Around the Table
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in Brava Magazine
March 2009
Related article: Ale Asylum’s Hathaway Dilba: This microbrewery partner gets the beer out the door
“What I like best about this cake is the actual process of making it. It’s easy and relaxing,“ Hath says. “Porter adds a velvety richness that pairs well with the chocolate and spices.”
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup Contorter Porter, heated just to a slow boil
1/3 cup powdered sugar
Grease and flour a 13" x 9" x 2" baking pan. Heat porter over medium high heat, removing from heat as soon as it comes to a slow boil. “The trick is to do it slowly and to keep an eye on it. Otherwise you'll have big mess on your hands when it boils over,” warns Hath.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and ground cayenne in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Beat at medium speed for two minutes. Stir in porter. Batter may be thin. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 35–40 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely by placing pan on a wire rack. Once cooled, shake powdered sugar over top.
Showing posts with label food and drink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food and drink. Show all posts
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Spunky and self-made: Sandra Lee
How Sandra Lee’s escape to Wisconsin led to sweet, Semi-Homemade success
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Brava magazine, December 2007
Cover story
When Sandra Lee was 15 years old, she looked her mother straight in the eye and announced that her future would be a good one.
She got the beating of her life.
Sandra left home that day. Exhausted from spending years as the primary caretaker of four younger siblings, emotionally spent from the thankless ordeal of rescuing her mother after a suicide attempt that nearly succeeded, shaken by a rape attempt by her former stepfather, and now more bloodied, black and blue than she’d ever been before, the teen fled for shelter with her boyfriend’s kindhearted family.
Sandra didn’t know it then, but she was only a few months away from the haven that would change her life forever: Wisconsin.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the 40-year-old Sandra Lee as anything other than the celebrity lifestyle expert she’s become. Her upbeat persona has led many to suppose that her success was effortless, her upbringing comfortable and coddled.
She’s the CEO of Semi-Homemade, Inc., the New York Times bestselling author of a string of cookbooks bearing the Semi-Homemade name and a guest lecturer for Harvard Business School conferences. She’s an entrepreneur who for years ran an industry-award-winning business based on do-it-yourself window-treatment gadgets she invented using clothes hanger wire. She’s a tireless worker for charities including UNICEF, Project Angel Food and Share Our Strength, and a trustee of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
But she’s probably best known as the chipper host of Food Network’s popular show Semi-Homemade Cooking. For each strongly themed episode, Sandra personally develops an array of recipes including her signature “Cocktail Time,” dramatic “tablescapes” that incorporate anything from garden ornaments to dime store props for 3D effect, a complete overhaul of the set’s dressing and even a coordinating wardrobe for herself, sometimes with multiple costume changes. She’s done this over 200 times since the show’s debut in 2003.
She balks at the suggestion that the themes express who she is: “It’s not me coming through. It’s not job to dictate what you should like and what you should not like. My job is to show you, if this is your taste, this is how to put it together with the minimum of time, effort and expense. Because I’ve already done it every which way there is to do it. By the time it’s on the air, it’s perfect.” The sheer volume and scope of projects covered in each show can seem overwhelming, but, Sandra explains, “No one’s going to make everything that’s in any episode. You might see one thing and say, ‘I can do that.’”
Sandra is known for an exuberant cooking style that uses lots of brand-name mixes, jars, seasoning packets and cans, for her full-throttle ruffles-and-lace decorating, and not least for a blazingly sunny disposition. This last, paired with her willowy, California-blonde good looks, seems to have predestined her success as the upbeat multimedia juggernaut she’s become. But her background of poverty, abuse and family hardship tells a different story.
In her newly published memoir, “Made From Scratch” (Meredith), Sandra recounts her rocky upbringing. Born to teenage parents, at the age of two she and her younger sister were deposited at the Santa Monica home of her father’s mother. There she spent her happiest childhood years. “Grandma Lorraine,” whom Sandra called “Mommy” at that time, worked hard to make home a special place to share with loved ones. She kept an immaculate house, cooked good food, made crafts with the girls, took them to church. When it was time for celebration, she went all out making decorations and treats, playing on a shrewd inventiveness that made the most of the slim paycheck she earned working at a cafeteria. Sandra lovingly recalls the simple foil pie pans she upturned to make “grand, shiny silver cake pedestals” at birthdays. The lesson in repurposing mundane objects would serve Sandra well later in life.
At six, when Sandra's mother and new husband took the girls to live in Washington State, the peaceful rhythms and special celebrations were gone, replaced by chaos, mess and violence. By the time Sandra was eleven, her stepfather was gone and her mother was immobilized by depression. Sandra took over the household responsibilities, buying groceries by bicycle, rationing food stamps through the month, cooking, cleaning, minding four children, raising extra money by selling bunches of flowers she picked from empty lots, dodging her mother’s beatings and admonitions that she wasn’t helping around the house enough -- and going to school, where she hid her bruises from the school nurses.
Just before her sixteenth birthday, Sandra left Washington for the Onalaska townhouse her father shared with his girlfriend. “I got there just in time,” says Sandra, speaking from her recently adopted city of New York. “If I hadn’t gone to live in Wisconsin, we would not be having this interview. I would not have become the person I am. There’s a sensibility in Wisconsin and the Midwest that’s wonderful. The values and morals are really prevalent in the society. ”
Her father’s household, too, dissolved into domestic violence, but Sandra believes Wisconsin life saved her. “The kids in Washington were doing drugs, but Wisconsin was a very different environment. There was really no bad crowd to get involved with.”
Grandma Lorraine helped Sandra find her own apartment in Onalaska. “It was the best and the worst time in my life,” Sandra recalls. “It was the first time I was really on my own and had to just focus on myself, to be still -- which was just odd and awkward. On the other hand, it wasn’t the chaos I was used to in my life in Washington. I was more peaceful and serene. I didn’t have parental guidance or supervision, but there was also this quiet environment. Being able to grow. I read. I focused on school much more. I was the entertainment editor, and in charge of advertising at the school newspaper. I joined cheerleading.”
Here Sandra says she developed the distinctive aesthetic of her show’s coordinated set dressing, tablescapes and wardrobe. “It’s very matchy-matchy, just like Wisconsin. When you’re in cheerleading, your hair-bow matches your purse matches your book cover. Everyone matches. All the time.”
Unaccustomed to what seemed like loads of free time, Sandra went to work, too. “My first jobs were at Hardee’s and Penny’s Shoes. Then I went to the pet store in the LaCrosse Mall. The work ethic and the support and the understanding -- Wisconsin was just a super terrific place to be.”
Then there was the food. “I experienced different foods in Wisconsin that I never had before. Brats were one, which I loved immediately. Sunfish was another -- I love sunfish to this day. Just flour and salt it, then saute in butter.”
After high school, Sandra headed to the UW-La Crosse to study physical therapy, “a great way to help people -- I got that from taking care of my brothers and sisters.” But the girl who once helped support her family selling value-added wildflowers found business classes more riveting. “Five of us got together and opened up an ice fishing shop, you know, on paper. You had to do per-square-foot dollars and figure out employee scheduling, everything. After that class, I said, ‘OK. I want to own my own business. This is just too much fun.’”
Cocktail Time, as well as the show’s occasional grilling segments, she says, comes straight from her experience of “grilling, cocktail waitressing and bartending at the Holiday Inn on Mississippi River. I learned to grill on that deck grill, in a very small space. I definitely learned creative cocktails on the deck. We’ve shot 200 themes. Who else could pump out 200 different cocktails? You need the expertise of being a Wisconsinite.”
In college Sandra also discovered the pleasures of entertaining for friends. She had no money, but as she had learned from Grandma Lorraine, “there’s no reason things can’t be special, no matter what your budget” (this attitude would later become central to the Semi-Homemade philosophy). So she learned to improvise in the kitchen. “I would make ‘Boone’s Farm Strawberry Shortcake,’ she recalls. “All you do is just simmer thawed-out strawberries, macerated in Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine. Let it all melt together -- the alcohol cooks out. That was the only thing we could afford.”
It took several years, a lot more life experience and an intensive course at Le Cordon Bleu’s Ottawa campus for all these elements to coalesce into the overarching concept of “Semi-Homemade.” And when it did, the message resonated with millions of homemakers. No publishing firm would touch her first book, “Semi-Homemade Cooking,” so Sandra self-published. The book became a grassroots phenomenon, and soon major publishers and the Food Network were lined up to get Sandra -- and her Semi-Homemade brand -- on their team.
“Semi-Homemade was really created so that the busy homemaker would have the time to sit down with the family,” Sandra explains. “It’s the solution to bringing the family back together at the table, without sacrificing quality or taste. It’s 70-30, right in line with how your grocery is laid out -- all the ready-made products in the center, and the 30% of the perimeter has the bakery, fresh meats, and produce.”
But some critics argue that 30% homemade is 70% short of real cooking. The New York Times review of the first Semi-Homemade cookbook was scornful. Members of Internet forums make gleeful sport of her menus and recipes, disdaining her advice to, for instance, stir together ready-made ranch dressing with sour cream and hot sauce to make a dip for deep-fried olives (she specifies buying them already stuffed with blue cheese) in tempura batter mix. The contempt doubles at her examples of repurposing, as when the strained-off olive liquid plays a role in Cocktail Time.
Sandra bristles at such attitudes. “They need to quit, these purists, being condescending. I take offense, and I take offense on behalf of millions of women who are working. Who want to take five minutes to sit down with their family. Or to look nice. Taking a shot at Semi-Homemade is absolutely ridiculous. They’re not even taking a shot at me; they’re taking a shot at those women.”
She continues, “Everything I do on the show, I ask first, does this work for Colleen Schmidt [Sandra’s best friend from college] of Fredonia, Wis., who’s on her second marriage and is raising two children? Does this work for Kimber Lee, who’s got no nanny to help her? If it doesn’t work for them, then it doesn’t work. Anything that creates helps create time and a platform for good family values should be greeted with open arms.”
Sandra sometimes has to fight this battle on her own show. For this year’s Christmas episode, a producer nixed a centerpiece of white, powdered-sugar doughnuts adorned with “tiny blue candies that you stick in the holes of the doughnuts,” Sandra explains, and draped with blue fruit leather, all affixed to a craft styrofoam cone.
“They didn’t want me to do this doughnut tree. It was drop-dead gorgeous! I just think the woman in charge didn’t understand what it’s supposed to be about. I said, ‘I understand that it’s not New York, L.A. sophisticated,” Sandra says, her voice becoming hot as she recounts the skirmish. “I said, ‘It’s not about you. It’s about what Colleen Schmidt Wayberg will use to make the holidays easier, better, faster.’ That’s what Christmas is supposed to be about. If you did that at your holiday party, everyone would say, ‘You are so clever!’” The producer relented.
“They don’t even know how to tell me, ‘No,’” Sandra says.
It’s a bit boastful, but that’s OK. Years ago, Sandra Lee decided to look straight in the eye of someone who wanted to beat her down, maybe for good. You wouldn’t expect her to back down now over a doughnut tree.
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Brava magazine, December 2007
Cover story
When Sandra Lee was 15 years old, she looked her mother straight in the eye and announced that her future would be a good one.
She got the beating of her life.
Sandra left home that day. Exhausted from spending years as the primary caretaker of four younger siblings, emotionally spent from the thankless ordeal of rescuing her mother after a suicide attempt that nearly succeeded, shaken by a rape attempt by her former stepfather, and now more bloodied, black and blue than she’d ever been before, the teen fled for shelter with her boyfriend’s kindhearted family.
Sandra didn’t know it then, but she was only a few months away from the haven that would change her life forever: Wisconsin.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the 40-year-old Sandra Lee as anything other than the celebrity lifestyle expert she’s become. Her upbeat persona has led many to suppose that her success was effortless, her upbringing comfortable and coddled.
She’s the CEO of Semi-Homemade, Inc., the New York Times bestselling author of a string of cookbooks bearing the Semi-Homemade name and a guest lecturer for Harvard Business School conferences. She’s an entrepreneur who for years ran an industry-award-winning business based on do-it-yourself window-treatment gadgets she invented using clothes hanger wire. She’s a tireless worker for charities including UNICEF, Project Angel Food and Share Our Strength, and a trustee of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
But she’s probably best known as the chipper host of Food Network’s popular show Semi-Homemade Cooking. For each strongly themed episode, Sandra personally develops an array of recipes including her signature “Cocktail Time,” dramatic “tablescapes” that incorporate anything from garden ornaments to dime store props for 3D effect, a complete overhaul of the set’s dressing and even a coordinating wardrobe for herself, sometimes with multiple costume changes. She’s done this over 200 times since the show’s debut in 2003.
She balks at the suggestion that the themes express who she is: “It’s not me coming through. It’s not job to dictate what you should like and what you should not like. My job is to show you, if this is your taste, this is how to put it together with the minimum of time, effort and expense. Because I’ve already done it every which way there is to do it. By the time it’s on the air, it’s perfect.” The sheer volume and scope of projects covered in each show can seem overwhelming, but, Sandra explains, “No one’s going to make everything that’s in any episode. You might see one thing and say, ‘I can do that.’”
