The Best Parsley

It’s been a time of what I can only describe as heroic, humbling…alright I’ll name it. It’s been hell. How to make that into the best parsley? It’s the best hell ever?

So I shut up for the last 8 months. And just took one step at a time. One day at a time. It’s all so cliché and yet for me, those little tips can were my saving grace.

Ironically, the veil of darkness finally lifted the day my dad died, 6 weeks ago.  In the company of my siblings,  my step mom, my dad’s brother and sister in law, and two rabbis close to our family, we witnessed my father’s last breaths, walking through those final steps of his journey. First with laughter: the rabbis hadn’t heard my fathers favorite joke and my brother just couldn’t resist a new audience. Then with prayers: Hospice Rabbi Bunny Friedman said the prayer for the soul making it’s final transition as we whispered last words to my dad, feeling his breathing slowing. And then with tears. Just minutes after Rabbi Bunny finished the final prayer, my dad took his final breath. If one’s death is at all the mark of one’s life, my dad’s life was extraordinary. And it was.

Born in 1926 in Detroit to immigrant parents, my dad was the Jewish Horatio Alger. First one in his family to go to college, he graduated from Wayne State Law School courtesy of the GI Bill. He and my mom moved out of the city in early 1966, before “white flight”. Their destination: rural Bloomfield Hills ,when many of the roads were still dirt and clothes didn’t have designer labels. When my grandfather Ben, who had arrived in the US at  17 with $7 in his pocket, first saw our new home on the hill with the acre+ lawn and built in swimming pool, he looked at my father with tears in his eyes and said, “Who would ever have thought that the son of  a man like me could achieve this?” My grandfather loved America. My father shared that love.

My dad was an early adapter: snow skiing in the 50s, support for Israel when it was just founded, pride in his Judiasm in the 60s and 70ss,  when many American Jews were focusing on assimilation. He taught us loyalty, honesty, and the importance of living a life bigger than ourselves. He modeled integrity, generosity and an impeccable sense of responsibility and honor.

He was far from perfect. He could be judgemental, harsh and even mean to those (including yours truly) who didn’t share his choices or lifestyle. He could be impatient and dismissive of things that he didn’t find important. He wasn’t always demonstrative with his love and affection to those closest to him. But despite any of this, to paraphrase Dr. Seuss: "he meant what he said and he said what he meant, my dad was loyal 100%”.  My dad was a fierce advocate of the importance of maintaining close family connections, no matter the differences. 

So why do I share this? And why would a darkness that had lasted off and on for 3 years lift at his passing? I’m not sharing this because it’s “the best parsley"  because it has made a huge difference to me and because I’m hoping it can make a difference to you. 

My dad’s spirit came to me when he died and filled me with light. I think many of us around his bed felt it. He was a big man with a huge spirit and a love of life. There’s no way that leaves this plane without going somewhere. And as the days and weeks passed, something else happened. All the love that my dad had for me started to enter me in a way it hadn’t when for many, many years. 

Throughout the years, our relationship could be challenging. He didn’t love my choices. And he let me know in no uncertain terms.  I felt that he could be narrow-minded and judgemental.  And I didn’t keep that a secret.  I drove him crazy. He hurt my feelings. We loved, even adored each other, but it wasn’t easy for us to be together. Often it was downright painful.

Now my dad’s love is permeating me, and his strengths and wisdom are shining more brightly than ever. Without the duality of our physical beings to collide, we are just spirits, loving each other completely. No judgement, no disappointment.

I am witnessing this as I witness my own parenting with my daughter, who can challenge me to my core, but whom I love with every breath. Am I to wait until I die for her to feel my complete unconditional love?

This is the lesson that I have the audacity to share in this blog. Certainly we are spirit beings in physical bodies for a reason. Our challenge (perhaps our task?): to love each other thoroughly through all of our challenges and imperfections. How then to move further, to build families, community, society?  That isn’t going to be easy, always fun or painless.

But as we move through our lives, can we remember to connect with the spirit in each person we see, without regard to their habits, manners, even their personalities or choices? Can we remember that we are all spirits, traveling through this earthly plane, doing the best that we can while we are here?

