Greenmarket's Nevia No, Bodhitree Farm, Returns From Terra Madre Slow Food Conference

Bodhitree Farm’s Nevia No is back from the Slow Food international organization’s bi annual Terra Madre conference, held in Turin Italy, October 21 through 25^th.

As previously reported here, Nevia is one of two Greenmarket farmers from New York City nominated to represent the Union Square Greenmarket.  The other nominee is a Vermont maple syrup farmer.

I adore Nevia’s farm fresh vegetables.  They are exquisitely pristine.

She takes extraordinary care with the growing – and the presentation. 

The produce is clean, clean, clean.  It is arranged with the care of a Saks Fifth Avenue fashion window, beckoning to the keen passerby and seasoned restaurant staff alike.

Every greenmarket and food book signing or culinary benefit I attend where the top chefs provide food tastings invariably note Bodhitree Farm as the preferred farmer.

The chefs’ reverence for her produce is not a surprise. 

The care and love she invests in farming, growing the tastiest, most flavorful veggies results in the best produce.  www.bodhitreefarm.com

Did you know the word Bodhi-Tree is a wisdom or world tree and is a symbol of enlightenment?  How perfect.

She – and her associate, Debbie – are unfailingly helpful and nice. Always smiling.

There is usually a cooking demo going on too. 

This way, once you’ve been seduced by the day’s neat-as-a-pin, colorful display, you can test drive the sweet potato curiosity you’ve never heard of. 

Or the purple cauliflower you didn’t think was real.

The variety of vegetables and herb is the tatsoi, red mizuna, Tuscan kale,

Delicious, tempting treats are made by Nevia or most often, Alissa Dicker Schrieber from The Kitchenista (www.thekitchenista.com). 

It’s always a food adventure at the Bodhitree farm stand at the Greenmarket.

I asked Nevia how the trip to Turin, Italy for the Terra Madre international network of food was for her. 

She described an extraordinary experience. 

I could see it in her eyes.  She looked like she’d been to the “other side.”  Transformed.

Just being in a place where everyone has the same passionate devotion to food must be a religious experience of sorts.

Nevia attended the lectures and panel discussions to learn more about the next generation of sustainable food producers of which she is one.

She also learned that while most small farm laborers are women; very, very few women actually own the land they work…

She said she was most impressed by a group of Asian women who risked prison and death over many years in order to claim their farm land.

Coincidentally and timely, I was just introduced to the “Women Wearing the Pants” (WWTP) organization that is dedicated to supporting the work of the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women and the commitment to Free Trade Zones and Fair Trade. The Asian women who fought for the farm could have used this support.

I was particularly intrigued with Experimental Gardens.  According to their website. http://tiny.cc/ibpf “In December 2010, WWTP will help research and finance 15 experimental subsistence gardens for impoverished women headed households in Nicaragua through affiliations with ww.IDEORG.org.  The International Development Enterprise.

Following a discussion about fair trade, gender issues in food production and indigenous food, I asked Nevia what was the most interesting food she experienced at the conference. 

She said she was so busy attending all the scheduled events that the food item that really captivated her was the bread she discovered the local Italians use.

Nevia brought out a shrink-wrapped bread from her truck cab to show me.

Soon, others were marveling at the unique, stylish bread design.  Leave it to those fashionable Italians! 

Slow Food International was founded 30 years ago as a non-profit organization that promotes the preservation and growth of environmentally sustainable and socially responsible food worldwide.  www.slowfood.com

It’s crazy that we have to even have such an organization as a watchdog and promoter – or reminder – of what “real” food is. Sigh. But we must.

And I for one, am most sincerely grateful for their amazing work, given the topsy-turvy world of industrialized, corporate food production that purports to provide “food” while delivering no less than laboratory-created “nutrients” rather than safe, pure, food. 

Don’t get me started.