Sandra is known for an exuberant cooking style that uses lots of brand-name mixes, jars, seasoning packets and cans, for her full-throttle ruffles-and-lace decorating, and not least for a blazingly sunny disposition. This last, paired with her willowy, California-blonde good looks, seems to have predestined her success as the upbeat multimedia juggernaut she’s become. But her background of poverty, abuse and family hardship tells a different story.
In her newly published memoir, “Made From Scratch” (Meredith), Sandra recounts her rocky upbringing. Born to teenage parents, at the age of two she and her younger sister were deposited at the Santa Monica home of her father’s mother. There she spent her happiest childhood years. “Grandma Lorraine,” whom Sandra called “Mommy” at that time, worked hard to make home a special place to share with loved ones. She kept an immaculate house, cooked good food, made crafts with the girls, took them to church. When it was time for celebration, she went all out making decorations and treats, playing on a shrewd inventiveness that made the most of the slim paycheck she earned working at a cafeteria. Sandra lovingly recalls the simple foil pie pans she upturned to make “grand, shiny silver cake pedestals” at birthdays. The lesson in repurposing mundane objects would serve Sandra well later in life.
At six, when Sandra's mother and new husband took the girls to live in Washington State, the peaceful rhythms and special celebrations were gone, replaced by chaos, mess and violence. By the time Sandra was eleven, her stepfather was gone and her mother was immobilized by depression. Sandra took over the household responsibilities, buying groceries by bicycle, rationing food stamps through the month, cooking, cleaning, minding four children, raising extra money by selling bunches of flowers she picked from empty lots, dodging her mother’s beatings and admonitions that she wasn’t helping around the house enough -- and going to school, where she hid her bruises from the school nurses.
Just before her sixteenth birthday, Sandra left Washington for the Onalaska townhouse her father shared with his girlfriend. “I got there just in time,” says Sandra, speaking from her recently adopted city of New York. “If I hadn’t gone to live in Wisconsin, we would not be having this interview. I would not have become the person I am. There’s a sensibility in Wisconsin and the Midwest that’s wonderful. The values and morals are really prevalent in the society. ”
Her father’s household, too, dissolved into domestic violence, but Sandra believes Wisconsin life saved her. “The kids in Washington were doing drugs, but Wisconsin was a very different environment. There was really no bad crowd to get involved with.”
Grandma Lorraine helped Sandra find her own apartment in Onalaska. “It was the best and the worst time in my life,” Sandra recalls. “It was the first time I was really on my own and had to just focus on myself, to be still -- which was just odd and awkward. On the other hand, it wasn’t the chaos I was used to in my life in Washington. I was more peaceful and serene. I didn’t have parental guidance or supervision, but there was also this quiet environment. Being able to grow. I read. I focused on school much more. I was the entertainment editor, and in charge of advertising at the school newspaper. I joined cheerleading.”
Here Sandra says she developed the distinctive aesthetic of her show’s coordinated set dressing, tablescapes and wardrobe. “It’s very matchy-matchy, just like Wisconsin. When you’re in cheerleading, your hair-bow matches your purse matches your book cover. Everyone matches. All the time.”
Unaccustomed to what seemed like loads of free time, Sandra went to work, too. “My first jobs were at Hardee’s and Penny’s Shoes. Then I went to the pet store in the LaCrosse Mall. The work ethic and the support and the understanding -- Wisconsin was just a super terrific place to be.”
Then there was the food. “I experienced different foods in Wisconsin that I never had before. Brats were one, which I loved immediately. Sunfish was another -- I love sunfish to this day. Just flour and salt it, then saute in butter.”
After high school, Sandra headed to the UW-La Crosse to study physical therapy, “a great way to help people -- I got that from taking care of my brothers and sisters.” But the girl who once helped support her family selling value-added wildflowers found business classes more riveting. “Five of us got together and opened up an ice fishing shop, you know, on paper. You had to do per-square-foot dollars and figure out employee scheduling, everything. After that class, I said, ‘OK. I want to own my own business. This is just too much fun.’”
Cocktail Time, as well as the show’s occasional grilling segments, she says, comes straight from her experience of “grilling, cocktail waitressing and bartending at the Holiday Inn on Mississippi River. I learned to grill on that deck grill, in a very small space. I definitely learned creative cocktails on the deck. We’ve shot 200 themes. Who else could pump out 200 different cocktails? You need the expertise of being a Wisconsinite.”
In college Sandra also discovered the pleasures of entertaining for friends. She had no money, but as she had learned from Grandma Lorraine, “there’s no reason things can’t be special, no matter what your budget” (this attitude would later become central to the Semi-Homemade philosophy). So she learned to improvise in the kitchen. “I would make ‘Boone’s Farm Strawberry Shortcake,’ she recalls. “All you do is just simmer thawed-out strawberries, macerated in Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine. Let it all melt together -- the alcohol cooks out. That was the only thing we could afford.”
It took several years, a lot more life experience and an intensive course at Le Cordon Bleu’s Ottawa campus for all these elements to coalesce into the overarching concept of “Semi-Homemade.” And when it did, the message resonated with millions of homemakers. No publishing firm would touch her first book, “Semi-Homemade Cooking,” so Sandra self-published. The book became a grassroots phenomenon, and soon major publishers and the Food Network were lined up to get Sandra -- and her Semi-Homemade brand -- on their team.
“Semi-Homemade was really created so that the busy homemaker would have the time to sit down with the family,” Sandra explains. “It’s the solution to bringing the family back together at the table, without sacrificing quality or taste. It’s 70-30, right in line with how your grocery is laid out -- all the ready-made products in the center, and the 30% of the perimeter has the bakery, fresh meats, and produce.”
But some critics argue that 30% homemade is 70% short of real cooking. The New York Times review of the first Semi-Homemade cookbook was scornful. Members of Internet forums make gleeful sport of her menus and recipes, disdaining her advice to, for instance, stir together ready-made ranch dressing with sour cream and hot sauce to make a dip for deep-fried olives (she specifies buying them already stuffed with blue cheese) in tempura batter mix. The contempt doubles at her examples of repurposing, as when the strained-off olive liquid plays a role in Cocktail Time.
Sandra bristles at such attitudes. “They need to quit, these purists, being condescending. I take offense, and I take offense on behalf of millions of women who are working. Who want to take five minutes to sit down with their family. Or to look nice. Taking a shot at Semi-Homemade is absolutely ridiculous. They’re not even taking a shot at me; they’re taking a shot at those women.”
She continues, “Everything I do on the show, I ask first, does this work for Colleen Schmidt [Sandra’s best friend from college] of Fredonia, Wis., who’s on her second marriage and is raising two children? Does this work for Kimber Lee, who’s got no nanny to help her? If it doesn’t work for them, then it doesn’t work. Anything that creates helps create time and a platform for good family values should be greeted with open arms.”
Sandra sometimes has to fight this battle on her own show. For this year’s Christmas episode, a producer nixed a centerpiece of white, powdered-sugar doughnuts adorned with “tiny blue candies that you stick in the holes of the doughnuts,” Sandra explains, and draped with blue fruit leather, all affixed to a craft styrofoam cone.
“They didn’t want me to do this doughnut tree. It was drop-dead gorgeous! I just think the woman in charge didn’t understand what it’s supposed to be about. I said, ‘I understand that it’s not New York, L.A. sophisticated,” Sandra says, her voice becoming hot as she recounts the skirmish. “I said, ‘It’s not about you. It’s about what Colleen Schmidt Wayberg will use to make the holidays easier, better, faster.’ That’s what Christmas is supposed to be about. If you did that at your holiday party, everyone would say, ‘You are so clever!’” The producer relented.
“They don’t even know how to tell me, ‘No,’” Sandra says.
It’s a bit boastful, but that’s OK. Years ago, Sandra Lee decided to look straight in the eye of someone who wanted to beat her down, maybe for good. You wouldn’t expect her to back down now over a doughnut tree.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Kristi Genna mixes it up at Genna’s Cocktail Lounge
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Brava magazine, October 2007
Column: Around the Table
Recipe: Berry Mojito
Kristi Genna was doesn’t remember the day her father, Frank, opened Genna’s Lounge in 1964 – she was only three years old at the time. But she knows its role in Madison’s cultural history as one of a cluster of taverns that earned a little stretch of University Avenue downtown the sobriquet “the Bermuda Triangle.” They say the unwary could become lost for days wandering the Black Bear, the 602 Club, Bob and Gene’s, Jocko’s Rocketship – and Genna’s.
In the 1980s, after graduating from the UW-Madison armed with a degree in communications arts, Kristi headed for Chicago “to pursue a career in television and film,” she says. She soon found work in commercials, but when her father fell ill, she found herself spending weekends in Madison helping with the bar.
“It became obvious that I couldn’t remain in Chicago and continue helping my father during his illness, so I moved back to Madison,” she says. “I ran the bar by myself while my father was ill.” After Frank’s death in 1987, ownership passed to Kristi. “Since then, I have never looked back. I am a proud bar owner, and this is what I do.”
In 1993, Genna’s moved to its new location on the Capitol Square, in a historic building that Kristi’s husband, Jack Williams – “with the help of a few loyal patrons,” as Genna’s Web site says – renovated completely.
Today Genna’s combines family tradition with urban sophistication, leading the way in cutting-edge mixology and authentically rendered classic cocktails.
VVK: What are your earliest memories of the family business?
KG: My father would take my sisters and me to help him clean the bar on Sundays. He provided incentive by telling us, “You know those drunks always drop money on the floor.” We later realized that he threw money on the floor as a little treat for us to find.
VVK: Did you think you’d be involved in the operation someday?
KG: Actually, my father refused to let me work at Genna's while I was at UW-Madison. I told him that he didn’t have to pay me – I would just work for tips. Without his permission, I started helping out the bartenders. As business began to increase, over time most of his bartenders left.– they didn’t care for the younger clientele. With more business and a smaller staff my dad conceded that he needed me there. He never put me on payroll, but he always helped me pay the rent. I think in the end he was happy I pushed it.
VVK: Do you still see patrons from those days?
KG: We often see people who once frequented my father’s bar. They usually express some degree of surprise that Genna’s is still operating, even if in a new space. They tell colorful stories about my father, whom I have learned over the years was quite a character.
VVK: Tell me about your passion for this business. What role do establishments like yours play in life and culture?
KG: I believe that taverns, if run correctly, provide a great service to society. People are social animals, and throughout history, we have gathered at meeting places to share our stories. The ancient Greeks and Romans certainly knew the value of gathering over wine to discuss life, art and philosophy. I think Genna’s has provided just such a meeting place over the years. The value of skilled bartenders is not only serving good drinks but also listening to the patrons’ stories as well as contributing their own.
VVK: How has Genna’s – and the Madison lounge scene – changed over the years?
KG: The old Genna’s was a classic hole-in-the-wall Wisconsin tavern – a “shot and beer” bar. Genna’s today retains that classic atmosphere, but the new space allows us to be so much more.
We helped bring the modern cocktail lounge to Madison. Just before the move, I hired Kitty Bennett, who was then head bartender at L’Etoile, to teach our bartenders the art of mixing classic cocktails at drink-making seminars. In 1993 very few people ordered martinis, but we continued offering specials. I persuaded my friends and regulars to try them. Genna’s became one of the few lounges in town serving Martinis, Cosmo[politans]s, and Manhattans.
The current set of bars serving finely crafted cocktails grew around us, and I am proud to have been part of that evolution. Genna’s still offers cocktails that are known to be some of the best and most unique in town. Our Bloody Mary is second to none, and where in Madison can you order a Pimm’s Cup?
We also offer a vast selection of microbrews and hand-crafted beers. Ten years ago, we couldn’t give away a Belgian beer, and now they’re quite popular.
VVK: What’s your secret to success?
KG: Genna’s staff certainly has been a large part of our success. An excellent staff tends to attract other people of the same caliber. And once these professionals are in place, they must have the freedom to be themselves. They help foster an atmosphere of individuality, creativity and free expression. People work better when they know management will support them and back them up. Our staff really is like family.
VVK: What’s the most difficult aspect of the business?
KG: Maintaining the equipment and infrastructure. If it weren’t for my husband Jack, I don’t think Genna's could have made it. Jack built this bar, and he has maintained it and kept it operating for over 20 years.
VVK: What’s been your biggest surprise?
KG: That my marriage has not only survived but thrived. I work alongside my husband every day and it really has been a great experience. After 17 years of marriage we still have so much fun together.
Brava magazine, October 2007
Column: Around the Table
Recipe: Berry Mojito
Kristi Genna was doesn’t remember the day her father, Frank, opened Genna’s Lounge in 1964 – she was only three years old at the time. But she knows its role in Madison’s cultural history as one of a cluster of taverns that earned a little stretch of University Avenue downtown the sobriquet “the Bermuda Triangle.” They say the unwary could become lost for days wandering the Black Bear, the 602 Club, Bob and Gene’s, Jocko’s Rocketship – and Genna’s.
