Savor, #73

David Buchanan:

When you grow your own food and you experiment with a range of vegetables and fruits, you come to realize that so much of what we have in the supermarket just isn't nearly as lively. It just doesn't taste as good. And so when you really emphasize taste and you care about that, you realize that there's a level of richness there that we've often forgotten.

Amy Anderson:

I can't really pinpoint what it is that I search for. I like to be around inspiring people. I like to be around fun people. Laughter is really important and a learning environment is really important too.

Karina Napier:

I see it more as an opportunity for people to take one little ounce of health into their hands and be conscious of that. It's a special item that we need to be paying attention to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you're listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 73 Savor, airing for the first time on February 3rd, 2013. Life is meant to be savored and what better way to do so than through food? In his book Taste Memory, author David Buchanan traces the experiences of modern day explorers who rediscover culturally rich, forgotten foods and return them to our tables for all to experience and savor. We enjoy his insights as a farmer, gardener and slow foods advocate. Hear about Maine's best savor spots from Eat Maine writer Amy Anderson and have a conversation with Karina Napier of Sea Change about her work in the sea salt industry here in Maine. As a physician with training in Chinese medicine and acupuncture, I spend a lot of time talking with my patients about food. Many people come to me wanting to lose weight or change their body in some way. What I like to focus on, though, is how it is that we can enjoy foods and really bring the joy of cooking and eating and cultivating into our lives. How can we savor what we have in front of us so that it's not a constant struggle. This, I've found, is the most successful way to approach weight loss, but it's also the most successful way to approach eating is learning how to cook what you truly enjoy in a healthy way. We believe that our conversations with David Buchanan, Amy Anderson and Carina Napier will enable you to find ways to savor your own life. Thank you for joining us. Recently at the Body Architect, I gave a talk on strengthening the immune system and offered a variety of different foods and other natural ways to keep people's immune system strong in the winter. One tip that I remember from my mother way back was gargling with salt water. This was a very simple way to deal with a sore throat and there is some science behind it. More and more of us are realizing that we need to go back to the things that our parents talked to us about to keep ourselves healthy. It's not anybody else's job, but ours. For more thoughts on how to keep ourselves healthy, join me on our monthly wellness series at the Body Architect or become a patient by calling the body architect at 207-774-2196. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast has been a way for me to bring some of my thoughts and also the thoughts of area guests and thought leaders. I know I'm saying thought a lot thoughts, feelings, emotions, passions about things like food to the airwaves. And the individual who's sitting across from me now certainly has a lot of thoughts and passion emotion about food. We have with us today David Buchanan, who is the author of Taste Memory. Thanks for coming in.

David Buchanan:

Thank you, Lisa. Wonderful to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it's wonderful to meet you because I always enjoy reading a book, which I did. I got your book, I read through it and really kind of getting to know you that way. But then it's funny to see how people actually progress over the course of their life after they finish writing the book to where they are now. But first, let's go back. What caused you to write this book?

David Buchanan:

I felt that I've been reading so much about the local hearing so much about the local food movement over the past five or six years. And to me there was another message that I wanted to to bring out into the world about heritage foods and diversity and the idea that local food isn't the same as food that's brought in from other parts of the world, that we can really establish our own distinct cuisine specific to this place.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's interesting because in Chinese medicine we talk a lot and I practice Chinese medicine and we talk a lot about sort of eating the foods that have the essence of the place where you actually live and how that ends up being more healthy for you. And we've talked about this before on air, that Maine seems to provide the foods that we need to live. Apples. That's one of the things that you're passionate about, why apples?

