea, but compete I do, every day, for the hearts and minds (and especially the stomachs) of a small town outside of the city—knowing full well that the big kids can do almost everything I do faster and cheaper—but also knowing that they can never do it better or with more heart. They can smirk and strut in the winners circle, but they also have to try to sleep knowing that they cheated to get there. And they also know that someday, sore loser or not, I’m not going to be quite so little anymore. And neither are you.

Nature’s Way is located at 2676 County Rd. 43 in Kemptville; they are open Monday through Saturday from 9 to 6, stop by if you’re in the area.

--Chef Bruce

dandy poem

Why would we celebrate the dandelion?
This crooked little weed—
This fruit of fertile, feral seed—
This yellow and this green that speak out Spring! Spring! Spring!

For what this little flower with its splash across the lawn—
Aggravating those who seek an order to the grass and long to poison it and us by proxy—

What moxie shows this humble little plant—
It can’t be beaten back, just slowed—
It springs back each and every time it’s mowed, its seeds sown again and again, by wind!
How can one defend against such a hearty foe?

Embrace, and buss, enjoy, we must!
This lion’s tooth, so humble, and so strong—
Why celebrate this weed, this flower, this first sign of spring, this bitter green?
Why celebrate when we have lost the battle it has fought?

Why would we not?

Locavore

A couple of months back, Nicole and I were present at the second annual Savour Ottawa summit meeting, held (this year) in the opulent surroundings of the National Art Centre. Savour Ottawa is the hub of the wheel that is moving our National Capital Region towards having a functioning local foods network. It is a joint program of Ottawa Tourism and a non-profit group called Just Foods, and is supported and loosely connected to many other local, provincial and Canadian efforts that all aim to put a little sanity back into the way we purchase, source, and ultimately consume food. In our area, it is our biggest and best means of participating in the local foods movement. This organization attempts to do this by putting chefs in the room with farmers (...and the media...and many other concerned folks, such as grocery store owners, distributors, micro-processors and farmers’ markets...) and it seems to be working; attendance at each event has increased as has interest and membership, with a surprising number of restaurants and farmers seeming anxious to climb aboard and help move this stuck wheel out of the mud. Much of the event was a series of progress reports and information bits, delivered in an organized and thoughtful fashion. Savour Ottawa has been quite active and engaged since its inception, just three short years ago, and I’ve enjoyed attending, participating, and even sitting on the advisory committee of this effective, smart and forward thinking group. We have gained a great deal by way of this group, but by far, the best thing has been the opportunity to meet, hear, talk to, and get to know a wonderful community of like minded folks. Folks like Terry McEvoy.

‘Locavore’ is a new word; the folks at the Oxford American Dictionary added it to their lexicon and named it the word of the year for 2007. It was coined in San Francisco by someone named Jessica Prentice for the 2005 World Environment Day to describe folks who choose locally produced foods over the high mileage options we find in most stores, and in a short time, it has come to describe a movement some folks are calling the new ‘organic’. That would have been funny to our grandparents who would have called it ‘normal’. I spend a lot of my time thinking about this kind of stuff, so much so that it actually surprises me when I discover that other folks don’t necessarily do the same. That’s why it is always a pleasure to find other people who are as passionate about it as I am.

I never set out to be a local foods guy; for me, it started with a love of food combined with a sincere interest in and love of nature and the environment. It began in my teens and, I’m usually sorry to say, the earliest manifestations were a precocious political bent, usually expressed with a passionate lecture or a blind criticism of anyone whose knee didn’t jerk to the left. Needless to say, this approach didn’t win me many fans and I eventually learned to tone down the preachy-ness in favour of a more personalized expression in the form of a series of experiments with vegetarian, vegan, and finally organic eating. My career path being what it was (with few exceptions, I’ve only ever cooked for a living), and because of my other hunger for things to read and learn, it was natural for me to follow each of these personal experiments into both extreme research in the form of articles and books as well as into a variety of professional settings. This path has led me to where I am now, cooking philosophical local and organic food in a small town—reaching out and teaching folks (I hope) about some of the things I’ve learned along the way. When we opened the branch, I made a promise to myself that I would start shopping at my door, and really, honestly try to forge a local network that would supply our restaurant, of course, and support my family, but also to contribute to the community as a whole; that we would be a part of something bigger than just a business, and that we would make an honest effort to be a part of a positive world change.

