The new store in cool light. Photo: Alison Cross

Alison Cross and her older brother Alphonzo saw a vast need for fresh food in the Castleberry Hill neighborhood of Atlanta, where they’d spent time since they were kids. The community, which is adjacent to the Atlanta University Center, had seen both vibrance and decay, and was begging for transformation.

So the siblings decided to fill that need, and hatched a plan to open The Boxcar Grocer, a new food business. Alison, who studied architecture and worked as a video editor, and Alphonzo, with a background in fashion, describe the independent grocery store, which stocks local, organic, whole foods, as being at “the intersection of food justice and high-concept retail.”

And they’re right; it’s not your average corner store. The market looks modern, with lots of light, stainless steel, and wood. The shop, which had a “soft” opening in late October and celebrated its grand opening on Monday, sits in an area dotted with old railroad warehouses. African Americans own the majority of the storefront businesses. The neighborhood is undergoing a renaissance with small art galleries, graphic design firms, and a tattoo parlor that attract the typical urban mix of students, artists, and free thinkers.

Alison, 36, has also written about the personal inspiration for Boxcar (“This is Our Land“), the socioeconomic challenges of the food movement (“All the Foodies are Rich, All of the Farmers are White, But Some of Us are Still Cookin’“), and its shortcomings (“A Limited Engagement“) on the store’s blog.

I spoke with her recently about her hopes for the family business and the obstacles she and her brother have faced along the way.

Q.  Why did you decide to open a corner store in Atlanta?

A. For years we recognized a lack of stores in the area where we could get food we liked when we came to town. The space became vacant in May 2009 but we couldn’t find anyone willing to put in a store. So we researched, wrote a business plan, and started submitting to banks for financing.

In the meantime, I was working at The San Francisco Foundation part-time and part-time at Feldman Architecture, so I was getting this great vision of what could happen when social ideals merge with beautiful design. We felt no one had done that. And there were very few people actually creating something new in terms of for-profit business models for food access. We also figured if we were going to uproot our lives and move away from the Bay Area, it had to be for something extraordinary.

Alison and Alphonzo Cross (with silent partner and friend) on the natural food depot's "soft" opening day.

Q. Did you run into any challenges?

A. Unfortunately, the economic crisis meant the process took us two years to complete. Banks flat-out weren’t lending, especially not commercial loans to novices. But we kept charging along. We applied to nine different banks and one foundation and all said no. All we needed was one yes, and that happened in March 2011.

Q. Did you get support from the healthy corner store movement?

A. People we approached in the national food movement didn’t really take us seriously until we actually opened the store. Maybe it’s because we came out of nowhere. We were not involved in politics, nor did we run in foodie circles. We’d meet people at food movement events and when I mentioned opening a store I got the sense that people were dismissive.

Q. What kind of response have you had from local residents?

A. We have had overwhelming support from the community. That’s a wonderful validation because for so long it was this thing rattling around in our heads and on paper. People have been amazingly patient with our mistakes. People are just so grateful to have a grocery store here after all these years. On opening day — which we tried to do quietly to work out the kinks — there was so much buzz about the business we had a line outside the door before we even opened. It was insanity.

Q. Can you tell us about the farmers you work with?

A. Locating local farmers has been a discovery process — we thought we’d be dealing with rural farms — so to find such well-established urban farms as Truly Living Well, Metro Atlanta Urban Farm, HABESHA, and Patchwork City Farms right here in the inner city has been incredible. It’s allowed us to tap their network of supporters and access a knowledge base that is helping us learn about organic farm operations.

I spent last summer riding my bike from farmers’ market to farmers’ market meeting vendors, tasting food, and connecting with the producers.

The grand opening celebration at Boxcar in January.

Q. What about some of the craft products in the store?

A. One couple make these phenomenal pulled pork sandwiches and organic barbecue sauce called The Heat Legend. A product like that speaks to our diverse community. It allows us to meet people where they are with their diet but offer a healthier option that is culturally appropriate. Another producer makes these kale salads with sun-dried tomatoes that people go bananas over. We can barely keep them in stock. It feels good to offer a healthy fast food that people can snack on.

Q. What’s it like running a business with your brother?

A. It’s awesome. We’ve always been close and we’ve always wanted to work together. I’m in awe of his creativity, social nature, and energy. He appreciates the way I dig down in the details and my diligence in seeing things through. We respect each other’s visions and know that we get more done together than we do on our own because of our complementary skills.

Q. Can you give us some background about your own relationship to food?

A. I was a notoriously picky eater as a child. Left to my own devices I’d consume nothing but Frosted Flakes and Kraft macaroni and cheese. Both my parents cooked. My mom made Cajun spiced red snapper, jambalaya, and gumbo, foods influenced by her mother, who was from Louisiana. My dad liked to cook us breakfast. We weren’t really allowed candy or lots of fast food, which was maybe a once-a-month treat. After my dad passed away in 2001, I went to Grenada, West Indies. It was the first time I was really surrounded by utterly fresh food. I was eating fruit right off the trees, vegetables directly from the ground, and seafood caught the same day it ended up on my plate. It was healing and cleansing and opened my eyes to what a difference food can make.

Q. What does food justice mean to you?

A. It means approaching food access as an issue that is not reduced to a socioeconomic determinant. It means adding more faces to the cause so people can identify and desire to be part of a lifestyle shift. If Jay-Z and Kanye can create a lifestyle brand that people in urban and suburban areas aspire to, regardless of their actual income, why can’t we do that with organic food?

We have had family members and friends who are highly educated and in the middle class develop diseases directly related to the food they are eating. I like to tell people that we are not in competition with Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. We’re in competition with KFC, Burger King, and McDonald’s, who are marketing directly to people like me. The food [access] movement is looking at low-income people and telling them to eat better, but not necessarily including the people who CAN afford to eat better but don’t think it’s important or don’t connect with how it has been presented thus far.

Q. What does the future hold for Boxcar?

A. We have always envisioned Boxcar as a national model. We wanted to be able to create something that would inspire other social entrepreneurs to replicate and hopefully get more healthy corner stores popping up in food deserts to show the demand is there for these businesses. What Alphonzo and I have done is an incredibly risky venture from a financial perspective. But we made a healthy gamble that was deeply rooted in the strength of our education, experience, work ethic, and commitment to seeing the model thrive in different incarnations across the country.

For now, we are focused on building this brand into a strong foundation. We would love Boxcar to be the Walgreen’s of healthy corner stores. We’d like to see at least another five to 10 stores like Boxcar in the next five years.

This post was originally published on Grist and reprinted on Civil Eats.

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Urban Youth on Growing and Selling Good Food

College students enjoy homemade food and create community. Photo: Courtesy CoFED

Taking matters beyond burritos, pizza, and beer, a boot camp for college food activists from across the country kicks off today at Berkeley Student Cooperative‘s Cloyne Court Hotel. The intensive, three-day retreat is designed to help train students who want to run campus co-op food cafés and stores stocked with wholesome foods for college kids seeking something other than a steady diet of fast food.