As noted in the Introduction to my book, “Long Island Homegrown” to be published next year (working hard to complete the last details now J)

Much of the effort was launched as a reaction, nay – a rebellion against the industrialization of food production and food offerings as presented by restaurant chains and supermarkets.  The Slow Food movement was started in Italy – not surprisingly – by Carlo Petrini --to combat fast food. In 1986, Petrini was resisting a McDonald’s planned near the Spanish Steps in Rome.  His Slow Food movement claims to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and seeds, domestic animals, and farming within an eco region. It was the first established part of the broader Slow movement. The movement has since expanded globally to hundreds of thousands of members all over the world, and the biannual food conference is a coveted invitation

Coveted indeed is an invitation to the Slow Food conference.

So raise your glass and let’s toast Nevia No, Bodhitree Farm, for representing Greenmarket. For making us so proud. 

For all the crazy hard work that she does with such integrity – and making it all look so elegant.

To continue to provide us outstanding leadership, sustainable “veggies with spirit” as she notes on her business card. – And unmatched, flavorful food.

We love you, Nevia.  The USPS needs to start issuing a series of stamps that celebrate Farmers as heroes and leaders. 

And I vote for you to be the first cover girl stamp!


You can learn more here about Slow Food Movement:

GrowNYC Greenmarket Nominated Local Farmers to Attend Slow Food Conference in Terra Madre

From the city that never sleeps and where things get done in a “New York Minute,” the Greenmarket delegates will be immersed in the Slowww way of life…

For the next few days, at least.

Applause, Applause! 

What greater honor could there be for a dedicated, local farmer and artisanal food producer than to be acknowledged as a representative for the Greenmarket at the biannual Slow Food Conference? 

It makes all those early mornings setting up in Union Square, endless hours of washing the baby lettuces, tapping the maple trees and boiling the sap, fretting over the storms and heat and water count for something. 
It’s not just the trip to Torino, Italy, nor the opportunity to mix and network with food artists from around the globe, or even all the great food tastings and samplings.

I think it’s also the recognition that all the hard work, dedication and standards of excellence in honor of fresh, local food matters.

This is important, noble work and just like the Oscar or the Emmy or the Tony, foody peers will forever have respect that you were selected.

I was admiring the pristine lettuces and sassy greens at one of my favorite Greenmarket “boutiques” yesterday when I learned from Bodhitree Farms (www.bodhitreefarm.com)

owner, Nevia No, aka the Greenmarket Goddess, that she was leaving for Terra Madre later that day.  Wowsy!

I was so excited for Nevia.  Questions spilled out of me along with the kudos.

Nevia explained that she is one of two farmers selected to attend the Slow Food conference by GrowNYC Greenmarket Farmers Market (www.grownyc.org/greenmarket.org

The other delegate is Howie and Stephen Cantor of Deep Mountain Maple, Vermont – because “the Italians don’t have maple syrup.”  No said. 

The exotic, sexy elixir is sure to cause a scene in Italy…

The Greenmarket Goddess didn’t have to explain to me why her Bodhitree Farms was chosen.   

No is usually eager to explain that Bodhi means enlightenment in Sanskrit.  A visit to her Greenmarket display with its pure, clean, variety of colorful and delicious vegetables will elevate anyone to a higher consciousness.

Greenmarket Goddess Nevia No’s Bodhitree Farms is located in the Garden State, naturally. She grows hundreds of varieties on 70 acres in Burlington County.  The Farm is a darling of all the New York City Master Chefs and Bodhitree was noted on most of the menu cards at the recent GrowNYC Greenmarket benefits.

The Farm is famous for green and hard to find Asian vegetables including baby lettuces pea shoots, mustard greens, tatsoi, mizuna and some of my favorites too are love her Hawaiian sweet potatoes grown from seed here, and shisito peppers.

  

I went back to take Nevia’s picture and Debbie said I just missed her L  She was on her way to JFK. 

So here is Debbie!  She is there every day of the market along with Nevia.

The theme of this conference is indigenous food and what we can learn from them.

Both Bodhitree and Deep Mountain Maple will have the other delegates swooning. 

I feel like I’m rooting for the home team!

Deep Mountain Maple was hailed as home town heroes in their local news:

www.bartonchronicle.com/index.php/food-ventures

The biannual Slow Food conference is called Terra Madre held in Torino, Italy from October 21^st – October 25^th.

