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Dive! Living Off America’s Trash

This past weekend  Dive! Living Off America’s Trash was featured at the Boulder International Film Festival. Jeremy Seifert is my new Michael Pollan, Morgan Spurlock and Chef Ann Cooper in that he brings to our attention – for lack of a better term, an inconvenient truth: We waste too much food in this country, not just in our homes, but at the grocery store. It’s the food we don’t purchase that gets wasted.

My cousin introduced me to the concept of dumpster diving years ago. I was aghast but have come to find that he has never been sickened by the food that he has retrieved from grocery store dumpsters. Certainly if you google dumpster diving, there is an abundance of advice and information on Wikihow, Wikipedia, and Youtube. Olivia Zaleski wrote a great piece about dumpster diving on the Huffington Post. But Seifert didn’t just set out alarm folks. He really was wondering if perhaps there is a better way to distribute food that is no logner deemed safe to sell.

In San Francisco, Mary Risley, founder of the Tante Marie Cooking  School felt the same way.  Many years ago she founded Food Runners. She knew that you can’t put the onus on food banks to not only distribute but also pick up food from all over a bustling city. Food Runners’ mission is simple: "To help alleviate hunger in San Francisco, to help prevent waste and to help create community." With a band of volunteers, unwanted food is just a phone call away from being picked up and delivered to an organization that can distribute it to those in need. While the mission is simple, the logistics are not. 

Do you have an organization like this in your community? Tell us about it. If you want to see Seifert’s movie, his website has viewing times.  The video below is the trailer for Dive!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HlFP-PMW6E

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1 comment February 27th, 2010

Babette’s Feast

Isak Dinesen (pseudonym for Karen Blixen) is one of my favorite writers and Babette’s Feast is a true flavorista classic.  It is the tale of a renowned French chef who finds herself exiled from revolutionary France to a small Danish village as the maid to 2 elderly, repressed spinsters.

In 1988, this wonderful story was made into a movie which won the academy award for Best Foreign Picture.  Kimberly knows of a culinary arts instructor who has his freshman students watch the movie to help them to understand the power of food and flavor.  It is a gem of a book AND a movie, which is not often the case. If you have never seen this movie or read this book, cozy up and enjoy.  It is a perfect excuse to take a moment during winter break to relax.

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Add comment December 26th, 2008

Anyone can cook, even a rat!

As our first foray into the "Food Flicks" file of Flavorista, I have to mention Ratatouille as one of my favorite food movies.  While watching it again, my 5 year old daughter came up to me and said that when she bites into fresh mozzarella, she sees "snow topped mountains."  This is reminiscent of a terrific moment in the movie when Remy, a French rat who longs to be a chef, tastes individual foods and experiences a singular sensation.  When he combines one food with a contrasting food (think cheese and grapes), Remy experiences a symphony of textures and flavors.

I really adore this movie and it is not just a kids movie, but a foodie movie. Here is tidbit of fact: Thomas Keller of The French Laundry was a consultant on the movie and actually created the ratatouille recipe for the movie.  I also must confess that the "Ratatouille, Roasted & Reconstructed" post in early September was loosley inspired by this wonderful "Food Flick."

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Add comment October 14th, 2008