The event, dubbed “Occupy Your Plate,” is sponsored by the year-old Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFED), a Berkeley-based program that was inspired by the launch of the Berkeley Student Food Collective (BSFC), across the street from campus on Bancroft Way. Speakers at the training include People’s Grocery executive director Nikki Henderson and cookbook author Mollie Katzen.  CoFED supporters include Cal professor and author Michael Pollan.

We spoke with CoFed co-founder and UC Berkeley graduate Yoni Landau — who was instrumental in getting the BSFC up and running and, in 2009, lead a protest to keep the Chinese fast-food chain Panda Express off campus – about what’s cooking with the CoFED crew this weekend and in 2012, which has been dubbed the International Year of Cooperatives by the United Nations.

What were some highlights from CoFED’s first year?

At the University of Seattle students secured a rent-free café space for a co-op cafe in their nutrition sciences department. At UC Santa Barbara, students received funds for a mobile-powered solar food cart. And at George Washington University in DC, CoFED training attendees won the top student enterprise grant on campus. These things happened within six months of these students being inspired to start a food co-op at a CoFED training.

Raising our first 200k, having Forbes.com list us as one of the top five ideas in food and sustainability, a Huffington Post nod, and electing the dream team board of directors was also pretty great.

Probably the most lasting highlight: when we had a one word, “how do you feel” check-out at the end of our very first workshop and the quiet kid said, “inspiregized.”

CoFED co-founder Yoni Landau. Photo: courtesy CoFED

Who is coming to the training this weekend?

College students from all over the U.S. and Canada who want to learn how to create cooperative, sustainable food enterprises will attend. They are grad students and freshmen, economics majors, geography majors, sustainable agriculture majors and nutrition sciences majors.

For the most part, they are ambitious, idealistic and won’t take no for an answer. They want to help the world around them get to a great big “yes.”

Why hold the training here in Berkeley?

If you want to learn how to play jazz, you go to New York — it’s not like that’s the only place that jazz is played. Berkeley is an incubator for the food movement.

Can you give us an update on the Berkeley Student Food Collective?

Sales have steadily grown at the new storefront towards break-even, leadership has turned over, the education and event planning is thriving.  Maybe most surprising: several fridges broke in the first month the store was open. At its November fundraising gala (and one-year anniversary for the store) over 100 people dropped 50 bucks a head to watch students sing the food co-op fundraising song (mainly a capella). They rule.

Are there other successful food co-ops on campuses around the country?

There are over two dozen examples on campuses in the US and Canada. Maryland’s Food Collective is one of our favorites. It’s been running since the ’70s, does over $700,000 in sales annually, and is a thriving part of the campus “scene.” Students can volunteer for an hour to get a local, organic lunch — it’s a low barrier of entry into the community.

How is CoFED funded?

Last year we got 115 people to commit to giving 10 or more dollars a month and it was a large part of our funding.  This year we’re going to triple that with 212 new monthly donors.

Much of the non-profit industrial complex will come down with crony capitalism. If we’re looking to create a new world, we have to build it on foundations that are aligned with our ends. Too many non-profits are stuck in foundation worship mode — it’s a death stroke if you ask me. Not that I’m not grateful, and I love spending time with these people, they’re usually pretty wonderful.

But in five years, we plan to be primarily funded by monthly supporters and the ownership shares paid by our members.

Berkeley's student co-op is across the street from campus on Bancroft Way. Photo: courtesy BSFC

What is going to happen over the weekend and what do you hope to achieve?

The magic that happens at these things is hard to pin down — young people leave changed. Part of that is the weird eye contact exercise and part of it is finally finding that community of real peers that they may never have had before. Part of it is definitely learning basic accounting and business planning. Our goal is to help students leave with the inspiration and tools to create the change they want to see on their campus in the form of a cooperative, sustainable food enterprise.

What does “Occupy Your Plate” mean to you?

By occupy, we mean to remove what we don’t like and create what we do like. Western, secular culture is the first human culture to lose its dinner-table rituals. Thousands of years of cementing cultural norms over food are basically gone with us. Bringing back gratitude, honesty and empathy to our most basic social function — eating with loved ones — is the most important thing we can do to shift our culture in a holistic way.

The occupy movement has reinspired us, or me at least. It hasn’t always been easy to make every decision based on my highest values; you want to take short cuts. My friends sleeping in the cold are reminders that you can’t take shortcuts to create a more democratic, just and sustainable world. You just have to do it.

There’ll be more on CoFED’s occupy stuff coming soon — here’s a hint though, we’re being outdone by Istanbul.

In this video Landau discusses CoFED’s mission on college campuses across the country.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside.

You might also like:

Berkeley Student Food Collective: Education & Eating
Nikki Henderson: On the Front Lines of Edible Education
Mollie Katzen: Get Cooking Author Dishes

I’ve been so busy compiling “top food stories of 2011″ lists for KQED’s Bay Area Bites and Berkeleyside, I almost forgot to compile a similar list here. So, as 2011 comes to an end let’s take a trip through the Lettuce Eat Kale archives at, arguably, the year’s best blog posts (horn toot alert).

It’s been a different kind of year here at LEK, as regular readers may have noticed. I’ve had an abundance of paid freelance work (no complaints) and thus much less time to write original pieces for my own site. So, you’ll see some crossover on my end-of-year lists this year, as most of my working days have been devoted to turning stories for other outlets, which I reprint on LEK.

I do miss penning personal posts here, and I’d like to make it a goal for 2012 to try to do more such pieces, but given my lousy track record (see exhibit A) with New Year’s resolutions, consider it an intention rather than a guarantee, okay?

Some of this year’s LEK posts spurred lots of comments, others pointed to national trends or local enterprises, some profiled well-known people and their culinary pursuits, still others focused on little-known folks who worked without fanfare on worthy food causes. Some I picked for this list simply because something about the subject or person particularly resonated with me, and I hope it does with you too.

Feel free to check out a post you may have missed, chime in on your favorite piece, or comment on those featured in this list.

And don’t be shy about letting me know what you’d like to see more (or less) of on this site in the year ahead.

I am grateful to Berkeleyside, Civil Eats, and Bay Area Bites, for sharing my stories with a wider audience on a regular basis. Thanks, as well, to other outlets who have published my work this year, including AFAR, Bay Citizen, Eating Well, Edible East Bay, California, Diablo, Great Schools, Grist, San Francisco, and Shareable.

Here’s wishing you, my loyal readers, a healthy, well-read and well-fed 2012.

Top Ten LEK Highlights of 2011 (in no particular order)

1. Covering the business of food blogging: Two posts I wrote for Bay Area Bites struck a nerve with readers — or at least other food writers. Will Write for Food, Payment Preferable generated so much attention I was worried I’d win the underpaid, underappreciated food writer of the year honor (which, seriously, would be okay if there was a big check attached.) A post later in the year, So You Want to be a Successful Food Blogger? Here’s How., annoyed some male bloggers, spoke to others, and appeared in BAB’s top 5 viewed food posts of the year. Oh, and the irony of The Huffington Post (see Will Write for Food) choosing my seafood story as its first BAB feature was not lost on me.

