Growing Strong

Claire Strader, farmer-about-town, brings organic agriculture into the heart of the city


By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Around the Table
This unpublished article was scheduled to appear in the May 2009 issue of Brava Magazine, which suspended publication for several months in 2009 when it changed ownership.

Related recipe: Spinach Salad

Urban vegetable gardens are tucked away in backyards everywhere. But an entire certified organic working farm right in town? That’s a lush surprise.

Welcome to Community GroundWorks at Troy Gardens, a 31-acre site on Madison’s Northside. The five-acre farm produces “well over a hundred varieties of fifty different vegetables,” says farm manager Claire Strader. The farm is just one program among many in this unique organization. “There’s no other development in the entire country that combines farming with community gardening, with prairie and woodland nature restoration, with kids’ gardening, and all the educational programming that’s part of each of those areas, with housing,” Claire says.

It was 2001 when Claire rolled up her sleeves, worked with volunteers to clear the land, and planted “some squash, potatoes and tomatoes.” Today the farm generates about $100,000 annually through sales of sprouts and herbs at local groceries, a farm stand that operates Thursdays May through October 4 p.m. – 6 p.m. on the 500 block of Troy Drive, and CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) shares, whereby members receive a weekly box of bounty throughout the harvest season. All 120 shares for 2009 have been sold out since early spring.

Claire gained national attention earlier this year when a farming couple in Illinois launched a competition for nominees for the position of “White House Farmer,” in the hopes that the administration would respond to urgings from the sustainable agriculture movement to till up at least a bit of the 18 acres of manicured lawn surrounding the presidential manse. Out of more than 56,000 votes cast for 111 candidates, nearly one in five went to Claire. She won handily.

VVK: What does your victory mean to you?

CS: It was very exciting while it was happening. I think it’s not so much about me as about this community. In south central Wisconsin, we’re tuned into, we care about the local agriculture movement. When this idea was put in front of people, they got in touch with their friends around the country, around the world, and said, vote for this person – she grows food here. Will Allen [of Growing Power Inc.], who came in fourth place, he’s from Milwaukee.

VVK: What happens now?

CS: The whitehousefarm.com group is still working on a packet to send the administration. The Obamas have put a garden in, but I haven’t heard anything about a farm or a farmer.

VVK: How did you get into farming?

CS: I started out studying biology and genetics, then switched to philosophy and women’s studies. I wanted to think more carefully about how I exist in the world – building shelter, making clothes, growing food. I thought the best way to learn would be to go work for an organic farmer. I worked for a farm run by man and his wife the summer I graduated from Wellesley. He was great. I loved working for him.

VVK: What brought you to Wisconsin?

CS: I sought out a farm run by women. I wanted to learn everything – to run the Rototiller, to fix things – regardless of my gender. I found Luna Circle, which was then in Gays Mills, and was there four years. We built a straw bale house, dug a well, lived off the grid. Later I went to UC-Santa Cruz for an apprenticeship in ecological horticulture and learned new things, beekeeping, orcharding. I decided that I wanted to work for a nonprofit, to do farming and education. I sent applications all over the country, and wound up becoming Troy Garden’s first employee.

VVK: It seems unusual, traditionally, for a woman to be a farmer.

CS: One of the things we learn in women’s studies is that agriculture across the world, historically, has been the domain of women when it’s on a small scale. For their own use, or for small-scale selling. I feel like women are a natural fit in this world of small-scale agricultural production, with organics and sustainable agriculture. Men not excluded – there are plenty of men here and across the world involved in it.

VVK: I noticed that women were the top three vote-getters – 40% of all votes cast – in the competition for White House Farmer nominees.

CS: For me, that does fit in. Also, none of us are traditional family farmers who own a farm. We’re all associated with education and broader mission statements. For me that makes sense as well.

VVK: How is the farm, and your job as a farmer, influenced by being part of Community GroundWorks at Troy Gardens?

CS: I’m not just the farmer, I’m also project coordinator. In the winter my job changes and becomes more internal to our organization -- writing grants, raising money. It’s hard for family farmers to devote a lot of time to education. Fewer farmers are offering internship programs; more are just hiring employees. Because of the nonprofit, we have the opportunity to do that. I really like training future farmers.

VVK: How is the current economic climate affecting the organization?

CS: Our programs are very strong, like the Kids’ Garden, things people see. It’s much harder for us to raise money for the salaries, the administration. This is true generally for nonprofits, but these days that piece of our organization is being much harder hit.

VVK: What’s the most challenging part of your job?

CS: Worrying constantly about the financial stability of the organization as a whole. We rely on individual contributions. It’s a lot lot of work to get the word out and solicit contributions, especially right now, for obvious reasons. I work really hard, and it’s tough to worry about financial things on top of all that.

VVK: Do you live nearby?

CS: I’m about a mile from the farm. I have a garden at home.

VVK: What! You farm all day, and then you garden when you get home?

CS: My partner, Sarah, pushed for it. We really like having food outside our back door. We have about 12 fruit trees and 40 asparagus plants. I’m experimenting with strawberries and raspberries. We’re ripping out the front yard for more dry beans. We’re committed to not buying any vegetables. Sarah is a woodworker and our next project is to build a solar food dehydrator for leeks, tomatoes, broccoli, all kinds of things.

VVK: What’s your favorite crop to grow?

CS: Carrots. They’re delicious, they store well, you can get lots of different colors, you can eat them raw or cooked. And they’re not easy to grow. They’re difficult to germinate, and it’s not easy to give them what they need to get that shape. I like that I keep learning.

VVK: How about the toughest crop?

CS: Corn is really hard for me. I have a lot of luck with popcorn, but sweet corn...! There are insect pests that are very difficult to deal with. I keep trying.

VVK: What projects are you working on now at the farm?

CS: We’re raising money for a passive solar greenhouse. We’re partnering with the UW for their first hands-on organic agriculture class ever at our land-grant university; students will work at the farm. We have lots of applications for our intern positions, including people who want to come back for another year, people from Michigan and Illinois, and even an applicant from France.

It’s a small farm in the scope of things. I’m honored and proud that there are so many people who hear about it and want to be involved.

Each month in her column “Around the Table,” freelance writer Vesna Vuynovich Kovach profiles women who are influential in Wisconsin foodways: cooks and bakers, farmers, teachers, authors, activists and more.

Sweet Love

Based in the strength and wisdom of kith and kin, up-and-coming pastry chef Sally Jarrett whips up witty treats and comfort sweets at Restaurant Magnus

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Around the Table
in Brava Magazine
April 2009

Related recipe: Sally's Mom's New York Cheesecake

“You can put a steak in a 500 degree oven and it will be done twice as fast, but a cake will not bake faster,” says Sally Jarrett, pastry chef at downtown’s esteemed Restaurant Magnus.

That’s the simple answer to something that’s always perplexed me: why is it that, on cooking competitions like TV’s Top Chef, contestants get most flustered about dessert?

But Sally likes a challenge. As a culinary arts student at MATC, she found herself responsible for the dessert in a team cooking competition at the annual Wisconsin Restaurant Expo. “We won first place. [It] made me realize that desserts were going to be a significant part of my life from then on.”

Now, at just 22, Sally is responsible for making the dizzying array of sophisticated sweet treats always available at Magnus, including an extensive dessert menu that evolves with the seasons, plus a steady, sparkling cascade of specials.

VVK: What are some of your favorite creations?

SJ: Empanadas are a savory dish; I twisted it around and made caramel-apple empanadas with candied pecans and a spicy cider syrup. Chef Leo [Leonardo Guevara] helped me out a lot with finding a puff-pastry dough that would work with the way I envisioned it the dish. Some were too dry and hard to roll out, or hard to shape around the apples. It was challenging, but worth it.

There are so many things you can do with simple ideas, too. Like a cheesecake. Right now we have lemon blueberry, peanut butter with chocolate crust and pineapple rum. All different variations on my mother’s recipe.

VVK: Is she sort of your unofficial off-site collaborator?

SJ: We call each other all the time and share recipes. We’re always trying new things and bouncing ideas off each other. We’re best friends, especially now that I work at Magnus. She helps me with so many little details, I don’t even know.

The first time somebody ordered a personal wedding cake, I’d never made and iced a layer cake before! Mom talked me through it. I had the phone on my shoulder, and she told me how to run the spatula in hot water to make the icing smooth, how to to put the layers together with dowels.

VVK: Did she influence your career choice?

SJ: She was a stay-at-home mom, always cooking and baking, making jams and jellies. She got the kids involved – peeling vegetables, helping with cookies. Mom always had a huge garden. I remember peeling a lot of apples at the end of every summer. Later she got a job at a bakery and I waitressed there and did a little bit of prep cooking. My mother taught me to work really hard, be responsible, take action, but I didn’t think food would be my career.

