[Editor’s Note: I worked briefly at The Cleaver Company as an extern. My time there was cut short (pun alert!) when I snipped off the tip of my finger while chopping  candied ginger for a dessert. Unfortunately I didn’t return, except as a customer at the neighboring Green Table.

These excerpts are from a talk that Cleaver gave as the first recipient of Slow Food NYC’s Snail Blazer Award at the organization’s annual gala.]

“As a chef and businessperson I practice seriously and embrace the ability and responsibility we have — the difference we can make — by consciously directing our food dollars.

I was fortunate to be raised on good food. I grew up cooking for pleasure and as a way of contributing to the family. We had large gatherings every summer on the shores of Buzzard’s Bay in southeastern Massachusetts, and feasted on corn picked just before dawn, clams dug from the sands of the tidal ponds, mussels harvested from the rocks by the creek, and seafood just off the boats of the then-formidable New Bedford fleets. I discovered that I enjoyed cooking for a crowd: I loved the camaraderie and cacophony of a well-fed group around a big table. I found that good food was appreciated and valuable; that it fed good spirits. That it was nurturing.

When I finished college in southern Vermont I wanted to buy a farm, raise goats and make goat cheese, but my intelligent partner of these past 35 years, Ashley Hollister, pointed out that I did not have the funds or skills to do that — so instead we moved to the marketplace of New York City to find jobs. I started out washing dishes in a fancy food shop, and it wasn’t long before I discovered I could make a living by cooking for people gathered around a big table.

An Urban Forager is Born

So there I was in the great marketplace of New York City – but where was the local, seasonal food? At my first job in the fancy food shop, raspberries from Chile arrived in February and we sold them for $7.00 a pint, but it was nearly impossible to find local tomatoes in August at any price.

A wonderful thing happened when Bob Lewis and Barry Benepe opened the Greenmarkets at Union Square in 1976. I was there every day it was open, and still frequent it and others around the city in my daily routine. I knew that the taste of my food was dependent on the quality of the raw ingredients, and it became imperative to know where it came from and how it was raised. I was then, and still am, what is now called an “urban forager.”

In my search for the best ingredients, I learned more and more about just how unhealthy our food supply was. The questions started coming: Where did this food come from? How was this food produced? What is it that what I am eating has been eating? What is irradiation and why are we not treating the source of these bacterial problems rather than the symptoms? Where does the Cesium 137 go? Why is it less expensive for me to buy lamb from New Zealand than from Washington County?

What kind of earth will my children inherit – will there be one?

Slow Food NYC Connects Kids to Gardens and Food

The work that Slow Food NYC is doing in their Urban Harvest Programs directly addresses many of these concerns. We have a tremendous amount of educating to do to address the food illiteracy now rampant – and for no good reason – in our over privileged, capitalist society. The gardens that have been built and the children in the eleven schools – elementary through high school – that are benefiting from this work are learning what healthy food tastes like by learning to grow it, harvest it and cook it. These kids are being given a chance through the curriculum in the program and their experiences in the garden to choose life giving food rather than the poison so often passed off as food in our society. The work that Sandra McLean and the all-volunteer board and members of Slow Food NYC are doing through Urban Harvest in Schools and Urban Harvest Gardens is outstanding and vital. They are working hands-on with the kids in reclaiming vacant land, filling it with live soil, building gardens, harvesting, and cooking what they have grown. The kids eat delicious food, which they have not only foraged but have created, around a big table.

There is a strong and growing Good Food Movement and I thank each and every one of you who is part of it. I do believe that we all – every individual who eats – can and must take an active role in curing the food supply. We must view ourselves not as passive consumers but as active creators of a healthy food system. ’Food is not the problem, but rather the solution’ as Brian Lehrer of Edible New York said, to a myriad health and environmental problems we are facing.

Let’s use our hearts, our hands and our dollars conscientiously to create better food for all.”

Resources

Slow Food New York