Artisan preserver June Taylor. Photo: Sarah Henry

2. Interviewing dozens of food folks for Berkeleyside’s Friday food column: I’ve been so fortunate to have the chance to chat with some of the most enterprising people in my hometown who work in the food and farming world, as part of my weekly food series for Berkeleyside. Highlights this year (a baker’s dozen) include Q&As with gleaner Natasha Boissier, urban farmer Kim Allen, artisan preserver June Taylor, community activist Joy Moore, culinary couple Wendy Brucker and Roscoe Skipper, jam maker Dafna Kory, cooking instructor MikeC, pasta maker Eric Sartenaer, baker Eduardo Morell, cheese purveyor Cathy Goldsmith, ghee artisan Matteo Girard Maxon, and pop-up restauranteur Nigel Jones.

3. Having a whole lot of fun with Whole Foods Parking Lot: What can I say? Sometimes a story comes your way that is just a blast to write. That’s exactly what it was like with the viral hit Whole Foods Parking Lot in two stories also for Bay Area Bites, the first of which appeared in that site’s top 5 viewed food posts of the year as well. Bonus: The fact that Dave Wittman was a super sweet interview and the story earned me cool cred with my son and his friends.

These guys had fun at a vegan speed dating event. Photo: Karine Brighten

4. Going undercover to document the perils of speed dating with a food focus: Just as well I was on assignment for Berkeleyside for this one, because social anxiety might have prevented me from attending a speed dating event for vegans and vegetarians, if it wasn’t the subject of my food column for the very next day. As you’ll see, this night was not for the faint of heart — or the hungry.

Nikki Henderson of People's Grocery. Photo: Rick Gilbert

5. Continuing coverage of the food insecure: My social justice reporting roots had me ferreting out stories about people working to get affordable, healthy food to the hungry in our communities. I penned pieces on James Berk of Mandela Marketplace in Oakland who brings produce to his people, chef Andre Green, who feeds the homeless in Berkeley, and People’s Grocery executive director Nikki Henderson, who educates people in her community and beyond about food security matters. I also stayed on the school food beat and covered the opening of the first faith-based urban farm in my area, Urban Adamah, and reminded readers on Thanksgiving to give thanks for farmworkers, the people who pick our food, often under difficult and dangerous conditions.

6. Ongoing reporting of promising food phenomenons: This year saw the launch of several food swaps, crop swaps,  food book clubs, an heirloom produce resource sharing project, and community supported aquaculture, all of which were covered here.

Talking Head David Byrne and a waiter wearing one of his designs. Photo: Christina Diaz

7. Chronicling the adventures of Alice: It was all about Alice in August. Alice Waters that is, the local food icon whose landmark restaurant Chez Panisse celebrated its 40th anniversary this year with a series of fundraisers for her edible education programs. Personal paparazzi moment: Greeting rocker David Byrne and immediately introducing him to a surprised waiter wearing a T-shirt he designed to support the Edible Schoolyard, all for a photo opportunity. Phew! (Those pics were taken by Christina Diaz, the wonderful photog I collaborated with on several occasions this year. Working with such a talented photographer was a highlight in itself.)

Scenes from the film Toast, released this year in the U.S.

8. Reviewing food films and books: There was less time for these posts this year than in 2010, but I still managed to sneak in a story about Serve Yourself author Joe Yonan and his solo suppers. I also covered an intriguing conversation between Gabrielle Hamilton, who penned the popular Blood, Bones, and Butter, and New York Times writer Kim Severson (so much left unsaid). And I had a chat with Food Rules author Michael Pollan. On the film front, I reported on screenings of the documentary Corner Store, the pilot episode of the TV series Food Forward, the couple behind The Perennial Plate online video series, and Toast, the theatrical release of British author Nigel Slater’s memoir of the same name.

Snapshots from a Wild Onion farm dinner. Photos: Heidi Gross Sandvoll

9. Turning the infrequent original post here: On rare occasion I wrote a post that just appeared here — whether it was an homage to the humble potato, a report on a visit from Michelle Obama or the U.S. Surgeon General, a reflection on the simple pleasures of a country dinner, or a reprint of a previous post (this time with awesome images of my grandmother attached) on the joys of listening and leftovers.

10. Winning an award: I was delighted, surprised, and honored to receive this year’s Karola Saekel Craib Excellence in Food Journalism award in recognition of my food writing on LEK and elsewhere. The San Francisco chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, an international philanthropic society of female leaders in the culinary world, established the fellowship in honor of Karola Saekel Craib, the San Francisco Chronicle reporter whose writing helped to define food journalism as we know it. Saekel Craib died earlier this year.

The $2,000 award was presented by Saekel Craib’s daughter, Anne Craib, whom I connected with over excess backyard citrus and local gleaning efforts designed to share that surplus with those in need. The award check, which came with no strings attached, was immediately put to good use: I updated my website and bought my growing teen a bigger bed. Speaking of beds, compiling this list makes me feel tired. Time to take a nap.

And that, dear readers, was the year in food over here at Lettuce Eat Kale. Let me know below if you have a favorite LEK story from 2011.

Tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida. Photo: Scott Robertson

As the nation’s annual food fest approaches, let’s take a moment to express gratitude for farmworkers, the hard-working field hands who grow and harvest the abundance we’re about to eat on Thanksgiving.

It’s so easy in the food-obsessed Bay Area to focus on whether our D.I.Y., made-from-scratch meals are perfect or if the raw ingredients of our culinary creations have a pristine pedigree.

But enough food narcissism already: let’s talk about the plight of the people who make this holiday possible.

Some food for thought:

• Check out the videos from the recent conference TedxFruitvale: Harvesting Change hosted by the foundation wing of the sustainable-food focused Bon Appétit Management Company (BAMCO). The event, held at Mills College in Oakland, revealed in sharp relief and from first-hand accounts the back-breaking labor of those in the fields, many of whom are still exposed to life-threatening pesticides and labor in shocking conditions. But this day-long event was anything but a downer: The program also highlighted farmworker success stories and alternative ownership models to BigAg.

The well-curated program (hat tip to BAMCO’s Maisie Greenawalt, Bonnie Powell, Haven Bourque and crew) featured a diverse group of speakers that went well beyond the usual suspects who typically wax on at such meet ups — along with great food, good music, and an inclusive vibe. There were breast-feeding activists and Spanish-speaking farmhands and everyone found a place on the stage and at the table.

Recurring themes from the day: Hard work, determination in the face of adversity, and the importance of family ties, which seems fitting to mention in a Thanksgiving post. Local organic farmers’ market regular Maria Catalán, one of the first Latina farm owners in the country, talked about giving back to her community and the pleasures of working with her children, as did Napa grape grower and wine maker Amelia Ceja.Adelfo Antonio of Swanton Berry Farm recounted the benefits of working on a unionized organic farm (one with panoramic ocean views, no less). Former farmworker, José Gutierrez, who once toiled alongside his father in the fields now studies agromedicine, so that workers like his dad can have a healthier life. Reporter Roberto Romano simply let his film La Cosecha/The Harvest, which chronicles the plight of three teenage migrant workers, speak for itself.