Doing that meant meeting local farmers and producers, a task that is the least work-ish part of my work. It meant going to farmers’ markets, cold-calling numbers from the internet or the phone book, and occasionally, it meant pulling a dangerous u-turn to stop and buy a tub of honey at a self serve shack like Terry McEvoy’s, which was right on the side of one of the main roads out of town.

I am a local food geek, for sure, but I am not a local food armageddonist, which is to say, I no longer think that the world will end if I eat a slice of processed cheese (it might...but I doubt it); nor am I completely convinced that there is absolutely no place for giant mechanized and centralized farming operations in the matrix of the future of how we feed this planet (hey, I love Star Trek, I’d love to think that there is a scientific solution to every problem!) But, as far as the benefits of local eating go, what I have come to believe is that big economies (such as giant centralized and mechanized farms) and big corporations (such as agro-chemical, food processing plants, or giant feedlot and slaughter operations) are too easily made victim to the violent side effects of one of nature’s fundamental laws, the law of inertia, or momentum. And until humans can subvert this basic law of nature, (God help us when we do...) I can’t help but feel that we are needlessly endangering ourselves, our fellow humans, our children and our planet, and usually for all of the wrong reasons, like money, power or ‘security’; but most often, as I stated before, simply because of momentum. Big systems like our agricultural and industrial food processing ones can turn a bad idea into a devastating one in a short time (think DDT or gene modification); ideas which seem like good science in the lab can suddenly become toxic and widespread when applied to our enormous food system as a whole. Also, when things go wrong, (think Mad Cow Disease, or E. coli) they tend to go very wrong, very quickly because the system is so big that by its nature, by its momentum, it is difficult, or even impossible to slow or stop. In other words, with each new iteration of a poorly tested or poorly understood catch-all agricultural ‘solution’, or with each new manifestation (...watch the papers, what is it that is being recalled this week: Peanut Butter? Spinach? Deli Meats?) of a systemic problem, we open Pandora’s Box; and by the time we realize what we’ve done, it is too big, too bad and too late.

You see, I do believe in the science of agriculture, it’s just that my favorite farm laboratories are not climate or temperature controlled (at least not by the hand of man) or located in a Monsanto complex, they are scattered around the countryside of every rural route in the world—and they are operated by scientists who understand things about plants that can’t be taught in a clean white lab-coat or with a test tube. The scientists that I trust have dirty hands and well-worn rubber boots; they can fix a tractor with a bent stick and a length of twine—they can tell you which hill gets the best sun for basil and which shallow spot is too wet for garlic. And the science they understand isn’t from a book with pages; it is from an almanac filled with dirt, sun, time and water. These scientists Will Feed Their Family, and then, if there is something left, they will feed some other folks, too. They know that crop diversity will be the best tool to ensure a year of meals because the bugs can’t get everything, and they know that saving seeds is cheaper than buying them and the best way to be sure of what they’re going to get. They know that spraying poison on food is counterintuitive at its best and downright criminal at its worst. And they know that if something doesn’t work, for heaven’s sake, you stop doing it, you don’t keep trying it over and over again, hoping for a different result. They are small enough, smart enough and quick enough that they do not get crushed by the momentum of a bad idea.

These folks are the scientists that I trust. They acknowledge the math and philosophy of the agricultural schools but they also don’t let it interfere with the process of putting food in the pantry or the root cellar. It is a science not simply based on knowledge, but on knowledge tempered with wisdom; science of the mind, but also of the heart. These are the same scientists who carried the world on their backs from the caves right up to the industrial revolution, and when the oil runs out (and it will...), these are the scientists we will all be seeking out, hat in hand, begging them to teach us how to feed ourselves again.