In the 1980s, after graduating from the UW-Madison armed with a degree in communications arts, Kristi headed for Chicago “to pursue a career in television and film,” she says. She soon found work in commercials, but when her father fell ill, she found herself spending weekends in Madison helping with the bar.
“It became obvious that I couldn’t remain in Chicago and continue helping my father during his illness, so I moved back to Madison,” she says. “I ran the bar by myself while my father was ill.” After Frank’s death in 1987, ownership passed to Kristi. “Since then, I have never looked back. I am a proud bar owner, and this is what I do.”
In 1993, Genna’s moved to its new location on the Capitol Square, in a historic building that Kristi’s husband, Jack Williams – “with the help of a few loyal patrons,” as Genna’s Web site says – renovated completely.
Today Genna’s combines family tradition with urban sophistication, leading the way in cutting-edge mixology and authentically rendered classic cocktails.
VVK: What are your earliest memories of the family business?
KG: My father would take my sisters and me to help him clean the bar on Sundays. He provided incentive by telling us, “You know those drunks always drop money on the floor.” We later realized that he threw money on the floor as a little treat for us to find.
VVK: Did you think you’d be involved in the operation someday?
KG: Actually, my father refused to let me work at Genna's while I was at UW-Madison. I told him that he didn’t have to pay me – I would just work for tips. Without his permission, I started helping out the bartenders. As business began to increase, over time most of his bartenders left.– they didn’t care for the younger clientele. With more business and a smaller staff my dad conceded that he needed me there. He never put me on payroll, but he always helped me pay the rent. I think in the end he was happy I pushed it.
VVK: Do you still see patrons from those days?
KG: We often see people who once frequented my father’s bar. They usually express some degree of surprise that Genna’s is still operating, even if in a new space. They tell colorful stories about my father, whom I have learned over the years was quite a character.
VVK: Tell me about your passion for this business. What role do establishments like yours play in life and culture?
KG: I believe that taverns, if run correctly, provide a great service to society. People are social animals, and throughout history, we have gathered at meeting places to share our stories. The ancient Greeks and Romans certainly knew the value of gathering over wine to discuss life, art and philosophy. I think Genna’s has provided just such a meeting place over the years. The value of skilled bartenders is not only serving good drinks but also listening to the patrons’ stories as well as contributing their own.
VVK: How has Genna’s – and the Madison lounge scene – changed over the years?
KG: The old Genna’s was a classic hole-in-the-wall Wisconsin tavern – a “shot and beer” bar. Genna’s today retains that classic atmosphere, but the new space allows us to be so much more.
We helped bring the modern cocktail lounge to Madison. Just before the move, I hired Kitty Bennett, who was then head bartender at L’Etoile, to teach our bartenders the art of mixing classic cocktails at drink-making seminars. In 1993 very few people ordered martinis, but we continued offering specials. I persuaded my friends and regulars to try them. Genna’s became one of the few lounges in town serving Martinis, Cosmo[politans]s, and Manhattans.
The current set of bars serving finely crafted cocktails grew around us, and I am proud to have been part of that evolution. Genna’s still offers cocktails that are known to be some of the best and most unique in town. Our Bloody Mary is second to none, and where in Madison can you order a Pimm’s Cup?
We also offer a vast selection of microbrews and hand-crafted beers. Ten years ago, we couldn’t give away a Belgian beer, and now they’re quite popular.
VVK: What’s your secret to success?
KG: Genna’s staff certainly has been a large part of our success. An excellent staff tends to attract other people of the same caliber. And once these professionals are in place, they must have the freedom to be themselves. They help foster an atmosphere of individuality, creativity and free expression. People work better when they know management will support them and back them up. Our staff really is like family.
VVK: What’s the most difficult aspect of the business?
KG: Maintaining the equipment and infrastructure. If it weren’t for my husband Jack, I don’t think Genna's could have made it. Jack built this bar, and he has maintained it and kept it operating for over 20 years.
VVK: What’s been your biggest surprise?
KG: That my marriage has not only survived but thrived. I work alongside my husband every day and it really has been a great experience. After 17 years of marriage we still have so much fun together.
Berry Mojito
From Kristi Genna mixes it up at Genna’s Cocktail Lounge
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Brava magazine, October 2007
Column: Around the Table
This fruity rendition of the classic rum refreshment is “our Saturday Farmers Market special,” says Kristi. You can swap in frozen berries for fresh; let thaw first. Barspeak translations? A traditional “jigger” is 1.5 liquid ounces, or three tablespoons. To “muddle” is to crush in liquid. A bartender’s muddler “looks like a tiny baseball bat,” Kristi explains. “In a pinch the end of a wooden spoon or any flat-ended object 1/2" to 1" in diameter will work.”
4 or 5 raspberries
6 or 7 ripped-up mint leaves
1 to 2 teaspoons sugar
A splash or two of seltzer water
1/2 jigger fresh lime juice
1 1/2 jiggers Mount Gay Rum
Put raspberries, mint, sugar and a splash of seltzer water in the bottom of a 10 ounce glass and muddle till all is mashed up. Fill glass with crushed ice. Pour the rum over the ice. Top off the glass with seltzer water. Stir up the concoction and garnish with a sprig of mint and wedge of lime.
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Brava magazine, October 2007
Column: Around the Table
This fruity rendition of the classic rum refreshment is “our Saturday Farmers Market special,” says Kristi. You can swap in frozen berries for fresh; let thaw first. Barspeak translations? A traditional “jigger” is 1.5 liquid ounces, or three tablespoons. To “muddle” is to crush in liquid. A bartender’s muddler “looks like a tiny baseball bat,” Kristi explains. “In a pinch the end of a wooden spoon or any flat-ended object 1/2" to 1" in diameter will work.”
4 or 5 raspberries
6 or 7 ripped-up mint leaves
1 to 2 teaspoons sugar
A splash or two of seltzer water
1/2 jigger fresh lime juice
1 1/2 jiggers Mount Gay Rum
Put raspberries, mint, sugar and a splash of seltzer water in the bottom of a 10 ounce glass and muddle till all is mashed up. Fill glass with crushed ice. Pour the rum over the ice. Top off the glass with seltzer water. Stir up the concoction and garnish with a sprig of mint and wedge of lime.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Herb farmer Jill Yeck builds a rewarding life of fragrant leaves and gentle living
In Brava magazine, July 2007
Column: Around the Table
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Recipe: Lemon Verbena with Peaches
Some years ago, I found myself shifting from vegetable to culinary herb gardening, largely because the latter is just so darn easy. No worries about pushing sacks of overabundant crop on co-workers and friends, or combing the garden for rotting, bug-eaten veggies. Drying and freezing the harvest are simple tasks with virtually no cleanup, and the results take up little storage space. Holiday gifts of beribboned dried sprigs or frozen pesto are laughably easy to assemble, compared to how well received they are. (“You grew this yourself?”)
In fact, just rubbing a sun-warmed leaf between my fingers and breathing in the resulting explosion of essential oils is enough incentive for me to grow any fragrant herb, whether or not I expect to ever use it in cooking. That’s why herb gardening has become my favorite kind of all.
But, inconveniently for me, culinary herb plants typically get little shelf space at nurseries or market vendor tables. So I was thrilled to discover farmer Jill Yeck, with her wide selection of kitchen standards and offbeat varieties at the Northside Farmers’ Market, where I like to bike on summer Sundays.
Jill is the proprietor of Harvest Moon Herb Farm, a small greenhouse business located about halfway between Stoughton and Deerfield. ““There’s something magical about picking an herb that you’ve grown and immediately tossing it into a dish,” she says. “Fresh herbs from the garden have a unique, invigorating taste that you cannot get from dried. Even store-bought, fresh-cut herbs have lost some of their flavor by the time they get home.”
Jill sells her wares at farmers’ markets at Madison’s Northside, Eastside and Westside markets. “We specialize in culinary herb plants that people can plant in a garden or pot. We also grow plants that attract butterflies,” she says. This spring, after three years on the waiting list, Harvest Moon was admitted into the grandmama of them all, Dane County Farmers’ Market on the Capitol Square, where she now sets up between W. Wash and M.L.K. Boulevard. “It was exciting,” she says, smiling at the memory of her first Saturday morning there. “I sold out of so many plants in one morning.”
At home, Jill is fulfilling her longtime dream of “living gently on a few acres” with Harvest Moon, which she named after the 1992 song by Neil Young. Ponds, a creek, beehives, a vegetable garden – and of course, a greenhouse and outdoor garden for the herbs – form the idyllic setting where she can create what she describes as “a peaceful, beautiful and safe atmosphere providing a refuge to look within.”
VVK: What’s your enterprise all about?
JY: Harvest Moon Herb Farm is a place of peace, healing, and wholeness. Our mission is to provide healthy, unique potted plants, and to provide knowledge on how to grow, use and enjoy plants in both practical and meditative ways. People who participate in this farm – both creators and visitors – can connect with our source on a physical level as we commune with the beautiful Mother Earth and all the abundant wonders provided.
I enjoy connecting with people at the farmers’ markets, and talking about gardening, herbs and the meaning of life. I also enjoy the quiet, meditative times I can spend in the greenhouse and gardens. I appreciate the simple pleasures of the earth.
VVK: How did you get into growing herbs?
I’ve enjoyed cooking and gardening since childhood. These activities, along with eating good food, were an important part of my family in Normal, Ill. Living in Thailand in the early 1980s (my former husband was a Peace Corps volunteer, so I followed love and became a teacher in Udornthani, Thailand), I fell in love with Thai cooking. At that time herbs like cilantro, Thai basil, and Thai peppers were hard to find [back in the U.S.]. I began growing them so I could prepare authentic Thai food.
While living on Long Island [in the 1990s] I was canoeing with my family down the Peconic River when I spotted a beat-up, hand-painted sign that read “Herb Farm.” We pulled the canoe ashore to find a beautiful, peaceful, greenhouse business. I picked up a brochure and a curry plant. The next week I felt the energy of the place pull me back. I became an apprentice and worked there for seven seasons, in food production – herbal jellies, vinegars, salsa – educational workshops and festivals as well as weeding, planting and plain good living. All women worked at the farm. The community we developed supported each one of us.
In 1994 – at that time, I also taught workshops on herbal and cooking topics at several venues – I [began making] herbal egg dye kits using ingredients like nettles, annatto and red cabbage and selling them to Whole Foods and local gourmet-type shops and health food stores. We moved to the Chicago area, where we put up a greenhouse in the back of our suburban home. For four years I sold organic herbs at local farmers’ markets. In 2004 I moved to Utica, Wis., and Harvest Moon Farm found its home.
VVK: Do you work outside the farm, as well?
JY: I have a full-time adjunct faculty position in the Educational Psychology department at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, one hour and 15 minutes from my farm. I teach classroom management and discipline to all the elementary education students – the focus of the course is relationship building, community and nonviolent communication. My last class in the spring is the week before farmers’ markets begin.
VVK: Can you describe your operation? Are your herbs organic?
Every morning I thank the plants for enhancing my life. On the practical side, I use organic methods on the farm which includes no sprays or synthetic fertilizers. I hand mix my soil using the finest ingredients. I was certified organic in Illinois but I decided the paperwork and cost wasn’t worth it. I continue to do things in the same way as when I was certified.
I start some seeds in the basement using grow lights. I have a 13' x 44' heated greenhouse and a small field to grow perennials. Most of the seeds I get from catalogs, but my favorite seeds are ones that friends share with me.
VVK: How many types of herbs do you carry, and what are some of them like?
I grew over 60 types of herbs and flowers this spring. The most popular include basil, lavender, rosemary and thyme. The more unusual include pineapple sage, Valentino basil – my favorite basil – sorrel, scented geraniums and orange mint. Lemon and cinnamon basil have a tad of the flavor of their names. Thai basil has a bit of an anise taste. Fino Verde basil has a stronger flavor and is good for drying. Genovese is the basic pesto basil, although all can be made into a pesto –– pesto simply means “paste” in Italian. Napolitano and Valentino are large-leaf types of basil; both have a typical sweet basil taste;
I particularly enjoy trying new things. My customers know that they can find unusual varieties of herbs. Many enjoy cooking and know that there’s nothing like fresh-cut herbs from the garden. Others just like the texture and aromas of the different plants. Gardening herbs is a sensual experience.
VVK: What misconceptions do people have about growing their own culinary herbs?
JY: That it’s difficult to do. Growing herbs is easy and rewarding. And food never tasted so good.
VVK: Are you ever surprised by what herbs become popular? How about herbs you think will be a hit, but just don’t take off?
JY: Orange mint is very popular. Since it’s an aggressive plant, like other mints, I thought that people would shy away from it, but that’s not the case. I really like sorrel – it’s easy to grow and makes great soup and sauces, but it’s not one of the popular herbs at the markets.
VVK: I’m mystified that stevia – the plant that natural, no-calorie sweetener is made from – doesn’t fly off your table. The one I bought from you last year was a great conversation piece in my garden because of the sweet-tasting leaves that you could roll up with mints and lemony herbs to make on-the-spot flavor combinations.