• Stay tuned for the pending posting of the Edible Education 101 lecture that included Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. Not one to mince words, Schlosser says simply that racism is at the heart of the long history of exploitation and abuse that characterizes farmworkers’ struggles. He urges us all to stop being consumers, start being citizens, and take some personal responsibility for what we eat.

Also speaking that evening, the man Schlosser refers to as the next Cesar Chavez, Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organized group of tomato pickers from Florida who have made great strides in improving simply horrendous living and working conditions for produce pickers. (A detailed account of the squalor, abuse, and danger these workers encounter can be found in Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook, who first brought national attention to this issue in a James Beard award-winning story for the late Gourmet magazine.)

In the past decade, the CIW’s Campaign For Fair Food has forced major fast food restaurants, food service companies, and tomato growers to agree to a pay increase for workers and a code of conduct that recognizes workers’ rights. (Still to come to the table: grocery store chains such as Kroger, Publix, Walmart, and Trader Joe’s, see below.) The Oakland-based Just Harvest USA is a CIW partner and works on fair food campaigns close to home.

• Take action: Get to know your local farmers. Visit your favorite farms (a green tour guide has been amazed to discover how many people — Bay Area residents no less — have never set foot on a farm.) Even heavy hitters like farmer friend Alice Waters, who herself had a recent epiphany about the plight of farmworkers, are showing support for farmworkers’ struggles. Waters sent snacks from Chez Panisse to feed protesters at the recent Trader Joe’s rally (covered on Bay Area Bites).

Protest march to Trader Joe’s in Oakland. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

•  Try farming: Got what it takes to harvest in the heat under difficult conditions for low pay and no benefits? The United Farm Workers invites American citizens who think immigrant and undocumented farm workers are stealing all the good jobs to sign up for field work as part of their Take Our Jobs campaign, which caught the attention of The Colbert Report, among others, last year.

Have ideas about how to stay connected to farmworkers and their concerns?

Bring ‘em on below.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.

This post originally appeared on KQED’s Bay Area Bites and was excerpted on Civil Eats.

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Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food
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Andre Green, who cooks for the homeless, believes no one should go hungry. Photo: Tracey Taylor

Andre Green’s mission is both simple and heartfelt: no one should go hungry. It’s a mantra that has worked for him in his more than seven years serving food to the homeless and poor.

After a long stint in the kitchen at the East Oakland Community Project, Green began cooking for Berkeley’s most vulnerable residents on Valentine’s Day this year, as the new food services coordinator for Berkeley Food & Housing Project. The non-profit group serves hot meals to homeless men, women, and children from food purchased from the Alameda County Community Food Bank and wholesale grocery stores, along with donations from individuals, organizations, and businesses.

The 49-year-old San Leandro resident, who cooks out of the women’s shelter kitchen, is excited about coordinating his first Thanksgiving here. In the short time he’s worked for the non-profit agency, he’s revamped the menu and made systemic changes to increase efficiency, reduce waste and loss, and stay within budget. When he first started few came to eat at the women’s shelter. But word has spread about Green’s meals and these days there’s often a line out the door for lunch or dinner, known as the Quarter Meal (that’s what it used to cost to make back in the 1970s) which is served at the Bancroft Way site five nights a week. Monday-Wednesday it’s a sit-down dinner; on Thursday and Friday a take-away brown bag meal is handed out.

The Quarter Meal is Berkeley’s longest running daily free meal program for the poor. This year about 36,000 such meals will be served, a 12% increase from last year, due to the continued economic crisis. BFHP’s food program is funded through city and county moneys and private grants. More than three quarters of the people who come for meals have physical disabilities, mental illness, and/or a history of substance abuse; all are homeless or transitioning to housing.

Green is mindful of his clientele: dishes are well cooked and soft, to accommodate those without teeth, and he uses seasonings aside from salt, in deference to those with high blood pressure. He has fruit juice on hand for diabetics and fresh fruit and green salad for those who can and want to eat it. Along with a focus on nutrition, dietary needs, and taste, Green wants all the food coming out of his kitchen to look good too.

We spoke earlier this week before lunch service at the women’s shelter on Dwight Way.

What’s on the menu for Thanksgiving?

It’s going to be a feast: we have turkey, ham, gravy, macaroni and cheese, sweet rolls, stuffing, yams, green beans, cranberry sauce, green salad, and apple cider. For the vegetarians we have tofu casserole and saffron rice. And for dessert we have apple, sweet potato, and pumpkin pies. The multi-service center will be decked out with tablecloths. We expect to feed anywhere from 350-500 people.

Lulu Robinson and Andre Green in the women's shelter kitchen on Dwight Way. Photo: Tracey Taylor

What’s your philosophy in the kitchen?

I tell all my staff and volunteers that we only serve food that we would eat ourselves. I also say: everyone eats. Our job is to be of service to the needy.

How do you feel about the people that you cook for?

Most of these people are just down on their luck; it’s hard to come in and ask for help. They just need a second chance. Last week one lady came in with two little boys and one of her sons asked where they were going next and she said: “I don’t know.”  That really got to me. I still care. When you stop caring you need to go do something else.

How do you think the clients feel about you?

They appreciative what we do. They can tell if it’s cooking that comes from the heart.

Has anything in your own background influenced your choice of work?

I grew up around a lot of people from single-parent homes who never had enough. I was blessed to have both my parents. We were poor but I didn’t know it. There was always food on the table. My mom was a great cook.

Volunteers serve food at the Berkeley Food & Housing Project. Photo: BFHP

How is your program placed in terms of food donations and kitchen volunteers?

Sometimes we have so many volunteers we have to turn some people away, but not on Thanksgiving. We take all-comers then. During the year, different groups come in and volunteer their time to cook and serve. Loaves and Fishes are a favorite; they’re really clean and efficient.

We get our coffee from Peet’s and Starbucks. We get bread from Semifreddi’s. And Berkeley Bowl supplies our milk. We just have to arrange for pick-up.

Some people, like Natasha Boissier, donate fresh fruit, and she also volunteers in the kitchen. She is so professional and kind to the clients. I’m fond of her.

What do you need in the kitchen?

We could use an energy-efficient dishwasher.  And our roasting pans, pots, and skillets are old — we need industrial-sized, quality kitchenware, serving spoons, and tongs.

As far as food, I’d like to offer our clients more baked goods. And I buy a lot of cheese; it would be good to have a donation source for cheese.

Have you seen any success stories in your short time here?

We had one guy, a regular, who is a mechanic. One day I pulled up at a traffic light and he was driving a Jaguar. He’d gotten his stuff together, had a job, he waved. Not every story is as dramatic, but they all get to me: One lady showed me when she had keys to her own home and she told me she’d gotten custody of her kids back. That was priceless.

Hans Johnny Meier with a salad he prepared in Andre Green's kitchen. Photo: Tracey Taylor

What do you like about working in this community?

I like the people: We’re in the middle of Berkeley, a homeless shelter, you’d never know it and people are fine with it.

We have a lot of long-time donors who give out of the goodness of their heart, they don’t want recognition and they don’t expect anything in return. Just last week a lady came by with gingerbread houses for all the kids. She’s done it for years.

