Food is Culture

Fer­ment Change is a two month long string of events that ben­e­fit City Slicker Farms in West Oak­land in the months of April and May. This event series strives to weave together fer­mented foods, cul­ture, and urban agri­cul­ture through a series of skill shares, din­ners, bicy­cle tours, work­shops all cul­mi­nat­ing in 400+ strong fer­mented food feast and potluck at the Human­ist Hall Oak­land. We encour­age part­ners and par­tic­i­pants to host their own events around urban agri­cul­ture and/or fer­mented foods to ben­e­fit City Slicker Farms or local food based groups work­ing to cre­ate a more equi­table food sys­tem. Please con­tact Max at info@fermentchange.org with any ques­tions and check back often for a list of more events.

There are some seri­ously cool things hap­pen­ing in the Bay Area. I’ll post an update about my trip to the SF Under­ground Mar­ket soon.

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The Peren­nial Plate is an online doc­u­men­tary series by Daniel Kline where he “hunts, farms and cooks his way through a year in Minnesota.”

After learn­ing to cook at his mother’s bed and break­fast, Daniel went on to work and train at many of the world’s top restau­rants. His culi­nary edu­ca­tion brought him to Spain, France, Eng­land, India and New York, where he has worked and trained at top Miche­lin starred restau­rants includ­ing The Fat Duck (Hes­ton Blu­men­thal), St. John (Fer­gus Hen­der­son), Mugaritz (Andoni Luis Aduriz), Bou­chon (Thomas Keller), Apple­wood (David Shea) and Craft (Tom Col­li­chio). After grad­u­at­ing from NYU, Daniel also pur­sued a career in film. He has directed, filmed, edited and pro­duced projects on var­i­ous issues includ­ing the devel­op­ment indus­try in Africa and oil pol­i­tics. Daniel’s most recent film “What are we doing here?” has aired on TV, in the­aters and at numer­ous fes­ti­vals around the world.

The first video gives a quick sum­mary of what he’s up to with this project and the sec­ond is his wor­thy plea for cash to keep the project going. Cheers Daniel!

Peren­nial Plate Trailer HD from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

Raise funds for Peren­nial Plate through Kick­starter from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

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This cool lit­tle info­graphic is trend­ing right now. The inter­ac­tive ver­sion gives even more data. It comes from this awe­some web­site. They also make this awe­some book.

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Jamie Oliver’s new ABC-TV show is start­ing March 26th and the net­work has just begun it’s pre­views. The show looks fan­tas­tic. I don’t think he’ll have any prob­lem round­ing up a siz­able audi­ence. Some of the same footage from the pro­mos below was also in the TED video I posted last week.

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He won this year. That means that the über-elite TED fel­lows and sub­scribers will offer their atten­tion and tal­ents towards ful­fill­ing his wish over the next year.

“I wish for your help to cre­ate a strong, sus­tain­able move­ment to edu­cate every child about food, inspire fam­i­lies to cook again and empower peo­ple every­where to fight obesity.”

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I’m tak­ing a soil sci­ence class at Mira­Costa col­lege in Ocean­side, CA, and we’re doing a lot of com­post­ing. A friend in the class told me two local cities, Carls­bad and Encini­tas, sub­si­dize the cost of buy­ing a nice Smith and Hawken stack­able com­post bin from the Solana Cen­ter in Encini­tas. Being such that this soil stuff is really cool and hip, I went down imme­di­ately to buy one– the com­post­ing guy there Mike was really friendly and gave me some good com­post­ing tips on brown to green mate­r­ial ratios. Here’s some pic­tures from my begin­ning attempts to com­post. I’m lucky to have a hay stack (for the brown mate­r­ial) that Jared brought over to pro­tect our myceli­ated wood chips from last year.

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