I’m not going to wait.

I didn’t want to write today, I (and lots of other folks) got some bad news yesterday morning, Terry McEvoy, our honey guy, died suddenly, much too suddenly and much, much too young. Our, and many other heavy hearts, are with his family today. Terry was a honey collector and processor, a family man, a birdhouse builder and a pioneer and an activist in many community based, positive world changing groups and projects. And, without question, he was one of those scientists, those men of knowledge, of wisdom, and of heart to whom I referred.

I was remembering that Savour Ottawa summit at the NAC today, because of him. As a fellow member of the advisory committee he was asked, I believe, just to introduce or to give a quick summary of some item at the microphone at some point during the latter half of the event. There was no keynote speaker that day and accurately sensing the spirit of the moment he took it upon himself to say a few things...he noted that this was not what he had been asked to do, but that he felt that when an opportunity presented itself, such as this one had, there must be a reason, and that it was important for someone to say what needed to be said. Then he pulled out a set of notes. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said with a bit of mischief, ‘It won’t take too long.’ It didn’t. He spoke clearly and eloquently for the next several minutes about several topics, but central to his theme was the idea that our collective need to put the idea of ‘culture’ back into ‘agriculture.’ He talked fondly of his forebears and about how crazy they would have found the idea that in our backwards food non-culture of today a farmer could have hundreds of acres and still not be able to feed his or her family. And he spoke about how great it was that we were all there in that room talking about doing something about it, but that all the talk in the world wasn’t going to fix what needed fixing and that we were all going to have roll up our sleeves and get to work if we wanted to see real change.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that his talk that day affected me deeply. On the one hand, my respect for him increased tenfold for his act of courage and will in even taking (and I do mean taking) the chance to speak. In some ways, he helped to wake up that passionate youngster in me who I had suppressed all those years ago for fear of offending; I felt like I was being given permission, even responsibility to take the chance to say what needed to be said when the chance arose, and I’ll admit, I have enjoyed and taken a few opportunities to do exactly that in the months since...much like what you’ve read in the paragraphs here today. And on the other hand, the importance of the specifics of his message have resonated with me; both as a reminder of the importance of what we who are active in the local food culture are doing and also for his call to arms, his recipe for a clear direction forward. His phrase about putting the ‘culture’ back into ‘agriculture’ is now a permanent part of my idiom, as it now is, I’m sure, for every person who heard him speak on that (or any other) day. Terry was a true and good leader. I did not know him well, certainly not nearly as well as I wanted to, and though I had looked forward to getting to know him over years to come, I find that even in 2 short days, I am already getting to know him better as I learn more and more about his incredible legacy.

This community has suffered a blow. Terry McEvoy, a good, good man, was ripped from us too swiftly and much too soon. But if he were here, something tells me that he’d be taking the microphone and telling us that we’ve got to roll up our sleeves, look ahead and get to work.

I didn’t want to write today, but I knew I had to.

--Chef Bruce

Earth Hour

Merely existing is not enough. Thank goodness—what a sad, impersonal world it would be if it were. Humans are social creatures—our need to build communities and work together for the greater good is what defines us as a species and is also the very definition of true joy. Earth Hour is a celebration of that spirit—it is a chance for people to make a statement that is at once personal, spiritual, communal and even, to some degree, political...But not a politics of left, right, green, red or blue; rather, it is a politics of politeness—It is a chance to say ‘I am willing to work for a better world.’ Even if the only act is turning off the light or the TV—turning down the heat or powering down the cell—walking instead of driving—it is a polite political act by being something small that we all do together. For one hour, we all say, ‘Yes, I want a better world, this is my contribution.’ Then, if we are lucky, at the end of that hour, as the lights come back on and the noise comes back up, we will all go forward with a new little spark—a smile, a little taste of truth. We will say, ‘You know what? That wasn’t so hard, in fact, it felt pretty good.’

the branch restaurant will celebrate Earth Hour with a candlelit, unplugged acoustic set featuring Ottawa’s Al Wood and Lindsay Pugh. You can also celebrate Earth Hour every day at the branch with our ongoing commitments to always choosing local foods, organic foods, compostable and recycled paper goods, biodegradable and non-toxic cleaning products and a general true belief in the importance of community. Thanks for being part of the change...