David Buchanan:

There are a lot of reasons that I get excited about apples, and it's partly because as a plant collector, I can still go out into the fields around Maine, into abandoned homesteads or even in urban settings and find old apple trees to collect. And so it's piece of history that's still very much alive. We're all probably familiar with ancient apple trees that could be up to 200 years old growing by the side of the road or behind someone's home. And so there's a real vibrancy to collecting apples, but also because there's just so much diversity in apple history and in apple growing in New England. Historically, it's estimated that in Maine, farmers, gardeners and home growers grew an estimated 400 plus varieties of apples. So there's this incredible richness there. And apples were served so many different uses. Maybe it was for fresh eating or for making cider, or for hard cider or pies. Every apple can have its own particular ecological niche and culinary use.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And apples, they will overwinter. We can actually some of them can be stored. Is that true?

David Buchanan:

Sure. There are summer apples that are best eating, that typically don't store at all, that are best eaten right off the tree or baked in August. And then there are apples that really don't reach their full potential until they've been stored for a month or two in a root cellar and should be eaten from February onwards.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was struck when you were talking about different varieties of apples. I think you mentioned honeycrisp as one that you kind of gave a little bit background. And it's interesting because you go into Hannaford or any grocery store and you see here's honeycrisp and here's Macintosh and that's Red Delicious, Green Delicious. That's about it. But you're talking lots and lots of different varieties with lots of different tastes.

David Buchanan:

Yes, thousands of varieties. I write about going out to the national germplasm collection, the USDA's apple collection in Geneva, New York, and wandering through their 50 acre orchard and sampling hundreds and thousands of varieties of apples, apples alone. And that same diversity is maybe not to quite that extent, but is available in all kinds of crops. But yes, if you Go to the supermarket, you see just a handful of varieties. That's partly a function of the difficulty of marketing more than a dozen or so varieties. People just can't recognize them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And also because a lot of them are not even. They're not even from Maine.

David Buchanan:

A lot of the fruit that we're eating isn't from Maine. It's really tough for Maine orchards to compete right now with higher volume production in other parts of the world, and we don't. In some ways, our climate is challenged for growing fruit. And so we're competing against Washington State or New Zealand or now China, although we've been.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Maine has been a farming state for centuries. So somehow we've made this work. Prior to the time that we were shipping things in from China and Washington

David Buchanan:

State, we can and do. We've got a scrappy group of farmers in Maine and a very vibrant agricultural community.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Talk to me about biodiversity. I think, you know, we just talked about apples and how there are certain things that we as consumers just get used to. We want certain things, tastes. Why is it important ecologically for us to consider biodiversity?

David Buchanan:

It's important to match a plant or an animal to a particular place. So let's say you're trying to grow an apple in central Maine, and you have a certain set of conditions. You've got some rocky soil, got cold winters, maybe wet springs, and a little bit of a dry period in the summer. It's a very different set of conditions from what a grower encounters out in Washington State. In central Washington state, which I also write about because I used to live there, I used to live close to apple country in north central Washington. And there the land is in the shadow of the North Cascade Mountains, and it's very dry. The winters are cold. The pest pressures are very different. And so when we're thinking about, say, the pressure from a fungal disease or a particular pest is going to differ radically from place to place. And some apples will respond more, will have some natural defenses against some of those pests, or have a better adaptation to drought, maybe have a deeper root system. Some might thrive better in cold or warm weather. There are apples that are more regionally adapted to the south or the Mid Atlantic or to northern Maine. There aren't that many apples that can survive up in Aroostook county, but there are a handful of apples like Duchess that are renowned for thriving in that difficult environment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And so if we're always depending upon a sort of apple, say it's. Let's just say it's Golden Delicious from Hannaford, and something comes along that destroys that crop, some sort of weather situation, then that's it.

David Buchanan:

Sure. Look at corn this summer, with the drought that spreads so intensely across the south and the Midwest, and we have hundreds of thousands of acres of or millions of acres in any one state planted entirely to corn, and typically to just one strain, one line of corn. And so if something comes along, say a heat wave while that corn is trying to pollinate, or maybe a pest at the wrong moment or a disease has the potential to spread like wildfire. So, in contrast, if you can diversify what you're planting, even if you're planting several different kinds of corn, you may have pollination occurring at different moments, one week to the next, and you'll have a better chance of getting a crop

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

which maybe now isn't quite as important. But if we think back to Ireland and the potato famine, it certainly was very important.

