Collective Eye Collection

The new documentary, Queen of the Sun, dazzles our senses with the beauty and magnificence of nature.  The director, Taggart Seigel (The Real Dirt on Farmer John) uses bold colors combined with incredible photography to tell the story of the catastrophic disappearance of bees from our landscape. We get a look at the mysterious world of the beehive through the eyes of biodynamic and organic beekeepers, scientists and philosophers from around the world.  The loss of honeybees affects us all.   Forty percent of all food consumed today is pollinated by bees.  It turns out the honeybee has been viewed from the beginning of civilization as sacred due to its importance in the nurturing of life and fertility.  No matter where you live or your ‘relationship’ with bees, everyone should be interested in beekeeping and the life of the honeybee. This is an engaging film and perfect viewing for 4-H & conservation groups.  Farmers, beekeepers, church groups, garden clubs will all be interested in the preservation of the planet’s agricultural diversity and the life around us.

http://www.mykazootv.com/farmerjason/

Oh, my gosh! This collection of songs from our beloved Farmer Jason and special friends is so much fun. The friends include: REM’s Mike Mills, Alison Brown, The Saw Doctors, Suzy Bogguss, Iris Dement, Webb Wilder, Todd Snider, Tommy Ramone, Jason & The Scorchers and many more. Sixteen original songs range in style from rock to sea shanties and jazz to folk. Farmer Jason takes the kids from the farm to the big world outside. The music encourages all types of activities from walking, canoeing, ice skating, bird watching and exploring the great, big, wonderful world of nature. There is even the bayou boogie. Farmer Jason introduces each song by discussing an activity with one of his all- star friends kicking off a rollicking good ole’ Farmer Jason time! The CD comes with a special DVD including 4 music videos and a beautifully-designed booklet. Nature Jams has won a “5 Doves” Family-Approved Seal from The Dove Foundation.

I’m a little big to be considered a kid, but this engaging collection made me want to get up and go outside!

Reviewed By Lisa Shively

Lotta Sweet Love at the Loveless Café

The Loveless Café has long been known for their secret biscuit recipe.  It is still a secret.  However, there is a new cookbook, Desserts from the famous Loveless Café, offering readers plenty of tips to make the Loveless desserts.  The cookbook was written and prepared by Alisha Huntsman, a chef trained at the Culinary Institute.  Ms. Huntsman was brought aboard to expand the dessert menu when the restaurant had their big re-opening in 2004.  Despite some changes this landmark Nashville restaurant is as local and original as Tootsie’s or Ernest Tubb’s Record Store.

-reviewed by Janie Whitlock

Evolution from Tea Room to Landmark

Originally known as the Harpeth Valley Tea Room, the Loveless motel and café first started offering its famous fried chicken and biscuits in 1951.  Lon and Annie Loveless sold their food from their front door to travelers on Hwy. 100.  Soon they converted the rooms of the home into dining areas.

Over time the restaurant came to be owned by Charles and Donna McCabe.  Their son, George, grew up at the Loveless.  He was responsible for establishing the Loveless brand.  All of the buildings were converted to the catalogue business in 1985.  By 2003 the nearly century-old building was unable to contain all the customers.  The business was sold once again to a group of Nashvillians committed to the restaurant’s unique history and delicious food.

In 2004 the café closed for renovations.  The new owners wanted to enlarge the menu – especially the desserts offered.

From Pies to Puddings

Ms. Huntsman’s cookbook, Desserts from the famous Loveless Café, contains more than 100 recipes for slap-yo-mama favorites and Loveless specialty desserts.  We are talking Muddy Fudge pie, Root Beer Float cake and any fruit you can cobbler.  The recipes are well organized.  The color photos throughout lovingly photographed.
These are solid recipes for the beginner pastry chef – down home recipes that don’t involve a lot of technique despite the author being trained at the culinary institute.  The audience for this book is the home cook.  Most recipes don’t require a lot of specialty bake ware, tools or advanced skills.  Most recipes consist of 5 steps or less.  Beyond the recipes themselves there is great information for the beginner chef – tips on making pie shells easily and rolling out cookie dough.  The Sources page was helpful for finding ingredients such as rose water or vanilla beans online.

While many recipes are classics with the Loveless spin, others are specialty pies like the Loveless Steeplechase pie.  Made with pecans and Jack Daniels, it is served most often celebrating Nashville’s Iroquois Steeplechase.  The race is held a week after the Kentucky Derby.  Just one of the simple Southern recipes from the book is the recipe for Red Velvet cake which will bake up beautifully for all those upcoming holidays.

Tradition meets Modernity

Check out this cookbook for some local flavor.  This dessert cookbook has done very well on QVC and was touted on Martha Stewart’s radio program.  My one quibble was for more stories featuring our famous musical neighbors who frequent the restaurant.  I’ll happily settle for sharing a piece of pie with a neighbor.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Most of us don’t think too much about the cost of a cup of coffee, except for the occasional sticker shock when splurging on a super-charged latte. However, most of us would be truly shocked to learn that the majority of people who do the hard work of growing our coffee live in dire poverty, often unable to afford the most basic necessities, such as clean water, food, and shelter.

