It’s actually a hair on fire emergency...
Cookhouse Kitchens from the 1940's partner with local regenerative farms
A genuine crisis imperils us today, and clearly also the planet we live on. We are dramatically unhealthy, and our planet is spinning off to a dangerous place. But with infused wisdom from the Sierra Club, we realize that a simple 1940’s “cookhouse kitchen” contains a vital “secret sauce”. Without it we could actually be doomed, as dramatic as that sounds.
The long cherished “cookhouse kitchen”vision comes from a childhood in an Italian community in northwestern Nevada. It is clear that local regenerative farms, partnered with nearby cookhouse kitchens, could restore the integrity of our entire food system.
Linking local farmers to old-fashioned real food kitchens could “save a fortune” on food miles. Cookhouses are the missing link. With cookhouses in place, regenerative farmers once again hold the center of food production. The food is fresh, unprocessed and full of power. And the planet’s fossil fuel burden is potentially reduced by 70%,
Hungry people today risk their rent money to buy expensive, packaged, ultra processed food, all of it injected with machine mandated solvents and degreasers. (Twenty-five years ago, factory food lobbyists wanted to know how to get their products labeled “organic.” Someone said..”what about the solvents and degreasers?” Someone else said “but they’re in everything!” And everyone waived it off. )
Today if you examine your “organic” packaged and processed food you can reflect upon that moment. The solvents and degreasers are still there. No one can keep their machines running without them.
And then there are the micronized plastic bits in everyone’s intestinal tracts, and teflon in our kitchens. Can you hear that big truck rattling down the road from Chicago? That’s bringing you machine made Fritos. Meanwhile, our very young people are dying from colon cancer in droves.
Big Ag e-coli and the bird flu now threaten all packaged foods (including broccoli, carrots, onions, eggs, cucumbers ). Your food most likely came from another side of the country, or another side of the world. None of this has to happen. Let’s go back to the cookhouse.
Eighty years ago, ranch house kitchens fed around 50 or more people three times a day. Food grown on family ranches and farms stayed there. No food miles!
Harry the Cook, with his the cook’s whites, cap and big cigar, cooked in that kitchen. He was famous for his food. His big platters circulated around the long tables; genuine works of art. His pickled beets are still on every menu we ever published. He did it pretty much all by himself.
Meals prepared in the cookhouse kitchen came from the huge gardens, the 4 orchards, and from deep basements stacked with rows of glass canning jars containing delicious fruit, vegetables, prepared jam, pickles and much more. Beets and berries, peaches, corn and fresh beans, gallon sized olive cans with old boards over them. Bacon just sliced, fresh eggs, bread baked in open fired ovens outdoors .
Long stored produce (potatoes, beets, celery root, parsnips, carrots, onions),was buried underground in deep tunneled root cellars, in 50 lb “gunny sacks”, alongside tractors, hay balers, rakes and more, in a process that dated back to the early 19th century. No packaging.
This, combined with the rooting and rustling activity of chickens, pigs, horses, cattle, turkeys , and more, converging with human and farm rhythms to sequester and bury carbon underground every way, every day. Once underground, the carbon becomes fertilizer. No plastic, no packaging, no food miles. No chemicals. No solvents and degreasers. No big expense and no wars over it.
Travel back in time…..and you see affordable, delicious real food on everyone’s plates. So long ago that it was unthinkable for anyone to be denied a plate or a seat at the table. Food for all was written into our DNA. We heard about people “starving on the streets of Calcutta,” but that was worlds away.
Today the world is suddenly waking up to the need to dispense with corporate food. Everybody eats, and eats well with this “new”concept. Only one layer of mark-up, ultra fresh food, no packaging. No food miles. Free fertilizer that doesn’t have to come from the Ukraine?
Is this the same trillions of dollars in hidden revenue that Elon Musk is wandering around looking for? Is this the health insurance that people appear to be to be willing to kill for? We think it is.
We need your help. Please consider helping us with donations to establish one or more cookhouse sites, nearby. The shared resources, including daily real food meals in your own community, will rebound to you, because we are a non-profit. Your contributions come back to you in the form of tax deductions. And in the form of real food for our burgeoning homeless population. We encourage academics in our community to help us measure the healing potential of real food for people, and for the planet. This can, and needs to, happen quickly. It’s time now.