David Buchanan:

Absolutely. It's important today, too. Diversity matters, and adaptation to local environment matters. In terms of the amount of spray we have to use, in terms of the health of the crop, the success of the farm.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it also seems to matter from a health standpoint. I mean, we have to be able to get used to it, eating different types of foods. We have to be able to expose ourselves to different types of environments, because when we don't do that, we get ill.

David Buchanan:

It's dull, too. It's boring to eat the same thing day after day. I like to experiment with different apples, and to me, there's a tremendous cultural richness just to go back to apples in that diversity. If you think about all the uses and the subtleties of it, when Maner's historically knew that one apple made the best apple butter and one, let's say a northern spire, a Baldwin, made the best pie, and then another was perfect for cider or perfect for eating at a particular time. To think that we can substitute all those uses and try to get all of that out of one apple. Just to take honeycrisp. Does that replace everything? It's a great apple. I really enjoy eating honeycrisp. But can it? Is it the end? Is it the only fruit? Can it substitute for all that richness?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is this one of the reasons why you were involved with slow foods?

David Buchanan:

There are a lot of reasons I've been involved with slow foods, yes, but the emphasis on regionality and tradition and the pleasures of the table really resonates with me, as well as its embrace of ecology. It's understanding that a thriving, successful, healthy agriculture has to be rooted in place, in with an environmental awareness.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And also this idea of taste. And the name of your book, obviously, is taste Memory. So there is this taste aspect, this joy, this pleasure, this savoring.

David Buchanan:

When you grow your own food and you experiment with a range of vegetables and fruits, you come to realize that so much of what we have in the supermarket just isn't nearly as lively. It just doesn't taste as good. And it's not just the freshness. It's also the that anytime you set out to grow something, you have to balance certain compromises. You have to choose between emphasizing yield or pest resistance or flavor or any number of other factors. And the commercial grower probably won't come down in the same place on that spectrum that the home grower will or the small farmer. And so when you really emphasize taste and you care about that, begin to elevate it above some of the other concerns. Realize that there's a level of richness there that we've often forgotten.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that we might be able to convince people to have a more diverse and healthy diet by introducing them to things that taste more interesting and perhaps even better?

David Buchanan:

I hope so. For me, getting involved with slow food has been an education. I don't think that I had the most refined taste. I still don't. I'm pretty humble about that. But my palate has developed, and I have an appreciation for flavor that adds a lot to my life personally.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you also have an appreciation for actually getting your hands in the dirt, getting yourself exposed to the soil, and really savoring that aspect of bringing the food to your table.

David Buchanan:

There's something really satisfying about being a gardener, and I consider myself a gardener first and foremost. Although my gardens are growing year to year, I find there's a lot of pleasure to harvesting something and bringing it to the table.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did somebody like you get into what could, some people would say could be pretty hard work? This gardening and Heritage Foods. I mean, in reading through your book, you are originally from Massachusetts, and you have a pretty nice degree from a pretty good institution, and you could have done really anything you wanted to. But one of the first things it sounds like you did was go out to Washington state and muck around in irrigation fields where you could have been electrocuted by.

David Buchanan:

Well, I ask myself that all the time. I'm realistic about the challenges. Farming isn't glamorous in a lot of ways. I find it satisfying on a lot of levels. I think I'm driven by strong feelings for the environment, strong feelings about biodiversity, a concern for saving these foods. To me, there's a mission there that's really important and exciting and worth giving myself to. And I enjoy working with my hands a lot. I can't imagine sitting in an office. It just doesn't. It's just not me. I need a lot of stimulation and diversity and this offers that every day is different.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast we we've long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepherd Financial. From David Buchanan's book Taste Memory, we

David Buchanan:

run across that quote, you must eat it to save it. And yet just because you ate it

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

doesn't mean it didn't go to waste.