I went to the UW-Madison for a year, then transferred to MATC, where I found the culinary arts program. It was so different from anything at the UW, and I’ve always been a hands-on learner. I discovered that I had a huge passion for food that I didn’t know about.

VVK: Who else has influenced you?

SJ: My boyfriend, Darren, whom I met in the culinary program and work with at Magnus. We bounce ideas off each other, and he’s a huge help in keeping me grounded. I think that having my significant other at work -- such a stressful environment -- makes it much easier to relate to each other. We know what each other goes through. I think that makes it easier to be more sympathetic and understanding towards challenges that we face.

VVK: What lessons have you learned in your work?

SJ: Simple is better. This Valentine’s weekend, when we were really, really busy, I made a cute little arty dessert, very intricate and complicated. It looked like sushi. I made a chocolate dough and rolled it out. I filled it with jasmine rice pudding and tropical fruit dyed purple with hibiscus. I served it with kiwi sauce, like the green wasabi that’s served with sushi. It didn’t sell. The other special that weekend was a warm chocolate cake with peanut butter ice cream. We sold a lot of that!

VVK: What’s your favorite thing about your job?

SJ: Chef Leo has given me so much freedom to experiment. He’ll order any product I need for the specials I want to do. And he’ll let me fail. My first night, I made a batch of sponge cakes. I didn’t know you have to take them right out of the pan, or they keep cooking. They shrank to half their size! He just said, “You see, you should ask more questions. Well, can you do it again?” I said, “Yes, Chef!” and made another batch that night.

Each month in her column “Around the Table,” freelance writer Vesna Vuynovich Kovach profiles women who are influential in Wisconsin foodways: cooks and bakers, farmers, teachers, authors, activists and more.

Ale Asylum’s Hathaway Dilba

This microbrewery partner gets the beer out the door

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in Brava Magazine
March 2009

Related recipe: South of the Porter Chocolate Cake

In the spring of 2006, a sign reading “Ale Asylum” sprouted in the front yard of one of the low-slung buildings scattered amidst the airfields and shipping depots along the broad corridor of Stoughton Road leading north of town towards the interstate. A brand-new microbrewery and table-service deli was open for business.

The four friends planting their life savings in the endeavor knew they were entering a field as crowded as their surroundings were sparse – craft brewing businesses are legion in this part of the Midwest. Now, scarcely three years later, Ale Asylum has become a formidable presence on the local microbrew scene: omnipresent at summer festivals, available in bottles at close to 125 stores and on tap at more than 80 bars and restaurants, all the while serving up booming business at the cozy tap room and eatery onsite.

Hathaway Dilba, originally a fashion designer (her line of custom coats, Volante, was featured in this magazine’s premiere issue in 2002) and later a fitness instructor, is one of the Ale Asylum’s four partners, along with brewmaster Dean Coffey, Glenn Schultz and Hathaway’s husband, Otto, a graphic artist.

“I had total faith in our product. I had faith in every part of my body,” says Hathaway (friends call her Hath), “but still it surprised me how fast we took off.”

VVK: What’s the secret to your success?

HD: A lot of it is Dean. He won many awards at Angelic, and he had a following. Glenn plays a significant role. He’s part of our sales force, he’s our face at festivals, he’s brought in other investors and he’s an amazing handyman.

Our name is a huge factor. People say, “Did you just say … ‘asylum’?” And alphabetically, our beers will appear at the top of lists at bars.

VVK: All your names and branding elements are powerful and catchy – Big Slick Stout, Ambergeddon – with strong logos. Who does that?

HD: Otto is is my hero because he can run the business operations and come up with our branding and creative work as well. He was assistant brand manager at Planet Propaganda. One could say that he has the perfect combo of right and left brain.

Everything we do, names and labels, have to get approved by the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. We had trouble with our slogan, “Fermented in sanity.” We had to point out that it said, “sanity,” not “insanity.” We wanted to name a porter “Disporterly Conduct,”and use handcuffs in the logo. They said no. But our Ambergeddon logo has guns, and that got passed. A lot of our artwork is controversial.

VVK: What do you do?

HD: Event planning, marketing, cooking and working for events. I love working on the bottling line. The camaraderie of it. It’s kind of like diapering your baby; you want to do it yourself. And you have to move pretty fast! I like putting the bottles in the boxes and seeing them put on the truck. It’s the end result of so many people’s work. I don’t ever want to take it for granted.

I’m not involved in the chemistry, which is very complicated. The bottling line is the way I can be involved. I love it. Being the only woman back there, it’s fun. I’ll cook at home and bring in lunch for the crew, or muffins. They call me “Mama Bear.”

VVK: How come no full-service restaurant?

HD: All the years my husband worked in the restaurant industry, he learned what a pain in the butt a hot kitchen is. He said, “You know what? Let’s just have a pizza oven and a deli.” Saves a lot of money in insurance, too. We figured keeping our restaurant simple was a really smart move, so we could focus on getting the beer out the door.

VVK: Have you won any awards?

HD: We’ve won a variety of best-of-show awards at area beer festivals. We won a bronze for Madison Magazine’s Best of Madison brewpub in 2007 and 2008, even though we’re technically not a brewpub. We’re a microbrewery.

VVK: What’s the difference?

HD: Even though Ale Asylum has a bar/deli as part of our business structure, the majority of our sales occur offsite, from beer distributed to area bars and liquor stores in the form of kegs and cases.

VVK: How much beer do you guys make?

HD: About 375 barrels a month. We go through about 40 of those in the tap room. One barrel equals 2 kegs [125 pint glasses each] of beer. We produce around 65,000 bottles per month. We have about 10 people on staff.

VVK: What’s your most popular beer?

HD: Hopalicious, an American pale ale. It’s bold in hop flavor without being bitter, which makes it a great beer for experienced drinkers and novices alike. Across the Midwest there’s been a dramatic increase in demand for hoppy beers.

VVK: What’s your personal favorite?

HD: I love our Sticky McDoogle Scotch Ale. It’s just fun. It’s got a little kick to it. it’s smooth, and for me it’s got a little curtain of caramel in it. Very popular with women. We supplied the beer for the Arthritis Foundation, a nonprofit gig. There were mostly women there, and the Scotch ale went so fast I had to order more from the brewery.

I love the Hatha-Weizen. I love the citrus note – it’s not in your face; it’s not too tart. It goes with everything. My favorite thing is to drink it on the beer patio the first warm night.

VVK: That’s named after you – a play on “hefeweizen,” or wheat beer, right?

HD: I feel very honored because my husband named a beer after me. I’m both touched and excited because that is my all time favorite beer that Dean makes. I'd be lying if I didn't say that it’s my favorite name.

VVK: Do you ever miss the fashion business?

HD: Fashion always played a special part of my life, and I have deep respect for the industry. I still follow it. But I don’t miss working in the business. It wasn’t the correct template for me. I’m glad I did it, though, because I never would’ve known.

VVK: Tell me about your involvements outside the Ale Asylum.

HD: I do philanthropy on the side, which I really enjoy. I’m involved in a group called Womenade of Madison that holds events supporting different organizations that are not so well known. At the Children’s Theater of Madison, I chair the education committee and am the board secretary. I was just invited to join the executive committee of A Fund for Women, and my first gut reaction was, oh my gosh, what a fantastic honor.

I go crazy unless I have projects and a lot of stuff to do. I start to have an identity crisis.

VVK: Have you always been a craft beer fan?

HD: I’m a novice, kind of a beginner beer geek. I’m not on the brewers’ guild like Dean and Glenn. When people are discussing beer while they’re drinking it, I like hearing it. My favorite thing is sitting in our bar and watching someone sip our beer and watching a smile come over their face. I like that moment.

I love listening to Dean talk about beers. When he has a beer out, it’s such a special moment. He’s so passionate about what he does – I get excited when he’s excited. If he’s talking to a beer-geek friend, he’ll talk in complexities. To me, he’ll tone it down. He’s really good that way.

VVK: What’s the atmosphere at your place?

HD: A biker once told us, “I love the décor – it’s like a martini bar, but with balls!” I call it industrial chic. It’s a diverse customer base. One night I saw a motorcycle dude sitting next to a business dude next to somebody who could have been a punk rocker, with tattoos up and down their arm. Older married couples will pop in for a night cap. We have a lot of Air Force guys coming in off duty. They love flying over the place – their landing strip is very close to us. They’ll do wing tips and stuff like that for us when they fly over.

