Food as Art

Food is a big deal in the community where we live,  and recently some friends who own an amazing restaurant asked me to hang out for a couple of evenings and shoot some pictures for their web site.

The place is called Mossback, and, as someone who feels like he is blessed with an artistic soul, I knew immediately I was among my artist kind at the restaurant. My friends bring a  creative touch to everything they do.

Best of all, these folks use LOCAL produce whenever possible, and even the beer they serve is brewed nearby. As I moved around and made photographs,  my friends kept handing me mug after mug of beer that had come from a brewery right down the street.

I can't with a straight face call what I did those nights "Work."

Harvest

This is the time of the year when I can’t help but think about Lenny, the simple-minded character in Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men,” and how Lenny had an agrarian dream to  “live off the fat of the land.”

Everywhere I look, the soil around me is offering foods that Leah and I can eat, if only we reach up and pick apples off trees or stoop down and gather beans from the garden or forage mushrooms from a forest floor. We gratefully oblige, bringing what the land has produced into the house and Leah dries or cans or freezes the bounty.

Truth be told, I spend almost as much time playing with my camera and trying to record the beauty of the food as I do helping with the harvest.

In the Woods

It was 40-some years ago that my grandfather first introduced me to the exhilarating freedom of long, rambling tramps through the woods near his farm in Eastern Ohio. I was about 10-years-old and grandpa would let his two dogs -- a beagle, and a collie mix -- run loose and the dogs would kick up rabbits while my grandfather, a retired greenhouse owner, would teach me the names of wildflowers we’d see. Or we’d dig sassafras roots and later my grandpa would make tea that to me smelled like hot root beer.

Years later, when I was in college and already crazy about photography, I’d head to my grandparents’ farm on breaks from school and grandpa and I would continue to explore those fields and woods. I would take pictures then, hoping to preserve what I knew were precious times.

Today, when I pull out the photographs I did of my grandfather on our walks, I am humbled by the limitations of my photographic craft. I realize that I best remember those times-long-ago, not through my two-dimensional prints, but rather when I encounter the aroma of root beer or sassafras tea.

***

I thought I’d post pictures today from some recent walks in the forests where I live now in the Pacific Northwest.

The two images above were shot in the damp, ultra-green lowlands, where moss often covers the trees, and -- if one is attentive and fortunate -- chanterelle mushrooms can be harvested from the forest floor.

The images below are from a hike I did last weekend when I trekked up-up-up into the high country woods of the Olympic Mountains on a photographic hunt for ice formations on a wild, rushing creek.

Bad Reputation

Wild blackberry vines have a PR problem here in the Pacific Northwest.

Brought here back in the day from Europe to produce fruit, blackberry plants quickly spread, here, there and everywhere, to the point that modern gardeners now regard the thorny vines critically, using words like “non-native,” and “invasive,” or even “weeds.” Folks attack blackberries with loppers and shovels; they dump gasoline on the plants and burn them; farmers in rural areas bring in goats, hoping the four-legged eating machines will destroy the vines by munching them to the ground.

Blackberry plants are tough buggers, though. Pick a fight with them and they'll rope-a-dope 'ya and wear 'ya down with their tenacity.

Only during a few weeks in August and September when blackberries fruit and ripen do the plants get any respect. And this year, perhaps partly due to the recession, I’m seeing people out foraging for berries, picking huge buckets-full. Last week I walked down our gravel lane to do barn chores and I heard voices just outside our gate, where lots of berries grow. Two women I didn’t know were picking, and I politely requested that they also leave some berries for my neighbors and me.

A half-pint of blackberries purchased from the grocery store or the local farmers’ market will cost you $5-$8, so it’s no wonder folks are out foraging. I picked six half pints and took them with me one day when I went to Seattle to do errands, giving the berries to friends. But first, of course, I made a picture of the fruit, simply because it looked oh-so-tasty.