JY: The plant in the pot isn’t as attractive and it’s not hardy here, so many were afraid to try it. This year I decided to not grow it and disappointed a few stevia converts. I’ll bring it back next spring.
VVK: What plans do you have for the future of Harvest Moon Herb Farm?
JY: I hope to make the farm a place where people come to enjoy the gardens, an herbal walk, an herbal lunch, a workshop. The workshops I would teach would include herb gardening, butterfly gardening, cooking, herbal cosmetics. I’d also like to expand into yoga, nonviolent communication, painting, pottery, poetry – really, anything that someone has a passion for and would like to offer.
Column: Around the Table
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Recipe: Lemon Verbena with Peaches
Some years ago, I found myself shifting from vegetable to culinary herb gardening, largely because the latter is just so darn easy. No worries about pushing sacks of overabundant crop on co-workers and friends, or combing the garden for rotting, bug-eaten veggies. Drying and freezing the harvest are simple tasks with virtually no cleanup, and the results take up little storage space. Holiday gifts of beribboned dried sprigs or frozen pesto are laughably easy to assemble, compared to how well received they are. (“You grew this yourself?”)
In fact, just rubbing a sun-warmed leaf between my fingers and breathing in the resulting explosion of essential oils is enough incentive for me to grow any fragrant herb, whether or not I expect to ever use it in cooking. That’s why herb gardening has become my favorite kind of all.
But, inconveniently for me, culinary herb plants typically get little shelf space at nurseries or market vendor tables. So I was thrilled to discover farmer Jill Yeck, with her wide selection of kitchen standards and offbeat varieties at the Northside Farmers’ Market, where I like to bike on summer Sundays.
Jill is the proprietor of Harvest Moon Herb Farm, a small greenhouse business located about halfway between Stoughton and Deerfield. ““There’s something magical about picking an herb that you’ve grown and immediately tossing it into a dish,” she says. “Fresh herbs from the garden have a unique, invigorating taste that you cannot get from dried. Even store-bought, fresh-cut herbs have lost some of their flavor by the time they get home.”
Jill sells her wares at farmers’ markets at Madison’s Northside, Eastside and Westside markets. “We specialize in culinary herb plants that people can plant in a garden or pot. We also grow plants that attract butterflies,” she says. This spring, after three years on the waiting list, Harvest Moon was admitted into the grandmama of them all, Dane County Farmers’ Market on the Capitol Square, where she now sets up between W. Wash and M.L.K. Boulevard. “It was exciting,” she says, smiling at the memory of her first Saturday morning there. “I sold out of so many plants in one morning.”
At home, Jill is fulfilling her longtime dream of “living gently on a few acres” with Harvest Moon, which she named after the 1992 song by Neil Young. Ponds, a creek, beehives, a vegetable garden – and of course, a greenhouse and outdoor garden for the herbs – form the idyllic setting where she can create what she describes as “a peaceful, beautiful and safe atmosphere providing a refuge to look within.”
VVK: What’s your enterprise all about?
JY: Harvest Moon Herb Farm is a place of peace, healing, and wholeness. Our mission is to provide healthy, unique potted plants, and to provide knowledge on how to grow, use and enjoy plants in both practical and meditative ways. People who participate in this farm – both creators and visitors – can connect with our source on a physical level as we commune with the beautiful Mother Earth and all the abundant wonders provided.
I enjoy connecting with people at the farmers’ markets, and talking about gardening, herbs and the meaning of life. I also enjoy the quiet, meditative times I can spend in the greenhouse and gardens. I appreciate the simple pleasures of the earth.
VVK: How did you get into growing herbs?
I’ve enjoyed cooking and gardening since childhood. These activities, along with eating good food, were an important part of my family in Normal, Ill. Living in Thailand in the early 1980s (my former husband was a Peace Corps volunteer, so I followed love and became a teacher in Udornthani, Thailand), I fell in love with Thai cooking. At that time herbs like cilantro, Thai basil, and Thai peppers were hard to find [back in the U.S.]. I began growing them so I could prepare authentic Thai food.
While living on Long Island [in the 1990s] I was canoeing with my family down the Peconic River when I spotted a beat-up, hand-painted sign that read “Herb Farm.” We pulled the canoe ashore to find a beautiful, peaceful, greenhouse business. I picked up a brochure and a curry plant. The next week I felt the energy of the place pull me back. I became an apprentice and worked there for seven seasons, in food production – herbal jellies, vinegars, salsa – educational workshops and festivals as well as weeding, planting and plain good living. All women worked at the farm. The community we developed supported each one of us.
In 1994 – at that time, I also taught workshops on herbal and cooking topics at several venues – I [began making] herbal egg dye kits using ingredients like nettles, annatto and red cabbage and selling them to Whole Foods and local gourmet-type shops and health food stores. We moved to the Chicago area, where we put up a greenhouse in the back of our suburban home. For four years I sold organic herbs at local farmers’ markets. In 2004 I moved to Utica, Wis., and Harvest Moon Farm found its home.
VVK: Do you work outside the farm, as well?
JY: I have a full-time adjunct faculty position in the Educational Psychology department at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, one hour and 15 minutes from my farm. I teach classroom management and discipline to all the elementary education students – the focus of the course is relationship building, community and nonviolent communication. My last class in the spring is the week before farmers’ markets begin.
VVK: Can you describe your operation? Are your herbs organic?
Every morning I thank the plants for enhancing my life. On the practical side, I use organic methods on the farm which includes no sprays or synthetic fertilizers. I hand mix my soil using the finest ingredients. I was certified organic in Illinois but I decided the paperwork and cost wasn’t worth it. I continue to do things in the same way as when I was certified.
I start some seeds in the basement using grow lights. I have a 13' x 44' heated greenhouse and a small field to grow perennials. Most of the seeds I get from catalogs, but my favorite seeds are ones that friends share with me.
VVK: How many types of herbs do you carry, and what are some of them like?
I grew over 60 types of herbs and flowers this spring. The most popular include basil, lavender, rosemary and thyme. The more unusual include pineapple sage, Valentino basil – my favorite basil – sorrel, scented geraniums and orange mint. Lemon and cinnamon basil have a tad of the flavor of their names. Thai basil has a bit of an anise taste. Fino Verde basil has a stronger flavor and is good for drying. Genovese is the basic pesto basil, although all can be made into a pesto –– pesto simply means “paste” in Italian. Napolitano and Valentino are large-leaf types of basil; both have a typical sweet basil taste;
I particularly enjoy trying new things. My customers know that they can find unusual varieties of herbs. Many enjoy cooking and know that there’s nothing like fresh-cut herbs from the garden. Others just like the texture and aromas of the different plants. Gardening herbs is a sensual experience.
VVK: What misconceptions do people have about growing their own culinary herbs?
JY: That it’s difficult to do. Growing herbs is easy and rewarding. And food never tasted so good.
VVK: Are you ever surprised by what herbs become popular? How about herbs you think will be a hit, but just don’t take off?
JY: Orange mint is very popular. Since it’s an aggressive plant, like other mints, I thought that people would shy away from it, but that’s not the case. I really like sorrel – it’s easy to grow and makes great soup and sauces, but it’s not one of the popular herbs at the markets.
VVK: I’m mystified that stevia – the plant that natural, no-calorie sweetener is made from – doesn’t fly off your table. The one I bought from you last year was a great conversation piece in my garden because of the sweet-tasting leaves that you could roll up with mints and lemony herbs to make on-the-spot flavor combinations.
JY: The plant in the pot isn’t as attractive and it’s not hardy here, so many were afraid to try it. This year I decided to not grow it and disappointed a few stevia converts. I’ll bring it back next spring.
VVK: What plans do you have for the future of Harvest Moon Herb Farm?
JY: I hope to make the farm a place where people come to enjoy the gardens, an herbal walk, an herbal lunch, a workshop. The workshops I would teach would include herb gardening, butterfly gardening, cooking, herbal cosmetics. I’d also like to expand into yoga, nonviolent communication, painting, pottery, poetry – really, anything that someone has a passion for and would like to offer.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Barbara Wright of the Madison Originals
Owner of The Dardanelles is a true “original” who also represents 40 locally owned Madison restaurants
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava magazine, April 2007
Column: Around the Table
Recipe: Tortilla Dardanelles with Aioli
“Local, independent restaurants are where the flavor is,” says Barbara Wright, president of The Madison Originals, a non-profit association of over 40 restaurant members. “It’s where the cutting edge of regional cuisine is found – where it was born and where it’s preserved.” What makes local eateries so special? “The owner is almost always in the house. There are real chefs in the kitchen, who hone their skills nightly and stand behind their food. Owners buy locally and know their suppliers, often with relationships that span decades. The food is prepared with skill and love, from foods selected for their nutrients and flavors.”
In the three years since the birth of Madison’s chapter of the Council of Independent Restaurants of America (CIRA), Madison Originals has been increasingly active in the community, holding golf outings, charity events and even a lively chef’s battle at the annual Madison Food & Wine Show. Earlier this year, the Originals organized Madison’s first annual Restaurant Week – “wildly successful,” says Barbara. And the group’s quarterly Madison Originals Magazine showcases local businesses, services and attractions of all types.
This month, Around the Table talks with Barbara Wright, who, along with being president of the Madison Originals, serves on the board of directors of CIRA. A 54-year-old native Chicagoan with a lifetime in the culinary trade, Barbara has owned The Dardanelles restaurant on Monroe Street for over a decade.VVK: What is the Madison Originals all about?
BW: We are a confederacy of independent owners who have formed a union to promote the idea of local dining. This is our guiding philosophy.
Independent restaurants are an integral part of the neighborhood, of the community. We know our customers and they know us. We create intimate places where you can come back again and again and find the same good food and the same warm reception. We train employees – in a positive and supportive environment – real culinary skills that stay with them a lifetime.
Independent restaurants have been suffering from the onslaught of chain restaurants not only moving into town on their own, but also lured to surrounding towns by the dozen by developers and city councils. We get no subsidies or special financing. No one pays to build roads up to our doors. We put our life savings on the line and live our dreams. The Madison Originals has created a network of friendships and support to help us do all of this.
VVK: How did the Madison chapter get started?
Three years ago, Marcia and Patrick O'Halloran, the owners of Lombardino’s Restaurant, saw a sticker on the door of a Kansas City restaurant while on vacation. They were told all about the Originals idea from the owners, and brought that idea back to their colleagues in Madison. The response was overwhelming. New restaurants join every month.
Last spring the board of directors of Dine Originals [CIRA’s trademarked name for its national network of associations] came to Madison and loved it! They were most impressed with the farmers’ market and our local network of farmers and suppliers. In many ways, Madison is way ahead of the curve. We have a great life here.
VVK: Tell me about Madison Originals Magazine. It’s so good looking, and such a celebration of local food and more – I always keep my copy for months.
BW: It’s one of our many successes. It has been so well done that other chapters around the country have been looking into publishing one just like it. It helps us to promote the many events we do each year.
VVK: How did your restaurant, The Dardanelles, come to be, and what does it mean to you personally? I understand it wasn’t always an easy road.
BW: I started the Dardanelles Restaurant in 1996 with my then-husband and two Turkish partners. We had such high hopes. We were excited about bringing the fresh taste and colorful flavors of the Mediterranean cuisine to Madison. We wanted to create the warmth of Mediterranean hospitality here on Monroe Street. We all worked hard to build the interior and set up the restaurant.When we opened, I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. We all were new at our jobs, and we trained, altered and rearranged as we went. Although I had talked to my husband and my partners about the huge amount of work starting a restaurant could be, they were overwhelmed. My partners fought with each other in Turkish and wanted to work only a few hours a day. They were the owners, they said, not the slaves of the business. My then-husband wanted to make profits right away, even when other restaurant owners explained that profits came later.
Within the first year, my partners were gone and my husband and I, married 25 years, had separated.
The business continued to grow and I worked hard to keep it growing. Today, I have a wonderful, supportive staff. Youssef Amraoui, whom I married three years ago, runs the kitchen with finesse. He is a Moroccan culinary school graduate – originally from a nomad family in the Sahara Desert near the border between Morocco and Algeria – who came to Madison after a stint at the famous Memphis Peabody hotel restaurant, Chez Phillipe. We continue to create new and classic cuisine from all over the Mediterranean region for all our friends in Madison.
To learn more about Madison Originals, visit www.madisonoriginals.org. The Dardanelles is located at 1851 Monroe St., Madison; (608) 256-8804.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
The Wisconsin Supper Club Idea: A great state tradition thrives at Toby’s
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava magazine, March 2007
Column: Around the Table
Recipe: Toby's Supper Club's Super-Secret Salad Dressing
What’s a supper club? If you have to ask, you’re probably not from around here – and here’s what you need to know. No, supper clubs don’t have memberships (just like night clubs). No, they’re not open for lunch – they’re not called “lunch clubs,” now, are they? And if you want to look like an old hand at supper clubbing, head straight to the bar to order your meal. You’ll be seated when your salad comes out.