This is the Fourth conference.

Delegates attend events, sample indigenous food, cheese, bread, vegetables, they also attend workshops,  -- brings together small food producers, farmers chefs,

Carlo Petrini started the Slow Food movement as a resistance to a McDonalds going up in Rome and as a backlash to fast food and bad food and the erosion of convivial dining. He has celebrated the importance of real, wholesome food, saying that to regain sovereignty we must rebuild it through an alliance of fisherman, farmers, livestock breeders, chefs, and academics from around the world.

Petrini recently visited the Union Square Greenmarket – and American universities as president of the Slow Food Organization and to promote his new book that highlights the future of food and biodiversity.

The new book is a follow up to Slow Food Nation (2005).  “Terra Madre – Foraging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities” is available now.

 No usually offers cooking demos for Greenmarket buyers to sample the delicious and sometimes new and curious vegetables.  She often does the cooking herself.  Sometime she features a guest cook.

I can’t wait to see what gastronomic surprises she will bring home with her, along with the great stories and learning.  

Catching up with the book

Today is my first posting about writing my first book.  

I had every intention of doing this much earlier - years ago, in fact.  

Maybe because we just came home from seeing "Julie & Julia" at the cinema or maybe I seemingly have more time now (more about that later), but I was determined to launch writing about the book today.

The soon (too soon?!) to be published book started as a concept in early 2002.  At that time, I was most interested in how the garden inspires artists -- all artists: musicians, painters,  fashion designers, cinematographers, writers, photographers and .... But most significantly, culinary artists, because they so obviously utilize the bounty of the garden to create their own art.  

So I thought a book franchise might start there --exploring the art of the garden from the perspective of how provocative and compelling a garden is to the creativity of  artistic endeavor.  

And it was!  I was over the moon when I was able to secure a publishing contract at that time for the book, "Celebrity Chefs & Their Gardens."  But then, all too soon, that publisher said there were too many garden books on the market and we needed to wait.  

For me?  Other opportunities arrived and I put the book concept on the shelf, so to speak. 

 

I had a new publisher interested in 2007 and we worked through the concept throughout 2008.  

At the same time, the world of gardening changed. A lot. Increasingly, gardeners were focusing more on growing their own food.  More and more, community gardens were turning from ornamental plants to vegetables and fruits.  Food scares and concerns about the safety of our food were news headlines!  Michael Pollan and Alice Waters were becoming icons for what seemed to be a growing (sorry) movement..

So I could feel the book subtly migrate to explore and learn about the unique chefs that celebrated not just the art of the garden but the integrity and tradition and purity of the garden and what that meant to our culture.  

I set out to identify those "celebrity chefs" who I now prefer to refer to as master chefs or noble chefs, who are leaders in marrying culinary art with garden art in an almost truer sense.  They grow their own food for the restaurant, their gardens do indeed inspire their work in the kitchen, and/or they elevate their local farmers and growers as partners in their pursuit of truly fine dining.  Menus imbued with seasonal, fresh local food. Not imported. Not exotic in the old way.  

I hoped these chefs, these culinary artists, could illuminate how they heroically changed the way we think about dining, about food, about nutrition.  They helped lead a revolution - a movement.  It soon became about lifestyle and politics too.

The book contract was finalized around Christmas 2008. I was so honored and so excited.  The book is to be published for spring 2010.

This will be the story of how that book came about, my overture to the chefs, my interview adventures (and there have been some epic tales!) and securing the perfect lineup of celebrity, er, noble chefs. And  finding the most wonderful photographer, food stylist and of course, working with a fantastic and supportive editor.  

Whenever I tell my friends and family about the chefs and their philosophy, not to mention the struggles and "triumphs" to coordinate all the elements of the book, they love it. I hope you do too. It is so exciting to learn from these culinary leaders.  

This first book focuses on chefs from New York City, the Hamptons and the Garden State.  I will share the list of chefs later...  

(Tell me who you would nominate to include in the book?)

I hope you will enjoy this story....