Photos of the latest yummies.
Jamie and I were in New York City last week - I was called down to meet with my boss and tripwolf COO, Sebastian. (Meet Seb.) He was in the city that week because his fiance lives there at the moment.
We spent two nights in Jersey, and one between Brooklyn and Queens. Its so fun to get a taste of the different neighborhoods and boroughs one after the other, and enjoy the differences and similarities. We were also so lucky and happy to visit old friends. We had a roof top cook out in Astoria with Britt and Arezki (recently married, love them) and spent the night on a blow up mattress in Williamsburg, only about 3 blocks away from my old apartment in Greenpoint. It's here we met Jamie's long-time friend Johan, and I met him for the first time.
Johan works (perhaps he is even the director) at a CSA in New Jersey. He has the opposite daily commute to I think probably every person who lives and works in or around New York City - he leaves Brooklyn every day and drives south to work the land.
First I want to point out that his apartment is beautiful - one of those long, skinny railroad style that dominate Brooklyn. It's only a one bedroom, perfect for him and his girlfriend, and everything is mise en place (can I use this meaning like everything has it's place? Well, that is what I mean.) The apartment is all wood and reds and ceramics. Jamie and I both loved the place, but really can't imagine moving away from our place and into an apartment - or ever desiring that kind of move - just the word apartment feels inhumane. (We've been spoiled.)
The decor was more farm-y than Brooklyn-y (these two things are becoming oddly intertwined), and from my experience, the young people I find myself surrounded with seem to need a combination of both urban living and idyllic country realness and connection. I am one of them, so I am on this train. We want to be connected, we desire to learn constantly, be in the 'center of the universe' in the sense that cities give us - moving forward, being surrounded by creative and (perhaps even) ambitious energy, while creating our desired life shaped by a different belief system. The belief in the good and the crafted and the grown. Cities are good, crafted and even grown in their own way, though the urban emphasis usually seems to be on things that are faster, cheaper, newer etc.
A few of Johan's coworkers were visiting as well, and talk came around towards current events, the Gulf Oil Spill and... Armageddon, of course.
I had drank only slightly less than a bottle of wine before this conversation, so I was int he perfect mood to sit quiet and listen to his interesting theories. The first was about the apparent methane pocket that was tapped with the same leaky line as the oil well. And that it is still leaking, and no one seems too urgently worried about this. He continued to say that if the underground pocket emptied enough to where the pressure of the water on the surface increased to be more than what was inside the pocket in the earth, the pocket could potentially collapse, and potentially create a giant tsunami, or series of tsunamis, and destroy much of human life and development on earth. ***OOoooOooOOOooo*** But I don't mean to make fun, it was thought provoking! Have any of you heard his theory before? Thanks.
Another idea of his that was a lot less destructive was the theory that we are on the crest of the next Agricultural Revolution. Coincidentally, Jamie and I were listening to an interview with Michael Pollan on the way down to the city in which he said exactly that we were NOT yet quite in what he would call a revolution. I do think we're on the edge of something like this, or at least this kid and us in Vermont are definitely feeling it. Vermont embraces this because it's farms and this system had luckily not been completely disintegrated before the majority of people started to re-embrace them. Plus, we have a small, interested and aware (smart) population.
Maybe most of my friends are foodies, but I spend a lot of time talking about food with them. We are an aware generation - aware by choice or not. Ideas are constantly thrown at us. We're also better at forgetting because of this, I believe. We are constantly on the spot, asked to filter out the crap from the truth. This truth-seeking trait drives us to find the real things - we've been enlightened to the fact that we have been fed fake foods - fake FOOD!? Even the stuff that looks and feels real, like produce, can be effed with on the inside. We don't want to be effed with, we don't want to feel like fools.
Along with this comes a desire to feel slightly in control of our choices, our lives, a feeling of independence. Feeding ourselves, (see an old post) even if it's only to be able to make the occasional caprese salad, means we are winning.
Agricultural revolution? A revolution usually grows out of necessity, and there are so many different sides to arguments about what we need...or what sort of priority we should even give to this idea of 'good' or 'real' food. I think we've reached a scary precipice.
Rooftop farms are trendy (this is way better than anything American Apparel will sell you), and home gardens have never left us - Let's see where this all goes.....
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