What’s hard about this work?

There’s administrative stuff like keeping in compliance with the health department, staying in the black in terms of the budget, and coming up with creative meals and menus that everyone can eat. But I can do all that. What really gets to me is the kids. They don’t ask to be here, to have this life. All I can do is make them smile and fill their bellies with good food.

What role do you play in your clients’ success?

Well, I don’t want to have a big head or anything…my role is just to feed and nourish them so they can go on to do all the other things they need to do to get back on track.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside. You might also like:

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Author Michael Pollan. Photo: Fran Collin

Sometimes a spoonful of sugar does, indeed, make the medicine go down. Though you won’t find that catchphrase in the just-released hardcover edition of Food Rules, Michael Pollan‘s best-selling little eater’s manual.

Food Rules does sport the sweetly whimsical and witty illustrations of well-known artist Maira Kalman, however. And the new book also boasts 19 new rules — many gleaned from eaters around the country that Pollan wished he had thought of and included the first time around.

Take two is again full of commonsense kitchen wisdom such as If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re probably not hungry; No labels on the table; and When you eat real food, you don’t need rules.

The takeaway message: food need not be complicated, and the act of eating is as much about pleasure and communion as it is about nutrition and health. In other words: lighten up a little and enjoy your food.

In case you’ve been living under a compost pile, Pollan is a champion of small-scale, sustainable farming, humanely-raised livestock, and access to real food for all. A foe of what he calls highly-processed, edible food-like substances, Pollan’s food philosophy is famously simple: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

He is the author of five previous books including the popular In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Botany of Desire, and he writes regularly about food matters for The New York Times. Pollan is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley and co-instructor of the Chez Panisse Foundation funded Edible Education 101 at Cal this fall.

Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world last year and everyone from students and grandmas to Oprah and the Obamas listen up when the mild-mannered man speaks out about corporate food, Big Ag, school food, factory farming, eating culture, and food safety.

We talked, briefly, following an Edible Education lecture given by former Berkeley School Lunch Lady Ann Cooper, whom Pollan introduced before taking her to dinner at — where else? — Chez Panisse. And we spoke again a few days later, at length, via phone.

Pollan, 56, dedicates his latest work to his mother, former New York Magazine style columnist Corky Pollan, “who always knew butter is better for you than margarine.” He lives in North Berkeley with his wife, the artist Judith Belzer. His formerly picky eater son, Isaac, recently dispatched to Wesleyan, misses family meals.

Why Food Rules Two?

I wanted to work on a more visual version of Food Rules to reach more people and continue the conversation that the first edition started. My wife and I saw an exhibit of Maira Kalman’s work at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and Judith suggested we collaborate.

When you look at Maira’s work — like a painting of a Snickers bar on a pink ground or a framed collection of onion rings — it often manages to be poignant, funny, and sad, all at the same time.

Eating is important to her but she doesn’t take food too seriously and is not politically correct about it in the least. We’re already neurotic enough about our eating; I wanted this book to be fun while it covered some serious ground.

Can you give us some insider insights into Edible Education 101?

It’s been an interesting experience for me personally because I’ve not taught undergraduates before, though I should note my co-instructor Nikki Henderson is carrying most of the load as I’m technically on leave. I’ve found the students terrific; they ask questions that are sharp but well phrased and polite. In a community meeting with corporate food people you might expect to hear the Berkeley hiss, but there’s been none of that. They’re an engaged and impressive group.

We’ve learned things too. We might have had a more effective dialogue in the case of the corporate food lecture, which included Wal-Mart, if it hadn’t been webcast. That had an inhibiting effect on the conversation. I’m also used to three-hour classes; these 90-minute ones go by really fast. I think they work best when we have just one guest so we can really drill down and expound on the issues. At this stage of the semester I wouldn’t be sorry if one of our guests had to cancel just so we had some time for reviewing and contextualizing the material with the students.

And, it has to be said, what a gift this is from the Chez Panisse Foundation to the community as well as the students. The list of speakers and the subjects covered is impressive.

Has interest in the food movement peaked in the popular culture?

It’s hard to know where we are right now but I don’t think so. I remember when I was trying to finish The Omnivore’s Dilemma, published in 2006, I thought I was coming to the subject a little late. It took me forever to finish that book. I do feel a sense of urgency to keep writing about food. We’re just beginning to see the impact of our food choices on health care and insurance costs — obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are soaring — and we need to keep the pressure on the government and corporations for change. If anything, I only see the conversation deepening, and that’s especially encouraging given the economic situation since 2008.

Do you ever want to write about something other than food?

I haven’t always written about food but I find it’s a good place to talk about other things like the environment, the economy, health, culture, and politics. Food is a very big tent as subjects go. That’s why it’s held my interest.

How — and what — do you cook?

I make simple food. I grill more nights than I don’t and my wife and I typically cook together. We work well in the kitchen together. One of us makes the main and the other the sides. We’re fortunate to work from home so we’re able to make dishes that require slow cooking like braises and soups.

Some of our readers view you as an elitist foodie and roll their eyes at such stories as your New York Times Magazine piece, The 36-Hour Dinner Party. Is that unfair?

I reject that characterization while I’m sensitive to the fact that not everybody has access to good food. I appreciate that food and class are intimately tied: that story is set in Napa, which implies a lot of leisure in certain circles. But I don’t think Americans should be afraid of aestheticism; as a culture some times we can have an aversion to pleasure.

To eat healthily in this country — by which I mean consuming food that contributes both to the eater’s health as well as to the health of the environment — costs more than it does to eat poorly. That situation is a public policy problem. We need farm policies that will correct this imbalance, so that healthy calories can compete with unhealthy ones.

There is no question that there is an elite strand within the food movement, but a lot of social change movements in this country — I’m thinking of abolitionists, women’s suffrage, and civil rights as examples — have been started by the affluent because they have the leisure and resources to do so.

#76: Place a Bouquet of Flowers on the Table and Everything Will Taste Twice as Good. Illustration: Copyright (c) Maira Kalman 2011. Reprinted with permission from The Penguin Press from FOOD RULES by Michael Pollan.

As a recognized leader in the food movement how do you handle the rock-star status?

A sense of humor helps, so does remembering that this type of attention is fleeting. And regardless of what people say about my books, the next morning I still have to get up and face the page and come up with sentences I like. All that other stuff, doesn’t help with writing, which can be incredibly hard.

What’s the subject of your next book?

It’s about the transformation of food through cooking methods such as baking, fermentation, and cooking with liquids or heat. So it focuses on the science of cooking, the classical elements; I’ve been doing research about fire, for instance. It should be out in early 2013.

What gives you hope on the food front?

I see movement happening all around the country, like grass-fed beef in supermarkets and young people taking up farming. I’m asked to speak in places like Troy, New York, Cleveland, and Lubbock, Texas, that’s new. They aren’t your typical food towns. People in their 20s are as engaged with this issue as their parents, whether it’s for their health, the environment, or both. I have a lot of faith that as consumers we can change things by voting with our forks.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was republished on Civil Eats.

