A.V. Crofts's Blog, page 2

sharing economy

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Final shared Thursday lunch of Summer 2015. (Photo A.V. Crofts)

 

There is much talk about the sharing economy these days.  Today, Amazon announced an “Uber-esque” model of delivery driver. Yesterday, Airbnb reportedly acquired a Russian gadget company, prompting all kinds of partnership speculation. On a personal note, last week I used Car2Go after dinner to safely ferry a visiting friend from my home to her hotel.

But is the concept of “sharing” accurate?

All the above examples involve a currency transfer. Sure, someone else will use my Car2Go vehicle later that night, but we each pay for the privilege. According to global business consultant Olivier Blanchard, renaming it the “micro-transaction economy” is an better description, as sharing is a misnomer.

I partake in a true sharing economy–and not surprisingly it involves food.

Once a week (twice in the summer) I meet with friends over lunch or dinner for a shared meal: shared ingredients, shared labor, and shared eating. Menus are typically discussed in advance but often involve a fair amount of inspiration from whatever is on hand.

Photographed above was a typical shared lunch this summer. Everything on the plate, save the cheese, came from within 50 miles of Portland, Maine, from farms like Maple Springs, or other farms that travel to the Portland farmers market each Wednesday. (Chew on this: the total of Maine organic farms has increased by 36% in the last seven years.)

These meals have a stone soup quality to them: the combining of our ingredients yields the best tasting meal. Words and ideas are exchanged while we eat, not money.

We are all richer for it.

 

clay cornucopia

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Pieces from The Food Chain Project, a pop-up supermarket made from sculptural groceries that represent artist Itamar Gilboa’s meals over 365 days. (Photo by Ronit Eden / www.roniteden.com)

A year and a half ago, I took my first clay class. Sure, my fingers had shaped chocolate-colored small-coiled bowls in elementary school, but that was the extent of my experimentation with ceramics.

I signed up wanting to handbuild. While there is magic in a lump of clay transforming thanks to steady hands and the centrifugal force of a pottery wheel, I was taking clay class to slow myself down. The wheel sped me up. I was also taking clay class to use my hands to build things in a different way than I do building with words, fingers, and a keyboard.

Five classes later, I now eat off and drink from what I have built. My homemade porcelain dinner and dessert plates are stacked next to my homemade bowls. My mugs come in various sizes and shapes–some pressed intentionally to form the exact grip of my hand. Meals take on a new meaning when you cook them yourself. They also take on a new meaning when you not only make the food, but the wares as well.

Artist Itimar Gilboa has given meaning to his meals by casting in plaster a representation of every item he consumed for an entire year. The result was The Food Chain Project, a traveling installation of over 8,000 items, each one for sale and with a percentage of the profits supporting organizations that address global food supply and demand issues.

As an Israeli working in The Netherlands, Gilboa was inspired to track his meals when he noticed how his consumption habits changed after moving from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam. Seasonality, accessibility, and affordability all contribute to the food we buy.

The Food Chain Project makes meaning through what the 8,000 pieces represent, as well as what their sale in part provides: the funds to feed people. Gilboa observed that his meals in turn supported the meals of many more. “What I ate turned into art, which, when sold, can again become food.”

 

the biking piewalla

 

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A dabba presents the perfect container for baking, transporting, and eating single pie servings. (Photo A.V. Crofts)

This post originally appeared at  Washington Bikes/Bicycle Alliance of Washington.

I sold my car two years ago and my bike became my ride.

The shift came with all kinds of freedom: parking, traffic, and buckets of savings on car insurance, gas, and maintenance. I also get to eat like a horse and burn it off on my commute.

But for all the benefits, a few challenges presented themselves when four wheels become two. One of them involved dessert. Pie, in particular.

As a pie maker, the safe transport of a freshly baked pie on my bike has particularly vexed me. Seattle’s hills are not gentle on a pie.

The answer, I discovered, was a dabba.