I guess I feel a little sorry for a feisty, misunderstood plant that has such a bad reputation.

Dude Ranch

I’ve been revisiting lately some of Mark Twain’s books that I first read when I was in high school, and I’m tempted to steal a scam from Tom Sawyer's bag of tricks. Remember how his Aunt Polly wanted Tom to whitewash the fence surrounding her house, and Tom convinced some of his schoolmates to do the job for him? (plus pay Tom for the privilege.)

Leah and I have been joking that we might do the same kind of ruse here, because we’ve been feeling a wee bit overwhelmed with all the summertime chores we have on our to-do list: There was firewood that I split and stacked (summer has barely arrived here in the Pacific Northwest, but I’m already having to think ahead to winter;) and there’s an amazing crop of moss on the roof I’ve been scraping off, shingle-by-shingle. And the garden and orchard are beginning to yield produce, thus Leah has been busy in the kitchen, canning and preserving.

So our joke went like this: There must be folks on the other side of Puget Sound in Seattle -- city-types, you know? -- who would love to come out here to our small farm and do some back-to-the-land work. We’d have a dude ranch of sorts where stressed-out urbanites could pick apples and blackberries, then slave away in a hot kitchen, making jam that Leah and I can eat this winter. Maybe those city folks would even pay us for the soul-healing tonic of doing Good Honest Work.

Just as Tom Sawyer was able to go fishing once the gullible kids took over his painting responsibilities, Leah and I too would have free time that presently is so hard to come by. We could go for leisurely walks. We could pet the neighbor’s horses.

I asked the horses the other day what they thought of my plan, and they nodded approvingly.

Playing with Food

I’m sure my parents did their best to teach me as a child not to play with my food, so I guess I must begin here by saying publicly: Sorry, Mom. Playing with food is exactly what I did this week.

Working in the garden, harvesting the bounty that Leah would take to the kitchen to can and preserve for us to eat this winter, my cameras and I eventually got waylaid. I mean, a man can only pick peas and strawberries for so long when distractions get the best of him. I made off with some of the peas and found a spot where the camera and I did a photo exercise in light and composition. Another day as I picked strawberries, I took a break from my labor and enticed the always-willing model, Pumpkin, to be part of a snapshot.

You gotta feel sorry for the two long-suffering women in my life. My Mom tried to teach me proper table manners, but her efforts apparently went for naught. And my wife would dearly appreciate it if I spent more time picking produce than I do photographing it.

What can I say? I’m a male and a photographer, so visual distractions are what I do best.

A Community of Food

Every time I sit down to a meal, I realize that I married well.

You see, my mate is a foodie.

She pays attention to the tastes of different kinds of salt.
She mixes preserved lemon into our pasta, and thinks goat cheese is one of the finest things on the planet Earth.
She buys a particular bottle of wine for its qualities, not (like me) because the grocer has it on special for $3.
And though she is not at all snooty, my mate is a woman of taste and culinary culture...married to a man who, left on his own in the choosing of foods, would happily dine on beer and peanuts all three meals a day.

Leah puts creativity, mindfulness, and her good soul into the making of a meal, elevating food to High Art.

I am a most fortunate fellow.

***

I heard recently that a neighbor who lives down the lane from us also is making food into art, and I thought I might use my cameras (and this blog) as an excuse to investigate. Word was that the neighbor has teamed up with a couple of friends, and that the three women are turning out baked goods that are All The Rage at the nearby Saturday Farmers’ Market in Poulsbo, WA.

My neighbor and her friends call their business The Food Shed, and, ohmygoodness, what an amazing Food Find I wandered into!

I learned (in my nosy, quasi-journalistic search for The Story) that the three women started with a business ethic that stresses ingredients that are as local and in-season as possible; and I saw that each baker seems to add a high-energy, creative flare all her own. I hung out with the women in the wee hours on a recent Saturday morning as they worked in a commercial kitchen. I watched the making of asparagus bread twists, and strawberry and rhubarb hand pies (the women also make savory hand pies using herbs, potatoes, and spring onions.) There is more that they made, a LOT more, but I need to stop typing soon, as I’m about to salivate into my computer keyboard.