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Food Day, October 24th, highlights the good, bad, and ugly of the way we consume food in this country.

Can Food Day, on October 24th, do for the growing food movement what Earth Day did for the nascent environmental movement back in 1970?

The organizers, the Center for Science in the Public Interest in D.C., certainly hope so. A national, grassroots campaign, Food Day is designed to celebrate what we eat while drawing attention to the need to overhaul this country’s food system from farm to fork. In this way it is similar to Earth Day which sparked widespread interest in the fragile nature of our planet.

Events planned for Monday, including in Berkeley and around the Bay Area, will highlight the good, bad, and ugly of the way we consume food in this country.

Simply put, how we grow, transport, process, market, and eat is not sustainable for the environment or our health, said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of CSPI and the creator of Food Day in a recent piece for The Atlantic. Dietary diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart attacks are rising at alarming rates. Industrially raised meat sucks up energy, pollutes the land and water, and is cruel to beast and worker alike.

Even in places like Berkeley where local, seasonal, organic, sustainable, and fresh food is available in abundance, too many people lack access to good grub and/or go hungry or malnourished.We are a nation, to quote UC Berkeley visiting scholar Raj Patel, of the “stuffed and starved.”

Food Day, whose advisory board includes Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, local heavy hitters on the edible revolution front, seeks to mobilize citizens to step up efforts to reform what’s wrong with our food system (hello Farm Bill). The campaign has six admirable goals:

1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting healthy food.

2. Support sustainable farms and cut subsidies to agribusiness.

3. Expand access to food and end hunger.

4. Protect the environment and animals by reforming factory farms.

5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids.

6. Obtain fair pay and safe conditions for food and farm workers.

The Berkeley City Council voted to proclaim October 24th Food Day, and to adopt the Seattle Farm Bill Principles. This is a set of six guiding principles that could serve as a framework for policy discussions around the renewal in 2012 of the federal Farm Bill, the primary piece of legislation that determines the nation’s food and agriculture policy.

“Sometimes it takes action at the local level to help to create change at the federal level,” said Ecology Center Executive Director Martin Bourque. “This may be a case — as with the Kyoto Protocol and climate change — where cities lead the way with innovative government strategies. We need a Food Bill not a Farm Bill.”

On Monday, the Ecology Center will mark Food Day with a tour of local women-owned farms for its members, as part of a series of activities in honor of what many hope will become an annual event.

Food Day activities will get major play in and around the UC Berkeley campus on Monday, said Kristen Rasmussen, a workplace wellness dietician for faculty and staff at Cal who serves as the university’s Food Day coordinator. Highlights include a BYO Lunch Picnic. (Read the full list of events.)

Speakers include Food Day co-organizer and UC alum Lilia Smelkova and Appetite for Profit author Michele Simon. “This is an excellent opportunity to talk about what’s wrong with our broken food system,” said Simon. “But we don’t want to do a lot of complaining. We also want to talk about solutions and what individuals can do to improve food for themselves and their communities, both locally and nationally. The time is ripe to organize around this issue.”

The Berkeley Student Food Collective plans on hosting a sandwich-making event during the day (11 am-4 pm) at its storefront at 2440 Bancroft across from campus, and in the evening will co-host Edible Occupation 101: Careers in Sustainable Food and Agriculture, a panel discussion featuring Sprouts Cooking Club founder Karen Rogers, local farmer Esperanza Pallana, and urban agriculture planner Nathan McClintock.

Every Monday the student stand The Local sells fresh organic produce on campus. Photo: Courtesy The Local

The Local, the student-run organic produce stand that is on campus every Monday (Upper Sproul Plaza, 10 am-2 pm) will be open for business as usual and will also distribute free samples of Cheese Board wholegrain bread.

“Though the food movement is growing, many still see it as exclusive,” said The Local’s Mickey Davis, a 21-year-old senior in the Nutrition Sciences Department. ”Not everyone is aware of the peril our food system is in, and a dangerous number of people do not understand the severity of the situation we are in health-wise, environmentally, or economically, and how the food system is closely related to that. It is important to invest time, celebration, and awareness to these issues on Food Day, to help spread the word to others who may otherwise not know.”

While Berkeley has much to celebrate on Food Day, there’s still plenty of work ahead on the food front, even in this food-focused and food-forward town.

“We can take pride in being early adopters as far as farmers’ markets and CSAs, and for being leaders on school food reform, and on the forefront of community gardens and urban agriculture,” said Bourque at the Ecology Center. “But even in Berkeley, with its very advanced alternative food system, we have large numbers of people dealing with diet-related illnesses and huge disparities still when it comes to access and affordability. We need to keep fighting to make good food available to every person in our community.”

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside. You might also like:

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One of CANFIT's programs is the MO Project which uses media and technology to encourage youth to advocate for nutrition and physical activity issues in their schools and community. Photo: CANFIT

Arnell Hinkle, the founding executive director of CANFIT (which stands for Communities, Adolescents, Nutrition, and Fitness) may be based in downtown Berkeley, but her work to improve the lives of low-income youth of color takes her across the country and around the globe.

She has been involved in development projects in India, Ecuador and Scotland, and spent last year on a Fullbright public policy fellowship in Wellington, New Zealand working with Maori and Pacific Island groups.

A kind of community food coach for young folk, the registered dietician who holds a masters in public health has worked as a restaurant chef, organic farmer, and as a project coordinator of the Hunger and Chronic Disease Prevention Program at the Contra Costa County Health Services Department.

CANFIT was founded in 1993 as the result of a class-action suit that charged the company General Foods with fraudulent, misleading, and deceptive advertising in marketing sugary cereals to children. Initially the small nonprofit addressed concerns of teens only in California, working on policy matters such as after-school physical activity and snack guidelines for the Department of Education. Berkeley Youth Alternatives was one of the first local groups assisted by the health promotion program.

Now, CANFIT offers training and technical assistance to help communities across the nation. Its goal: preventing obesity and other chronic lifestyle diseases by improving access to safe, affordable, culturally appropriate, and healthy food. It also focuses on physical activity after school for low-income adolescent youth in urban or rural settings, and ethnic-specific organizations.

Hinkle, who jokingly describes herself as ageless, lives in South Berkeley with her husband. She has received numerous awards for her work, including from the Rockefeller and Robert Wood Johnson foundations and the American Public Health Association. In 2009-2010 she was an IATP Food and Community Fellow.

How do you relate to youth?

I come from a similar background, so I can talk from my experience, growing up poor in St. Louis, eating overcooked vegetables and meat at every meal — a very Midwestern diet.  And then I talk about learning about health and how I came to be doing what I’m doing and why I do it.

I also talk about how your food is a part of who you are but it doesn’t have to define you. Sometimes people will say I won’t eat that because that’s “white people” food — say, something like the sprouts in this sandwich — and you have to kind of tear that apart: why is it that you have that perception?

We work on getting youth to understand that if they eat a more nutrient-rich diet they’ll feel more satisfied. At the same time we recognize real concerns, like that fast food places may be the safest place in a community for youth to hang out.