David Buchanan:

Money's like that too. You must work to save all the

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

money you didn't spend.

David Buchanan:

But then it becomes someone's job to give it another purpose. So what then is this relationship with money we call the saver? You feel a very acute desire to save because cash is accumulating. You save into a 401k. You save for education. On paper, financial growth is happening and yet it feels like you have nothing for today, nothing to savor. You may feel burdened and disconnected with

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the money set aside for tomorrow.

David Buchanan:

You may take risks because you have money, but miss opportunities because you can't access it. You feel split between two realities.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have one foot in your financial

David Buchanan:

past and the other, at best, it's in the future. To explore this more, send an email to inferdfinancialmain.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What has it been like to go from really this very hands on gardening and growing and you also spend time in the farmer's market selling and to writing and doing something that's very cerebral and also going out and talking to people on MPBN and hear about your book. I mean that's a very interesting Sort of back and forth in your life.

David Buchanan:

It's a strange balance. And again, it's my nature that I like diversity. So I might spend a few hours mucking around in the dirt and then come home to the computer. I wrote a lot of the book over the winters over the past three years. And certainly getting out and publicizing it now has been a new experience. It's very different from my day to day life. I'm a pretty private person, so that's been odd. But I again, I like, I like the balance and the book feeds into everything else I want to do because as I said earlier, I don't really consider myself a farmer. I think of myself as a gardener and a plant collector. And the book will enable me to build on that side of the growing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the challenges that you've experienced with this path that you've taken? You've been doing this for now, 20 years?

David Buchanan:

No, not exactly. I did it part time when I lived in Washington State and I was bitten by the bug of collecting heritage foods. And so I had my own gardens and collected all kinds of grains and vegetables and fruit trees. And then I stopped. I moved back to the East Coast, I moved to Boston, I took an office job. I worked for a few years there. I did design work up in Maine after that and in Massachusetts. And so it was really only when I got involved with Slow Food, I helped found and then led the Portland chapter for three years that I started feeling myself pulled back into this world of food, borrowed some space at a friend's farm, started growing vegetables and couldn't help myself. And it's just expanded from there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And have there been challenges? I mean, you've had a. I think I was saying to you on the phone, one of my favorite quotes is all who wander are not lost. This is a Tolkien quote. And certainly you've done some wandering in your career path. Have there been challenges associated with that?

David Buchanan:

Well, there are all kinds of challenges. For one thing, we live in downtown Portland and I've never really been exactly a country person though I've lived out in rural Washington state and didn't want to just go out and be on a rural farm. So I've leased land. My partner, Carla, my fiance Carla works up in Augusta and in Portland, and so she's not really involved with the growing. So it's really my project. I've leased land in and around Portland and it's a real challenge. We no longer have our land use arranged for agricultural production largely. If you go back a couple of generations. 50 years, Cape Elizabeth was a farming community producing strawberries, lettuce, other crops for markets down in Massachusetts and farther. And that's no longer the case. There's still some wonderful farms there, but. But a lot of the land has gone to residential development, as is much of the suburban landscape around Portland and most American cities. It's not like going to Europe, where zoning and land use has been very carefully restricted to preserve agricultural land. Simply finding a place to grow, finding a place to do my project was probably the most difficult thing I had to face just getting started. In other words, what's the hardest thing? And as you know, someone like Dr. Rodney Voisin on Cape Elizabeth has been wonderful in opening up his door to me and letting me grow there. And I've had some wonderful experiences with landowners around Portland, letting me beg and borrow space from them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it's important to get outside of Portland to some extent. In fact, you talked about. I was very struck when you were talking about rooftop gardening in urban settings and the challenges associated with clean soil.

David Buchanan:

Desperation.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. Right. So, I mean, there are some very. I mean, soil isn't soil uniformly. I mean, there are some soils that are healthier than others. Has that also been part of the issue is you need to find.