The term black gold is usually used in reference to oil (petroleum). But here is a startling fact: after oil, coffee is the most actively traded commodity in the world, representing about $80 billion in the retail marketplace. There are about 25 million coffee growers in 50 countries, and about 2 billion cups of coffee are consumed world-wide very day. Another startling fact: most coffee farmers, who are very small-scale, earn less than 3 cents per cup.

The film does a superb job of telling important stories and conveying a lot of information in a compelling way that holds our attention and interest all the way through. Following the journey of Tadesse Meskela, the representative of the Oromio Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union in Southern Ethiopia, as he works to get a higher price for their crops, we meet some of the coffee farmers, and learn of their urgent need to feed their families, and their fervent desire to send their children to school, along with the harsh realities of the international marketplace that leave these people praying to be paid fairly.

Black Gold does not inflict a guilt trip on us, however. It opens the door of knowledge and understanding so that we can make choices, like voting with our dollars, and buying Fair Trade coffee, which empowers the producers in the trade process, guarantees that they receive a living wage, and supports their community development projects such as health care and schools.
We have options, and more influence than we realize, just brewing in our daily cup.

–Reviewed by Karen Adler

Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities

If you talk to a farmer who has been to a Terra Madre conference, you will probably get an ecstatic glow along with any attempt at a description. The first Terra Madre took place in 2004, bringing people together from all over the world who were part of the local food and sustainable agriculture movements. This bold undertaking was the brainchild of the author, Carlo Petrini, founder and president of Slow Food, and his collaborators, and focused on enabling the folks who toil in the fields and in small kitchens in remote areas of the world to participate. In this book, Petrini tells the story of Terra Madre, which is now sponsored by Slow Food every other fall in Turin, Italy, as a way for the small-scale farmers and food artisans to meet and share their knowledge, and he reveals time-honored as well as new ways for us to think, and to sustain ourselves and our world.

Petrini describes the Terra Madre network as being governed by ‘”austere anarchy,”‘ generated by faith in others, in diversity, and in nature.” Tackling topics such as food sovereignty, the dangers of seed patents and monopolies, and the need to de-industrialize our food systems, he weaves in important discussions about why taking pleasure in food, far from being elitist, is truly democratic, and shows how local economies are the key to prosperity and sustainability. With the approach of the next Terra Madre gathering, which takes place in October, 2010, the visionary ideas that Carlo Petrini shares, encouraging us, in very practical, concrete ways, to act locally while we think (and interact) globally, are more relevant than ever.

–Reviewed by Karen Adler

The Literature of Food

Food binds us in so many ways–in good times and bad. Our relationship with food is buried deep in our subconscious. Smells and tastes can elicit long-forgotten memories, relationships, and moments in our life. Food defines our individual culture and sense of place. One person’s comfort food can be an aversion to another. Food, both figurative and metaphorically, is the seed of this thought-provoking and nourishing collection of prose and poetry. Alimentum is a beautifully produced twice yearly journal. This past summer’s issue has little moments with cheese puffs, yoghurt, broccoli rabe, tapas, and cooking moong dal. I agree with a recent reviewer in The New York Times who wrote, “A journal small enough to carry with you for mental and aesthetic nourishment breaks.” The winter edition will be available in your local bookstore in October and it’s worth the look.

–reviewed by Lisa Shively

From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat

Today the average meal has traveled thousands of miles before reaching the dinner table. How on earth did this happen? In fact, long-distance food is nothing new and, since the earliest times, the things we eat and drink have crossed countries and continents. Through delightful anecdotes and astonishing facts, Moveable Feasts tells their stories. In a thought-provoking and highly entertaining account, Moveable Feasts brings an entirely fresh perspective to the subject of food. And today, as global warming makes headlines and concerns mount about the ?food miles? clocked by our dinners, Murray poses a contentious question: Is buying local always the most sustainable, ethical choice?

Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods

Part history/part cookbook/part ecological call, RAFT is a beautiful celebration of North American foods from older cultures on our diverse continent that might be made new again. The book lists more than 1000 foods at risk in our nation. The authors suggest that such regional, native foods such as Wild Tomatillos, Chickasaw Plums, Jerusalem Artichoke, Sibley Squash, Cayuga Duck, Gillette Figs and Tenneessee’s own Fainting (Myotonic) goats have the chance to become our new culinary experi- ence and be just as exciting as the exotic foods we import from other continent’s. By searching out our own continent’s diverse heritage breeds of animals/poultry and native seeds we help ensure the continua- tion of species who will otherwise disappear. Many are on the edge of extinction and by eating wild and native we also help preserve traditional hunting, fishing and farming areas.

How to Save the World in 24 Hours

Founders of Nashville’s CoolPeopleCare.org, Davidson and Mosely offer more than 100 ways for regular people to make a difference in our world. Focusing on the little things each of us can do to combat climate change and conserve natural resources from making smart food choices, greening your office, shopping wisely, and investing a little of your free time back into your community. The bot- tom line ? you can change the world and this little book will show you the way.