How did you get into this line of work?

As a teen, I was part of an after-school program, where I met other kids from around the city, and one of my friends was a vegetarian. I must have been about 14, and I remember thinking: okay, there are other ways of eating.

My mom worked so I often had to start the family meal. I did a lot of experimenting with cooking, baking, trying different foods. I liked to cook. I ended up getting a scholarship to Princeton and so I went away to school and as  a way to earn money I started catering events. And when I got out of school I realized I needed a skill. I had a great education but no skill.

So I applied to a culinary school in Boston but, in the meantime, a friend took me to Martha’s Vineyard and I fell in love with the place and ended up getting a summer job at this old hotel that had a European-trained chef and he took me on as an apprentice. I figured I’d learn more from this chef than I would at culinary school so I stayed through the winter and then for another three years after that working at different places.

I worked cheffing for about seven years, catering, restaurants, and at a retreat center. It was when I started growing things — and working with the soil — that I realized a lot of what I was serving people, cream, butter, and meat, wasn’t very good for them. That’s when my interest in nutrition began.

A CANFIT after-school wellness learning community program in Oakland in May this year. Photo: CANFIT

What’s the most rewarding aspect of your work and the biggest challenge?

That’s easy: the best part is going into communities, making relationships, and seeing the light bulb go on around change and how it can improve individual and community health. The toughest part: funding. Now, we get smaller amounts of money for shorter amounts of times with a lot more guidelines attached to it.

Does being in Berkeley help or hinder what you do?

Well personally, it’s great because I live a mile from my job, so I get to walk to work. And it’s a great place to live. But we haven’t worked on a project here in years. Sometimes coming from here is a detriment because so often when people hear Berkeley they think: you have it all made and you have no issues as far as food is concerned.

Any projects of note you’d like to mention?

We work with an American Indian reservation community in Arizona who are trying to return to their traditional foods, both growing them and having them served in their schools and senior centers, foods like corn, beans, desert plants. They even opened their own cafe.

Our Mo Project, a contest for youth who shoot their own 90 second PSAs on bringing about healthy change in their communities, is pretty inspiring.

Now that we have adolescents’ attention and have made progress getting them plugged into food and community health, we’re working on how we can get youth to become the next generation of leaders on these issues. We’re developing a guide on food-system careers for low-income youth of color.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and republished on Civil Eats.

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In The Bread Project Cafe with employee Pat Van Valkenburgh and students Tricia Peterson and Takiena Duchine. Photo: Sarah Henry

Pat Van Valkenburgh is the kind of person that The Bread Project hopes to help. A stay-at-home mom who home-schooled her two children until they attended Berkeley High School, Van Valkenburgh desperately needed a job when her construction worker husband became unemployed. Since she enjoyed cooking, she thought the nonprofit’s nine-week café training program, which focuses on basic kitchen, food service, and barista skills, was a good fit and would help her find a job in the restaurant industry.

Van Valkenburgh didn’t have to look far: she was snapped up by the group to manage the café it runs out of the Berkeley Adult School, where the program for low-income job seekers, started by Susan Phillips and Lucie Buchbinder in 2000, has been housed since 2003.

The part-time gig has made all the difference during tough economic times; Van Valkenburgh’s family has held on to their home and health insurance. (Both her kids, who attended the Academic Choice School at BHS, currently study at local community colleges and intend to transfer to UC.)

The Bread Project Café, where students learn and practice their new culinary skills, is open to the public and frequented by the staff and students at the adult school. It serves baked goods, soups, salads, and sandwiches, along with coffee and tea at prices half those charged in most local cafés.

In the kitchen with project students learning new culinary skills. Photo: Courtesy The Bread Project

No matter that the vast multipurpose room that houses the cafe is largely devoid of charm, people come to the café for the food, the friendly service, and to support a worthwhile cause. On the menu yesterday: lemon scones and chocolate croissants, corn chowder with spinach, vegetarian pizza, and corn-crusted tilapia with rice and vegetables. In the late morning a steady stream of people were putting in their lunch order.

Bread Project program members learn to bake bread among other skills.

The Bread Project also boasts a bakery in Emeryville, opened last year thanks to funding from both Semifreddi’s and Chevron, where it runs a 12- week training program that emphasizes baking, batch cooking, food service and food manufacturing.

The program serves vulnerable populations, including low-income immigrants and single moms, former felons and recovering substance abusers, the once homeless and the formerly employed.

Bread Project staff recruit students from quarters few other culinary programs would approach: homeless shelters, halfway houses, addiction recovery programs, jails, and social service agencies.

Potential participants go through a screening interview to assess their strengths  — along with their challenges and barriers — to better serve their goal of finding food service employment once they finish their training.

Students earn a certificate of completion if they attend most of the instruction sessions and pass most of the required written and practical tests given during the course.

While there’s a lot of encouragement and support for students, there’s also an expectation that they meet standards of on-the-job food industry — like showing up for work. The program’s main goal: to foster economic self-sufficiency in program participants.

Their results speak for themselves: over the past three years an average of 77% of students graduated, 72% found jobs in the food field, and 80% retained employment. Last fiscal year 126 students completed the program.

Many of those students have never had a job, have been welfare recipients for a long time, have minimal education or workplace history gaps. But as the economy continues to tank, there’s been a significant increase in the number of college graduates in the program’s mix, along with a larger group of recently unemployed and those who need job retraining, said acting executive director John Lee.

A Bread Project graduate sells her goodies at a farmers' market. Photo: The Bread Project

Graduates have gone to work in restaurants like Radius in San Francisco and Lake Chalet and Spice Monkey in Oakland, said Daniel McCarthy, a veteran chef who co-teaches the culinary program. Others have obtained employment in food industry jobs for Jamba Juice, SF Soup Co, Mariposa Bakery, AG Ferrari, Berkeley Bowl West, and Revolution Foods, according to Lee. Some have joined the staff of catering companies or senior centers. In addition, the program, which has a policy of hiring its own graduates, currently has six on staff.

“It is personally rewarding to see the individual successes of our graduates, whether it is an improvement in self-confidence or obtaining their dream job,” said Lee.

The culinary program is free of charge to participants. The organization’s income is split 2 to 1, between donations, grants and other charitable contributions and earned income. The organization’s budget this year is $1,235,039.

The program offers students the opportunity to try their hand at everything from bread baking and cookie and cake making to main meals, side dishes, and other savory fare. Students also learn how to make specialty coffee drinks and work a cash register. The project has a catering arm, wholesale bakery business, and partnerships with farmers’ markets like the one at Rincon Center in San Francisco, and social-service agencies such as Project Open Hand.

“It was an excellent training program,” said Dilsa Lugo, a graduate who runs Los Cilantros Mexican food catering company, in a Berkeleyside story last year. “To this day the staff there have been helpful to me in my business.”

Mary Dirks (left) at Hippy Gypsy Café employs fellow Bread Project graduate Angela Guzman (right). Photo: Sarah Henry

One former student recently opened her own café in Berkeley. Mary Dirks runs the new Hippie Gypsy Cafe on Shattuck Avenue (in the former Village Grounds space). Dirks hired two fellow students from The Bread Project to work with her, Angela Guzman, 25, from Oakland, and Erika Burrios, 19, from Richmond.

