Why read this blog?

In short:
READ THIS BLOG BECAUSE:
MUCH OF OUR FOOD IS COMING FROM:
INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS, FOREIGN HUNGER, U.S. MONOPOLIES, & EVEN DOMESTIC SLAVERY

Following this blog will enable solutions to bringing food closer to home!

I've spent these past 3years researching sustainable food systems. (Perhaps more appropriate saying these 3 years have been spent understanding our worlds currently unsustainable food production system)

Spent a dozen years before that in commercial kitchens

Now, passed through 48 kitchens as full time, on call & consult.

I bring to your this venture to making dinner like Granny once had!


So... What shall you be reading about?

-food sovereignty
______(You can eat sans mad transport & industrial inputs)
-creating community commensality
______(eat family style with your neighbors!)
-child nutrition
______(tips & tricks learned & those shared with me, protect your child!)
-sustainable foods
______(knowing your food's sourcing & knowing it can continue)
-food justice
______(Did you know there is still slavery in your pantry???)
-urban farming
______(we can grow so much so close! We are taking it for granted!)
-alternative food procurement, processing, & preserving
-canning, drying, & fermenting
-Permaculture
-Foraged FOODS
-LIVE FOODS
-RAW FOODS
-REAL FOOD!!!
-realities of our new world food system...

So, What does this mean?

As you check in with - cHEF Be - you will hear about the solutions to bringing our food system closer to home, what obstacles we must over come, the horrid realities of our modern industrial food system, the helpful hints on how to grow more food close to our homes, & the helpful hints on how to avoid the unnaturally produced foods that often find their way to our family's tables from thousands of miles away!
{that well traveled food should be on other nation's tables!}

In good time I too will make this page all sexy & such with cool tools, helpful links,in text links, book lists, recipe links, & movie roles.

Until when, please continue checking in & help in bringing you & your families meals closer to what Granny might have place on the table!

Have fun & Stay well,

-cHEF Be -




P.S. PLEASE ASK QUESTIONS! CHALLENGE ME, TEACH ME, READ ME, CREATE MORE RESEARCH NEEDS!

I find my Mecca

So, here I am in Portland Oregon. A city which boasts of its progressive food culture; more eateries per capita than Paris, France. More breweries than any city in the world..

I've come to view this lush green place as "A Botanist's Wet Dream".
Imagine how conducive 7months of grey drizzle are to snuggling up with a micro brew, sipping a locally roasted cup of bean juice, nibbling an artisan crafted hazelnut chocolate, or for that matter... munching on most anything that can be munched under the banner of Localvore holding comfort in gustatory delight as self care.

What a god send for me to have arrived here. Upon my check engine light blaring back at me, I told myself "I will pass 3 years in the PDX before digging in." I had little desire to immediately become a carpet-bagger in a city who's sends many more packing than it swallows up with it's amazing taste for bohemian culture embraced as the grey drizzle descends with no hasty exit. [ read: America's Bourgeoisie proletariat, the lost middle class, is finding home in Portland, Oregon. ]

Since doing time in America's Natural Foods Grocer & the hatching & nursing of a corporate restaurant franchise, I've been in search of a more real existence.
I've settled into what I've come to consider a "bastion of like-mindedness".

Portland, Oregon.


Here, growing my understanding of who my neighbors are, who my neighbors can be, where our food can come from, & how to create community with these understandings is helping me now feel well rooted.

I've had doors opened to me that have allowed for condoning or even cultivating, what before I could only describe as, my food neurosis.


I've been embraced by community where beliefs of: A community garden BEING your community amp; A Community Garden not merely being a forgotten piece of errant land under utilized & being reborn with the vigor of lost tomato plants but a concept to weave into our sustainable existence.

Portlanders want to grow their food!

Well, My three years of coy observation is coming to a close & I'm now still here to act & spread roots!

Please,
Remember to check in with & share with me as I share this story of: How Portland & this moment has allowed not only to accept ?foodcentric neurosis? but embrace it as creating a community environment ripening to give back its surplus.

This may even,

someday...

Help me succeed in achieving my real story board of:

a "simple" homestead B&B?
[read: Stay with, & learn this way to idealizing our un-sustainable food system]

or... as I might rather view it:


{ Saving the World by cultivating family commensality! }












I'm hoping to bring you along with, from 7 year old brown sugar delight to 27 year old idealist cross pollinating ideas & action as ?food activist?
I cringe as I still use "food activist".

Is "food activist" really even a role?

I feel it a survivalist obligation.
After all, FOOD, aside from community, FOOD IS OUR ONLY NECESSITY!

How are you helping ensure you & yours are nourished?

Until next time, Keep on smilin,

cHEF -Be-

*sigh* & Thus it begins...

Yes, So...

I'm cHEF -Be-.

I've been playing with food since I was ~7.

I've been working with food since I was 12.


Now I'm ready for you & all others to play with food again!



One hot n humid Tennessee afternoon in 1989 I walked out into the backyard of the family apartment & realized I could over load wild oats with brown sugar, butter & a dash of 2% pasteurized homogenized milk & call it ?oatmeal?.
After all, My red headed Father might make me an Irish lad.
I recall being so proud that I had created this sugary buttery concoction I could now share with my playmates & we would smile while slurping the silliness down. (Thanks Jamie & Gina)
Who wouldn't smile eating foraged food, when our summers were still only playtime & brown sugar was only gonna rot our baby teeth?


Well, time passes & I now live in my urban apartment with a mere 30 square feet of cultivatable soil surrounded by manholes & asphalt 4,000 miles away from my immediate family & the fertile soils of the Mississippi Delta.
I have learned to scoff when my sugar is lacking "cane sugar" & Genetically engineered beet is the saccharin substitute.
or worse more if that sugary flavor came from the genetically modified enzyme churning out Cargill's HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup).

I now find myself not only reading ingredient labels, but wondering what this lable is missing...
if this tasty bite of $%*$# is being created as ?food? by the same folks that sell us cigarettes, if this sugary snack is a by-product of chemical warfare(aspertame), or if even my apple's skin is full of poison?

How did I get here? Where am I going with this?

A belief in an ad hoc life & serendipity is what guides me. Well, That is unless I account for my amazing luck, or a firm belief in my keen ability to manifest.

So, my story begins... (starting with what may be my latest & most reaffirming chapter)

After a few months pirating grease & ?sustenance? from dumpsters to fuel myself & a 14,000 pound short SVO (strait veggie oil) chool bus rolling on a dump truck frame, I somehow managed to break down here in Portland, OR.

I was on my way to enjoy & take up an understudy with Creole Chef Alex Patout in New Orleans, LA. when I somehow found myself taking up residence in the land of Wild berries, foragable mushrooms, old growth forest, & to my total delight, HOT SPRINGS!

How can I break down in the Pacific North West while driving to The Big Easy en route from the Music City of Nashville, TN?

I imagine it happens about the same way I quit my corporate computer gig bought a plane ticket to Zurich & six months later found myself in the midst of my first full on culinary gig taking in eternal darkness & 3AM sunshine in of all places, The Arctic Circle.

Well, I did mention serendipity right?

(next post at 12AM PST Dec.2, 2009)