I have to preface these post with a shout out: the images are from Kyle Roth, a local photographer who does beautiful work and who is a big champion of Cleveland, be sure to read his blog at North Coast Lifestyle and Epstein Design Partners.
Michael Ruhlman is an author and culinary grad. As he stood on the stage and talked, I found myself nodding. He spoke about food and cooking. I can tell you from personally experience that most people do not know what most veggies are, or how they are raised. We are becoming farther detached from our food. He gave us a great talk about food and how cooking are what makes us human.. He quoted from Richard Wrangham’s book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Taking us from our food preparation has made us more separate and more unhealthy. He spoke about how we feed our livestock foods that they were never meant to eat. Furthermore, social problems and illness are on the rise as more of our food is processed and provided to us. Cooking makes us think about what we are eating. It takes effort, which brings families together. When you cook, you look for better ingredients and you learn more about what you are eating and how to make your life better.
Michael Ruhlman is so passionate that he helped to start North Union Farmer’s Market, which has grown to one of the top farmers markets in the region, with multiple locations around the city. He showed us slides of some local producers. Local farms that are doing good things by raising humanely produced pigs that are well treated and humanely slaughtered. Local food is making a comeback because we are starting to learn that cooking makes us better, and not cooking takes stuff away from our lives. We can change things now, simply by taking the time and effort to cook for ourselves and our family. One of the things he mentioned was voting with our dollars. When we buy raw ingredients and cook, we spend our money in support of those who are promoting this industry. On the other hand, those who do spent money on crap are voting for more crap. So what do you want to vote for? And take the time to pick up a pan, rather than McDonald’s for dinner.
image courtesy of Susie Sharp
Tags: cooking, local food, TEDxCLE
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