Supper clubs were born during the Prohibition Era, when alcohol was forbidden by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That’s right, for 13 long years sipping a beer was a federal offense. Not a popular law in Wisconsin. Soon, resourceful citizens throughout the state had opened out-of-the-way establishments along clandestine – er, peaceful – wooded roads, cleverly labeling them “supper clubs.” In those days, “club” evoked a respectable gathering spot for gentlefolk; just the opposite of the wicked connotation of “saloon” or “bar.” And supper sounded like a legitimate reason to go out. Thus was born a culinary tradition that still thrives throughout the region.
Toby’s Supper Club, on Dutch Mill Road near the intersection of Stoughton Road and the Beltline, which evolved into a supper club through the 1930s and ’40s, is a vibrant example of the form, serving authentic supper club eats alongside cocktails so classic they were in fashion when the old fashioned was a new fashion. (In fact, that happens to be Toby’s number one mixed drink.) This is no retro-chic retread: Toby’s is the real thing.
Sisters Roxanne Peterson and Rhonda Frank run the club, which has been in their family since the late 1960’s. We talked with owner Roxanne about Toby’s yesterday and today.
VVK: How and when did Toby’s Supper Club get started?RP: In 1933 [the final year of Prohibition] Harden Davis and his wife, Iva, built a barber shop here. The rumors were that bootleg booze was sold out of this barber shop – Toby’s kitchen today. In 1939, an addition was made to the building and the barber chair was moved out into a quarter of the dinning room. I have a customer who lived across the street and remembers having french fries and getting his hair cut by Harden.
In 1940, it was sold to Lester and Ruth Galvin and made into more of a restaurant. In 1945, three couples – Weedpohl, Dohaney and Curtis – made it into a supper club and named it Toby’s. In 1950, Toby and Lila Curtis became the sole owners.
VVK: What was Dutch Mill Corners like in days past?
RP: It was Madison’s entertainment center! At that corner there was Simon’s Log Cabin, where the Park and Ride is now. Jack Simon was known as a bootlegger in Prohibition time. I remember riding my bike with my mom and sisters to have lunch during the day, and we had many dinners there. There was the Beacon, where Arby’s is now – a bar and dance hall owned by George Dunn. My dad frequented it in the 50s.
On the other side of 12 and 18 was Oren Rimes’ Supper Club, later known as Nate’s, then Baker’s Dutch Mill. Further down 12 and 18 were Charlie’s Bar and Noble’s Supper Club. There was also a bar called the Cat and the Fiddle, and the Old Dutch Mill.
VVK: How did your family come to acquire Toby’s?
RP: In 1956, my parents built a home around the corner. I still remember my first dinner at Toby’s. It was my fourth birthday. I had the shrimp and a kiddie cocktail, and I thought they were both awful! I love the shrimp now. I remember that my dad painted Toby Curtis’s car, and when he would come to see my dad he would always bring us candy. In 1960, Toby passed away. Lila ran the business until 1969, when my parents bought it. Lila worked with my parents the first year and passed away in 1971.In 1972, my dad made an addition to the building. When he knocked down a wall to make the new addition, inside we found newspapers with headlines of Prohibition being lifted, Ringling Brothers Circus posters, two sealed, full, Prohibition gin bottles and an original Toby’s menu. The perch plate was 35 cents. – 75 cents for the dinner. A T-bone steak was 65 cents and shrimp was $1.35 Lobster was $1.75.
VVK: Did you always plan to make Toby’s your career?
RP: I went to school to be a nurse so that I wouldn’t have to work at the restaurant the rest of my life. But now I’m the owner! I also work as an R.N. at Meriter Hospital, and at the Lasting Skin Solutions clinic I do aesthetic procedures – lasers, dermal fillers, Botox procedures. Between these two jobs I probably work 50 hours a week. I’d have a hard time choosing which job I like the best. Nursing is very rewarding for me, as is working at the restaurant. People tell me I work too hard, and I say I work a lot but I have never worked hard. The day that I work hard is the day that I don’t like what I do.
I started washing dishes at the age of 11 when my mother worked at the restaurant. I never thought that I would still be here 42 years later. After my parents purchased Toby’s, I eventually moved up the ladder to waitress. When my parents divorced in 1972, I became the manager. At that time I was married with two children and had just completed my L.P.N. degree at MATC and was starting a new job at Madison General Hospital, which is now Meriter. In 1976 I went back to school at UW Madison for my B.S. in nursing.
VVK: What other family members work at Toby’s?RP: Rhonda’s worked at the restaurant for the last 37 years. We’ve never had an argument. She says it’s because I‘m the boss, and I say it’s because we’re a great team and we’re great friends.
Rhonda’s son, Tony, has worked at Toby’s for 13 years. He’s been our icon bartender for the past ten years. If you’ve ever been to Toby’s, you’ll know Tony and he will surely remember your drink. Sara, Tony’s significant other, has worked at Toby’s for eight years. Rhonda’s daughter, Danyelle, has her own hair and massage therapy business, and she fills in at Toby’s when needed. My daughter Kelly has worked here for the past 23 years, minus the six years she went to college [out of state]. She fills a variety of roles and is the employee’s go-to person in my absence. My son, Chris, has worked at Toby’s on and off over the past 23 years.
VVK: How has the boom in chain restaurants affected your business?
RP: We offer an old-fashioned, nostalgic atmosphere that the new franchises cannot reproduce. At Toby’s we have never advertised. We’ve relied on word of mouth. I credit my dad for telling me a long time ago, “Don’t worry about what the competition is doing. Just take care of your own business and you’ll be fine.” We’re seeing the generation of adults coming to Toby’s because they had dinner here as a child. They’re now bringing their children.
VVK: How about the smoking ban?
RP: We’ve lost a few good friends and customers because they can’t smoke inside. But customers comment how much they love the smoke-free environment. We’ve been very fortunate that the smoking ban has not affected our business overall.
VVK: With all the fads in dining over the past few decades, how has Toby’s menu changed over the years?
RP: Thirty-eight years ago, we added pork chops, frog’s legs, and cod to the menu. We’ve added some appetizers, a New York Strip on Saturdays, and Rhonda’s Wednesday night special, which is different every week.
VVK: You haven’t felt pressure to update, to follow new trends?
RP: No. We use the same dressing recipes and food preparations handed down from the original owners. To this day we use the same cast iron skillets that have always been at Toby’s for hash browns. The same cast iron skillets for pan-fried chicken. We got a new grill and stove in 1996. At that time our cook Margaret remembered when Toby got his first new stove in 1956. She had cooked on that stove for 40 years, and continued to cook on the new stove for another four years. She passed away at the age of 72.
VVK: How about trends in cocktails?
The most popular mixed drink that we make is the old fashioned. In more recent days martinis and Manhattans have become more popular again. Tony is known for his famous key lime pie martini. He will not give out the recipe, not even to me. Toby’s offers a large variety of beer. In 1969 our biggest selling beers were Budweiser and Pabst. In 1972, when Miller Lite came out, it became our number one selling beer and remains so to this day.
VVK: What’s the secret to Toby’s continued success?
RP: We’ve maintained our quality and consistency in preparation of food. When people come to Toby’s they get what they expect and what they remember. They’re recognized by our staff. The same staff is always there. One Friday night, a couple had come in, who Rhonda had waited on for years. When they walked in the door they’d see Rhonda and nod at her, and she’d put in their order. On this particular Friday night, Rhonda wasn’t there. Tony and I asked if they’d put their order in – it appeared that they’d been waiting a long time. They replied that they weren’t sure what to do because Rhonda wasn’t there. They didn’t know how to put their order in. “Rhonda always knows what we want,” they said.
VVK: It sounds like you have a really solid community of loyal customers!
RP: We have people that have been coming to Toby’s since the 40’s. Last summer, some customers told me they were there for the 50th anniversary of their first date. One of our oldest customers, Charlie, passed away in 2006 at the age of 98. He was actively coming to dinner at Toby’s with friends. His wife, Lou Lou, lives at Skaalen nursing home and is 102 years old.
Toby's Supper Club's Super-Secret Salad Dressing
Recipe from Around the Table: Toby's Supper Club
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava magazine, March 2007
At first, Roxanne was reluctant to reveal any of the recipes that have been Toby’s secrets for over half a century. When I told her that folks these days think salad dressing is something you buy from a big company at the supermarket, she agreed to share this recipe, a favorite at the club. It’s basic; it’s just right; it’s honest American home cookery. Good stuff. “People bring in their own jars for us to fill,” says Roxanne. “I make this by the gallon. I’ll scale it down for your readers.”
Toby’s Supper Club Super-Secret Vinegar and Oil Dressing
1 1/2 cups of salad oil
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons whole oregano
1 tablespoon garlic salt
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion
Combine all ingredients in a blender pitcher. Blend. Keep refrigerated. Makes one quart.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Linda Clash brings classic Soul to Madison’s South side
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach In Brava Magazine, February 2007
Column: Around the Table
Recipe: Fried Green Tomatoes
There’s something good cookin’ in the South Park Street area, one of Madison’s most culturally diverse neighborhoods. It’s home to a summertime farmers’ market, a variety of ethnic specialty grocery stores and great eateries offering authentic culinary traditions as far-ranging as Indian, Mexican, Vietnamese – and now, with the mid-2006 opening of Jada’s Soul Food, classic Southern Americana.
Offering down-home fare like fried catfish, smothered chicken, homemade baked macaroni and cheese, cornbread, sweet potato pie and more, Jada’s is packed with customers who long for a taste of the South, and for down-to-earth, wholesome, home-cooking quality.
Self-described “die-hard foodies” Jackie and Linda Clash (JAckie + LinDA = “Jada”) decided to open the restaurant only after they’d built themselves some security in the form of a first business, a residential and commercial janitorial service “that was easy to set up and get going,” says Linda. But serving up good food has been their target ever since they noticed Madison’s potential for soul food.
“Jackie was driving along Rimrock Road one day a few years ago when he saw a sign outside a restaurant that said, ‘Soul Food served Sundays,’ says Linda, a 36-year-old Madison native. “He went inside, but the owner said they’d discontinued it after the cook left. So Jackie volunteered. The response was overwhelming.”
Jackie was no stranger to the kitchen – he’d grown up working at his parents’ restaurant, Shorty’s Soul Food on the south side of Chicago, as well as cooking for his four siblings at home. He’s also an alumnus of MATC’s pastry arts program. “He’d been working on his recipes since his early days at Shorty’s and looking for ways to make it better,” says Linda. For her part, Linda had helped her best friend, the owner of the now-defunct Southern Flavor, with catering events in the early 1990s. The Clashes realized that with their experience and their love of food and cooking, they could take the soul food concept far beyond a weekly gig. They decided to work towards opening their own place.
Today, with their Dirt Destroyers business going strong, the Clashes work hard to keep up with booming business at Jada’s, where Jackie cooks and Linda manages catering and customer service. And right across the street, still cutting hair at Style & Grace at 83 years old, is Linda’s father, Taylor "Smitty" Smith. “He was the first African-American barber in Madison,” says Linda. “He and my mother, Helen, are still active members at Second Baptist Church. They’ve been in Madison 65 years!”
VVK: What has been your biggest surprise so far connected to this business? What have you learned along the way?LC: Our diverse customer base! It is such a blessing to see people of different races and from all walks of life stopping at Jada's for a good meal. We understand and cherish the fact that Jada's was a God-given blessing from conception, and we know that lots of restaurants don't receive the kind of response we have so early on. We don't take anything for granted!
VVK: What do you think is the appeal of soul food, especially yours?
LC: When food is cooked with love, people respond to that. Every dish at Jada's has lots of love behind it. Every recipe is something Jackie and I love. It wasn't placed on the menu for any other reason. We will always serve food that has meaning for us. This resonates with our customers as well. I can't count the number of times I've had customers reminiscing about food they used to love as a kid, or something their mother used to make them when they taste our food. That's why we do what we do.
VVK: What do people encounter for the first time at Jada’s, and how do they respond?
LC: Greens! That has become our soul food icebreaker. Anyone that comes in looking to try something new, I always steer them in the greens direction. Our collard greens have so much flavor, and come three different ways – vegetarian, with smoked turkey, and with smoked pork – that there’s bound to be a connection with just about everyone. We occasionally offer a collard and turnip mix, but for the most part, we serve collards. Jackie and I love collards! We buy local produce from the farmer's market when it’s in season.
VVK: I read in Isthmus that Jada’s is the only place in town serving up chitterlings. You know, I’ve heard about them all my life, but I don’t really know what they are.
LC: For seasoned soul food eaters, the chitterlings (pronounced “chit-lins”) are the number one draw at Jada's. People are pleasantly surprised when they find them on the menu. We always sell out! Chitterlings aren't that complicated to prepare, they’re just time consuming. Most customers love that they don't have to do the grunt work at home – we've already done it for them. I'm going to keep the identity of chitterlings a secret, and encourage people to come in and ask! I find that just about every cuisine has its own type of unique item that you just won't find anywhere else.
