Food for thought from the Rome Sustainable Food Project

Cutting cucumbers...

At the American Academy in Rome, Executive Chef Mona Talbott is showing that food can be educational, artistic, and sustainable. Over the last five years, Mona has made the Rome Sustainable Food Project (RSFP) a beloved part of the scholarly and artistic mission of the Academy: Mona and others train interns in the kitchen, gardening and food preparation take place where others can watch and join in, and the chefs write books about their work. Throughout, the kitchen team does its best to connect those who eat the food to the network of local organic farmers who produce it.

The benefits of a project like RSFP for the Academy are clear. Suddenly, invitations to meals are coveted. People are excited to spend time with each other over delicious food, and feel well-nourished. The seasonal and largely traditional food connects the people eating it to the land and culture around them. By tying the food to the educational and artistic mission of the institution, Mona helps people see it as more than just a service.

In turn, Mona says, teaching makes her a better cook. She thinks it's important that people preparing food identify with something bigger than just chopping vegetables. Cooking is a way of working towards a mission, of expressing a point of view: For example, the RSFP resists the American idea that "more is more." Instead of producing a food-court-like smorgasbord of different options, Mona's kitchen team "edits" the choices available. The spread is focused, healthy, and artistic, sustaining the scholars of the Academy both physically and mentally.

Mona thinks many other institutions offer opportunities to transform ordinary dining experiences into something special, like she has done with the Rome Sustainable Food Project. I agree.

 Scholars at the Academy can admire the herbs and produce RSFP grows in this garden. 

Alternatives to chemicals and GM seeds

A short piece I wrote about Navdanya's work to promote organic farming in India was just published on the Nourishing the Planet blog. Check it out here.

Some beautiful kohlrabi at the Navdaya farm.

Buying what I need from Delhi's mom-and-pop stores

An Indian mom-and-pop grocery store.

I did my Fulbright research on fruit and vegetable purchasing in Delhi. But I was struck by how very different all food buying patterns are from those in the U.S.

In most Indian cities, almost everyone buys foods from the mom 'n' pop grocery stores embedded in streets--and sometimes homes--throughout the city. These stores range in size from a simple window hung with goods to an entire room complete with a counter and cash register. Instead of strolling through aisles of products and picking up products as you would in a supermarket, you walk up to a counter and make your request. No marketing consultants have been through here: Many items are so hidden in back corners and recesses that the store owner has to clamber up on a chair and search for them in the shelves.

When I go to the supermarket in the US, I'll usually browse the aisles and count on visual triggers to remember what I need ("Oh, yeah--we ARE out of flour"). I frequently end up buying more than I plan, whether it's because I notice that my favorite yogurt is on sale--got to stock up!--or see a new product I want to try. 

In Delhi, I was far more likely to go to the store with a list of items to buy, ask for them, and then leave with exactly what I needed--and nothing more. On occasion I made impulse purchases, such as picking up a pack of gum at the counter, but I wasn't walking past every item in the store and was therefore far less likely to grab extras. 

A small general store in one of Delhi's slums.

Compared to the mom 'n' pop format, exposure to every product in the aisles of the supermarket encourages people to buy and consume more. Therefore, the predicted transition from mom 'n' pop grocery stores to supermarkets in India seems likely to increase consumption. This can’t be good for India’s growing epidemic of obesity.

But where are the nutritionists in the debate over changes in food retail in India? While there have been protests and political debates over how supermarkets will change supply chains and affect employment, no one mentions nutrition. I think that's a problem: We need to collect data on how the shift from mom ‘n’ pop stores to supermarkets will affect food buying patterns, and therefore nutrition. Then we need to use that data to inform food retail policy. 

Making pasta from scratch in Italy

Rolling out pasta dough with a water bottle

Cutting and shaping spinach tortellini

Now that I'm in Italy, I've been immersing myself in the "slow food" culture and making ravioli, tortellini, and gnocchi from scratch. Making gnocchi isn't hard, but using a can and metal water bottle to roll out sheets of pasta dough for the ravioli was quite an endeavor!

Serving bread by the bucket at a Sikh temple

This large bucket of roti bread in the Gurdwara

kitchen will be served to worshippers in the hall.

How difficult must it be to put eyeliner on a baby? My friend and I contemplated this question while sitting cross-legged on large carpets with a mass of Sikh worshippers. We were waiting for the next serving cycle at the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara, which, like all Sikh temples, has a kitchen that distributes free food to all comers. Many of the babies around us had eyes daubed with eyeliner and tiny wrists adorned with mini-bangles. Like the Sikh women carrying the babies, we covered our heads with scarves.

After we had waited for about five minutes, the doors to the huge dining hall opened and the crowd crushed forward. We all hustled to get seats on the floor in long rows. Then volunteers—including one boy who looked as young as six—walked down each row dispensing metal trays and spoons. Next came handfuls of roti bread from giant baskets. Volunteers ladled out servings of dal (lentils) and sabzi (vegetables) onto our plates.