--Chef Bruce

To everything, there is a season...

Back in 2001, Chef Eric (Tucker, from Millennium in San Francisco) and I went to a big food event in the Civic Center plaza; for an hour or so, we wandered around various booths in our chef coats, trying to look important enough to get free stuff. One of our stops was a booth for Ten Speed Press, the publishers of The Millennium Cookbook, Eric’s first book (and later, The Artful Vegan); the folks were friendly and loaded Eric down with cookbooks, ‘Here, you take this one, this guy is good’ he said, handing me a copy of Gordon Ramsay’s A Chef for all Seasons. I devour cookbooks, and was pleased to have this hardcover and artfully designed one to add to my collection. Later, I was also pleased to discover that the format followed a unique pattern, arranging recipes by season instead of by courses. The photography was stunning, the recipes engaging, straightforward, and fairly modern, but, as I recall, it was his near political advocacy for ‘in season’ and local food selection that was the most enticing feature.



Later I heard a story about the character of this chef that took some of the shine off of the jewel, the now famous account of him physically removing food critic A. A. Gill from one of his London restaurants. As a chef, and someone who has lived in fear and awe of critics (the civilian oversight of our profession) for the better part of my career, the symbolism of such an act was powerful. It certainly didn’t mesh with the clean lines and austere presentations that were shown in his book. More stories followed. The temper, the larger than life ego, the passion; the very public character we have all come to know. Ramsay apparently started out as a professional football (or soccer, as we call it here...) player. It would seem that he brought that rough and tumble competitive spirit with him to his new profession; his breakout television series (which I haven’t seen) chronicles his quest to achieve the world cup of fine dining awards, three Michelin stars. Later series have put him in the role of the bully coach, tightening the screws on the underperforming players in an attempt to get a winning game out of them. And finally, in one of his most recent roles, the unfettered hooligan, the armchair quarterback, given control of the entire game. He is, what we in the profession call, ‘a screamer.’



Kitchens are very high stress environments, sometimes, (such as in the case of severe food allergies or in the poor stewardship of chemicals or the potentially poisonous effects of mishandled meats or rotten foods) we are actually holding life and death in our hands. Now, to be fair, we are not doctors, firemen or paramedics, or as one critic put it recently, we are not saving the world (not all of us, anyway). We are not required to earn diplomas to serve our wares, yet the facts remain: if we fail to be careful, sanitary stewards of our duties, we may do harm, even severe harm. That thought terrifies me every time I see a brigade of untrained high school children manning the line at any chain restaurant, even a doughnut shop. When I hear the tales of dangerous and deadly mistakes that occur as a result of our blind acceptance of such a system, I am only surprised that it is only as infrequent a story as it is.



I worked for a screamer once. I’m sure we’ve all had awful bosses at one time or another, if pop culture and the movies are to be believed; a tough boss or drill sergeant (or coach) is not only acceptable, it is of vital and critical importance in our process of becoming good people. But every once in a while, that line is crossed from being tough to being abusive. Kitchens, as I stated, can be very high stress environments, and the farther you move up the food chain, the higher the stress. The screamer I worked for ran a very high end restaurant kitchen. Her tirades were famous within our four walls and unknown outside them. Her ability to berate was legendary—and the terror she invoked in every person within earshot was unmatched. But the fact is, she wasn’t that good. She demanded and commanded respect though her bellicosity, but even the dishwashers knew she was overcompensating. She was good enough; she rigidly maintained the status quo in the kitchen while the executive chef who trained her (and trained her to scream) poked his head in once a week before touring the dining room and taking credit for her (and our) work. But the screaming was a device. In her mind, she was keeping us all on the straight and narrow; she probably even saw herself as a friend and mentor, but she was often guilty of the failings for which she attacked us. To be fair, most of us were ambitious, egotistical shits who had taken the job at this exclusive, well reviewed restaurant to pad our resumes and (hopefully) get a leg up to a better job. We all had nothing to gain from serving anything but the best product we could assemble and it showed. Basic food-handling philosophy, such as the ‘first in, first out’ rule were the ‘first out’ the window as we scrambled over the tired old product to tear into today’s delivery in order to get an edge over our competitor...oops, I mean our co-worker’s presentation. Expensive, rich, and heart-clogging ingredients were crammed onto every plate as a substitute for creative, thoughtful or even skillfully devised ones. In fact, technique was very low on the roster of priorities in that space, edged out by the greater good of guaranteed results. Creativity was suspect, forward thinking was discouraged, and waste was a price paid for elegance. She brought nothing of value to that kitchen other than a semblance of order; she knew this, we knew this, and her terror of anyone else finding out required her to keep the world at arms length. So she screamed.