VVK: Smothered chicken sounds delicious – what’s that like?
LC: Smothered chicken is fried fresh, and then smothered with gravy. It remains crispy in the gravy because we fry everything fresh at Jada's.
VVK: What’s the difference between your fried chicken and what people are used to these days from fast food chains?
LC: Our chicken is a wonderful, well-kept secret! Our technique is unique, and the reason you won't find any fried chicken like ours in Madison is because it never sits under a light. All of our meats, with the exception of chitterlings and ribs [these are slow-cooking foods], are prepared right when you order it. You can always call or fax in your order for faster service, but we will never change that particular practice.
VVK: Somebody on an Internet forum said your cornbread is Northern-style because it’s sweet, even though you specialize in Southern cookery. What’s your philosophy on cornbread?
LC: I'm not sure if it's a Northern or Southern practice, because I've been served sweet cornbread countless times when I visit the South. I like both sweet and savory cornbread. Our cornbread muffins are sweet, but our cornbread dressing in gravy is not. Our dressing is like Thanksgiving stuffing. The gravy is chicken- and turkey-based, and made from scratch.
VVK: What’s been the biggest challenge been in making Jada’s a success?
LC: The long hours. Jackie and I realize we need to be as hands on as possible in the beginning, so we make it a priority to not sweat the small stuff. We are committed to making sure we steward our time wisely. You may see our children playing at the restaurant!
VVK: What plans do you have for the future?
LC: We have so many plans for Jada's! There may even be a joint venture cooking up in our near future – stay tuned to find out. Jada's Soul Food and Catering has some wonderful things in store for Madison. We are here to stay!
Fried Green Tomatoes
Recipe from Around the Table: Linda Clash of Jada's Soul Food By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach In Brava Magazine, February 2007
Column: Around the Table
Related article: Jada's Soul Food
A savory, golden brown crunch through to a tangy, subtly sweet, juicy center: that’s the essential fried green tomato experience. “This recipe was perfected last summer when my craving and quest for fried green tomatoes led me to preparing them almost every day,” Linda says. “These will definitely be on Jada’s menu this summer!”
With the right combination of ingredients and a methodical approach, you can produce this classic Soul Food dish in your own kitchen. “The key is being completely prepared before you begin the cooking process,” she says.
Fried Green Tomatoes
recipe from Linda Clash, Jada's Soul Food in Madison, Wis.
3 or 4 large, firm, green tomatoes
2 cups vegetable oil for frying
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder, paprika, and onion powder
1/2 tablespoon ground black pepper
Slice tomatoes 1/4 inch thick. In a skillet, heat the oil over medium high heat. Set out two bowls near the stove. In one, place the buttermilk. In the other, mix all dry ingredients. Dip each tomato slice in the buttermilk, dredge it in the dry mixture, and place in the skillet – gently, so as not to spatter hot oil. Repeat until there are several slices in the skillet, but with plenty of space around each. (Overcrowding the skillet will drop the oil’s temperature, yielding a soggy, greasy result.) Fry approximately two minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Remove to a plate; then dip, dredge and fry the next batch. Serve immediately.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Day-Boat Scallops with Citrus Beurre Blanc
Recipe from Around the Table: Kathy Hughes of Hughes Seafood
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava Magazine (formerly ANEW), November 2006
If you’ve ever had scallops that were mushy, chalky white and flavorless, chances are they spent up to 10 days on a board a fishing boat, soaking in phosphate preservative. Day-boat scallop fishers, by contrast, bring in the tasty bivalves daily, as their name suggests. Kathy recommends serving these fresh beauties with roasted asparagus and pine nut couscous.
Day-Boat Scallops with Citrus Beurre Blanc
One dozen day-boat sea scallops
salt and pepper
Season scallops with salt and pepper. Set a heavy-bottomed saute pan or a nonstick skillet over high heat. Heat a small amount of olive oil. Add scallops and sear for 3 to 4 minutes per side. Serve with Citrus Beurre Blanc, below.
Citrus Beurre Blanc
2 tablespoons butter
1 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1/4 cup cream
Chopped chives for garnish
Salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste
Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add shallot and garlic. Sauté briefly, but do not brown. Deglaze with white wine. Bring to a simmer and reduce by one-half. Add orange juice and thyme. Continue to simmer and again reduce by one-half. Add cream. Reduce until slightly thickened. Season with salt, pepper and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Spoon over scallops. Sprinkle with chopped chives.
Monday, May 1, 2006
Thea Miller brings it all together as product manager of Brennan's Market
Bringing it all together: Thea Miller, Product Manager of Brennan’s Market
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in ANEW Magazine, May 2006
Column: Around the Table
Related recipe: Red Sangria
Remember that 1976 cooking show, “In the Kitchen With Thea”? Of course you don’t. It was never televised.
“I would stand at the counter in our kitchen that overlooked our living room and host a show to an imaginary audience,” recalls 34-year-old Milwaukee native Thea Miller. “I have a few pictures, but this was before video cameras so I have no idea what I said – though I must have thought it was important. I have always loved food.”
Today, Miller is the product manager for Brennan’s Farm Markets, southern Wisconsin’s highly regarded purveyors of specialty produce, wines, cheeses and beers purchased directly from farmers and artisans around the world. Owner Skip Brennan does most of the globe-trotting and deal-making involved with acquiring new products, but it’s Miller who brings it all together. Some of her duties: doing the research that leads to new finds, helping small producers learn the intricacies of international export, handling PR and educating each employee about new products, so they can pass on the Brennan’s enthusiasm to the customer.
For someone whose passion for spreading the good word about good eats is literally lifelong, it’s the perfect occupation.
Miller started at Brennan’s while a history major at Mount Mary College. Her mother, a fan of the grocery with the old-timey feel and distinctive selection, talked her into taking a summer job at the nearby Brookfield store. “I planned to leave at the end of the summer,” says Miller. “Labor Day weekend came and went, and I’m still working at Brennan’s.”
VVK: What do you enjoy most about your job?
TM: I get to work with my favorite things: wine and food. I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world meeting with our winemakers and producers, learning firsthand what they do.
Last April, I traveled to New Zealand and worked at Daniel Schuster’s winery during harvest. He is the producer of Kiwi Gold [Brennan’s first private label wine], a fantastic wine. I got to pick Pinot Noir grapes and run them through the destemmer. And learn about winemaking from a pioneer of New Zealand wine and an international wine consultant.
It was fun and very educational, but a lot of hard work. I was covered in grapes by the end of each day and exhausted. I might have snuck a few to eat, too. I can’t wait to get that vintage in!
VVK: Tell me about your involvement with the private label wines.
We started the program about six years ago. For a number of years, Brennan’s has carried exclusive wines, meaning that if you can buy it at Brennan’s, you cannot buy it anywhere else. The private label program goes further. In 2005, we launched five new lines from all over the world, including New Zealand, Australia, Chile and California. Each line includes several varieties.
We like to work with small family-owned wineries. These little guys don’t have the production to supply big importers, so they normally wouldn’t make it to the U.S. Once a winery gets the stamp of approval from Skip, the task of getting the wine here goes to me. This involves building and maintaining a relationship with the supplier, making sure labels meet government requirements, educating our staff, making signs and tasting notes and coordinating visits from suppliers.
I brainstorm ideas for label names, work with our designer, write back labels, provide support materials for each lineup – like brochures and tasting notes – and work with staff at each store to launch and promote new wine. It’s a great feeling to know that words I wrote are on thousands of labels out there in people’s homes.
VVK: What’s been your biggest challenge?
TM: Keeping balance with all of our producers, projecting, promoting and selling to meet everyone’s needs. When you have things coming in from around the world, you can’t order and have something show up the next day.
VVK: What are some foods that Brennan’s has led the way in introducing?
TM: Skip found Island Grove Olives at a farmers’ market in Tasmania. Wendy, the owner, was selling her vacuum-packed olives there. Skip drove back to her grove and convinced her to sell her olives to us. Now she sells them all around the world.
VVK: Any flops that should have been a sure thing?
TM: We carried a sparkling juice called “Uva Uva” around 1998. The company was founded by gentleman and his daughters, and they bottled it champagne style. It was hands down the best product on the market. At that time, our exclusive grocery program was very small and the owner of the company was trying to compete with lower price rather than separating from the pack. He started selling to the big wholesale stores. Unfortunately, he went out business. Today, with the strength of our sampling program, I know it would be a great seller for us and wish we could find a product like it.
VVK: How do you compete with the mega-warehouse grocery stores?
TM: People are looking for great service and great food. The big key is having both and differentiating yourself from the pack. We sell products that the big guys don’t. We seek out the best from the little guys like us. We have a story behind every product we sell, whether it’s an orange, a pistachio or a bottle of wine.
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in ANEW Magazine, May 2006
Column: Around the Table
Related recipe: Red Sangria
Remember that 1976 cooking show, “In the Kitchen With Thea”? Of course you don’t. It was never televised.
“I would stand at the counter in our kitchen that overlooked our living room and host a show to an imaginary audience,” recalls 34-year-old Milwaukee native Thea Miller. “I have a few pictures, but this was before video cameras so I have no idea what I said – though I must have thought it was important. I have always loved food.”
Today, Miller is the product manager for Brennan’s Farm Markets, southern Wisconsin’s highly regarded purveyors of specialty produce, wines, cheeses and beers purchased directly from farmers and artisans around the world. Owner Skip Brennan does most of the globe-trotting and deal-making involved with acquiring new products, but it’s Miller who brings it all together. Some of her duties: doing the research that leads to new finds, helping small producers learn the intricacies of international export, handling PR and educating each employee about new products, so they can pass on the Brennan’s enthusiasm to the customer.
For someone whose passion for spreading the good word about good eats is literally lifelong, it’s the perfect occupation.
Miller started at Brennan’s while a history major at Mount Mary College. Her mother, a fan of the grocery with the old-timey feel and distinctive selection, talked her into taking a summer job at the nearby Brookfield store. “I planned to leave at the end of the summer,” says Miller. “Labor Day weekend came and went, and I’m still working at Brennan’s.”
VVK: What do you enjoy most about your job?
TM: I get to work with my favorite things: wine and food. I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world meeting with our winemakers and producers, learning firsthand what they do.
Last April, I traveled to New Zealand and worked at Daniel Schuster’s winery during harvest. He is the producer of Kiwi Gold [Brennan’s first private label wine], a fantastic wine. I got to pick Pinot Noir grapes and run them through the destemmer. And learn about winemaking from a pioneer of New Zealand wine and an international wine consultant.
It was fun and very educational, but a lot of hard work. I was covered in grapes by the end of each day and exhausted. I might have snuck a few to eat, too. I can’t wait to get that vintage in!
VVK: Tell me about your involvement with the private label wines.
We started the program about six years ago. For a number of years, Brennan’s has carried exclusive wines, meaning that if you can buy it at Brennan’s, you cannot buy it anywhere else. The private label program goes further. In 2005, we launched five new lines from all over the world, including New Zealand, Australia, Chile and California. Each line includes several varieties.
We like to work with small family-owned wineries. These little guys don’t have the production to supply big importers, so they normally wouldn’t make it to the U.S. Once a winery gets the stamp of approval from Skip, the task of getting the wine here goes to me. This involves building and maintaining a relationship with the supplier, making sure labels meet government requirements, educating our staff, making signs and tasting notes and coordinating visits from suppliers.
I brainstorm ideas for label names, work with our designer, write back labels, provide support materials for each lineup – like brochures and tasting notes – and work with staff at each store to launch and promote new wine. It’s a great feeling to know that words I wrote are on thousands of labels out there in people’s homes.
VVK: What’s been your biggest challenge?
TM: Keeping balance with all of our producers, projecting, promoting and selling to meet everyone’s needs. When you have things coming in from around the world, you can’t order and have something show up the next day.
VVK: What are some foods that Brennan’s has led the way in introducing?
TM: Skip found Island Grove Olives at a farmers’ market in Tasmania. Wendy, the owner, was selling her vacuum-packed olives there. Skip drove back to her grove and convinced her to sell her olives to us. Now she sells them all around the world.
VVK: Any flops that should have been a sure thing?
TM: We carried a sparkling juice called “Uva Uva” around 1998. The company was founded by gentleman and his daughters, and they bottled it champagne style. It was hands down the best product on the market. At that time, our exclusive grocery program was very small and the owner of the company was trying to compete with lower price rather than separating from the pack. He started selling to the big wholesale stores. Unfortunately, he went out business. Today, with the strength of our sampling program, I know it would be a great seller for us and wish we could find a product like it.
VVK: How do you compete with the mega-warehouse grocery stores?
TM: People are looking for great service and great food. The big key is having both and differentiating yourself from the pack. We sell products that the big guys don’t. We seek out the best from the little guys like us. We have a story behind every product we sell, whether it’s an orange, a pistachio or a bottle of wine.