David Buchanan:

Sure. Finding the right soil is definitely a part of it. You can't grow fruit trees. As I'm increasingly fascinated by all the nuances of all kinds of fruit trees. And you need good drainage. You don't want to plant them in a heavy clay soil, good sunlight, ideally some elevation to get away from springtime frosts. And that's a challenge, finding within a half an hour of Portland. So, yes, there are all kinds of considerations. Chemical contamination is another thing I write about that's invisible and often really hard to assess.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Another thing that I. Again, going back to your time, I think it was in Washington State that I was just so struck by was this sense that choosing to be a small gardener and really have your livelihood depend upon that, or to be a farmer and to do that for a living. I mean, it's not without its risks. I mean, you talk about having gotten quite ill, I believe, from dehydration, and you went to the emergency room and they treated you and you would spend all your wages for.

David Buchanan:

And I wasn't dependent on those wages at the time. It wasn't that. That was something I was working part time, irrigating a ranch, partly maybe for the romance of it. And I. So I worked three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. And I was doing other things as well. And the money was. It was negligible as it is for so many farm workers. That was $4.50 an hour. It was nothing. And it's not much higher for a lot of agricultural workers today. But I write about that, about that to help give a sense of what the world looks like from a producer's perspective, from a farm worker's perspective. I was doing it also because I knew a lot of farm workers in that part of the world, spent a lot of time with some wonderful friends from the highlands of Oaxaca who were farm workers. And I saw what their lives were like and I thought, well, let me see if I can do a bit of this. And it was really brutal. It was really difficult. I worked as fast as I could and it was never fast enough. And I got very dehydrated and sick and wound up in the emergency room and went on an IV and that swallowed a month's wages right there. And I can't even imagine trying to live that way, to really try to make a living doing that and raise a family. And what a challenge it is.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are things that people who are listening right now could be doing? I know it's wintertime and there's not a lot growing outside, but what types of things do gardeners do in the winter to prepare for the spring or the summer or other things that can be grown inside?

David Buchanan:

Well, for the home gardeners, you can certainly extend your season a lot with a small hoop house or a cold frame. You can grow greens well into the winter, even in a small cold frame, and then they'll often start again, depending on the severity of the winter. In the spring, our farmers are really pushing the boundaries of the season. We really do have a very creative and energetic farming scene around Portland and throughout Maine. And so it's possible to buy winter shares of community supported agriculture, CSA operations, or local food is now available year round. With a hoop house, a grower, a plastic covered hoop house, a grower can raise foods through the winter even in Maine. It's amazing, really. Keep the snow off and the temperatures get up during the day, and a lot of hardy greens will survive through the winter and can be picked. And of course, with the root cellar, you can keep root vegetables going all year long. I store root crops in a basement very well into June.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What have you learned as an individual through this journey that you've taken, whether it's working out in Washington State or coming back here and working in Cape Elizabeth?

David Buchanan:

I think I've learned that you have to be persistent. If you have something that you really care about, you really have to dig your heels in and keep at it. The reason, if we follow something that we really feel passionate about, the reason we succeed in the end is sheer persistence and stubbornness.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And where are you going from here?

David Buchanan:

We have recently purchased land in Pownall just a few minutes from Freeport. And my goal there is to create a kind of conservation center for these foods. In some ways it's a compromise. It's not exactly apple growing country, but I want to make it work. For my passion right now, which is hard cider, but for other, other production as well. I'll have all kinds of fruits and vegetables and maybe we'll have some animals too. And building turning one of the outbuildings into a small commercial kitchen and cider house so I can do some hard cider. And I have now probably about 150 varieties of apples, a couple dozen varieties of pears, all kinds of peaches and plums, apricots, cherries, small fruits. I want to expand that collection. So the dream is to create a kind of cornucopia of big garden out there and to find ways to bring the public in and get people out there and find avenues to distribute the plant material, share it. I believe that these historic foods aren't really alive unless they're being grown and eaten. That it's not enough to just keep them in a gene bank. So I really want to find their hidden potential, help bring them back into the market, help get them into the hands of gardeners, make them live on our tables in our gardens.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And come spring you'll be back at the farmer's market in Portland.