We don’t have TVs. We’re very proud of that. We get killed on Packer Sundays and Badger Saturdays. But we don’t want people just staring at a TV. We want there to be discussion, conversations, like the bars of yesterday.

VVK: Might you expand into more locations?

HD: Right now, no. It would really take away from our focus.

VVK: So what’s next for Ale Asylum?

HD: We’re thinking about putting up our own grain silo this summer. That will look cool to the pilots when they fly overhead!

Each month in her column “Around the Table,” freelance writer Vesna Vuynovich Kovach profiles women who are influential in Wisconsin foodways: cooks and bakers, farmers, teachers, authors, activists and more.

The Education of Anne

How a school principal from Sheboygan learned to cook Sicilian – and run a restaurant

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava Magazine
February 2009
Column: Around the Table

Related recipe: Rigatoni Mare Monti

“We are not just following a recipe. We are articulating a family heritage,” says Anne Nause, who does nearly all the from-scratch Sicilian cooking at her restaurant, Sole Sapori, on Mount Horeb’s Main Street, where “the core recipes come from family traditions.” She explains, “Food traditions [within] any culture are similar,” but “they take on the flavor personality of the people who create them. That’s what sets us apart.”

Anne cares so strongly about continuing the culinary legacy of this family that she left her lifelong career in education – with a Master’s in education, she had long been a school principal and was working at a central office level, pursuing certification as a director of curriculum when she bought the restaurant in 2003 – to devote her professional life to this cause.

But what makes this all the more unusual is that, in the case of this particular German-Norwegian native of Sheboygan, the family in question is not her own.

VVK: How did you first get involved with the restaurant?

AN: My youngest daughter, Maddy, was waitressing for the Vitales [Sam and Celina Vitale, who founded Sole e Sapori, its previous name, in the 1980s]. She was a gymnast and needed a sub for her shift. She couldn’t find anyone to work for her, so she asked me if I could do it. Since I had never waitressed I was a bit apprehensive. I went with her one night and she showed me around before my big debut. All went well and I was surprised to have people actually give me cash! What a riot – all you have to do is give them food and you get cash. I was hooked. I subbed for her all through her gymnastics season and even picked up my own shift when another waitress quit.

VVK: To go from pinch-hitting and part-timing to switching careers – that’s quite a leap. How did it happen?

AN: I decided to become a restaurateur because I could see the potential in the restaurant and did not want it to close. It was that simple. Albeit capricious.

Celina frequently asked me if I would like to buy the restaurant, but I was passionate about staying in education. It wasn’t until many months later, after Celina and I became quite close, that I heard her speaking to her family in Sicily. Although I didn’t speak a lick of Italian, I knew she was planning to move back. I asked her [about it]. “Ya, ya,” she said, “I go.” I said, “What about the restaurant?” She replied, “I close.”

When you live in a small town it’s heartbreaking to see things close. [Back home] there had been a restaurant we used to frequent. When it changed hands the new owners changed the restaurant and it subsequently closed. I just didn’t want to see that happen in Mount Horeb.

VVK: What was your training like?

AN: I asked Celina how long it would take me to learn everything. She said, “Two weeks. First week I cook, you watch. Second week you cook, I watch” Brushing her hands, she declared, “Done.” Sam and Celina are brilliant. They set up the recipes in a way that made it possible for one person to cook for the entire restaurant without skipping a beat. I would attribute the distinctive flavors of the core Sole recipes to a set of consistent ingredients. To say much more would be letting out the big secret of what is behind the sauces.

In my first week, I watched and took notes. It was literally hands on. That’s the measurement system we used: hands, spoons, “glugs,” some, a little. I was just relieved to find out [Celina and I] had the same size hands!


VVK: How is the Vitale way different from the cooking you knew before? How has your relationship with food transformed?

AN: In my life growing up, I was introduced to lavish-ingredient, multi-course cooking that would take a whole day to prepare. My mom and grandmother were incredible cooks and dinner was a major event while I was growing up. I used to think great food had to take forever to make, and if it didn’t come from James Beard or Julia Child it just wouldn’t be good enough.

I’ve always loved to cook, to eat and to interact with food in general. The Vitales introduced me to a whole new way of thinking. Now, I have a hard time following a recipe without translating it into something new. I can look at an ingredient, picture, or recipe and integrate it into something uniquely my own. Cooking is freeing and expressive.

VVK: Have you added your own touches to the menu?

AN: Some modifications and additions. Some were experiments that were so delicious we had to keep them on the menu. So far we have been very fortunate – our regulars are thrilled with the maintenance of the original recipes and excited about the addition of the new.

We make our own garlic crisp crackers for our homemade dips, all inventions of mine. A weekend special I make which people are clamoring to have added to the menu is a chicken sun-dried tomato and roasted garlic lasagna with béchamel sauce. Also just put together a clam and mussel dish – we call it Crostaceo alla Pomodoro – that’s fresh mussels and clams with chopped tomatoes in a spicy garlic wine sauce. It’s beautiful, with the clams and mussels in their shells. Today I’m experimenting with a panettone layer cake with almond paste and a light cherry flavoring in the cream layer. I just like to play around with food.

VVK: You’ve done a lot with the interior, too.

AN: I definitely wanted the rooms to stay rustic – no straight walls, lots of texture, rich colors for the front room. The back room is more of an indoor “garden room” – lots of windows, lots of plants. The second remodel added space that was formerly vacant, unheated, storage area. We made a small, private dining room with leather-like finish on the walls – dark and intimate, deep merlot with a dark brown frottage finish, with large, dark, wooden tables. We added a lounge with a fireplace and small bar. For the larger banquet room I wanted an Old New York speakeasy feel, cream, espresso, black and white.

VVK: How do you like being a business person?

AN: I think my enthusiasm and love of the place really does translate to the overall experience. How other people feel about the place – as long as I’m not losing money – is far more important to me than making piles of money and feeling like I’m taking a short cut. Five years ago Sole was predominantly a pizza and spaghetti carry-out business. Now most of our business is dine-in. It’s a place where couples go, where friends like to meet. I’ve even had a few proposals and one small wedding.

When the business was small, it was a piece of cake. It’s time to find someone who can take on some of the load. As it is, there is not a single moment in my awake time – unless you count showering – that I’m not working. Accounting, bills, remodeling, cook planning, party planning, ordering inventory, putting inventory away. I do 100% of the prep work: bread, meat sauce, marinara, tiramisu, specialty desserts, appetizers, pizza dough, and pizza sauce. Currently, I also do all the cooking. Name it, I do it. I’m looking for help, so if you know of anyone, call me.

VVK: What are the biggest difference between your old career and your new one? What do you miss?

AN: I was passionate about education, versus being excited about the restaurant. I miss the feeling that what I’m doing on a daily basis is needed and important to the world. I am glad to leave behind the feeling that I can never do enough to change the world for some children.

As a principal, you’re middle management and it can be frustrating. At the restaurant, it is mine. My ideas, my work, my success or failure. I like being able to have an idea and see it to fruition, or modify it as I see fit.

VVK What do you love most about what you do?

AN: When people go out of their way to tell us how delicious the food is. How surprised they are when they walk down the long hall and are transported to another place, another time and it’s both beautiful and delicious. I love to know that people really appreciate the handcrafted goodness that makes Sole unique.

Each month in her column “Around the Table,” freelance writer Vesna Vuynovich Kovach profiles women who are influential in Wisconsin foodways: cooks and bakers, farmers, teachers, authors, activists and more.

It's Greek to Her: Beth Fatsis of Atlantis Taverna

Married into a Greek family, apparel designer Beth Fatsis now runs Atlantis Taverna

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava Magazine
December 2008
Column: Around the Table

Related recipe: Kleftiko, Clay-Roasted Lamb

Beth Fatsis, co-owner of Atlantis Taverna in Sun Prairie and Plaka Taverna in downtown Madison, and former operator of the the Athenian Garden food cart on the UW-Madison Library Mall, never expected her life to turn out so Greek.

“My first Greek food was trying spanakopita – spinach pie – and baklava during the 70s at a small health food store in my hometown [Chatham, in upstate New York]. I had never seen filo dough before and was intrigued at how thin it was and how expertly it was layered,” she remembers.

In 1983, with her brand-new degree in apparel design, Beth headed for Dallas to break into the thriving clothing industry there. She made patterns for various dress manufacturers, created custom wedding gowns and dance costumes, and started a wholesale and retail maternity clothing business.