After pulling a college-style all-nighter, the three bakers barely had time to get their still-warm-from-the-oven goodies displayed at their stand before market-goers began lining up. It was a typically rainy Pacific Northwest day, but I sensed the weather only made sweets more appealing, and that Saturdays in our part of the world are a GREAT day for eating.

Green Stuff

This is the time of year when my To-Do list of outdoor jobs grows as fast as the weeds that we’re struggling to keep out of our garden...and believe me, that’s FAST!

The weather is slowly -- painfully slowly if you ask me -- beginning to warm up. We’ll have several days of cool-ish, wet weather, followed by a day or two of sunshine and mild temperatures. This weather cycle seems to be just what plants like the strawberries and lettuce in our garden (and the grasses in the pasture of Pumpkin the goat) need to go into mega-overdrive growing mode. I go outside thinking I’ll spend an hour picking weeds from the vegetable garden, only to find that the herb garden too needs work. Then I notice that nettles are out of control near the wood pile and I’d better do something about that. And so the tasks just go on and on...

It’s hard for me to grasp, but stuff in our garden -- and in the gardens of our friends who sell produce at our town’s Saturday Farmers Market -- is growing so fast that we’ve already begun the process of harvesting and canning (“harvest” feels to me like a word that should be used in October, not in June.) Leah spent a day last weekend canning asparagus, and life had a decidedly green feel to it.

Though I’d promised weeks ago that I’d pitch in and help with the canning this year, it turned out that Leah did the asparagus herself...while I worked outside, trying to stay ahead of weeds and nettles and other plant life that’s so out-of-control pumped-up on the growth hormones of spring.

Unruly

My computer desktop looks like a crazy person is in charge.

There must be fifty image files, photographs I shot yesterday as workout pictures, visual exercises, play.

There are pictures of our goat, Pumpkin. And pictures of a fern I saw on our property. And pictures of a pomegranate that Leah put in the salad we had for dinner last night.

The pictures of the goat and the fern, well maybe I’ll post those another time, maybe I won’t. I kind of follow my gut with this journal... and you, dear reader, and I...well, we're at the mercy of that unruly brat, my inner child.

Heck, even just looking at the pomegranate pictures, I’m not at all sure which variation-on-a-theme I like best, so I’ll post three: The image as I shot it (I had about 10 seconds to shoot, as the cook was breathing down my neck, antsy to make her salad...) Then a version where I made the background black and white; and another one, cropped.

Please! Someone come and take control of this computer! There’s an inner child acting out.

Nosey

Our kitchen must be a place of great mystery to the two dogs who live here. Leah and I are adventurous eaters, and in just the past week our kitchen has been filled with the aromas of Thai, Indian, Italian, and good old, red-white-and-blue ‘Mer-kin foods. Even when we’re not sitting down to a meal, our table is always decorated with some kind produce: Oranges from the market, or, this morning, eggs from our own chicken house.

I happen to think that Leah is as accomplished at cooking as Yo Yo Ma is when he draws a bow across the strings of his cello, or Picasso was when he put paint to canvas.

We keep our four-leggeds on their toes because we're forever introducing new scents. I watch with a grin on my face and a camera in my hand as the dog Buddha comes around to check out the aroma of the day. He sniffs from a polite distance, never close enough to get dog goobers on our human food.

He’s like a wine connoisseur checking the nose of a fine Cabernet.

In the Garden

She told me she’d come to the US from Botswana, but I met her earlier this week as she worked in her garden on an island in Puget Sound in Washington state.

She has a wonderful face, doesn’t she? And her hat...well I thought her hat was just The Best. (Do you remember that hippie dippy artist guy who taught painting on TV?...well, I think he would have said this woman was wearing “a happy little hat.”)

