Hannah Wallace

Joe Cimperman, a Leader of Cleveland's Good Food Revolution

You hear a lot of talk in the sustainable food movement these days about how each of us needs to "vote with our fork." The notion is that political change is hard to come by—and while we are waiting and waiting for our elected politicians to curtail insane subsidies to commodity crops like corn and soy and pass common-sense measures like a soda tax—we might as well choose foods that are good for us, the planet, and the people who harvest and cook them. Judging by the recent explosion of farmers' markets in the U.S., this maxim is—at least in part—working.

But voting with your fork isn't enough. We also need to campaign for and elect politicians who will fight for our values—who will fight against charges of "nanny statism" and big corporate interests (hello, Coke) and pass legislation that will give people of all income levels incentive to grow their own food, buy locally, and eat more sensibly.

Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman is one of these politicians. When I first heard him speak about his city's efforts to tackle health inequalities, I was transfixed. He shared a dire statistic that has stuck with me: In Cleveland, residents of the African American community of Hough live on average 24 years less than residents of the predominantly white community of Lyndhurst. Twelve of those years, Cimperman said, are attributable to smoking and diet.

This kind of life expectancy discrepancy is not O.K.—and clearly it is not O.K. with Cimperman, who went on to tell the assembled audience of food justice activists, anti-hunger organizations, union advocates, and public health experts (we were at a food policy conference) how Cleveland was working to fix these health inequalities. He spoke about how the city had just banned trans fats and made it illegal to smoke in playgrounds and other outdoor public places. How City Council had passed legislation making it legal to keep chickens and bees and also passed a resolution committing to a community garden within five blocks of every resident by 2020. He wrapped up his talk by boasting that every farmers' market in Cleveland now accepts food stamps. As Cimperman spoke, I realized that if we want to transform our food system and ensure that fruit and vegetables are more ubiquitous than fried chicken and Froot Loops, then we need more elected leaders like Joe Cimperman.

This spring, Spirit (Southwest Airline's in-flight magazine) sent me to Cleveland to report on Cimperman's role in the city's agricultural renaissance. Though my story, part of a package on "the Power of One," focuses on Cimperman, he would be the first to tell you that these changes have come about because of the hard work and collaboration of many Clevelanders. You only get a glimpse of these folks in my article—people like Rich Hoban of Cleveland Crops, Mansfield Frazier of Chateau Hough, Bobbi McDermott (who worked on Re-Imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland), Morgan Taggart at OSU Extension, Marge Misak at the Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Cleveland, John Yokie at EcoVillage Produce... (I could go on and on).  But suffice it to say that I will be re-visiting Cleveland in future articles and blogs. To read this article, click Download JoeCimperman for the PDF.

Vintage MFK Fisher

Inextricably bound up with M.F.K. Fisher’s lifelong passion for food was the pleasure she took from sipping and serving a simple house wine, a crisp aperitif or a prickly, delicious glass of Champagne. In “M.F.K. Fisher: Musings on Wine and other Libations” (Sterling Epicure; $19), Fisher’s biographer, Anne Zimmerman, gathers all of the eminent food writer’s essays on drink under one beautifully designed cover. Some of these gems have been plucked from well-known collections, like “The Art of Eating” and “Long Ago in France,” but many others — the entertaining “a Vintage Spat,” for example, and the rousing “Wine is Life” — have been out of print for decades. For Fisher fans, coming across these is like reading an as-yet-unopened letter from a dear old friend.

Continue reading my review of "Mustings on Wine and other Libations" on the New York Times' the Moment blog.

A Book for "Everyday Foodies" Falls Short

Economist Tyler Cowen calls himself an “everyday foodie,” and his new book, “An Economist Gets Lunch,” is aimed at people like him. So it seems reasonable to ask: What is an everyday foodie? A single mom on food stamps who shops at the farmers market? A locavore who cooks nourishing meals for less than $5?

It’s impossible to say, because throughout this distractingly discursive book, Cowen never defines the term. At first, he hints that he’s addressing eaters of a lower income bracket. “I also view wise eating as a way to limit inequality,” he writes, noting that in the United States the wealthy often eat better than the middle class. “It doesn’t have to be this way and I’m explaining how, even on a modest income, you can eat and enjoy some of the tastiest food in the world.”

Cowen goes on to mischaracterize locavores and Slow Food activists as "food snobs," and argues unpersuasively that we'll need genetically modified crops to solve world hunger. To read more, see my book review in the Washington Post, which ran on June 1st.

Yakuza Garden Cottage

I wrote a short item on Dayna McErlean's Yakuza Garden Cottage for the June 2012 issue of Monocle.