2 years ago, I named this blog “The Best Parsley” due to my tendency towards hyperbole best described by (and only partially mocked by) my cousin when I tasted a piece of parsley directly a farmer's soil, immediately coining it, “the best parsley”. Like my father, in blessed memory, I have passion for my preferences.  I tend to think they are “the best”. And I tend to let others know in no uncertain terms.

Maybe they are the best. Maybe they are, in fact,  the worst. But today, as the sun dips behind the trees in the Northern Michigan spot that I so love, I feel blessed to have received the lesson that the best parsley is the one that we share without reservations. Without conditions. Without judgement.

I am honored to be my father, Steven I Victor’s daughter. I strive to live a life with as much integrity and enthusiasm as his. And I also strive to keep my heart open to every being that passes my way. If I can even remember that aspiration, then I will have a legacy that is not only worthy of my father, but of my daughter as well.

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Ann Arbor sure has changed in 25 years!

Writing this,  I am sitting by the wood fireplace at Selma Café, a weekly breakfast at the Ann Arbor home of Jeff McCabe and Lisa Gottleib. Every Friday for the past two years, as many as 186 people pay $12-$15  for a sumptuous locally-sourced  breakfast, while raising money to fund local farms, hoophouses and a sustainable food system in SE Michigan. Jeff just cut off a sliver of homemade prosciutto at the four-top where I am sitting, duck livers are soaking in milk for the “duck confit and poached egg on charred bread” entree, and the conversation is about advanced engineering of hoop houses. Executive Chefs from U of M Catering Department, donned in crisp white chef coats, are braising local beet greens, warming buckwheat crepes and frying up local root vegetables. The coffee is strong and locally roasted  (Roos Coffee) the tea is loose and locally –grown; the salad greens are perfectly dressed and grown in a 4 season hoop house nearby.  And,  by the way, I haven’t been around this many carnivorous locavores…well…ever.

This is not the tofu-crunching Ann Arbor of the 80s.

Ann Arbor and Avalon have always had a special relationship. Wildflour, which closed just months before Avalon opened, was an original source of inspiration for Avalon. And throughout the years, our Ann Arbor wholesale clientele has continued to grow in both size and enthusiasm. More and more cultural tourists visit us from Ann Arbor; students from U of M are now a steady stream of new Detroit residents.

The loop is beginning to close.  I am thrilled to be a guest chef (ok, really a sous chef and trafficker  of Praline French Toast) with Maggie Long, Executive Chef and Proprietor of Ann Arbor’s famed Jolly Pumpkin (and loyal Avalon customer) next Friday, March 4th at Selma Café,  I’ll sling root vegetable hash to crowds of  locals giving  their hard earned time and money to  create a new vital and sustainable regional food economy.

Check out Selma’s wonderful website at www.repastspresentandfuture.org to find out more about the incredible work they are doing. And join Maggie and me on Friday, March 4^th, from 6:30 a.m.-10:00 at 722 Soule Blvd. You will see a few familiar faces from Avalon. You will meet some great new people from Ann Arbor. And you can help close the loop further, creating an even stronger local food movement in SE Michigan.

And the food is gonna rock.

Jackie

It seems like just yesterday that I was running soft whole wheat loaves of yeasty bread through the faded green bread slicer  at Wildflour Bakery in Ann Arbor. I watched in awe and delight as co-founder Annie, in her long hippie skirt, ate raw cloves of garlic, baking bread at dawn.  It was the 80s, and I was a periodic student volunteer, in between political science classes and protests against intervention in Central America.

Ann Arbor sure has changed in 25 years!

Writing this,  I am sitting by the wood fireplace at Selma Café, a weekly breakfast at the Ann Arbor home of Jeff McCabe and Lisa Gottleib. Every Friday for the past two years, as many as 186 people pay $12-$15  for a sumptuous locally-sourced  breakfast, while raising money to fund local farms, hoophouses and a sustainable food system in SE Michigan. Jeff just cut off a sliver of homemade prosciutto at the four-top where I am sitting, duck livers are soaking in milk for the “duck confit and poached egg on charred bread” entree, and the conversation is about advanced engineering of hoop houses. Executive Chefs from U of M Catering Department, donned in crisp white chef coats, are braising local beet greens, warming buckwheat crepes and frying up local root vegetables. The coffee is strong and locally roasted  (Roos Coffee) the tea is loose and locally –grown; the salad greens are perfectly dressed and grown in a 4 season hoop house nearby.  And,  by the way, I haven’t been around this many carnivorous locavores…well…ever.

