Earth Eats: Real Food, Green Living

“Imagine, we have dinner at 7, 8 pm–my baba would take all of the çörek to the bakery and have it baked and he’s back home at 10pm–doesn’t matter! Fresh tea, hot tea, feta cheese, olives, breakfast–that’s like your night breakfast the day before Eid.”This week on the show, we spend time in the kitchen with Derya Dogan. She is a PhD candidate in Education Policy Studies in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. She walks us through the steps of making her version of Poğaça–a Turkish hand pie filled with cheese and herbs. She shares treasured childhood memories of communal baking in her home town in Southeast Turkey.

“There is a beautiful Hindustani saying, ‘Kosa kosa per pani badle, chare kosa per vani,’ which means "Every two miles the water changes, and every four the language." So that, in fact, is the geography of taste and terroir in India.”This week on the show, we talk with sociologist Krishnendu Ray about place and food and caste in India and how identity can be defined as much by what you DON'T eat, as by what you DO eat.  And we share a recipe for a home grown hot sauce that cannot be prepared indoors. 

"It really revolves around the environmental justice issues. These operations are popping up in communities of color, where they don't really have a lot of political clout. But these people have fought back."This week on the show a conversation with Sherri Dugger and Craig Watts with Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. We talk about the work they’re doing to support people living in rural communities dealing with the consequences of factory farming operations located in their neighborhoods.

Many of the farmers talked about the ability to be out in nature with other members of their family and other members of their community and several of them also talked about the benefits of being able to interact with people from other communities.This week on the show, we talk with geographer Pablo Bose about innovative resettlement projects that help refugees connect with familiar foods from home, through gardening in community with others.

“As you walk through the doors, whether you like to cook or you don’t like to cook, you feel welcome, and things are accessible…”“What our vision is, is to make it a better world through breaking bread at the kitchen table, if you will.”  This week on the show, we talk with co-owners of Bloomington’s independent, locally-owned kitchen supply store, Goods for Cooks. We hear some of the shop’s nearly 50 year history, as it has changed hands, updated, and maintained a commitment to quality goods and face-to-face customer service. Plus a story from Harvest Public Media about a native midwestern fruit that should be way more popular than it currently is. 

“As Greeks, we don't really shop from supermarkets. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who comes from a village and has access to olive trees and olive oil.”On today’s show, a conversation with Greek chef and anthropologist Nafsika Papacharalampous. She shares a recipe for Greek comfort food, and talks with me and Ogla Kalentzidou about the role of memory and nostalgia in contemporary Greek cuisine. Plus a story from Harvest Public Media about how prairies might be making a comeback in farm country.

“We know that there are all sorts of good chemicals that come out of the dirt and working with land–working with plants–that are beneficial to our mood and our health. For refugee populations that have had to be on the run or had to live in refugee camps for decades, having a little piece of land that you can tend to that you can take care of and then see the results and not feel like you’re gonna be bombed out the next day–it brings a kind of peace of mind and a little bit of healing.” This week on the show, Tammy Ho, Professor of Gender and Sexuality studies at University of California-Riverside, shares her research about refugees from Burma and their participation in the United States food system. We’ll learn about a supermarket sushi mogul, Burmese meatpackers as essential workers, and how a group of refugees saved a failing church by starting a community garden. 

“At least 100 years ago, the last robber barons, we got nice libraries out of it. This one, it’s like ‘oh, what is the family using its money for? To gut public education via charter school networks?’ It’s kind of Machiavellian–it’s Machiavellian in a really sad way”This week on the show, I’m talking with Austin Frerick, the author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. Frerick uncovers the sometimes shocking facts about seven large companies who play an outsized role in our nation’s food system. From hog barons to coffee barons, to Indiana’s own dairy barons, Fair Oaks farm. 

“And that’s why we call it a food value chain.You know, it’s a supply chain but it’s based on the values that you have as far as how the land is treated, how people are treated, what kind of nutrition contents in your food–all those things [that] people up and down–from the farmer to the consumer have an interest in. And so, this system that we’re developing is about addressing those values and making sure they happen.”This week on the show, an uplifting conversation about organizations and coalitions working together for stronger rural economies and robust local food systems. We talk about micro lending, food hubs, farm-to-school programs and more. 

“When you have to make those decisions do you buy the nicest ingredients to make your food, since that’s why people are there? Or do you pay your employees two dollars more an hour? Or do you rent the building that’s gonna put you in the location that gives you the highest chance of success? I think that in many ways restaurant owners have one of the most complicated business owning ventures that you can think of. They are balancing so many different goals in one space.”Today we’re talking with geographer Jennifer Watkins about restaurants–about owners, workers, customers and how precarious the whole industry appears to be in this moment. 