Dabbas, the stainless steel stackable lunch boxes most widely used in India, have starred in recent films like The Lunchbox or the documentary The Dabbawallas, featuring the astonishing network of 4,000 delivery men (dabbawallas) who deliver more than 100,000 lunch boxes daily to offices across Bombay.

Many years ago, friends gifted me with a personalized dabba from Bombay. Until lately it was a patient presence in my kitchen, awaiting action that never came because my leftovers required a microwave’s touch.

One morning I had a flash of inspiration: what if I baked personalized pies in each of the dabba layers? What if, after they baked and cooled, they were stacked, tucked into my bike basket, and served as is at the dinner party?

Look, Ma. No pie pan.

The inaugural pies were a mixed berry trio of raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. This particular dinner party was an intimate affair, so I baked off three individual pies in the oven in their dabba layer and let them sit until they came to room temperature. I then assembled my dabba and hit the road.

My first transport test was the five miles from my home to the University of Washington Seattle campus. I checked the pies upon arrival at work—perfect. They remained unscathed from the elevation gain from the Burke-Gilman Trail to the Upper Fremont dinner party destination, where I triumphantly handed over the dessert dabba to my hosts. We ate them under an outdoor canopy. All that was required was forks.

That’s one of the keys to reveling in the biking life: it might take me longer to reach my destination, but I’m happier (and hungrier) when I get there. Especially when I arrive with pie.

bombs and breakfast

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Humanitarian Communications training room in Antakya, Turkey. (Photo by A.V. Crofts)

This post originally appeared in Flip the Media.

The lively city of Antakya is nestled in a valley formed by the Nur Mountains, only 14 miles from the Mediterranean Sea in the southernmost tip of Turkey. Last month, as my plane banked and shuddered through the updrafts for a safe landing at the Hatay airport, I was mesmerized by the stunning natural beauty of the region. Green-carpeted mountainsides and sweeping deep blue skies greeted me as I poked my head out of the plane into the fresh air. It was hard to believe that 12 miles away in Syria was, and is, a war zone.

I traveled to Antakya to deliver a three-day humanitarian communications training for GOAL SYRIA, a country office of GOAL, the Irish international development organization headquartered in Dublin.

For safety reasons, the GOAL SYRIA office operates out of Turkey, with Syrian nationals on staff crossing the border regularly to deliver aid and manage rebuilding programs. GOAL SYRIA is currently one of GOAL’s largest operations, given that the war has displaced almost 8 million Syrians internally and sent another 3 million across country borders seeking refuge. While the scale of human suffering is hard to fathom, GOAL CEO Barry Andrews gave it a good try at TEDxUCD in Dublin last June.

The plan was to have all Syria-based staff join my training in Turkey. However, the Turkish government closed the border a week before I arrived so more than half of the participants had no choice but to use the online platform Blackboard Learn in an environment with already fragile Internet connectivity. On top of that, two of the cities where the majority of the Syrian-based participants live were bombed the night after our first day of the training.

One participant named Walid Almawas was particularly determined. He managed to log onto the online platform and follow along with the entire training, regularly typing thoughtful comments and questions in the chat box. On the second day of the training, when it was time for the participants to head out into the glorious sunshine for a story photo shoot, his question to me in the chat box shook me to my senses. While Walid was geographically as close as the crow flies, his situation was worlds away from mine.

How can I complete this assignment, Anita? It is not safe to go outdoors.

I thought fast and typed faster.

Walid, you don’t have to go outside to tell a story. I bet there’s a story you can tell inside your home.

He answered immediately.

My wife is making breakfast. Do you mean I could tell a story about that?

When we think of humanitarian agencies, we often think about them as being in the business of providing things–tents, water, blankets, and food. GOAL recognizes that providing stories such as Walid’s is important, too, and that those stories must be told. War zones, disease outbreaks and natural disasters can quickly turn humans into abstractions and statistics. Humanitarian communications is about ethically documenting stories within communities that showcase resilience and optimism in the face of unspeakable sorrow and staggering perseverance. Or just the simple fact that life continues amidst atrocities, and in the morning you make breakfast for those you love.

