Arts & Ideas: Think global, eat local
Look down the National Mall toward the U.S. Capitol these days, and you'll see corn stalks pushing their way toward the sky. Spinach is growing there, too, along with more exotic plants, such as frijoles and silver-gray olive trees.
A garden plot is an unusual spectacle amid the monuments and museums, but in the context of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's "Food Culture USA," which runs from June 23 to June 27 and June 30 through July 4, it makes perfect sense. While food demonstrations and concessions have always been part of the annual festival, this year, it's one of the star attractions. "The festival spotlights how American food has adapted over the past 30 years," says co-curator Joan Nathan.
American food has become increasingly processed and, as the author Barbara Kingsolver says, "Many adults believe that food comes from grocery stores." According to Dan Barber, chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico, N.Y., the average distance food now travels from farm to plate is 2,220 miles. But the festival demonstrates that another current has started to run through the food supply. "There's been a revival, a need to return to the local ideal," says Barber. The young chef, who has also worked in California and Paris, showed festivalgoers how to cook a lunch of pistou and fruit soup with seasonal fruits and vegetables gathered from the garden outside his Westchester County, N.Y., restaurant kitchen or from within a 150-mile driving radius. "Here you have this young chef, who, in another generation would have been a doctor or a lawyer," says Nathan. "But he's using his mind to think about food."
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