Then, in the mid-1990s, she met Telly Fatsis. He had come to Dallas straight out of college too, around the same time as Beth, to work in the restaurant business. But now, after a divorce, he was headed home to his native Madison, where he was soon to open Cleveland’s Diner downtown. After two years of long-distance dating (“I was in a building lease for the business and wasn't going to break the lease,” says Beth), she moved up here, they married, and the rest is Greek food history.

Today, Beth, 47, could vie for a spot on both Top Chef and Project Runway – the famed reality-TV competitions for cooks and fashion designers respectively – and rewrite My Big Fat Greek Wedding from the point of view of a non-Greek woman who joins a Hellenic clan. Of that flick, Beth says, “The focus on food is definitely not an exaggeration. A family dinner can easily be a party for 30 people – and there will still be leftovers.”

Vesna Vuynovich Kovach: How did you feel making the switch from fashion to food?

Beth Fatsis: I was ready to get out of apparel. It's not glamourous like the magazines lead you to believe. It's hard for the little guy to compete with the big corporations who have access to cheap labor. It became stressful – trying to guess what people would buy, investing money each season and hoping the customers liked your product, [dealing with] damaged merchandise and returns.

The restaurant business “looked so easy”– ha, ha – when Telly was doing the breakfast/lunch thing. I wanted to do something new.

VVK: In 2006 you opened Atlantis Taverna. This summer you reopened Cleveland’s Diner as Plaka Taverna. How did you and Telly transition from a diner and a food cart to this more fully realized Greek dining experience?

BF: The Cleveland’s space was available [in 1995]. However, it [had been] known as a breakfast/lunch diner for decades, and Telly chose to keep the same theme. He wasn’t ready to plunge into a full-service dinner restaurant with a bar. A Greek restaurant was a distant goal.

The food cart was a low-overhead means of expanding the business and getting into selling Greek food. I ran it for five years. I enjoyed the street vending and the people, but the physical work got more and more difficult as I got older. Lifting, hauling, packing, unpacking, hitching the trailer twice a day. The festivals were profitable, but they usually involved 16-hour days of work. A lot of people think that a food cart is a fun sideline business. But it is a business just like any other. You can't treat it like a bake sale. Telly and I wanted to open another restaurant and I couldn't do both the cart and the restaurant.

VVK: What makes Greek food special? What do you like about it?

It’s healthy, and the herbs blend nicely. It’s typically not hot and spicy. I also love garlic, which is abundant. It can go as simple as a tomato-feta-cucumber plate drizzled with olive oil, or as complicated as a moussaka (eggplant casserole) with all its processes.

The Greeks still don’t have the massive transportation system we have in this country, being as mountainous as they are. You will find that a Greek dish will differ according to the region in which it has evolved. Telly’s family is from the Peloponnese region in southern Greece, so most of the cooking at the restaurants reflects that.

There is a lot of overlap between Greek food and that of Turkey and portions of the Mideast and Eastern Europe. Populations migrate, empires rise and fall, and food traditions get adopted by different cultures. The recipes generally evolve around what products are readily available in the villages. Olive trees are plentiful, so olive oil is a staple. Spanakopita (spinach pie), dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), moussaka, eggplant salad, kebobs, pita bread – these are some examples of foods found not only in Greece, but in neighboring regions as well.

VVK: How do you and Telly work it, running two Greek restaurants in neighboring cities?

BF: He runs Plaka; I run Atlantis. We don’t do well together working side by side. We discuss ideas – marketing, menu ideas. But in the end, we each make our own decisions. It’s a lot easier to manage the responsibilities when you only have one restaurant to focus on.

VVK: Is there a difference in what the two communities want?

BK: Definitely. We sell a lot of gyros and fries in Sun Prairie. We get more families with children, so we also offer burgers and pizza, with a Greek flair, at Atlantis. The Madison palate tends to be more adventuresome than Sun Prairie’s.

VVK: What’s the most popular dish on the menu?

BF: At Atlantis, it’s probably the Mama’s Homebaked Combo, a combination of the moussaka, the pastitsio, green beans, rice pilaf, and feta cheese. Our falafel and spinach pie combos are popular as well.

VVK: What's your favorite dish on the menu?

BF: The moussaka. You can taste the cinnamon and cloves in the meat sauce, as well as the fresh parsley. The béchamel (cream) sauce on top is really its own separate entity with a hint of nutmeg, yet when you take a forkful of the moussaka you get the whole combination at once. It’s hearty and filling, and has a pleasing blend of spices. I also love eggplant.

VVK: How would you compare and contrast the two spots?

BK: Atlantis has brighter colors and lots of foliage. More of what you’d think of when you say “Mediterranean.” In reality, though, the tavernas in Greece are pretty rustic. Plaka is smaller and more intimate than Atlantis. It has a more rustic feel, with the distressed tables and the darker colors.

In Greece, we collected menus from several of the restaurants we visited, knowing that we’d want to take elements of those menus and use them here. We also took notes on the décor of different tavernas. Telly’s aunt and uncle used to own a taverna in their village in Greece, a neighborhood place with an uncomplicated menu. The pork kebobs on our menu are named after Telly’s uncle, “Theo Pavlo” – “Uncle Paul.” 

VVK: The murals on Atlantis’s walls are beautiful. Can you tell more about them?

BF: I did all the artwork myself. The real-life villages really do look a lot like the mural: plain rectangular buildings without a lot of frills. The style of the artwork is playful, which is the mood Telly and I wanted to create in the dining room. Not too serious.

VVK: There’s an element in the mural depicting an episode from your cart vending days. Down at the Library Mall, you had a conflict with a street musician that got into the news. I understand that, after complaints by you and several others, he was issued a noise citation that was eventually overturned.

BF: A two-and-a-half hour dose of the piccolo daily is very unnerving, due to the high pitch. Other musicians who got there earlier in the day, were greeted with loud piccolo music played over their music. Employees in the buildings nearby were distracted by the shrill sound. Piccolo Man included in his repertoire the national anthems of Thailand, Greece, and Jamaica, because those food carts all complained.

If you look at the mural at Atlantis Taverna, you’ll see I painted a “tribute” to him in my mural. It’s not a compliment to his character. I used a very fine brush and painted a scene inside a church that most people don't even notice is there unless I point it out. It was my way of closing that dispute.

Each month in her column “Around the Table,” freelance writer Vesna Vuynovich Kovach profiles women who are influential in Wisconsin foodways: cooks and bakers, farmers, teachers, authors, activists and more.

Earthly Delights: Josie Pradella's TerraSource Chocolates

Josie Pradella’s TerraSource Chocolates promote local self-reliance and are good for the planet, too
A shorter version of this article appeared in Brava Magazine
November 2008
Column: Around the Table

Related recipe: Raspberry Truffles

Josie Pradella, all grown up and with a serious career as an air management specialist at the DNR, meditated.

She wanted to follow her bliss, but how? Which way lay bliss? And then she remembered.

Mud pies.

“I had an image of a childhood phase I went through that was absolute rapture for me,” she recalls. “Making mud pies and foraging very locally for colorful leaves, flowers and other found objects.”

In that meditative clarity, Josie perceived the magical element that engaged that part of her soul that reveled in the dark, the gooey, earthen-rich and natural: chocolate.

“I’ve always loved baking chocolate desserts, especially for friends and dinner parties,” Josie says. For years, she had hosted “truffle-making parties for friends around the solstice holiday.” From mud pies studded with leaves and flowers to chocolates filled with fruit purees and tea infusions: what could be a more fitting evolution?

And thus was born TerraSource Chocolate Gourmet Chocolates, LLC, specializing in handcrafted chocolates using local fruits and flowers. The business is a comprehensive expression of Josie's values and her point of view: All the ingredients are either local, fairly traded and/or organic: the product line is completely free of animal products; the locally produced boxes are made from plantable paper embedded with wildflower seeds.

TerraSource started up in October 2007, and already the chocolates are available at A Room of One’s Own Bookstore, Bunky’s Café, Carl’s Cakes, The Dardanelles, Fair Indigo and Sentry at Hilldale, Jenifer Street Market and Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse, or via the Web at terrasourcechocolates.com. In the temperate months – but not in the high heat of summer – Josie vends at the Westside Community Farmers Market outside the DOT as well.

VVK: What are your chocolates like?

JP: Except for the Pecan Praline, all the chocolates have a blended center that combines the major fruit puree or tea infusion with chocolate, so they’re all kind of dense and creamy. Teas to date: Jasmine Green Tea, Masala Chai Tea, and Scarlet Tea.

VVK: No plain chocolate, or bar chocolate?

JP: No, as other local chocolatiers already do solid chocolates and bars.

VVK: You use local products like rhubarb, blueberries and red, black and golden raspberries. What are some others, and how did you find them?