I approached her and we talked a bit; then I asked if I could take her picture, just because I liked her face and her hat. She was a bit shy and uncertain at first, but she allowed me to take a picture. I showed her how the image looked on the screen on the back of the digital camera. Then she permitted several more pictures. One of my favorites is posted above.

This morning a dear friend of mine sent me an email with a link to a short YouTube video that seems like a perfect accompaniment to my moments this week in that garden. I think it’s worth a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=hN8CKwdosjE

Seeing Food

I am married to someone for whom food -- the buying and preparation and eating of it -- is an act of mindfulness, a rite, a celebration. While I can write you a short list of the dishes I can cook and I’ll need maybe ten words to do it -- eggs, scrambled and fried; garden burgers and soup, microwaved...(that’s nine words, if you are counting)... my dear mate puts the kind of energy and intention into making meals that I put into making photographs -- and that is saying something indeed.

Last night we had quinoa with fresh asparagus. The night before we had amazing taco salads (vegetarian) made with fresh, local greens and veggies that Leah bought from our community’s Farmers’ Market...where she also bought locally-grown-and-ground flour, which she used three evenings ago to fashion homemade pizza. All these meals were put together with what appeared to be effortless ease, but the reality was that there was a great deal of tender loving care involved.

Most of the time Leah puts incredible foods in front of me and, though I like to think I’m aware of her artistry, I also grew up being taught that one should not talk with one’s mouth full. And so I eat the meals Leah makes and I nod appreciatively -- I nod a lot -- but too often I’m probably too busy enjoying the meal to enthuse about it in the way it deserves.

It happens that this week my son is working on a web site for a Seattle client of his who sells tasty and beautiful chocolates, including the truffles you see above. My son asked me to do some truffles pictures (after the shoot we invited neighbors over to help eat the goods.) Another evening Leah and I were out for beers at a local pub and I did an artsy-fartsy picture with the camera pointed toward the bottom of a pint of stout.

Some might say that what you’re seeing here are the two most-important Food Groups: Chocolate and Beer.

Saturday Market

Of course I can’t know how other people feel about the news we’re hearing this week about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but I can tell you that the stories are breaking my heart...so much so that I’d like to say something about the story here...but what to say and how to say it, well I’m afraid I feel the need to tread lightly.

I mean, on the one hand, I consider this forum to be diary-ish, kind of personal. I can write my feelings and if you don’t happen to like them, well then you can go someplace else. On the other hand, I don’t want you to go someplace else. I don’t really want to talk to an empty room.

Not only do I like talking with you, I have to add that my feelings about the oil spill might come off sounding like I’m telling other folks how to live or what their values should be. I don’t want to be a Mister Bossy Pants.

But I'm afraid that I have a diplomatic problem because a phrase keeps popping into my head as, with each passing day, the oil spill gets worse and worse. That phrase is: “If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” Nearly all of us drive cars and we all consume energy. The oil that's causing such problems in the Gulf was being pumped out of the sea floor because you and I buy gasoline, and oil companies are more than happy to drill for it and sell it to us.

Maybe we can all try to drive a bit less, consolidate the trips we do make?
But what about the food we eat? Many experts point out that locally-produced foods get from a farm to our table with far less fuel burned in shipping and transportation than strawberries grown in Mexico or grapes that came from Chile.

Leah and I went (by bike, I might add) to our town’s Farmers’ Market last Saturday. We bought fresh, in-season local produce, grown by our neighbors or folks who live just a few miles away. We also visited and chatted with smiling, congenial vendors and other market-goers (how many good conversations do you have with your fellow human beings when you're engaged in get-out-of-my-way shopping combat with the hoards at Costco, where much of the produce has been transported from half-a-country or half-a-world away?)

I suspect being thoughtful consumers is something that we all can work on to be part of a solution.