at a somewhat reduced price. Their buying consistently and buying big makes the relationship worthwhile to the farms.
Ben pulling a ham cut from a locally-raised Tamsworth pig out of its salt bath, on its way to being prosciutto.
Running the kitchen requires skill in cooking seasonally, and most importantly, planning ahead. The summer months are grueling. This is when huge quantities of produce are prepped and either frozen or canned, at some considerable risk to the enterprise, since memberships are monthly and Ben and Kate are putting away food for the winter. Hundreds of pounds of tomatoes are canned, fresh corn is frozen, pestos and other sauces are prepared in bulk and frozen for the long, cold winters. The true test of a community-supported kitchen, in Mark’s words, are “managing and planning for using local foods year-round artfully and gracefully.”
You have to be a big-time foodie to make one of these things work. The hours are long. Delivering the two meals for each member on Tuesday afternoons entails six days of prep and planning. Thursday the menu is planned and all the produce and meats are ordered. On Friday, they’re delivered and stored in preparation for cooking. Saturday is for shopping at the farmers market and the co-op for smaller items. Sunday often means soaking beans and other minor prep work like pulling goods from the freezer to thaw. Monday is the big prep day, and Ben and Kate tag-team taking care of the kids with working in the kitchen. Fillings, sauces and bread doughs are made. Some items, like soups, are packaged up Monday evening. But by the end of the day the kitchen has to be clean and ready to go for the big day.
Tuesday is when it all comes together. Ben is up and cooking by 7 am. Breads go in the oven, and then the most technically difficult foods are assembled. More subtly flavored foods like salads and rice dishes are saved for last to keep them as fresh as possible, as are garnishes and dressings. Packing everything up has to start by noon, and it’s no mean task. Ben takes care of the kids and Kate takes over in the kitchen, breaking down portions according to how many shares there are by household. There are distinct containers (mostly glass) for separate portions of the meal as well as for portion size. Their proper number has to be calculated, retrieved from storage and wiped clean. The meals are portioned out by weight, then lidded or cellophaned. The final part of assembly is packing the entire meal into a reusable, color-coded grocery bag, with the containers on the bottom and more delicate items like bags of salad on top. Different colored bags are for specific diets — vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. Next the bags go into coolers and the coolers are loaded into the station wagon. All this needs to be done by 2 pm. The 24 separate deliveries take about two hours. Finally, it’s all done and Ben and Kate get to enjoy dinner with their kids, knowing they have Wednesday to themselves.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to taste one of Ben and Kate’s scrumptious meals. My timing was wrong, having shown up on a weekend when only minor prep work was happening. This bummed me out, so I was all the more excited when I stumbled upon another clandestine kitchen in Detroit on the tail end of my trip. While I was on my tour of the D-Town farm, I watched as another member of the tour pulled out a bag and began stuffing it with purslane, a troublesome weed that volunteers spent many hours yanking out of the garden beds. I have a funny relationship with this plant. It has always piqued my curiosity, being one of the more choice edible weeds, high in Omega.3s and a great soup thickener. But for the life of me, I’ve never been able to get it to grow. I’d hypothesized that it’s because of the long hot summers in North Carolina, but a summer or two back I was walking along the highway in Birmingham, Alabama, (don’t ask) and found a patch of purslane sprouting out of the scalding black pavement, semis rumbling by, as happy as could be. Some weeds, I guess, are just stubborn, and value their independence above all else. They won’t be civilized in a garden patch.
I couldn’t help but inquire about the purslane’s ultimate destination. The woman, Rakiza, explained she was going to chop it up and put it in a salad for a dinner club she was having later that evening. After some more conversation, and, I expect, some sizing me up on her part, she extended an invitation. She apologized for having to charge for the meal. Little did she know that this would only pique my interest that much more. After some additional inquiry, I learned she was running a raw/vegan speakeasy restaurant every Thursday out of the foreclosed home she was housesitting for a friend. I won’t pretend that I eat raw or vegan very often, but after five weeks on the road eating peanut butter sandwiches and greasy diner eggs, I could feel my colon jumping for joy at the thought.
I showed up that evening, and found a cast of characters from the African-American community of Detroit not often represented in the media. About a dozen folks cycled through over the course of a few hours, many nattily dressed, all devoted to their health and the well-being of their beloved city. There were a fair number of single men, and I can sympathize with the difficulty of cooking healthy meals when alone at home. Teachers, salesmen and delivery drivers came in, served themselves up a plate of raw zucchini-noodle lasagna with a blendered squash-seed filling, a delicious salad with the aforementioned purslane and many other greens, peeled carrots and slices of red peppers, and all washed down with fresh lemonade and apple cider. There was much talk of the city’s troubles and the poor health of Detroit’s citizenry and how that has likely led to much of its social decline. I couldn’t help but butt in and offer some words of encouragement. Okay, Detroit had fallen on hard times, there was no denying that, but I had to give my kudos to everyone in the room, who by concerning themselves with their own health and well-being were acting to reinvigorate their city at its core. Just like the subscribers to Ben and Kate’s community-supported kitchen, the folks spending ten dollars for a scrumptious meal once a week in that quaint foreclosed home were helping to employ Rakiza and her cooking partner, as well as providing revenue for local farms. They were literally sowing the seeds for their community’s revival amongst its decay.
An Interview with Ben
I began by asking Ben what membership in his community-supported kitchen means.
Membership is the keystone of our business.
Membership is what differentiates our business model from that of the personal chef, caterer or a restaurant. Underlying the membership premise is the concept of commitment and relationships.
First of all, members pay us in advance, not a la carte. This financial commitment helps us manage our cash flow and make purchasing decisions with minimized risk, thus allowing us to control our overhead. This in turn allows us to keep membership dues affordable. This concept is radically different from the restaurant model in which owners accept considerable risk buying food in anticipation of sales that may or may not be realized. High mark-ups, decreased quality, and waste become accepted practices.
Secondly, members commit to taking their shares every week of the month. Of course, we are flexible with travel plans or unforeseen circumstances. But in general, if you are here, you agree to receive your share. Again, this helps us know what our monthly income will be and allows us to make business and personal decisions accordingly. Mitigating our risk and providing financial stability, so different from waiting tables or event catering, again reciprocates in keeping prices affordable for the members. We have yet to raise prices, and have even offered discounts for members who commit to every week for the academic calendar (September to June). If they need to miss a week or so, they still pay for the whole month, but we allocate their missed shares into extra portions when they want them for extra-busy weeks, or when guests come to town. We happily exchange discount for stability.
For us, we are committed to constancy. Having members means that we are committed to providing meals for them every week. When the weather is snowy, we do our damnedest to deliver. When it is sweltering, we still fire up the stove. When one of us falls ill, the other picks up the slack and friends and family come to the rescue with child care. We time our travels with the majority of our members’, and we never, never just flake out (“Hey everybody! Just a quick e-mail to let you know that we decided to stay an extra night in Madison to catch a Willy Nelson show, so deliveries will be on Wednesday! Thanks for understanding!!!”). Never. We need our members and, I dare say, they need us.
We are committed to professionalism. We do