Food, Up Close and Personal
Joshua Bright for The New York Times
OK, here’s a story a little far afield from the Northwest, but a Brooklyn, NY high school perfectly illustrates an issue Edible Idaho explored on Monday: the strong desire people have to get close to the source of their food.
As the New York Times reports:
These curious students, all juniors and seniors at Automotive High School in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, are taking a class called “Food, Land, and You.” Introduced by Jenny Kessler, a teacher at the school, three years ago, this elective English course is a primer about food broadly defined — its social, political and economic aspects. While dozens of New York City public schools have edible gardens, or offer student-grown food on the cafeteria menu, Ms. Kessler’s class is unusual in the wider perspective it takes . . .
Ms. Kessler’s pupils study factory farming and corn subsidies, read articles by Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry and watch documentaries like “Food, Inc.,” a dark look at the nation’s industrialized food system. They also tend a 2,500-square-foot organic vegetable garden that borders their school, financing it with funds they raise and with support from the New York chapter of Slow Food U.S.A.”
The Times says one of the popular field trips the class takes is to a butcher shop called the Meat Hook. There they get to witness the art of meat cutting and get to sample bits of fresh cut, raw beef.
“It tastes like salty gummy bears,” says one 16 year old.
Sampling raw meat may not be what many have in mind when they say they want to learn more about their food, but those students will likely never look at a package of supermarket meat the same way again.