This is not the tofu-crunching Ann Arbor of the 80s.

 Ann Arbor and Avalon have always had a special relationship. Wildflour, which closed just months before Avalon opened, was an original source of inspiration for Avalon. And throughout the years, our Ann Arbor wholesale clientele has continued to grow in both size and enthusiasm. More and more cultural tourists visit us from Ann Arbor; students from U of M are now a steady stream of new Detroit residents.

The loop is beginning to close.  I am thrilled to be a guest chef (ok, really a sous chef and trafficker  of Praline French Toast) with Maggie Long, Executive Chef and Proprietor of Ann Arbor’s famed Jolly Pumpkin (and loyal Avalon customer) next Friday, March 4th at Selma Café,  I’ll sling root vegetable hash to crowds of  locals giving  their hard earned time and money to  create a new vital and sustainable regional food economy.

 Check out Selma’s wonderful website at www.repastspresentandfuture.org to find out more about the incredible work they are doing. And join Maggie and me on Friday, March 4^th, from 6:30 a.m.-10:00 at 722 Soule Blvd. You will see a few familiar faces from Avalon. You will meet some great new people from Ann Arbor. And you can help close the loop further, creating an even stronger local food movement in SE Michigan.

 And the food is gonna rock.

 Jackie

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 I am sitting amidst unpacked boxes in my new digs- in the Meis van der Rohe townhouse in Lafayette Park. I just bought a unit after a year and a half of renting.  The space is  amazing: light, spacious, and, in a nod to middle age, sexy-great storage. It feels like a new beginning and I am grateful.

 I am also tired, but in a good way. 12 hours of moving on Saturday (with my buddies at BOS Moving at my side) just wasn’t enough: I needed a sleepover babysitter so that I could go to George N’Namdi’s opening on Saturday night in the new Sugar Hill District on E. Forest, East of Woodward, behind MOCAD.

The longest continually-operating African American art dealer in the country, George and his amazing wife Carmen, have been working towards this for many years: visioning, renovating, business plan writing, borrowing, patching, etc. And when Detroit  comes out, we  come out in stye.

Amazing. Nefertiti (owner of  neighbor business Textures by Nefertiti), with waist length dread locks, tied up atop her regal head,  worked that patio naturally, showing up those 20 and 30 year olds (sorry, ladies) with her natural prowess. Nef’s professional modeling days behind her, she knows how to work the room. Her true beauty: she doesn’t know she’s working it. Nef’s beauty is so deep it comes out the other side. That’s what we get in Detroit. Deep beauty.

 So back to George. The painting that was done of George for the occasion by Bernard Williams, painter out of Chicago says more than words. Vibrant yellow on expansiv6 x 5 foot  (at least!) canvass: an abstract representation of his iconic face, with his crumpled hat and eyes closed. And out of the corner of his right eye emanates a spray of rainbow colors

 Nef and I talk about it the next day; how in Detroit the secret is to ignore reality and figure out how to relate to it at the same time. We are spiritual beings and yet we are here on earth: our mission to relate to other humans. Don’t let reality get you down; our credo.

 The party was bursting with pride, art, connection. White square lounging couches outside on an indian summer evening.  Fashion, movies, music and poetry. Come on boys and girls: it is Detroit. We all come out and smile at each other with ease. We have arrived because George has arrived. We are home.

 The evening proceeds with abandon: warm pastry fresh out of the oven at the bakery.. Unpack for hours the next day with dear friends, Liz and Angela, who have stuck by me through thick and thin.

 Tonight, had to get a sitter again; rare for these short joint custody days. Clandestine only comes once a year and last time it was the social event of the season. This time, David Schon, #1 Detroit fan-who-doesn’t-live-in-Detroit,  flies in from Washington D.C. to attend. Here’s the gig: you pay $60 in advance and get to have a fabulous dinner prepared by some of the areas best chefs in a “pop up” restaurant in the city. Where? Stop by the pick up spot an hour before and get your map.