All of the food we ate came from a huge kitchen in which volunteers prepare food for over 10,000 people a day. Unlike the centralized school meal kitchen I visited earlier, the giant spoons and vats of lentils in the temple were all used by humans rather than machines. Each of the roti on my plate was clearly made by hand.

Instead of using a machine, volunteers will make roti by

hand at "stations" marked by piles of flour.

At first I was surprised by how quickly the people around me in the dining hall were eating. Then I realized why they were scarfing down their food so quickly: another group of worshippers was waiting eager to enter the hall. My friend and I were taking too long to finish, so two volunteers came and stood in front of us encouraging us to eat quickly and make room for the next crowd. While processes at the Gurdwara may not be mechanized, they are efficient!

Volunteers make dishes in vats and serve them with giant

 spoons. The woman in the back left is making roti.

Fruit for Lord Shiva

While cracking open a wood apple on our kitchen counter this morning, I reflected upon the tight connections between food and religion here in India.

Bael with sweet flesh ready to scoop out.

Bael fruit growing on a tree.

The shell of the wood apple (called bael in Hindi) is almost as hard as a coconut’s. I had seen bael tucked among necklaces of marigolds and other items used in sacred festivals, but hadn't known why those items were sold together. My friend Shalabh explained that the leaves and sweet fruit of the bael tree are sacred to the Hindu god Shiva. Bael is also supposed to be "cooling," so the fruit is often made into drinks on the street. The gritty texture of the fruit I bought wasn't a hit with others around the breakfast table, but Shalabh and I like the custardy taste and the hard shell made a perfect bowl.

Bael is not the only fruit with religious significance. I've been researching fruit and vegetable retail for the last eight months here in India, but am continually surprised at the many ways in which religion influences diet. For instance, many Hindus will eat only fruit and milk during Maha Shivaratri, buying so much fruit that the carts look empty and forlorn. 

Many places of worship provide prasad, food first offered to the gods and then eaten by the community. Long lines form at the temple across from my apartment as working men and families from the neighborhood line up for free meals. The halwa, poori, and chana masala from the handouts I've tasted have all been delicious--even better than the bael! 

Schoolchildren eat prasad (served in bowls on the table) outside the temple.

Stretching 5 cents into a healthy school meal

Given six cents per kid and some rice and wheat, is it really possible to make a healthy, balanced school meal?

The ISKCON Food Relief Foundation has turned this daunting challenge—the Indian government’s mandate that states provide kids with cooked meals—into a modern “stone soup” story:

• The central Indian government provides rice, wheat, and about six cents per child to cover other ingredients and charges. (For context, the US National School Lunch Program reimburses an average of $2.68 per child.)
•  Former businessmen voluntarily manage the operations and serve on the Foundation Board of Directors.
• Corporations like Tata and Indian Oil give land, money, and food delivery vehicles, amounting to up about half the program’s total funding.
•  Individuals donate on the phone or in the workplace.

Put the donated ingredients together, and you’ve got hot meals that help keep 177,000 children a day in school and learning on full stomachs.

Steam powers the rice boilers on the left. Kidney beans cook in the vat on the right.

Preparing all those meals requires a truly massive kitchen. The ISKCON kitchen I visited was their biggest, serving 352 Delhi schools. Walking in between rows of cauldrons, each holding 100 kg of boiling rice, and 600L vats of cooking beans, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the scale. 

Machine churning out 20,000 pooris

 (fried Indian flatbreads) an hour.

Kids get a different meal every day of the week. Menus are set by the central government to provide 450 calories and 13g of protein per child, and attempt to accommodate the diverse culinary traditions of India. In South India, all meals are rice-based (rice and dal, for example). In Central India, where wheat is the staple grain, they’re wheat-based. The Delhi kitchen caters to both rice- and wheat-eaters, so meals are rice-based three days a week and wheat-based the other three. Since most of the children reached by the program don’t get two square meals a day, the menu includes fried bread (poori) for extra calories. 

Not everything goes smoothly, however. According to the kitchen manager who showed me around, the cooks can't predict exactly how many kids they'll be feeding on a given day. Beans have to start soaking the day before, and cooking starts at midnight. That means they can't respond quickly to rainstorms that keep a large number of kids at home. Although the leftovers would probably be safe to serve to humans, they're instead given to piggeries. This seemed like a strange choice for a Hare Krishna organization operating in a city in which few people eat pork, but it frees the Foundation from liability in case of food becomes contaminated after being served.


Avoiding the potential for scandals is part of ISKCON's effort to keep its reputation pristine in the sometimes-controversial school meal effort. (Other NGOs, schools, and teachers have all been accused of stealing grains and meals.) ISKCON's kitchen meets the highest sanitary standards, and even has an effluent treatment plant of the kind usually seen in fancy hotels. Each metal canister of dal or rice is double-checked before it’s loaded onto the trucks, and is sent back if the ziptie holding it closed is broken. 

Lugging a giant cauldron of dal to the wash area. 

Seeing the impressive operation--and sampling the delicious halwa in the kitchen--made me eager to head to Delhi’s Gurdwara Bangla Sahib kitchen tonight. This Sikh temple feeds 10,000 visitors a day for free!