JP: I’ve made most connections through the local farmers markets and food conferences. One of my best finds was Carandale Farms in Fitchburg. They grow unusual fruit crops for Wisconsin’s climate, such as aronia and seaberry. These are two super-nutritious fruits. Aronia looks like a cross between a large blueberry and small concord grape – very dark with a more grainy texture. It has three times the anti-oxidant value of blueberries. Seaberry has a mild citrus flavor and is very bitter by itself. It has a gorgeous golden color and seven times the vitamin C content of lemons.

In quite a few of my chocolates I use liqueurs and spirits, such as Lemoncella and rum made by Yahara Bay Distillers.

VVK: Are you able to buy local products in sufficient volume?

JP: As small as I am at this time, yes.

VVK: How much of what you use is organic?

JP: This question quickly gets complicated. The off-the-shelf products I buy, such as sugar, vanilla and teas, are certified organic, which means that they’ve gone through a formal registration process and are validated by a qualified third party. Often local growers use organic practices but can’t afford to become certified organic. I love working with these growers because their ethics are in the right place and they have wonderful products.

VVK: Tell me about the chocolate itself.

JP: I source the chocolate from two different producers. One is certified fair trade; the other is fairly traded, which means they adhere to fair trade principles but have not gone through the expense of a certification process. The cocoa comes from Columbia (single origin), Costa Rica, Peru, the Dominican Republic. I blend to get around 70% dark chocolate for my shells, going for some complexity on the palate without being too bitter.

VVK: What's your most popular chocolate?

JP: Probably the aronia because it’s so different. People like to have a unique experience and it’s fun to be able to do that with food.

VVK: And your personal favorite?

JP: Pecan praline. Heavenly with the dark chocolate around that nutty center. Great texture! It started out as a caramel, but with the vegan ingredients it became more granular and delectable.

VVK: How come you made your entire line vegan?

JP: Butter and cream are big in most gourmet ganache fillings. I wanted to offer something delectable to those who have food sensitivities so they can thoroughly enjoy a quality product like everyone else. At this point my intention is to offer only vegan products because it [helps] so many of the animal-free, lower-impact on the planet issues that people are concerned about.

By sourcing locally, we also have less impact on the majority world who often starve as they grow cash crops for large companies to export. They can’t eat that stuff and don’t have much land to subsist on. Choosing vegan ingredients lowers much of that impact.

VVK: How about bee products?

JP: Nope. I use maple syrup instead.

VVK: Your business is so green! Tell me about that.

JP: I am determined to exemplify what’s possible as a green business: to build local relationships, add value to locally grown products, procure eco-friendly packaging and print, bank locally and use other local professional services such as Web hosting and graphic design, and give back to the local community. My next goal is to offset the carbon emissions from my production, delivery and shipping practices.

VVK: I understand you’ve been active for years with organizations that promote environmental responsibility and local commerce and food systems.

JP: I co-founded Wisconsin Partners for SustainAbility (formerly the Wisconsin Sustainable Futures Network) back in 1999. Four years ago I helped cofound the Dane County Buy Local Initiative, now known as Dane Buy Local. I’ve been exploring local self reliance pretty fully the last several years.

VVK: Do you have a marketing or business background?

JP: I wish! I do the best I can with what makes sense to me; then hope the overall message can be refined and condensed for greatest effect. I took several courses at UW-Madison’s business school and have a rough business plan.

VVK: What's your favorite thing about what you do?

JP: Having the opportunity to converse with people about the eco aspects, then having them just physically enjoy indulging in the product. It becomes a full mind-body experience. The Westside market has been wonderful. People really want to learn about the products they’re buying. Grab ’n’ go is not part of their philosophy.

VVK: How about your least favorite?

JP: Part of the chocolate-making process involves vigorous shaking and tapping of the molds to coax out air bubbles. It’s noisy and disruptive to an otherwise peaceful process.

VVK: How did you learn your craft?

JP: Being invited by David Bacco to view his chocolate-making production when he was at CoCoLiQuot, for which I am eternally grateful. Getting a degree from the Ecole Chocolat. Experimenting with recipes and using friends and co-workers as guinea pigs.

VVK: There are some other chocolatiers in town. What sort of community is it?

JP: My experience, with the exception of David Bacco, has been that other local chocolatiers pretty much keep to themselves. When I approached several to do some research and try to learn about the local market and avoiding pitfalls as a new business owner, I didn’t get very far. That’s unfortunate, because I think we all do better when we help one another. I know I feel honored when someone thinks I know enough about a topic to ask me questions about it, and I want to share the knowledge. This experience is also an important factor in my commitment to make TerraSource as transparent as possible. So I list the partners I’m involved with on the Web site and have a short profile on each of them, along with a link to their Web site if they have one.

VVK: What are some chocolate challenges?

JP: Tempering is a very exact science to get that nice shiny, glossy exterior. One degree off and the chocolate comes out looking dull or streaky. It’s pretty unforgiving.

Another great challenge – some business don’t want to carry product with a relatively short shelf life. Because they have no preservatives or other added ingredients, they only last about two weeks. It’s the filling I’m concerned about keeping as fresh as possible. Right now I’m developing a system to track the dates that chocolates get delivered and to whom, and to stay on top of keeping the stock fresh at the various merchants.

VVK: How big is your operation?

JP: I’m making around 400 pieces a week. No employees. I do it all!

VVK: Where do you make the chocolates?

JP: Carl Loeffel, the owner of Carl’s Cakes, is a dear friend and wanted to support my vision of creating this business. He truly has made this effort possible. I’m lucky to have access to Carl’s Cakes kitchen when they’re not doing their bakery production, nights and weekends. Overall, I have the place to myself Saturday afternoons and Sundays.

VVK: Regulations prohibit you from using your home kitchen?

JP: That’s correct. I’m certified as a food handler working out of Carl’s Cakes’ kitchen.

VVK: So what’s next for Terrasource?

JP: I’ve gotten a request for a mint chocolate from a market-goer and will be experimenting with that as the next potential flavor. I’m working on more tea infusion flavors. If Carandale or some other grower has more superfood fruits, I’d love to get those into my chocolates as well. A future vision is to work more with edible flowers, such as rose geranium, and get even more creative with green packaging.

VVK: What do you like most about chocolate?

JP: It’s bliss on earth.

“Do carrots grow on trees?”

Raising awareness and bridging the gaps between farm and table: REAP’s executive director Miriam Grunes

Around the Table
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in Brava Magazine
September 2008

Related recipe: Kale Crisps

Farmers, chefs, grocers, producers of artisan foods, artists, activists and more—on Saturday, Sept. 20, the Food for Thought Festival will unite these diverse groups during its 10th annual celebration of local, sustainable food. Highlights include cooking demonstrations and possibly live competitions, talks including a keynote speech by urban agriculturist Michael Ableman, local bands and children’s activities. The site is, aptly enough, right next to the farmers market on the Capitol Square, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.

“It’s a really great festival,” says Miriam Grunes, executive director of REAP, the local nonprofit group behind the event. “It’s so fun for me to watch hunger prevention sitting alongside environmental activists sitting alongside foodies who just love culinary delights sitting next to culinary historians. It’s an amazing networking opportunity.”


Since the mid-1990s, REAP (Research, Education, Action and Policy on Food Group; www.reapfoodgroup.org) has fought to bring awareness to the environmental, economic, and social issues surrounding food production and preparation, arguing that local is best on all these fronts. Today, with “green” and “locavore” (a person who eats only locally grown food) emerging as buzzwords of the decade, REAP is riding a rising wave of awareness.

Begun by a handful of volunteers, REAP now employs a staff of four and manages myriad projects including publications, educational programs and foodie events. Earlier this year REAP graduated from its patchwork of home offices to move into a professional space on Wilson Street downtown.

In her early years with REAP, Miriam squeezed in 25 volunteer hours a week alongside her full-time job at the Biodiversity Project (a national nonprofit located in Madison) and her responsibilities as a mother of two small children. “I really had three jobs,” she explains. Landing REAP’s first paid, full-time position in 2004 allowed her to cut that down to two.

VVK: How did you become so passionate about sustainable food?

MG: I’ve always loved being a gardener. Having my hands in the dirt. I stopped eating meat way back in college, having read Diet for a Small Planet. It seemed, there’s something wrong with the way we raise meat. There’s no reason I need this in my life. The hippie aspect, brown rice and stir fries—I always just lived my life that way, not thinking that was going to become my life’s work.

That moment came when I had kids. I started thinking about the “corporatization” of food, the fact that kids can recognize over 200 corporate logos but can’t identify vegetables. My interest in food and sustainability and health drew me into volunteering with REAP.