Relief agencies like GOAL are intentionally non-partisan, yet they do bear witness to the events that unfold around them. The stories that they capture and share at a grassroots level become part of the country’s collective memory. And we all know that compelling stories from the field inspire vital donations. But, perhaps most importantly, GOAL communications share stories in a way that preserves the dignity of those involved and reminds us of what we all have in common. Instantly. Everywhere.

Walid sent me his photo essay that evening. His wife preparing food at the stove. A second photo of his 3-year-old son in front of a tray of food. His infant son in a highchair. A self-portrait.

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Self Portrait by Walid Almawas.

In a war zone, the ritual of breakfast at home with your family is more than just an act of love. It’s hope.

That is always a story worth telling.

 

 

g for gelato

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The author with Georgiana Peacher at Frontier Cafe in 2012.  (Photo courtesy of Jessica Esch)

 

I met Georgiana Peacher over a meal in 2003.

G, as friends and I called her, was a poet, a professor, and a playwright. Her life was the stuff of movies: influential encounters as a teen with Amelia Earhart; groundbreaking work in phoniatrics and laryngolngy when few women earned PhDs, let alone tenure track positions; and a blue Sunbeam Alpine convertible she drove from Philadelphia to New York City in one hour flat–not once receiving a speeding ticket.

G died last November at the age of 95. Her body got old, but G remains one of the youngest people I have ever met.

We shared many more Maine meals after our first brunch, from picnics on her back patio to feasts at Frontier Cafe in Brunswick, the town where she lived. But of all of our gastro galavanting, G’s eyes lit up the most for gelato. Brunswick is home to the original Gelato Fiasco, and no trip to see G felt complete without a stop.

Gelato Fiasco boasts a dizzying array of flavors, all displayed with classic decorative sweeps and flourishes of “spatulart.”  Servers will patiently and enthusiastically let you sample them all, if so inclined. The sheer number of choices might have paralyzed some.

But not G.

After all, this was the woman who once wrote, “How many kinds of freedom may be found during a lifetime!”

My first glorious spoonful of gelato this summer will be for her.

handshakes to hugs

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Meet the parents (and the extended family!) over pizza. (Photo by A.V. Crofts)

 

I have spent the last two weeks in the home where I grew up, sharing meals with members of my family who cheered me on from tween to teen to twenty-something and beyond.

My Philadelphia holidays are homecomings.

Many meals have table settings into double digits with an age spread of over 60 years. This was the first Christmas without two venerable matriarchs, my maternal grandmother being one of them. But her presence was made visible through the legacy of food she prepared so often and so expertly for all of us: apple pie, opera fudge, and cranberry sherbet, to name just three that surfaced this season.

Despite these keen losses, this was a Christmas of family expansion.

My cousin and her fiancé hosted a meal this past Sunday where the parents met for the first time, along with aunts, uncles, and cousins. The meal was held in South Philly at Nomad Pizza, home to thin crust pies that cook in minutes and with one bite transport me back to Napoli, where such techniques originated and the best pizza in the world still emerges from fiery ovens.

There were 21 of us seated around a long wooden table, intentionally distributed so that our families blended from the moment the meal began. Drinks arrived and the arugula salads and meatball appetizers appeared as if by magic. The table buzzed with greetings and introductions.

Hello, my name it Anita.

Welcome!

It is wonderful to meet you.

As the pizza began to show up—two standouts were the truffle mushroom with a fresh farm egg and the kale with spicy chorizo—the conversations gained momentum and animation. Some musical chairs began, giving people a chance to talk to the other end of the table. By dessert it was discovered between bites of tiramisu that two couples at the table shared not only an anniversary year, but also the exact same day. Delight at this happy coincidence only underscored the welcome sense of co-mingling as an enlarged family.

By the time we tumbled out into the crisp South Philly air, handshakes that started the meal had turned to hugs at its end. My clan grew bigger as I beamed.