Locavore Lesson Plan

When Laura Adiletta left Cleveland in 2009, she had no idea she would make a return under such delicious circumstances.

Or that she would bring 33 high school students from Marianapolis Preparatory School in Connecticut  with her.

This week Adiletta is taking the students on a tour of the city as she teaches them about sustainable foods.

“The title of the course is Taste of Cleveland," explains Adiletta, who is also a chef at Vanilla Bean Cafe in Pomfret, Conn.  "So not only will they get a taste of the food and the stuff that’s growing around Cleveland, they’re also getting to experience the culture that really makes Cleveland unique.”




A few places on their packed itinerary include the Flying Fig, Greenhouse Tavern, and Spice Kitchen & Bar, where they will be treated to chef-led talks and tours. They’ll also get right into the source of their meals by visiting the Culinary Vegetable Institute in Milan, Ohio, and West Side Market’s urban farm.

 Adiletta's history with Cleveland (she graduated from Case Western Reserve University and also worked as an editor at Cleveland Magazine) influenced her decision to use it as an example for her course, but the city's emerging focus on sustainable food also caught her eye.

“I’ve been following the local food in Cleveland for years, really ever since I started cooking,” she says. “I jumped on the opportunity to highlight Cleveland and the food scene that’s brewing there.”

Many of the students Adiletta will be taking around the city are international, so this trip is an opportunity to show those kids there is more to American food than drive-thru fare.

“I want the kids to ask where their food is coming from,” she says. “I want to be an ambassador to American food culture and say we’re not all about McDonald's hamburgers.”

The  local food education doesn't stop with the students. Adiletta and her students are using social media to engage with the community about what they learned. Follow along through Twitter with the @eatloCLE handle and #eatloCLE hashtag and a website made for the trip, eatlocle.com.

Inspiring Opportunity

I’ve been tracking the Bioneers Conference for years. It’s an annual meeting of change leaders, innovative thinkers, community activists and visionaries from the worlds of science, business, government, religion and academia. They come together to explore and share practical, creative, and cutting edge strategies for addressing the most pressing environmental problems of our times and the complex web of social, ethical, and financial challenges integral to them.

This month will be the 19th gathering. As always it’s in California and, as always, I am not able to attend. But I am incredibly excited-and proud- because Cleveland is among a select group of American cities that are hosting simultaneous companion forums October 17-19. The Great Lakes Bioneers program will present keynote speakers via live satellite feeds from the west coast conference, along with locally produced workshops, seminars, and tours that focus on issues and initiatives specific to northeast Ohio. Water is a primary theme this year but food- a subject that is my personal and professional passion- will be part of the discussions. That’s because where it comes from and how it is produced are critical to the long term health of our regional economy, environment, and communities.

All the sessions are open to the public and there’s a complete listing of what’s happening when on the website www.gcbl.org/bioneers . Most are downtown at Cleveland State University. You can sign up for single days or the entire 3-day confab. It’s an opportunity to get informed and inspired, connect with like minded people, and find out about the amazing things going on here when it comes to living and working green.

Table Talk

I walked into Fahrenheit recently and was blown away by the beautiful new tables that fill the dining room. The tops are maple and oak and are stained a rich cordovan brown. They are finished to silky smoothness and polished to a high shine that glows in the candlelight. I actually caught a server pause from clearing to stroke the surface. She saw me watching, blushed, and said “We all love them.”

What got me in the door to get a close look at these tables was both personal and professional. They are custom designed and made locally by APOC, aka A Piece of Cleveland, a company that my son Ezra Taxel and three partners launched a little less than a year ago. They deconstruct buildings all over town- as opposed to demolishing them- rescuing wood and other materials that otherwise would end up in the waste stream. In their shop they bring flooring, molding, studs, beams and doors back to pristine condition and then create furniture, countertops, and unique household accessories. The process is called upcycling and it’s at the cutting edge of the sustainability revolution. To say I am a proud mother is definitely and understatement. His equally proud pop, Barney Taxel is responsible for the fine photo.

But as a food writer my job is to follow and report on restaurant trends. None is more significant right now than implementing green principles. So I have more than parental pride motivating me to write about what Fahrenheit’s owner Rocco Whalen and his partners have done by commissioning APOC to make tables for the Tremont restaurant. The decision does all kinds of environmental good, saving trees, turning trash into raw materials, and conserving resources by eliminating the need for tablecloths which must be trucked to and from the laundry, washed and ironed. The tables are made from wood pulled from two houses, one in Westlake and the other on W.65th, and like all APOC products, they come with “rebirth certificates” that provides a bit of local history. There’s no bigger Cleveland booster than Chef Rocco, so it seems especially appropriate that he’s furnishing his place with stuff culled from the city he loves.

The APOC team is now hard at work making new tables for Starbucks at Cedar and Fairmount in Cleveland Heights. The wood they’re using was originally in a warehouse on E. 71st and what was, until it came down recently, the city’s oldest school building at Stannard and 50th. It will definitely add some local flavor to every cup of coffee they serve.