 Last night was at the formerly-abandoned  Cadillac Body Service shop on Grand River and Joy Road. 30 foot American flag covered the wall; Steve Jarosz playing flamenco guitar; champagne on the roof at sunset and 125 people who are willing to come out and pay good money to eat in a garage. The food was sublime, the wine bountiful, the espresso creamy good and the spirit? We are all shocked to have found each other. So many of us have been in this alone for so many years. Now that there are places to come together, more people willing to take risks and nothing left to lose, we are finding each other again and again in places surprising and mundane.

 Back to  unpacking, so my kids can get to their clothes and toys. No more social events this week.

 But it is the height of the color change and Empire in Leelenau Country is as good as it gets. Rafi and I head back into the northern woods on Friday.

The boxes will wait. More parsley ahead.

I hate packing like I hate shopping at Costco. Like I hate using a dirty outhouse.  Maybe that’s why I didn’t start until 10 p.m. last night, after putting the kids to bed.. So…with 4 hours of sleep under my sagging eyes, I arrived at the airport this morning  to fly to the Netherlands, to the international  (mystery) meeting on Metropolitan Agriculture.

20 of us  from Detroit/Flint are attending the meeting in Rotterdam; twelve flying together today. Quite a number of the Flint participants are younger while those of us from Detroit are…well….young at heart.  

One of my fellow Detroiters is Kathryn Underwood. Kathryn is a staff planner for  the City Planning Commission of Detroit and has been a tireless advocate of urban agriculture in the city for over a decade. She, along with her  dynamic “ adopted daughter”,  Ashley Atkinson (Urban Ag. Program Director for Greening of Detroit) , have been fiercely (and fearlessly!)  working away both in the neighborhoods and at City Hall…way before urban agriculture was “sexy”.  Confronted with layers of antiquated laws and policies on the local, state and federal level, Kathryn and her peers are working hard to craft policies  that will be both flexible enough to  meet the unique opportunities of growing food in a city with 84,000 vacant parcels of land, yet far-sighted enough to anticipate the needs of both city residents and farmers. Kathryn once described her job as “building the bike and riding it at the same time.”

Lately the wheels have spinning even faster..  The local food movement  is flourishing inside the city, bringing more and more chefs and restaurants into the fold. Internationally, top chefs are all about local food. But in Detroit, local can mean in the neighborhood across town.

Last Saturday, The Detroit  Black Community Food Security Network, along with 500 supporters,  harvested hundreds of pounds of fall crops at their annual Harvest Celebration, in Detroit’s Rouge Park. Their “D  Town” farm, four parcels nestled in the fertile valley along the Rouge River,  are a shining example of the physical beauty of farming, the bounty that it creates and the community it fosters.

On the same day, Greening of Detroit hosted its 20^th Anniversary celebration , with 20 local chefs from Eve, Grizzly Peak and Grange in Ann Arbor to El Barzone, Roast, Capuchin Soup Kitchen (Chef Alison consistently kicks out some amazing food, seemingly everywhere)..and other local favorites. Chef Nick from the Henry Ford (who buys over 70% of their food locally in season!) and John Summerville, who has been cooking locally-sourced French fare for over two decades  at The Lark, highlighted the main stage, joined by local food icon Lorraine from “Sweet Lorraine’s” restaurant.   Over 500 more people filled Shed 5, enjoying the local food,  music and spirits.   

But for me, the heart of the celebration came in the weeks preceding it, as local businesses (including Avalon) scrambled to find as much locally-grown produce as possible, pushing the local food chain even harder from the demand side. Local farmers, many inside the city limits, met the demand. (Full sustainability disclosure: an Avalon chef did drive to Ann Arbor to get bulbs of fresh, local garlic)

Detroit-grown produce was also highlighted at Earthworks Annual Harvest Dinner a few weeks ago, (feeding over 300 guests), and  again last Sunday at the monthly community brunch at Brother Nature Farm in North Corktown, hosted by Angela and Greg Newsom, (which fed well over 100). I ate amazing food at both events.

And  the world is watching. Over a dozen cities receive technical assistance in  urban agriculture from Detroit’s expertise.  And last weekend there were so many documentary and news crews filming the activities of this emerging movement that, as one D Town farmer noted, “the filmmakers were filming the filmmakers.”