VVK: What’s the climate for the work REAP is doing?

MG: Right now there’s a perfect storm of awareness from the food contamination scares and soaring prices. Food prices are scaring people, and they should. Food’s been too cheap. Farmers haven’t been paid what they should be. All this is forcing people to ask questions about their food. Where does your food come from?

Suddenly we’re not having to explain the whys. Now we answer the hows. How do we pay the farmers a living wage? How do we feed everybody? How do we make sure everyone has access to fresh, local food?

VVK: What’s the greatest challenge to REAP’s goals?

MG: We’ve devolved so far so fast. As recently as 50 years ago there was still infrastructure that supported eating locally. That’s just completely gone.

VVK: REAP’s newest program, Buy Fresh Buy Local Southern Wisconsin, pairs eateries with local food growers. How is going?

MG: It’s showcasing chefs’ and farmers’ relationships in a way that tells the story, helps restaurants do more, feel good about doing more, make a profit. We never have to explain to restaurants about why should they buy local, what the point is. They just want to know, “How do I do it?” We have now have over 23 restaurants involved, and we’re adding more all the time. Some say, “I’m really going to concentrate on increasing my local dairy use, because I already have good relationships with produce farmers.” Others say, “I’m going to start with a side dish vegetable.” It’s a lot of opportunity to make incredible impact.

VVK: Then there’s the Farm Fresh Atlas, a directory of local farmers, dairies, honey producers, orchards and farmers’ markets. It’s so beautifully done and has such a wealth of information.

MG: People really use it. Farmers are grateful for the marketing tool. The transition we’ve seen in the last few years just wonderful. I remember standing at farmers market, just begging people to take it. Now people virtually attack us! We’ve released the seventh annual edition, and we’re having such a blast with it.

VVK: What it’s like working with children through REAP’s farm-to-school program, Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch?

MG: They’re a little grossed out by the notion that food doesn’t come packaged. There are kids that don’t know that a carrot is a root. They thought it might grow on a tree. You tell them it grows under the dirt, and they’re a little bit—“Eeew!” But when they can get their hands into the dirt and pull it out, the response is immediate. You have to convince them to wash it first!

You’ve got to get kids back out and experiencing life in all its forms, learning the idea of life in the soil. Through field trips to farms, wildlife restoration. Pulling that all back together is really powerful. Will all these kids grow up to be healthy consumers as adults? We don’t know. But we know that without it, they don’t have a chance.

VVK: How do you share your ideals with your own children?

MG: We have traditions of always going strawberry picking in the spring, always going to an apple orchard in the fall. There’s seasonality. Food isn’t just something that comes packaged from an anonymous source. I just try to keep as much balance as possible and hope something will stick. My daughters are now 15 and 11. I just hope they grow to be passionate and kind and responsible and good adults.

VVK: What kind of food do you cook and eat?

MG: I cook pretty simply. I belong to a CSA [subscription farm]. My box comes on a Thursday and I have to be inspired by it. The produce tells you what needs to be done to it. I have a great big garden in my backyard and four chickens that lay eggs for us. We have an abundance of eggs from the chickens. That’s great for vegetable frittatas.

VVK: You live in the city. How do your neighbors respond to the chickens?

MG: I do have one hen that’s a little squawky. But now the neighbor across the yard has got some chickens, too!

Each month in her column “Around the Table,” freelance writer Vesna Vuynovich Kovach profiles women who are influential in Wisconsin foodways: cooks and bakers, farmers, teachers, authors, activists and more. “The eternal quest for flavor and form is woven deep into who and what we are. That’s why I love to write about people who love food,” she says.

Vesna’s work on food and other topics has appeared in publications including Wisconsin Trails, Isthmus, Madison Magazine, Corporate Report Wisconsin, and Dane County Kids. She was formerly editor-in-chief of Erickson Publishing, and was the original editor of Brava Magazine (then known as Anew).

Big flavor from Sow Little

Terry Cohn and Michael Johns harvest “raspberries when you least expect them”

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Around the Table
in Brava Magazine
August 2008

Related recipe: Raspberry Jam

Raspberries. They’re not just for summer anymore.

When Terry Cohn and her husband, Michael Johns, learned about the experiments out east at Cornell University, where researchers were growing winter raspberries in greenhouses walled with layers of clear, plastic draping, they knew they’d found the niche crop they were looking for.

After all, says Terry, “We love raspberries.”

In 2001, the couple’s home business -- buying and selling used scientific equipment -- was suffering due to overseas outsourcing of manufacturing. To find a new source of income, they looked to their land: the 5-acre former farm within the city of Madison that they’d bought in 1991, meaning to build a warehouse.

“We wanted to use our land as one of the last farms within the city of Madison. We talked about trees and perennials,” says Terry. Then they learned about extended-season raspberries being grown at Cornell. “They were reported to be outstanding and able to command a good price.“ They realized, with excitement, they already had the foundation for an off-season raspberry farm in their own backyard.

“We had a family garden via survival of the fittest,” Terry says. “We would plant hundreds of plants and vegetables, heavily mulch them because we had no time to weed, and [get] a wonderful harvest.” Included in the mix was “a raspberry patch from plants that we rescued from the property across the road that were to be plowed under for development.”

They saw the potential for a state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly, operation with good demand. “We wanted to produce the highest quality raspberries without using herbicides and pesticides and make them available to local chefs and individuals at the time of year when raspberries were shipped to the Midwest from California, Chile and Mexico.”

Terry dusted off her scientific training -- she majored in in biology and botany in college before becoming “the first physician’s assistant in Madison,” as she say, and later earning another degree in computer programming -- and she and Michael devoted themselves to learning about off-season raspberry farming. And Sow Little Farm was born.

“We first put up a plastic cover that was supported by electrical conduit, the ends covered by tennis balls, over our raspberry patch in November 2002 and heated it with a kerosene heater to keep the plants alive,” she remembers. “One of us would turn it on around midnight and the other one would get up at four in the morning because the fuel only lasted for four hours. Our daughter Leah thought our lives were like getting up with a newborn.” The hard work paid off: “The raspberries were protected, sweet.”

Now all they needed was customers. “We wowed Odessa Piper. She was our first chef customer,” says Terry. A titan in the world of local-produce fine dining, Odessa then owned L’Etoile restaurant on Madison’s Capitol Square. “I did a blind call. I explained how we had extended the season of the raspberries. She was excited and tasted them.” After that, she says, “we would bring small amounts, one to two half-pint containers every week or twice a week, whatever we were able to harvest from our small patch. I would bring a little basket carefully wrapped with a towel. Tory [Miller, then L’Etoile’s chef de cuisine and now its owner] would taste them and I would wait for his reaction. His face would light up and that made my day.”

That first chef connection led to many more. “Odessa encouraged us to expand and have other chefs taste our berries,” says Terry. Today, Sow Little Farm grows seven varieties of raspberries, which they’ve harvested as early as May and as late as December. Some they sell to individuals via e-mail (sowlittlefarm@gmail.com), but most are destined for the fine restaurants in Madison, Chicago and more where chefs clamor for the plump, juicy berries ripened on the cane.

“There’s never enough for the demand,” says Terry.

VVK: What’s the usual season for raspberries?

TC: Most home gardeners tend to grow summer-bearing varieties that ripen late June, early July. Large growers tend to grow fall raspberries that begin ripening mid-August and end with the first frost.

VVK: What's the secret to off-season harvests?

TC: We grow summer and fall varieties, experimenting with staggering their ripening by pruning and [controlling] temperature in the high tunnels. Once the canes are leafing out and starting to form flower buds, we don’t let them get below 34 degrees. The houses get very warm even in the winter, so we have to open windows to keep the plants below 45 degrees while they are dormant.

VVK: What’s a high tunnel? Is it a sort of greenhouse?

TC: It’s a structure of bent metal tubing connected to steel posts driven into the ground, and a wooden baseboard. It’s covered with two layers of plastic with a space between inflated by a small blower. Ours have recycled windows and doors on the end walls for air circulation. We have six high tunnels totaling about 7,000 square feet. Our favorites have a gothic, pitched roof, as opposed to a Quonset shape, and has sides that roll up the entire length.

Putting the huge sheets of plastic on the high tunnels can only be done when there’s no wind. We’ve had great help from groups of friends and family when we got to that stage. Each time that the task was completed, we would look at each other beaming, feeling like we’d just completed a barn raising.

VVK: How did you learn to do all this?

TC: Through our own experiments, attending workshops in Canada and Penn State, and consulting Professor Marvin Pritts at Cornell University. Getting help from our local extension agents. Bob Tomesh from the UW Extension helped orchestrate a visit of farmers from the country of Georgia to our farm. We also had visitors from Tasmania who were researching high-tunnel raspberries as part of a Winston Churchill grant.