Whether it is the fact of our duty to handle food safely, or even just to keep a handle on our jobs (or our Zagat ratings, or our Michelin stars...), kitchens can be very stressful places; but even the most jaded restaurant lifer would agree that in few other professions would such bad behaviour as is seen in this one ever be tolerated. Now, in that ever present interest of full disclosure, I have, on (hopefully rare) occasion, fallen prey to the beast within and screamed my way out of a situation I couldn’t earn my way out of. I feel no pride in this. In fact, that dark side is my profession’s (and my own) most disgusting feature. When I scream, I remember that other chef, her tirades, her iron grip, but ultimately, I remember that she was screaming to compensate for her own shortcomings. I repeat, I take no pride in my temper, and no joy; but I do take some comfort in the fact that in my worst moments, I am always careful to not be personal...no such claim could be made about the onscreen antics of chef Ramsay. And when my head cools after such a rough night or shift, my first priority is to seek out anyone who may have gotten in the path of my invective and to clear the air, to breathe deeply, apologize and remove the weight of all that stress. My screaming boss never took these steps, and if Ramsay does, it is certainly excluded from the final cut of his shows, to all of our detriment. And in a perfect world, we never would have been cornered into such a response in the first place.



You see, I have also had the distinct honour of working for seven years with a guy who in all of those high stress, top of the profession, intense moments, never (to my memory) lost his temper or personally berated a member of his staff. Eric Tucker was a hell of a chef and I try my best to pass on the lessons of his even keeled temperament to every crew I’ve worked with since, admittedly, some days more successfully than others...but such is the nature of the beast.



Gordon Ramsay has had a wonderful season. His books top the charts, his numerous restaurants rate quite well, his television series have had a good run. He is even taking over a cooking school. A few years ago there was another successful television star who was raking in the rave reviews, a guy named Dave Chappelle. At the top of his game, his brand of race-based stereotype skewering humour had propelled him to the sort of ‘do no wrong’ kind of popularity that is not unlike Ramsay’s current run at the goal. Then one day he stopped. He is quoted as saying he felt that some of his sketches were ‘socially irresponsible’ that he felt like a prostitute, that people were laughing at him, not with him. As a chef who takes no joy in the dark side of our profession, and as someone who sees and appreciates the deep spirit Ramsay’s written work has evoked; a love for the season, of local foods, and most recently, of a return to the ritual of family dining and togetherness...I can only hope that someday soon, he too will have his own ‘Dave Chappelle moment’ and realize that for all of his good intentions, he is glorifying the worst of who we, the brother/sisterhood of chefs, can hope to be...



Mario Batali, a fine chef who seems quite capable of keeping a cool head has recently banned Ramsay from all his restaurants in response to personal attacks made by Ramsay regarding him in the press, in response, he said, to criticism Mario made about his food. Ironically, when chef Ramsay evicted that critic in the famous story that introduced me to his less than thoughtful nature all those years ago it was, as he said, because criticism of his food was one thing but personal attacks were not acceptable. Batali has turned the mirror to Ramsay, and given him the treatment he has offered others, nothing more and nothing less. It’s time for the rest of us to do the same.