Winter
Winter has come into full effect recently here in Modesto. With endless rain, it seems our drought should be ending, but alas we still need to conserve. Why should this matter to a culinary program?? Well we require food, and we live in the heart of farm country. It takes lots of water to grow the nation’s food here in the Central Valley. Still the lingering question…why does it matter to the culinary program? Quite simply with no food, we can’t teach how to cook.
The larger issue, teaching chefs to be good stewards of the land and environment; what we demand is what is grown. Not recognizing the true seasons of food created new hybrids, weak genes require more fertilizer; more fertilizer means nitrogen runoff to what….our water. We all need water in basic form to consume, yet we are poor stewards of our own supply. Most Californians poorly understand snowpack and water supply, and we want green grass year round. We also want the largest reddest strawberries year round. We don’t understand agriculture, we want gratification.
I have watched our little garden grow for two seasons, a nice little broccoli crop is getting ready for harvest; the frost from December took care of most of our herbs. Soon….lettuce, then herbs, and cycle lives. All driven by water…
Our lives revolve upon the availability of water, and the lack of. Stewards of the land is what we need, a little awareness is what we offer. We try here as part of a culinary education being a chef is stewardship of our land, of each other. Trying to make the world a little better place from our little corner of the Central Valley in Modesto; may the rains darken our days until our drought ends, then to the sun shall shine making our days brighter and crops stronger, washing away the impurities that linger from one rainy season to the next.
Until we grow some more literally and figuratively.
