Sustainable WNC

35 years have passed since moving to WNC and starting a life as a chef. Having come to my work with a certain mindset - of cooking with what is available - there have been many opportunities to participate in the revival of a local food economy and culture.

We are fortunate that the opportunities continue to present themselves. Each season, a new surprise is revealed: another cheese, a different variety of tomato, a truffle producer across the mountain, wood fired bread, grass fed lamb, availablity grows. For the first time, to one that does not farm, it has become possible to eat mainly foods from our region, foods that are grown in a more balanced manner, foods that come from familiar hands, organic lands, according to season.

In this we are fortunate and a great opportunity presents itself. Around the culture of food is the opportunity to have a richer life, build a better community, revive the memory of taste.

There is also much danger to be mindful of, not necessarily from within the community of growers and “co-producers” (a Slow Food term for those of us who are not growers but eat locally), but from the greater community we are embedded. There is the pressure of development and losing more farming land, the continued commercialization of food, the expectation of any food at any time and in it’s extreme; the privatization of the seed and water.

So, it is to this - how to develop, promote, sustain and most of all to celebrate eating locally, that this blog begins.

-Mark R.