VVK: What are some of the restaurants that use your berries?

TC: L’Etoile, Harvest, Wisconsin Cheesecakery, Bishop’s Bay Country Club, The Madison Club, Sardine, Cocoliquot, Lombardino’s, Oconomowoc Lake Club, Gilbert’s Restaurant in Lake Geneva, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in East Troy, Hot Chocolate and North Pond, both in Chicago, and others in Madison and between Milwaukee and Chicago.

VVK: How are they to work with?

TC: The chefs that I work with are wonderful. They are flexible with [our] availability. They understand that what we do is labor intensive and the product is superior to getting raspberries from California for half the cost.

VVK: What do you love about raspberries?

TC: Raspberries are sensuous and delicious. We love it when we say raspberries and we notice people’s eyes get dreamy and their mouths form a smile.

VVK: What’s your favorite way to enjoy raspberries?

TC: Eating them fresh and noticing how long the flavor lasts in our mouth.

It’s fun to make a splendid cake

Award-winning decorator Suzanne Daly teaches you how

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Around the Table
in Brava Magazine
July 2008

Related recipe: Homemade Fondant

“I’m here to take take the fear out of fondant,” announces Suzanne Daly.

She’s addressing her students at one of the Wilton Method cake decorating classes she teaches at the Vanilla Bean, the baking supply shop on Odana Road on Madison’s West side. It’s the first night of the four-session course in fondant, and there’s a thrill of excitement in the room – perhaps a bit of intimidation, too. During a round of introductions, students explain why they’re here:

“I’ve dabbled in fondant, but I’ve never covered the cake.”

“I make wedding cakes for friends, and they all want fondant.”

“My husband is coming back from Iraq, and I want to make him a special cake. It’s got to be fondant.”

So what is fondant? Essentially, it's a a doughy sugar paste that you roll out like pie crust, then drape and shape right over your cake. The main ingredients are forms of sugar: confectioners’, glucose and glycerin. “It’s like Silly Putty, or play dough,” Suzanne explains. You can also roll out decorations, forming ribbons or using cookie cutters and other gadgets to punch out shapes, and apply them to the fondant-covered cake.

The smooth, sophisticated look of a fondant-coated cake is unmistakable, and it looks difficult to achieve. But Suzanne is reassuring, and – as she leads a hands-on demo, kneading coloring into a lump of fondant, rolling it out, embossing it with vine designs, draping it over a cake and affixing flowers and leaves – she’s convincing, too.

“It’s just a really neat medium to work with,” she says as she shapes and cuts the soft, doughy material. “It’s very forgiving. If you make a mistake, you don’t have to throw it away. You can work with it over and over. Just ball it up and re-roll it.” Suzanne says students have told her they’re worried that fondant is delicate and will rip easily, but the substance is robust and cooperative to the touch. “If it gets dry, you just add a little shortening. If it’s too sticky, you add a little cornstarch and powdered sugar mixture. You can store it in the refrigerator for a month, double wrapped. ”

Suzanne, who has won best in show at numerous county fairs in Wisconsin and Illinois, has been decorating cakes for 30 years and teaching for twelve. She belongs to professional organizations including ICES (International Cake Exploration Societe) and Dairyland Decorators. She keeps up with the latest trends and techniques through studying trade magazines. These days, she says, fondant is what just about everyone wants on a cake these days, even if they don’t know it.

VVK: At your bakery, Suzanne’s Sweet Artistry, what’s the big trend in wedding cake these days?

SD: Approximately 75% of the wedding cakes that I make are covered in fondant. My brides pull out every bridal magazine, and all the cakes they show me are fondant. They’re surprised when they try it – they aren’t sure if they like it. It’s the texture that’s unusual, like eating a soft Tootsie Roll. People aren’t used to chewing their cake. But they typically go with it.

VVK: It is unusual. More like eating candy than cake.

SD: I tell people if you don’t like to eat the fondant, that’s OK. You can just peel it off! I put a layer of buttercream frosting underneath. You can actually keep a cake that has fondant on it much longer than one that just has the buttercream. Once you’ve got the fondant on the cake, that cake will last three to four days. The buttercream keeps the fondant soft, and the fondant protects the cake from from drying out.

VVK: Which is easier to work with, fondant, or regular buttercream frosting?

SD: With buttercream, it’s more technique: practicing your consistency, practicing your pressure. Squeezing the frosting out of the bag. Holding your bag in the correct position to make sure it turns out exactly the way you want it to.

With fondant, you cut it out and put it on. It’s a different skill. You can do a lot more, make a lot of different things. Truly, fondant is something that anyone can do. Young kids can do it. Older people can do it. And the possibilities are endless.

Those of us who are cake artists, we will walk into a store, and we’ll see something that’s meant to be used for something else, and we’ll figure out how to use it in fondant. You know all those little paper punches? I use those for fondant. You punch out the little designs and put them on your cake.

VVK: You showed a photo of a delicate carnation in the class, with the paper-thin petals – it’s just out of this world.

SD: Very simple.

VVK: But it looks hard!

SD: That’s the illusion of it. You can make something that’s just exquisite.

VVK: How did you get into cake decorating?

SD: At an early age I realized just how happy I could make people with my cake creations. Growing up in a family of seven gave many opportunities to make cakes and desserts. After 18 years in banking, I realized it was time to retire from that career and take my “serious hobby” to the next level. I am very blessed to have found my passion and have the ability to make a living doing it.

VVK: What do you enjoy most about it?

SD: I enjoy the creative outlet that it provides to me. Taking someone’s idea and interpreting that idea into cake form is very satisfying. Also, for me it’s a stress reliever. There’s nothing better at the end of the day than to bake cakes and decorate.

I’m always looking for new ideas and techniques to learn. Then the fun is incorporating what I have learned into an edible work of art!

VVK: What’s your most popular course?

SD: The basic Course I class. It covers everything from frosting the cake to making borders and different flowers, including roses – most of the basics needed to simply decorate a cake. I teach Wilson Method classes. The advantage is that Wilton Industries provides lesson plans, equipment and tools to purchase to make all of the techniques needed to decorate a cake.

VVK: What are some of the reasons students sign up for cake decorating classes?

SD: Many want to make cakes for children’s birthdays. Some want to make a business of it, but once they realize that you have to have a separate state-inspected kitchen, it deters some of them from that idea. But they can still learn how to make great cakes for their friends and family.

VVK: What would you tell someone who’s worried their homemade cake won't look as nice as a professionally made cake?

SD: One thing that your children will always remember is that you made their birthday cakes for them. To a child, the cake is great, no matter if the frosting was smooth or the decorations weren’t perfect.

VVK: What was one of your favorite cakes?

SD: My three-year-old nephew, Zach, wanted a combine cake. He’s obsessed with tractors and farm implements. Instead of making a cake in the shape of a combine, I decided to make an interactive cake. It was decorated as a corn field with the look of some of the corn already having been picked and some still standing. The corn was made by first piping the green stalks with a round tip and then topping each stalk with yellow frosting piped with what’s known as the “grass tip.“ I then placed a purchased kid’s combine with movable wheels on the cake, lined up with the unpicked rows of corn. When he saw the cake, he knew exactly what to do. He took the combine and pushed it through the corn rows! No one minded that their piece of cake may have been missing some frosting. That is the beauty of cake decorating. It’s just frosting!

VVK: How about one of your most challenging cakes?

SD: The president of Swiss Colony had a niece that was getting married, and I was commissioned to make a wedding cake. She wanted a white fondant cake that had white fondant bows coming all the way down the front of it. Sounds fairly simple, except for the size. The bottom tier was three feet in diameter, but then you have to take into account the sides, so we’re talking rolling out almost a four-foot piece of fondant. Well, I didn’t have anything big enough to roll it out on. I told the gentlemen who were helping me that we needed to go find something. We went out into the bakery, and what we ended up finding was a conveyor belt – pliable, yet thick enough that it would support the weight of all that fondant. So we took this big piece of conveyor belt and rolled the fondant out onto it. It took five of us to lift that piece of fondant up and over onto that cake. There was probably almost 150 pounds of fondant on that cake!

VVK: When I see some elaborate cakes, like on the show “Ace of Cakes,” they’re not even appetizing anymore – I start to wonder if they’re even food, and if not, what are they?

SD: I guess that's why I consider myself more of a decorating purist. I do want to have as much on the cakes to be eaten as I can. That show certainly shows how you can take decorating to an extreme. I see that type of decorating as [for] an artist who uses cake as a medium. I consider myself a baker who uses different techniques to enhance the look of my creation.