She’s not your typical Bread Project success story: Dirks’ parents ran a coffee house-gas station and she had years of food service experience as a Subway manager in Florida, where she lived up until two years ago, when she sold her home and moved with her son to South Berkeley.

The 46-year-old single parent already had a café business plan in the works, but landed in town with few connections on the food industry front. When a flyer for the Berkeley Adult School landed in her mailbox, she realized The Bread Project was just the kind of course she needed to help turn her café idea into reality.

She jokingly described Chef Daniel as the Gordon Ramsey of The Bread Project, because of his high expectations and commitment to restaurant-quality standards. But she also said he’s been an invaluable resource and informal consultant for her own budding business. And his philosophy of passing on your culinary expertise and giving back to the food community resonated with her.

Bread Project students learn to bake bread, pastries, and other sweet and savory fare. Photo: The Bread Project

Guzman, a single parent and former nurse’s assistant with no formal culinary training, was an immediate pick for Dirks, because of her common sense, calmness under pressure, and strong work ethic, the café owner said.

Along with food service training, the program helps students with job placement skills such as resumes and cover letters, said Guzman, and encourages students to overcome self-esteem issues (she described herself as quite shy before she did the training) in order to find work.

“I learned knife skills, such as how to julienne vegetables, health and safety rules around the use of cutting boards, and other kitchen skills,” said Guzman. “But there was also room to be creative. We were shown the basic ingredients that go into making scones and were given the opportunity to come up with our own flavors like lemon blueberry or orange chocolate,” she explained.

“It’s really hands-on, which is how I learn best. You’re encouraged to just do it, get messy, and figure it out for yourself — which is great training for a job.”

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was republished on Civil Eats and The Bay Citizen.

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Nikki Henderson strives to keep it real in a new course at UC Berkeley this fall called Edible Education 101. Photo: Rick Gilbert

People seem to have an insatiable appetite for food matters right now. Case in point: the public tickets for Edible Education 101 at UC Berkeley were snapped up in 12 minutes on Monday, according to a tweet from Alice Waters, who played a key role in bringing the curriculum to the university.

The 13-week course, co-taught by J-school professor and The Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan and Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery, a food justice organization in West Oakland, will examine the rise and future of the food movement. Student enrollment for the one-semester course also filled within minutes after it was listed online, as Berkeleyside reported earlier this month.

Why such interest? The class offers undergrads, grad students, and regular folk a chance to critique current food systems and dissect food politics with Pollan, Henderson, and Waters, as well as a slew of other big names in the food movement, including Marion Nestle and Eric Schlosser. The course kicks off with a lecture by Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini on August 30. The class also coincides with the 40th anniversary celebration of Chez Panisse restaurant.

“UC Berkeley is my alma mater so I feel a real connection to the institution,” Waters explained to Berkeleyside earlier this week. “The opportunity arose to develop this course and we pulled this program together quickly. We also wanted to show our support for the university and public education.” Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation (soon to be renamed The Edible Schoolyard Project) is footing the bill for the fall semester course to the tune of $30,000.

“I hope that students will have a stronger grasp of the concept that what we eat has consequences for our health, culture and the environment,” Waters said, adding that she hopes that the course will continue beyond the fall.

If Waters is the iconic idealist and Pollan the affable academic, Henderson is the unapologetic activist. She’s also young (26), African-American, and spends her work days at a nonprofit devoted to dealing with food security issues for low-income people of color.

Prior to coming to People’s Grocery 18 months ago, she worked for Slow Food USA and Green for All, the environmental organization co-founded by Van Jones. Not surprisingly, Henderson, who grew up with seven older foster brothers and two blood brothers in L.A., brings a different perspective and sensibility to the Berkeley bourgeois food scene.

Berkeleyside recently met Henderson for lunch — in Oakland — to learn more about why she decided to come to the table with Waters and Pollan.

Members of the People's Grocery team meet with Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

How did your involvement with this course come about?

Well, the Chez Panisse Foundation came to me and asked me if I’d be interested in doing it. This class was important to me because it’s an opportunity to have a real exploration of the issues of race, power, class and privilege in relation to food, which is something we do every day at People’s Grocery. When Chez Panisse approached me I told them I was only interested in teaching the course if we hit those bases and a good third of the curriculum does that.

It was also important for me that people speak for themselves. The whole class could have been taught by people who have written books about other people’s experiences. But we’ll have practitioners like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers [immigrant farm workers who have brought about historic changes for tomato farmers in Florida], for instance, who will come and tell their stories themselves. It’s important for the students to experience that, because one of the dynamics of not having privilege is that you don’t get to tell your own story. Those with means and access get to spend their time telling your story.

I wanted to ground the syllabus in the struggle for food justice and food security. There wouldn’t need to be a movement if there weren’t deep injustices happening and divisions within the movement. This college course explores the complexity of these issues within the context of the food movement.

How involved have Waters and Pollan been in shaping the curriculum?

Alice Waters really laid the groundwork for this to happen and her message is so consistent that you know what she’s going to say, so she just sort of gave me her marching orders and made a lot of suggestions, but then she just leaves it in your hands.

Michael wanted to make sure that the course was academically rigorous and that it involved deep, critical thought. He wanted the mix of practitioners and academics. He didn’t want it to be just a good conversation about the food movement but that there was a component that explored the complex question: what is there to do now?

They both made it clear since the beginning that they wanted me to feel it was very much my course too. And they’ve been generous with their time and expertise. Michael’s been coaching me through putting the lecture series together. One piece of advice he gave me: don’t have the same format every week or people will fall asleep.

Can you tell us a little about your personal connection to food?

We grew up eating very healthy food. We ate home-cooked meals that consistently included a grain, a protein, and a vegetable, usually something like brown rice, baked chicken, and steamed broccoli. My mom was a kind of ’70s hippie, though I don’t think she’d classify herself as such, she is vegetarian and has a deep interest in health and nutrition, and she passed on those good habits to her children.

My great aunt and uncle were diabetic amputees. My aunt has the disease and my grandfather, who is no longer alive, almost lost his feet to the condition. With this exposure to diet-related diseases it hit me early on: what you eat is not something to play with.

What can young people interested in the food movement learn from those who have worked on this cause for decades?

There’s a lot of context that younger people need, of what’s actually happened so far in the food movement, like the current middle-class mainstream food movement is very much centered in an older struggle for food security and it’s important to have that context. You need to be grounded in the history. I’ve only been in the food movement the past three or four years and I’m well aware of how much there is to learn about what’s happened historically, so we in this younger generation can be truly effective in bringing about change. I want to soak up every bit of that in this course.

Is this the right time for this class?

It should have happened two years ago because the window of opportunity is closing. The mass media switches from one thing to the next pretty quickly and food has been hot for the last two years and it’s probably only going to be hot for another year or two and then it’s going to fade into the background. I’m going to do everything I can to move some things along while I can.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was republished on Civil Eats and The Bay Citizen.

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