"...one of which is sorghum sudan grass, and if you don't mow that, it gets to be like ten feet tall. And so we had pigs that were  running through there, that reminded us of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park–you know, you can't see the animal, you just see the top of  the plant waving back and forth. And so we were always on safari when we had to go out and do pig chores."This week on the show, we visit Nightfall Farm, a livestock farm in Southern Indiana focused on sustainable agriculture.We talk about perennial pastures, rotational grazing and what farmers can learn when they listen to their animals. 

“Animal agriculture creates more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation combined. Yet, as individuals we’re often told ‘you should take public transportation and ride bikes,’ all of which are good things but not very frequently are we told, ‘let’s reduce our consumption of animal products, and that will have a tremendous impact on the environment.’This week on the show, Toby Foster talks with the creators of Planted, a local plant-based food truck and catering operation in Bloomington, Indiana. We learn about their inventive, plant-based menu and their commitment to sustainable practices.We have an interview with Julie Guthman about the troubled strawberry industry and we wrap up the show with a recipe for  pickled carrots.

“Speaking directly to Black women and wanting Black women to know that their bodies are not the problem. The way that our bodies are treated and problematized and pathologized, we’re often taught that it’s our fault, that it’s our problem to fix or we just need to love our bodies out of societal oppression.”  This week on the show a conversation with dietitian and author Jessica Wilson about her book, It’s Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women’s BodiesShe’s challenging us to rethink the politics of body positivity by centering the bodies of Black women in our discussions about food, weight, health and wellness. 

“I grow tomatoes at my house. My mom’s such a good shot, she was shooting cherry tomatoes  off their stems”This week on the show it's back to school and into the garden.We meet kids in an after school garden club at Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Next we drop into a multi-age classroom in Bloomington where kids work with a chef to craft a garden-to-table snack for their whole classroom.

“When the forids  arrive, the ants release a pheromone that tells their nest mates, all the other ants that are in the vicinity, their sisters that are in the vicinity, tells them ‘Careful! The forids are here! You better go back to your nest or get paralyzed.’”This week on the show, we get to nerd out on insects with Ivette Perfecto who studies biodiversity and agroecology. She’s got some wild stories to tell about bugs on coffee plants and the importance of understanding the delicate balance between species.

“When you think of literacy and you think of what does that mean and what are all the parts of it– think about reading a recipe. Think about measuring the ingredients. Think about learning how to cook.  Think about planning a meal, or budgeting for that meal.There are so many things that are learning-through-play, learning-through-doing-it, in a teaching kitchen. That’s the reason  why we call it a teaching kitchen. It really is about learning literacy as well as some skills that are very specific to cooking.”This week on the show, conversations with an architect, a library director and the head of a food pantry about how a teaching kitchen found its way into a public library and what it means for the community. 

“We’ve been presented with problems today that we’ve never dealt with before as an agriculture industry–like climate change.  And I don’t think that the approach we’ve taken, historically, is going to work here…As long as I’ve heard the words ‘climate change,’ I have heard that Indigenous practice is the solution.”This week on the show, a conversation with Michelle Hughes of the National Young Farmers Coalition. In 2019, the organization made a decision to put racial equity at the center of their strategic planning work. Michelle Hughes shares the story of their transformation. This story first aired in 2022, Michelle Hughes is now the co-director of the National Young Farmers CoalitionAnd Josephine McRobbie brings us a story about a new web tool that might help oyster farmers better prepare for the rainy season. [Note: This story first aired in 2022, Michelle Hughes is now co-director of the National Young Farmers Coalition.]

Have you ever had a hunch about something, tested it out and been shocked by the results? That’s what happened to public health scholar Funmi Ayeni. She took a traditional Nigerian home remedy and applied the rigors of scientific research to test its efficacy. The results were nothing short of jaw dropping. This week on Earth Eats, food research that could end up saving lives.

“As I started to think more about theories around  food, and it’s a thing that we do every day without fail, and it really shapes the way that we interact with one another, it shapes the way we interact with our environments, the ways that we create networks of relationships–being able to name it has given it a power to be able to use it to tap into ways to think about social relationships in the present and propose alternatives.”This week we’re devoting the full show to my conversation with Dr. Kaitlyn Alcantara an anthropological bioarcheologist, at Indiana University-Bloomington, who studies foodways as tools of empowerment. 

“We use wood so that we give the various microorganisms sort of a place to colonize and live from batch to batch. And over time those colonies and those species that have taken hold will change, they’ll drift and so, you’ll develop a unique character to each tank that’s really interesting.”This week on the show we dive head first into a giant oak barrel full of aging beer. Okay, well, not literally. Producer Toby Foster pays a visit to The Woodshop, that’s Upland Brewing Company’s sour beer facility. Now’s your chance to learn what’s special about this type of beer and why they needed to construct a separate building to craft it.