Red Sangria
Related article: Thea Miller of Brennan's Market
“Just because I’m a wine buyer, don’t think that I sit around and drink expensive bottles of wine every night,” says Miller, who adapted this robust punch from a Food Network recipe for her thirtieth birthday celebration. “I like all different kinds of sangria, but this one in particular because it can be made with fruit that’s available year-round. Sometimes it’s fun to kick back with a big plate of paella or enchiladas and enjoy a glass.”
Red Sangria
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
2 bottles dry red wine*
3/4 cup brandy
1/2 cup triple sec
3/4 cup orange juice
2 oranges, sliced in thin rounds
2 green apples, cored and sliced thin
2 lemons, sliced in thin rounds
Boil water and pour over sugar to dissolve. Cool. Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher and refrigerate covered for at least two hours and up to two days. Serve over ice.
*Miller suggests any of these Brennan’s private label picks: Bootleg Reserve Mixed Red, Riverland Merlot, Monterey Coast Cabernet Sauvignon. Or, try a single 1.5 liter bottle of Brennan’s Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Just because I’m a wine buyer, don’t think that I sit around and drink expensive bottles of wine every night,” says Miller, who adapted this robust punch from a Food Network recipe for her thirtieth birthday celebration. “I like all different kinds of sangria, but this one in particular because it can be made with fruit that’s available year-round. Sometimes it’s fun to kick back with a big plate of paella or enchiladas and enjoy a glass.”
Red Sangria
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
2 bottles dry red wine*
3/4 cup brandy
1/2 cup triple sec
3/4 cup orange juice
2 oranges, sliced in thin rounds
2 green apples, cored and sliced thin
2 lemons, sliced in thin rounds
Boil water and pour over sugar to dissolve. Cool. Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher and refrigerate covered for at least two hours and up to two days. Serve over ice.
*Miller suggests any of these Brennan’s private label picks: Bootleg Reserve Mixed Red, Riverland Merlot, Monterey Coast Cabernet Sauvignon. Or, try a single 1.5 liter bottle of Brennan’s Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon.
Monday, December 1, 2003
¡Qué maravillosa!
A tasty trip through Hispanic holiday foods By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach In Madison Magazine, December 2006
Recipes and shopping tips follow this article
Photo: Martha Busse
When Melania Alvarez tells me how to make cochinita pibil, a Christmas dish from her native Mexico, she gets excited just talking about it. “Oh, my mouth is watering!” she exclaims. She talks me through each step, and calls back a couple of times with some tips she forgot.
I must sound puzzled at her description of some of the more exotic ingredients, because the next day, I find them in a shopping bag hanging on my doorknob. There’s also an authentic comal – a steel griddle for warming tortillas. It’s a gift, for my efforts to share a dish that’s dear to her. The recipe comes out fabulous. The comal works great.
Holiday food customs matter to people. Here are some favorites of Madisonians from around the Latin American diaspora. ¡Que maravillosa!
MEXICO
Rosca de Reyes (wreath of kings) and Cochinita Pibil (barbecue pork soft tacos)
Alvarez, an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison, remembers fondly the holiday celebrations she grew up with. Dec. 16 kicks off Las Posadas, a nightly neighborhood-wide reenactment in song of Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging, culminating in a party each night at a different neighbor’s house. Festive dishes include ponche con piquete (punch with sting), a fruity, alcoholic concoction. For the children, there’s a piñata filled with peanuts, oranges, tangerines, sugar canes and candy.
Presents arrive on Epiphany (Jan. 6) courtesy of the three Wise Men – not Santa – in remembrance of the gifts they brought Jesus. On that day is served the rosca de reyes (wreath of kings), “a big oval wreath of egg bread with dry fruit decorations and sprinkled sugar on top,” explains Alvarez. “Hidden inside, there is a little ceramic doll which represents the Baby Jesus.”But the main feast of Christmastime in Mexico, as throughout most of Latin America, is held the night of Christmas Eve. The Alvarez spread was lavish: “We had tamales, romeritos [a green vegetable] with shrimp, pork with plum sauce, bacalao [salt cod with chili peppers], and lots more. Our family loves to eat. In Mexico, food is just an incredible thing. There’s so much variety.” Christmas Day itself is “low-key,” she says – lots of lounging and leftovers.
One of Alvarez’s favorite holiday dishes is cochinita pibil, a kind of tangy pork barbecue served taco style with pickled red onions. Although her family hails from Monterrey in Mexico’s north, this Christmas specialty from south Mexico – an area with a vastly different culinary style – was always on her family’s holiday table. Here’s how it came to be there.
Born in Yucatán in the 1860s, Doña Aurora Canto chronicled the marvelous foods she grew up with, and developed recipes for preparing them in a modern, urban kitchen. Her granddaughter, Melba Sanchez, and her husband, Alonso, opened a restaurant in central Mexico, serving these recipes.
In the 1960s, the Sanchezes befriended a family that had newly moved south to Mexico City. The clan’s matriarch bonded with their little girl – Melania – who loved to hear stories about life in old Yucatán. And Doña Aurora shared with Melania’s family her method for cochinita pibil.
The classic form of the dish involves marinating a whole suckling pig in spices and orange juice, wrapping it in banana leaves, and roasting it in a pit dug into the earth.
This stovetop version from Doña Aurora, however, is easy. “It’s a foolproof recipe,” Alvarez says. “No matter what you do, it’s very hard that you ruin this thing. Put some on your tortilla, add some onion. You close your taco and – heaven! It’s good.”
Cochinitas pibil make a perfect buffet food. Just keep the pork hot in a chafing dish, and put the red onions nearby in a pretty bowl. Warm a stack of tortillas and keep them hot in foil or in a tortilla warmer.
HONDURAS
Torejas (sweet corn puffs)
Christmas Eve dinner in Honduras, just north of Nicaragua, features nacatamales – pork or chicken tamales wrapped in banana leaves, rather than the corn husks-wrapped tamales of Mexico that Americans are more familiar with. And for dessert, there’s always torejas – delicate little spongey disks dripping with rich, sweet cane syrup.
“Everybody has torejas and coffee,” says DeStephen, who was a dentist in Honduras. She came to the States two years ago with her husband, a clinical engineer with Rayovac. “They’re served right after dinner at room temperature. They’re very popular, and very easy. Very nice.”
In other Hispanic countries, “torejas” is a word meaning French toast, or sometimes just toast. But in Honduras, it specifically means these tiny fried corn flour cakes. (Fans of Indian food can consider these gulab jamun for the Western hemisphere.)
The most exotic ingredient here is piloncillo, a cone of evaporated cane syrup, a staple at Latin markets. The label IDs it as “brown sugar,” but it’s not quite the same as American brown sugar, which is just white sugar with a little molasses stirred in. This is the real thing – the pure, unrefined juice of the crushed cane. Compared to our brown sugar, the flavor is rich, hefty, whole.
CHILE
Pan de Pascua (holy season bread) and Cola de Mono (monkey’s tail)
Fruitcake and monkey’s tail: it’s the instant Chilean Christmas celebration kit. “If you say this combination to any Chilean, they will say, ‘Oh, my, how did you know?’” says Paulette Berthelon. “Everywhere you go, everyone offers it to you. You just keep eating and drinking that through New Year’s Eve.”
Pan de Pascua, or Chilean fruitcake, translates as “bread of the holy season.” Dense, rich and bready, it’s sort of a cross between our fruitcake (less sweet, and not phony) and German stollen.
Cola de mono, meaning monkey’s tail, is the Chilean cultural equivalent of eggnog. This sweet drink is made with spiced milk and coffee and spiked with aguardiente, a Chilean liquor distilled from sugar cane.
Eaten in tandem, you’d think the two sweet treats would just cloy and cancel each other out, but in fact they combine in transcendent spicy harmony. “You eat and drink these two together, and – I don’t know, it’s just right,” says Berthelon.”It’s so good.”
Pan de Pascua is thought to originate from regions in the south of Chile settled by Germans in the early twentieth century, and Berthelon’s favorite recipe is the family treasure of a friend whose great-grandfather arrived in Chile around that time.
RECIPES AND SHOPPING TIPS
Rosca de Reyes In Madison, the Panaderia Marimar (270-0711; 1325 Greenway Cross) bakes delicious roscas de reyes in time for Epiphany. You can call ahead to reserve one, and arrange to pick it up at any of Marimar’s three mercado (market) locations around town.
Here’s a group of party-friendly recipes: every one of these can be prepared days in advance, and most get better with time. Enjoy!
Mexican Cochinitas Pibil
Alvarez recommends making cochinita pibil a day or even a week ahead of time. “It gets better and better,” she says. The pickled onions mellow and improve with time in the fridge, also.
Achiote is a garlicky condiment made chiefly from crushed annatto seeds. Annatto’s flavor is mild, but its color is a spectacular orange. (Used in tiny amounts, annatto gives cheddar and other orange cheeses their familiar ruddy hue.) Achiote is easy to find at any Latino food store. It comes in a little box about the size of a bar of soap, usually sporting a jaunty drawing of – a roast suckling pig.
Banana leaves are also uncommon to the American kitchen, but readily available at a mercado.
In Yucatán, a special orange, the naranja agria (bitter orange), is juiced for the marinade, but, says Alvarez, “You can only get it in Yucatán.” This recipe uses vinegar plus orange juice to duplicate the super-sour quality of naranja agria.
Tortilla warmers, cases to keep your heated tortillas hot, are available inexpensively at most Latino specialty mercados and tiendas (stores). Yue Wah (2328 S. Park St., 257-9338), a multiethnic supermarket, is also an excellent source for Latino groceries and accoutrements.
Cohinita Pibil Recipe
3 pounds pork shoulder butt roast
3/4 bar achiote (annatto) paste
2–3 feet banana leaves
5 oranges, juiced (or 1 1/2 cups OJ)
3/4 cup white vinegar, plus more cups vinegar
1–2 red onions
1 lime
1–4 serrano or habanero peppers
plenty of corn tortillas
Pork
Combine juice and 3/4 cup vinegar. Dissolve the achiote into the liquid. Cut the pork into six or more pieces. Marinate the pork in the achiote mixture overnight. A zippered freezer bag – inside another bag or a bowl just in case – works well.
Transfer the meat and marinade into a heavy pot. (Iron or enameled iron are perfect; uncoated aluminum is not a good choice, because the acid will pit it.) Loosely wrap the meat into foot-long lengths of banana leaf. Add water to cover. Simmer, covered, 3–5 hours, until very tender – enough that you can easily tear it into little strips with a fork. (Some people like to use an electric crockpot for this slow cooking; others say it just isn’t the same.) Discard the banana leaves. Shred the pork. Keep the lid off and cook liquid down until it’s juicy, but not soupy. Keep in mind that when it cools, much of the liquid will be absorbed. Mash another teaspoon or tablespoon of achiote with a little vinegar and stir it in, to freshen up the taste. Excellent right away or reheated. Be careful not to let this get scorched: “Burnt annatto tastes terrible,” says Alvarez.
Onion condiment
Slice the onion into thin rings. Place in a glass bowl or other container suitable for fairly long-term refrigeration. Add the juice of a lime. Add vinegar to cover. Slice the pepper(s) lengthwise and add them – as many as you think you will want the heat of! Refrigerate at least a day before serving. The sharpness of the onions mellows over time.
To serve Over low heat, warm tortillas on a griddle or an authentic flat steel comal (available at mercados). Make a soft taco by putting some pork on a tortilla, adding red onion (lift it out of the vinegar), and folding the tortilla in half.
Honduran Torejas
3 eggs, separated
3 tablespoons corn flour (finer than corn meal)
3 piloncillos
3 cups water
Oil for frying (about 1 quart)
Woodman’s carries big, cheap jugs of peanut oil. With its high smoking point and unobtrusive flavor, is a good choice for frying. It can easily be strained and reused after frying torejas.
Beat yolks till thick and creamy, like mayonnaise. Beat egg whites till stiff peaks form. Stir whites and yolks together. Stir in corn flour.
Fry in 1" of hot (375º) oil, dropping batter from a teaspoon. Fry torejas until golden brown, flipping once. It doesn’t take long. By the time you fill the pan, it’s time to flip the first ones you dropped in. By the time you’ve turned them all, it’s time to start removing them to a rack. Cool on rack, then remove to paper towels for better drainage. At this point, they’re feather-light, mostly air – the better to soak up the delicious piloncillo syrup.
Place in the syrup. Refrigerate overnight. Serve about three torejas at room temperature in lots of syrup in a little dish.
Piloncillo syrup In a saucepan over low heat, place piloncillos in water and cover. The dried cane syrup will dissolve into a thin syrup after several minutes.
Pan De Pasuca
Holy Season Bread, or Chilean Fruitcake
Most Panes de Pascua are yeasted breads, time-consuming constructions involving various kneadings and risings. This one, however, is leavened with baking powder, so it’s much simpler to make. It’s legacy, however, is authentic, dating back generations in a German family of southern Chile.