As the Mayor  holds town meetings, asking how we  should use our vacant land and redefine our city to reflect current realities, Detroiters are  already answering in real time:  in our neighborhoods, restaurants,  churches and even parks.

The conference activities start tomorrow. Which will actually be in the middle of the night tonight, Detroit time. But I can sleep on Friday when I get home. And besides, I have at least 4 hours of sleep under my eyes.

Kathryn Underwood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

In Detroit, a local food economy is growing...

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory meets Miss America. That’s what this process feels like, as I find myself preparing for a 5 day (3 night!) international meeting in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and  suddenly immersed in a newly created food system collaberative, obliquely titled “Metropolitan Agriculture” . I feel lucky and excited, but also curious where this golden wrapper is taking me….

It started in late August, with a restrained email invitation to a 2 day meeting to address strengthening the local food system in the Detroit/Flint area. 2 days? They’ve  got to be joking!. I need to put 2 days into creating a fxxxg website for the bakery or maybe a photo album for my dear children? But Dan Carmody, hilariously self-effacing (and equally effective) Executive Director of the Eastern Market Corporation assures me that as a “food processor”, my voice is needed at the table. I concede, knowing that I actually love a meeting like most normal Americans love a football game on a warm fall Sunday. I’m a geek for process. When it works. And I am, if nothing else, a hopeless optimist. I sign up.

On the appointed day, I slide in after depositing children throughout the city,  to find a circle  of 50 “food activists” introducing themselves:, a 19 year old farmer apprentice from inner city Detroit ; a  Flint couple who have been teaching karate and farming to neighborhood youth for 30 years. The directors of Detroit and Flint farmers markets are there, as are foundation people, urban farmers as well as those from rural areas directly outside our urban corridor, grassroots urban agriculture organizers , a commissioner from Detroit's Planning Commision, a key administrator for DPS food systems.

And, to my horror, each is depositing a symbol that they brought with them representing what they offer to the  group for the next two days. Clearly, I should have read the 4 page document they sent me all the way through. Next time…

Luckily, I come in uniform. Donning my Detroit Lover t shirt, I glide effortlessly into the “vision holding” space: my love for my city transcending any reality that the world can throw at us. I see an agri-urban economy thriving in Detroit as clearly as I saw the bakery 15 years ago. In fact, when we started the bakery, Ann and I saw it growing with an urban agrculture movement. But 15 years later, we couldn’t’ have imagined that 1200 gardens and farms would be growing 160 tons of organic produce inside the city in one growing season and that Avalon would be buying a steady stream of it. Like the bakery, the visionary reality has outstripped the vision. And folks  wonder why I love Detroit?  For a lifelong activist, this stuff is gold!

For the next 2 days, the magical facilitators, Tuesday and Joe, midwife us elegantly through a transformative process of indentifying problems, opportunities, resources and possible collaborations. The group goes on  “learning journeys” to parts of the food system to learn more about the current landscape: Whole Foods, Holiday Market, Market Fresh Salsa company, Body, Mind and Spirit Restaurant and more. We are asked to remove our “lenses” that give us the answers we already know, and inquire deeply to learn what exists and why.

The groups reconvene and share the journeys, revealing  underlying issues such as race and class, but also common goals and opportunities. Somehow, by the end of two days, we have created actual action steps to address this broken food system that creates so much food, yet  leaves so many without adequate nutrition; all the while contributing to global climate change and suburban sprawl. The problems are huge. Our  solutions, amazingly,  seem visionary yet manageable. I leave with my heart racing, energized at the opportunity to sit with other activists for two days  After spending the past 14 years, counting raisins, counting pennies, hiring and firing, making sales calls and marketing, marketing, marketing, this is spa for me.

Before we leave, the facilitators  ask who would be interested in representing our region in the Netherlands, convening with  five teams like ours from throughout the world: Johanessburg, London, Sao Paolo, Brazil, Chinai, India  as well as Detroit /Flint.   All expenses paid.  In a month. Coincidentally, I have planned that  week off to travel to Seattle.. But Seattle can wait. I  even  have an active passport . I say yes.  When I get the call two days later, telling me  that I am one of 20 to go to Rotterdam,  I actually squeal, “I feel like Miss America!”.

Now I just have to figure out who is sending me and what we are going to do there. That’s where Willy Wonka comes in.

I leave September 27^th.