To me, the basic, fundamental objective is to have a cake that tastes great – and looks as good as it tastes.

Fish fries, food and folk

Janet Gilmore reads food as folklore

Around the Table
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in Brava Magazine
April 2008


RECIPE

In the spirit of the alternative storylines of folk tale, Janet provides a parallel telling of three ways to stuff and bake a big fish. One comes from her fieldwork among the commercial fishing families of Green Bay -- from a woman there named Eileen Behrend -- and one comes from the recipe on p. 230 of the 1946 edition of The Joy of Cooking. The third is Janet’s own method, which is, turn, influenced by her childhood. “When I was growing up, a family friend regularly went charter fishing off the Oregon Coast,” Janet remembers. “He sometimes offered us a nice, big, whole salmon -- a cause for celebration.”

However you choose to follow the narrative below, start with Janet's recommendation of “a fresh, whole, big-bodied fish like Lake Michigan whitefish, Lake Superior lake trout or a wild-caught salmon from the Pacific Northwest,” and don’t stop till you get to the happy ending: a splendid main dish that’s brown and crispy outside, and delicately flaky within.

Baked and stuffed whole fish

One whole 3- to 5-pound fish, cleaned (Janet keeps the head and tail on; Eileen doesn’t)
A few strips of bacon (Eileen only)
Stuffing:
1 1/2 cups bread stuffing cubes (Janet uses sourdough or rye crumbs)
At least 2 tablespoons chopped onion (Janet uses more; Eileen uses “a lot”)
1/2 cup chopped celery (Joy, and Eileen)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley (only if it’s on hand, says Eileen)
1 or 2 eggs, beaten (Joy, and Janet)
Salt, black pepper and sage to taste (Eileen)
1/8 teaspoon paprika, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (Joy, and Janet)

Combine stuffing ingredients. “Stuff the fish loosely and mass any extra along the opening to the cavity,” Janet says. Eileen sews the sides together with a coarse needle and thread. Place fish on a generous length of heavy-duty foil laid over a shallow baking pan. If head and tail is on (they can extend past the pan’s corners), loosely wrap foil around them. If you’re using bacon, lay it over the body of the fish.

Bake at 400° F for 1 to 2 1/2 hours, depending on fish size, until, as Eileen described, “nice and brown and crispy on the outside” and “white opaque all the way through.” Joy says 350°, but “I suspect [400°] will more effectively dry out the fish,” says Janet. “I look for a flaky, dry texture.“ Transfer to serving plater, foil and all.

ARTICLE

What is folklore? If you just thought of embroidered vests, flowing skirts and circle dances, or tales of talking trees and fairy princesses, forget it.

Folklore is everything that you and your folk know and do and make that nobody else quite gets.

Janet Gilmore, who teaches courses at the UW-Madison that explore food as folklore, explains: “It’s traditional artistic expression in small groups. Every group you can think of – a school group, work group, church group. A family. In every one of those environments there’s esoteric information, insider knowledge, that you learn in order to navigate. You usually learn this informally – across generations or from peers – and you use it in artistic expression of who you are.” And how we deal with food, she says, both in daily life and on special occasions, “is definitely folk knowledge.”

Originally from the state of Oregon, Janet earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. There she met her husband, Wisconsin native and fellow folklorist Jim Leary. For decades, the pair travelled through the Upper Midwest on contracts with organizations like the Michigan State Museum, Manitowoc’s Maritime Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, gathering information about customs and culture, working with museum collections and exhibits and presenting their findings at folklife festivals and academic conferences.

Today both are faculty members at the UW-Madison, where Jim, now the director of the Folklore Program there, helped create the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. Janet, who’s published a string of papers in peer-reviewed journals based on her fieldwork among commercial fishing families of Wisconsin and Michigan, is an assistant professor of landscape architecture and folklore. She’s also been featured on radio and in print as an expert on the history and social meaning of Wisconsin’s Friday night fish fry traditions.

VVK: How is food a form of folklore?

JG: Food is expressed through a bounty of expression, through stories, words, sayings, songs. There are the religious rituals that use food symbolically, whether it’s Holy Communion or the Passover, where you deal with a series of symbolic foods as you reenact the story of Exodus in your home. The bitter herb for slavery, the ground nut mixture for the mortar of the pyramids -- these things transport you to a different time and place.

Then there are the material traditions involving food. Food is something that we need. But how do we make decisions about what’s going to be acceptable as a foodstuff? How do we extract it from nature? How is it presented on a table? What’s the fast and feast cycle?

VVK: Isn’t that pretty much uniform across the country?

JG: If you interview people you’ll find out pretty quickly they don’t all follow the same routine. For instance, there’s a perception that everyone celebrates Thanksgiving about the same way. In my Festivals and Celebrations class last semester, we talked about three or four main ways just of dealing with the turkey. Some families have the big table-side carving ritual. Who carves the bird says something about the family hierarchy. Some will focus on how the turkey is cooked – they’ll try all sorts of techniques for making it more juicy and flavorful, brining, deep-frying. Immigrant families will get a turkey, as part of becoming American, but they might not know quite what to do with it, and it can end up a little strange. It’ll be over on the side, a symbol, and the real feast will be their own ethnic celebration foods. Then there are families where they have a turkey because they feel they have to, but it’s not featured. They might cook it the night before, to free up the oven. They might even slice it up and serve it on a platter.

VVK: What! They won’t have a whole bird on the table? I find that disturbing, somehow.

JG: Yes, and that’s what happens in my class. Students are so emotionally involved with their family food traditions, that it becomes difficult to separate out their feelings and approach this subject objectively. That’s what attracts people to food – it’s emotional. Students look at their family and their food experiences, and they start to see all the expressions of loving relationships. But also, food has this fundamental purpose. So I say to them, OK, if all you’re doing is expressing love, can you take the food out of the equation and still express the love? And that really bugs them.

But that’s what I like about studying food. When you start talking about food in an academic way, it doesn’t distance you from the food. It just engages you more. What feeds me is that my students are interested in all this, too.

VVK: I’ve heard you say that we’re unaware of a lot of our folk food knowledge. Like when someone gives us a handwritten recipe card with basically just a list of ingredients, a temperature and a time. My friend shared with me her mother’s carrot cake recipe, and it occurred to me that people from a different culture might have a hard time ending up with carrot cake from just that card.

JG: Exactly. Most cookbooks leave a lot out, but you don’t notice that. You bring your own knowledge to it, your esoteric knowledge of what the food is supposed to become. People think a recipe is all you need, but it really isn’t. The more experience you have, the more you can figure out. When a cookbook tries to fully explain everything, there’s so much writing. Yet it never has quite enough information.

VVK: Do you ever get tired of giving talks about Wisconsin fish fries?

JG: Never. I love it. Except that people expect me to be able to tell them what’s the best fish fry in Wisconsin. I tell them, it’s your favorite fish fry. Because it’s not really about the fish. It’s about seeing the people you know, socializing while you stand in line. Your tavern, your church, your VFW hall. Find one where you feel comfortable, and keep going. It will become yours. I know people who go to a different fish fry each week, looking for the ultimate. They’re missing it.

VVK: What draws you to working with the commercial fishing families of Wisconsin and the U.P.?

JG: The joy they have in that life, like nowhere else. Pacific coast fishing families would tell me, “My kids hate fish,” or “Fish is the last thing I want to eat after a day on the boat,” or that they won’t eat fish for days before an event, so they don’t smell. Here, everyone eats fish, everyone cooks, everyone fishes. They figure out how to cook fish out on the boat, using the heat of the engine. They go ice fishing. Children know when the streams will run with different types of fish. It’s a reason for a party, to have a fish boil, or to get the smokehouse going and smoke a hundred pounds of fish, share it with everyone, and wind up with just ten pounds for themselves. They can it, they pickle it. They’ll set out a jar when company comes. It’s wonderful. Families stay in that region, even though times are hard, economically, because they love the life. It’s an inland maritime culture.

My goal is to write some books about these fish foodways, as much for the people I’ve interviewed as anything. It’s their lives. And so many European immigrant traditions that haven’t been researched, and the fish foodways of the indigenous peoples. I’m probably not going to be able to do all of this in my lifetime. I hope I can inspire my students.

VVK: What’s the state of folklore today?

JG: It’s accepted as an academic subject more and more. Folklore is about looking at artistic expressions that aren’t endorsed by the official culture. At what’s expressed by people who aren’t powerful. Everybody participates in folk culture. As long as there’s a group, there’s folklore, because it’s how people interact and how they express themselves.