True Food

When she was a little girl and wanted a snack, chef and food educator Evelyn Cheatham would go out back and pull up a carrot. It was handy, satisfying, and better for her than a cookie, according to her mother, who kept a small vegetable plot in San Francisco.

Eating fresh, local food in season and calling the farmer by name wasn't a movement back then. But today a backyard carrot is a classic example of what might be called True Food.

It also goes by other names: Real Food, Slow Food, Smart Food, Feel-Good Cuisine, Ethical Eating and the like. All speak to a broad trend focused on food that is healthful, tasty, in season, and can be traced to a small-scale nearby farm or purveyor that most likely uses organic, biodynamic or sustainable methods. And its epicenter might be right here under our noses.

Foodies, restaurateurs and growers have been talking about the importance of this personal and conscious link between consumer and producer for some time. It's why some farmers markets have become destination spots. And why restaurant menus tell you not only which grape-growing valley your wine came from, but the name of the farmer who raised the pig in your pork chops and which local artisan baked your bread.

"There are other places that have beautiful wine and artisanal producers and good chefs," said Honore Comfort, executive director of Sonoma County Vintners. "But nowhere else has the three-way -- wine, food and chefs -- combined with the inherent sense of hospitality in Sonoma County."

For that reason, Comfort likes to call this county "the dining table for the whole country."

John Ash, who is credited as one of the originators of California Wine Country cuisine, has spent two decades teaching legions of professional and home chefs how to set a True Food table.

"For a long time, Northern California had a sensitivity to organic agriculture and sustainable farming not shared around the country," said the Santa Rosa-based chef, educator and author. "It's been alive here longer than other places. That's given us a leadership position.... Sonoma County has been pivotal in creating a consciousness in other parts of the country, which know us for our food, our wine and our sensibility to ethical eating."

Dry Creek winemaker Lou Preston, who likes to talk food, wine and sustainability with visitors and runs his tractor on used cooking oil, agrees the region "plays a significant role" in this movement.

"We have the agricultural tradition. And a significant presence of foodies who seek wholesome food. There's definitely a movement afoot," he said. It includes notions of "sustainability, progressive politics, food sophistication and practical nutrition. And casting off these chains of conventional ways, be it chemical farming or shipping food halfway around the world."

More than hippie food

Lest anyone think this is a retro, 1970s back-to-the land creation, practitioners quickly point out the former was a counterculture scene. Today's is more sophisticated and more mainstream.

"Back then was more an off-the-grid thing," said Jil Hales, whose Barndiva restaurant in Healdsburg celebrates local, fresh and seasonal cuisine. "Remember the whole wheat bread in those days? You could have killed someone with it."

Still, True Food has a definite political and social edge, prompted by a mixture of health, economic, environmental and social concerns. Its popularity has been boosted by food scares over E. coli and mad cow disease, prompting consumers to ask questions like, "Where did this beef come from?"

Worries over obesity and diabetes and an awareness by a record-sized generation of the health perils of aging are part of the impetus. Plus the growing backlash to factory farms and fast food, where volume and price matter more than taste and nutrition.

"A lot is in response to some of the horrors of the food industry, food that doesn't taste good and what fast food has wrought, in terms of obesity and diabetes," said Cheatham, who still likes her carrots.

She talks about making people food-literate and starting with kids. As part of her Worth Our Weight food service training program, she takes young people on field trips to farms to demonstrate that "dinner doesn't come from a window and lettuce doesn't come from a plastic bag."

Veggies and education

North of Santa Rosa on Airport Boulevard near the freeway ramp sits the Tierra Vegetables stand with neat rows of crops in view. Lee James farms there with her brother, Wayne.

Her customers like knowing the source of their food, but she thinks most Americans "care more about who makes their running shoes than who grows their potatoes."

Educating them on why they should care is the job of Wayne's wife, Evie Truxaw, who runs the stand, tells customers what to do with rutabagas and has a sign saying, "The strawberries in this jam are from this very field."

She likes the term "real food" and said the difference is in the taste. "Kids who won't eat the cardboard broccoli that you buy at the store ... will eat it from the field."

Fresh, local food is not necessarily cheaper. You can buy a bag of apples in a grocery store that may cost the same as two just picked from the tree. But it can be more economical in the long run, said Truxaw. "If you spend more money on fruits and vegetables that your kids will eat because they taste good, that's really a bargain."

Chef Ash quotes Kentucky farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry, who worried about America's becoming a nation of "industrial eaters."

In his cooking classes, Ash passes out copies of Berry's essay "The Pleasures of Eating," in which he describes the "passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food, to confront a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived."

Ash, who likes the term "ethical eating," said the trend is to educate the public as to why organic is healthier and why sustainable farming is good conservation. He thinks the public caution over trans fat came from such awareness: The public learned about it, agreed they didn't like it, and "no trans fat" labeling on cookies and crackers quickly followed.

A food-literate public is also eager to try out new tastes, said Ash, noting that "10 years ago the portobello mushroom was considered exotic. Now it's commonplace."

So are stories on the pleasures of eating fresh and regional, showing up in Travel and Leisure magazine and USA Today.

"We are in the center of something here," agreed Hales. "We're singularly blessed because of our topography. That is not to say that there aren't other places where people farm well, eat seasonally and don't expect ... strawberries in December!"

Politics of food

Michael Dimock is a local organizer for the worldwide Slow Food movement, which originated in Italy 20 years ago. It promotes local culinary traditions, regional produce, preserving endangered fruits and vegetables and a slow, relaxed cooking and dining time -- the goal being to appreciate food more.

While some complain that Slow Food is elitist fare, Dimock counters that it's really more democratic. "We have to be willing to pay a few cents more per pound or per ounce to make sure the farmworker gets paid fairly."

Hales, whose high-end Barndiva menu might declare that the pastrami is Niman Ranch and the goat cheese is Cypress Grove, thinks the move to fresh and local is a political act in another way.

"What this means to the person on the street -- and I don't mean a foodie or a wine person or an organic freak -- is control. There are so many things a person can't do anything about. Iraq. Global warming. But I can have control over my own table, my garden and my family."

But it still must please the palate.

"Ultimately," said Hales, "I do this because it tastes better."

For her, the bottom line on True Food is simple: "It tastes good. It's good for you. And the people who provide it are nice people who farm well, and you want them to make a good living."

You can reach Staff Writer Susan Swartz at 521-5284 or sswartz@pressdemocrat.com.