1 cup of butter, room temperature
1/2 cup milk
4 eggs, separated
2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon anise extract
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (not too small, break every piece in half)
3/4 cup almonds (optional, broken in pieces as you do with the walnuts)
1 1/2 cups golden raisins
1 cup mixed candied fruit
1/2 cup brandy or rum
1 teaspoon white vinegar
Preheat oven to 325º. Grease two deep 9" round cake pans or one 9" springform pan. Spray pan(s) with cooking spray. For extra nonstick-ness, line the bottom and sides of the pan with foil, then spray.
Combine the fruits and nuts in a medium bowl. Toss in a handful of flour and mix to coat. The flour keeps the fruits and nuts from sinking to the bottom of the cake.
Beat butter in a large bowl until creamy. Add all the sugar and beat until
light and fluffy. Add honey. Beat in egg yolks one at a time, beating well at each addition. Add vanilla. Stir in lemon peel and egg whites. Add some of the milk.
Sift flour, baking powder and spices and add to butter mixture alternately
with brandy or rum, beating just until blended. (Get someone to do the adding while you do the beating, and it will be much easier!) Add the vinegar. Now add enough of the milk to make a batter no thinner than an average cake batter. This might mean adding all the milk. Thick is OK, but you don’t want it too thin. Fold in reserved fruit and nuts mixture.
Spoon into pan(s) and smooth top. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake is firm. (It might take up to fifteen minutes longer.)
Cool completely on wire rack. Cover with foil and refrigerate or store in a cool dry place. Pan de pascua keeps for several days.
Chilean Cola de Mono
Monkey’s Tail
1 quart milk
8 tablespoons sugar (or more to taste)
4 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon grated cloves
sections of peel from 1/4 orange, white pith scraped away
1 1/2 cups freshly brewed coffee.
3/4 to 1 cup aquardiente
Aquardiente, a cane-based spirit that predates rum, is difficult to find stateside, but rum or tequila are serviceable substitutes. Paulette cautions against using vodka: “It gives a bitter taste. Don’t even try it.”
Place the milk, sugar, vanilla extract, grated nutmeg, grated cloves, and
orange peel in a two- or three-quart saucepan. Over medium heat, heat the mixture to just before to the boiling point, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat just as it’s about to boil. Stir the coffee into the hot milk. Let it cool at room temperature. (If you prefer to use instant coffee, dissolve 4 teaspoons in a cup using a little bit of the hot milk mixture, and then add it to the rest of the mixture.)
Add the liquor after the liquid has cooled. If it’s still warm, the alcohol will evaporate! You can add the liquor by stages, to adjust the strength to your taste. You might even want to add the liquor later, to suit individual tastes and so that children and other non-drinkers can enjoy it.
Remove the orange peels, strain the cola de mono and decant into bottles, using a ladle and funnel. Cover tightly and chill before serving. Keeps several days refrigerated.
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
Natural Collaboration: Organic Valley's George Siemon
An unconventional business, Organic Valley Family of Farms has grown into a national leader in the organic movement.
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Corporate Report Wisconsin, October 2003
Profile: George Siemon, Organic Valley's CEO
Needle-tart, refreshing, sweet: a delicate, complex play of juicy flavors bursts onto my tongue with startling directness, as if I’d pierced the skin of a just-picked fruit. My eyes widen. It’s organic grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed and packed into 1/2 gallon paperboard cartons, then shipped, carefully chilled, thousands of miles to Wisconsin.
Across a polished wooden conference table sits George Siemon, the CEO of Organic Valley, the fourth biggest organics brand in America. “Isn’t that stuff just incredible?” says the lanky 50-year-old, his gleaming blond hair draping to his shoulders. “We just started making juice two years ago. I drink the grapefruit juice myself.”
The juice comes from a farmer-owned cooperative of 14 members, all organic growers of citrus in Florida. That co-op is, in turn, a member of CROPP Cooperative, whose 550 farmer-members make it the largest organic farmer-owned cooperative in North America. The La Farge, Wis.-based CROPP (Cooperative Regions of Organic Producer Pools) is better known by its brand name, Organic Valley Family of Farms.
A producer of organic dairy and eggs, produce, meats, and, lately, juice, it’s also known in the natural foods world as one of the remaining independent holdouts in a growth industry in which many of the successful pioneers have been bought up by giant corporations in recent years. At Organic Valley, where each of the seven directors on the board is a farmer-member who is elected by the other farmer-members, where members own the company directly and each member gets precisely one vote, selling out is not on the agenda.
Siemon arrived at work today dressed in jeans, sandals, and a blue denim shirt embroidered above the breast pocket with the Organic Valley logo: a gambrel-roofed, red barn amid a green field of crops. He’s usually less formal, he explains, but today he’s gussied up for the CRW photo shoot.
The photos, by the way, had been delayed for a bit while Siemon pushed a dollyful of Cryovac packaging wrap through the grounds of Organic Valley’s full-to-bursting headquarters, to the cheese-packing facility somehow jammed among the offices stuffed inside the main building, an old, converted dairy. Office space spills over into a row of trailers out back.
After the photos, Siemon headed upstairs and into his office and immediately slipped out of the sandals. That’s where I am now, sipping grapefruit juice and talking with a barefooted, nature-loving, vegetable farmer who, despite having no formal business education, shepherded the rise of an association of seven Wisconsin farmers into a national company with 2003 sales expected to top $150 million.
Siemon is doubtless one of the most important figures in organics today, and not just because of his work at Organic Valley. He’s also serving the first of five years on U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board.
He’s also, arguably, one of the most important figures for the future of rural America. For decades, small farms across the nation have been going out of business, thousands and sometimes tens of thousands each year. Organics, the fastest-growing agricultural sector, is seen as a rare ray of hope for farming families. In 2002 alone, Organic Valley brought 94 farmers – 44 in Wis. – into its fold, saving many from extinction.
Siemon, who also serves on the USDA’s Small Farm Advisory Committee, uses all of his muscle to advocate for rural communities and small-scale family farming, defend the environment, and champion the ethical, humane treatment of farm animals – which generally requires practices that are possible only on small farms.
Note that the championing of small farms is an Organic Valley value, not necessarily an organic one. Half of California’s $400 million organic produce market comes from just five big farms. Washington’s Cascadian Farms, the ninth biggest organics brand in the U.S., buys the ingredients for its organic microwavable dinners, frozen veggies, jams, and more from large farms in California and abroad. Colorado-based Horizon Organic, Organic Valley’s most formidable dairy competitor, fences thousands of cows inside grassless lots. Organic to the letter of federal law, these mega-farms use no pesticides and the cows are fed grain grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. (Horizon was purchased by Dean Foods, America’s largest dairy concern, in August, 2003.) Organic Valley, on the other hand, requires its livestock farmers to provide access to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, direct sunlight and natural pasture. Herds of 70-80 cows are ideal for such treatment.
Protecting rural communities and the environment is written into Organic Valley’s mission statement, and it shows in the company’s actions. Consider the site of the $4 million headquarters now under construction: a couple of hillsides away from its present Main Street address in La Farge (pop. 775), about two-thirds of the way from Madison to La Crosse. The nearest Interstate is 20 twisting miles north; the closest U.S. Highway several miles south along steep terrain.
“The expectation was that we’d move to be near a big city. Probably Chicago,” Siemon says. “We looked into it. But we decided it was right to stay in La Farge. This is where we grew up. It’s where we bank.” So instead of pulling 206 jobs out of the rural area, Organic Valley is staying put, with plans to add another 105 jobs. Local workers and, as much as possible, local contractors and locally sourced materials are being used to build the structure.
The facility will boast green goodies including cotton insulation, recycled steel siding, sheet rock made from recycled coke-ash, sustainable water-free plumbing and solar-powered parking lot lights. Windows will be specially glazed to let in a maximum of light with little glare, saving energy and providing workers with beautiful views.
“We wanted to build a green building. To provide a healthy environment for the employees, plus keep the electric bill down,” says Siemon. He firmly believes it’s good business to do good for everyone involved. “I think there’s a real positive value to creating a work environment that’s healthy and pleasant to be in. Employees react to that, don’t they? They feel, ‘Somebody cares for me.’ They’re going to work a little harder.”
He believes his approach to be the wave of the future in business: “The penny-pinching school of thought that says that all that counts is my profits, being greedy, taking advantage of your position to further yourself – it’s an attitude that’s short lived. Good business is sustainable and environmental. Really, it’s the golden rule. You can’t have a sustainable business based on another’s unsustainability.”
If this sounds like a hippie-era flower child at heart, that’s not too far off. Being a business executive was never his intention.
Growing up, Siemon yearned to get as far from his family’s office supply business as possible. “I swore I’d never be a business person,” he recalls. “I wanted to work outdoors in nature. I did outdoor bird photography when I was a kid, joined the Audubon Society. I spent my summers at farms, with family in Alabama. I was Nature Boy.”
In 1970, Siemon fled his West Palm Beach upbringing for the free-spirited atmosphere of Colorado State University. He worked his way through college as a hired hand at local farms. At first he majored in forestry, planning to become a naturalist, but he switched to animal science. “I got disillusioned with forestry,” he says. “I used to say, ‘I’m just going to count picnic tables for the government for the rest of my life.’”
After graduating in 1974, Siemon moved to Iowa with his wife, Jane, for her graduate work. Later they migrated east of the Mississippi and began farming vegetables in the rugged Kickapoo Valley region of southwest Wisconsin. (Jane continues to run the farm today.)
In 1988, they banded together with a few other farm families to form a cooperative to sell their produce. Siemon was tapped to run the business end of things. “I was the only one in the group who wasn’t raised on a farm,” he says. He was surprised to find how much useful knowledge he’d gleaned from his business family background: “You learn more sitting around the family table than you realize.”
The business gig was supposed to be temporary, Siemon says. “I kept saying, ‘I’ll get this thing going, and then I’ll quit. One more year, and then I’ll quit.” But the growth of CROPP led to an unexpected personal transformation.
“I resisted who I am today,” he says. “For the first half of this, I thought I would be quitting any time. My objective was to work my way out of a job. Then I realized that was self-centered. My whole mission in life had been to sit at home and watch the birds fly by. But it became obvious that CROPP has an important role as a farmer leader in the nation, and that I was part of that. And that I should accept that. Around 1995, we started hiring professional people. They were helpful in mentoring me and encouraging me. They said, ‘We need you.’”
“Becoming a boss was my biggest challenge,” he remembers. “You’re no longer one of the gang. You don’t know how friendly to be. How much conversation to have in the hall. You make a comment in the break room and it turns into some weird mandate.” Siemon had to accept that his former peers were no longer peers, exactly. “I had to learn how to fire friends. It’s just part of growing up. You can be mission oriented, but in order to have the luxury to serve your mission, you have to have good business.
“This place is very uncorporate, but not everyone sees that. ‘Oh, back in the old days,’ they say. Yeah, in the old days it was very tough and stressful. CROPP is changing. It’s got it’s own life. We can’t hold it back.”
That growth has not been without controversy. Over the past few years, Organic Valley squeaked by with a 1.5% profit margin, despite rocketing growth. Facing criticism from all around, not least from the bank, the co-op stubbornly refused to lower the price it paid farmers for their milk.
“Lowering the milk price would have been as easy as falling off a log,” says Siemon. “But one of our objectives is to pay farmers a good price. It’s an easy, easy path that, every time we hit a bump, oh, we’ll just lower the farmers’ pay price. That’s what happens in America. But we have a pay program the farmers expect us to deliver on. These relationships are the most important thing.”
He admits, “Quite honestly, we did take the co-op to the point of risk by growing so fast. That was the time when the mass market started to explode in organic milk. We went for that market. We grew fast, so we weren’t able to make money. The other side of it is, now we’re much bigger, serving more farmers, with a national brand well placed in the mass market. Sixty percent of our business is in the mainstream supermarkets now. We’re in chains with 900 stores. We couldn’t get in like that today. Do I regret taking that risk? No. We had to go into that world or we wouldn’t be in the position we are now: strong enough to influence the overall pricing structure.”
Ultimately, he says, he protected organic dairy’s price premium nationwide – the very thing that makes organic the hope for the future of family farming.
“My biggest dream,” says Siemon, “is that the organic marketplace will grow, that it will just explode, as individual people start taking responsibility as consumers.”
If that happens, Organic Valley farmers will be well placed, thanks to Siemon’s deft steering through the recent organic dairy boom. “We are a market leader in the industry now,” he says. “We are the number one dairy brand in natural foods markets, and number two in the mass market. We’re growing up to twice as fast as our competitor. We’re on the fast track. It’s incredibly exciting.”
George Siemon: An Inside Look
Favorite Musician:
John Trudell, known as much for his fusion of political poetry and rock and roll with Indian tribal chants and drums as for his chairmanship of the controversial American Indian Movement (AIM) through much of the 1970s.
On His Magazine Rack:
CEO
Harvard Business Review
Meat and Poultry
Rural Cooperatives
Smithsonian
Favorite Vacation:
Tent camping, horse packing or car camping in the Kickapoo Valley. “I like to hike. I like to use my feet.”
Best Way to Zone Out:
Western novels.
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