David Buchanan:

Yes, I just do the Saturday market with my smoothie cartoon and I sell some nursery plants too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So if people want to find you there in the spring, they can find you there.

David Buchanan:

They can find me at Deering Oaks Park. Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And if people would like to buy your book, what's the best way of going about doing that?

David Buchanan:

They can go directly to Chelsea Green, my publisher's website. They can buy it there. They can also buy it through online retailers or through local bookstores. It's distributed nationally, so they should be able to find it. Or they can go to my website, originsfruit.com and see some photos of places in the book and find some contact information there too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And your book has been called one of the top small food books from Amazon. You sent me this and I Amazon

David Buchanan:

ranked it among their top 10 food literary books of the year. I was a little shocked and very pleased. It just came out back in early November. So it's a new book and it hadn't occurred to me that anyone even had time to read it over there yet.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I was impressed with it and I would encourage people that are listening to us right now to go out and take some time reading it especially. It's a good book to read, I think, in the winter. It's very thought provoking. It's wide ranging.

David Buchanan:

It'll make you dream of spring.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, it does make you dream of spring. So we've been talking talking with David Buchanan, author of Taste, Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors and why they Matter. We appreciate your spending time with us today.

David Buchanan:

Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of my favorite things to do in the world is eat really good food. And in Maine we're pretty fortunate because there's really good food in a lot of places up and down the coast. Portland, Camden, Rockport, Kennebungport. And one person who knows all about good food is Amy Anderson, who is now your point person for Maine Magazine and also a Food Eat Maine blogger. Thanks for coming in and talking to me.

Amy Anderson:

Amy hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now I can't wait to pick your brain about all of the wonderful places that Maine has to offer the eaters of the state.

Amy Anderson:

There are so many great places in the state to eat. It is. It's difficult to, you know, pin down the best. And I think that's what's so nice about Maine is you can go to an array of different areas and check out, you know, a bistro or a fine dining place or a Diner and find something really spectacular all over the place. I'm really comfortable with Portland restaurants, you know, waiting tables at Hugo's and Eventide. And this is my home base, too, so I know about this area and writing for Maine Magazine and being able to write the blog, I've been able to travel a little bit and see what else is out there, and there's some wonderful things out there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, you have an interesting background because the first time you and I met, you were actually working for a different local publication, and I had just put together the book Our Daily Tread for Safe Passage, and you interviewed me. So that's kind of. We're turning the tables. Exactly right. So you have this background, not only as a writer and a writer within the community, but also in the food world, and now you're bringing them both together. So that must be really interesting for you.

Amy Anderson:

It's very interesting. I think my whole life, I've really been on these parallel tracks of writing and journalism on one side and being in the restaurant business on the other, and I've always wanted to combine the two. It's always been a passion of mine to write about food. I love writing and I love food, so it seemed to make sense to bring them together. And finally with the Maine Magazine, this has happened, and it's so exciting that I get to do the writing part of it and the eating part, and I still get to wait tables. So I'm completely involved in all aspects of things I love. So. Right. Coming from a journalism background, it's nice because I get to maybe look at the people who work in the restaurants and. And ask them questions and talk to the cooks and use that background for the blogs and for the journalism part of the Maine Magazine. But it's really the love of food that comes out, I think, in my writing, and that's what's important.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And the two places that you are waiting tables at are known for really good food in very different and interesting ways. You are at Hugo's restaurant and also at Even Tide, and they're right next to each other. One has been around for a long time and well known within the community. In fact, probably nationally and possibly internationally. One is within the last year or so.

Amy Anderson:

Oh, yeah, like six months.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But they're both known for being real food destinations.

Amy Anderson:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What has that been like to work with people who are in that sort of higher level of food love, let's say?

Amy Anderson:

Well, I think my progression in my career in. In restaurants has gone in that direction. You know, starting at something like the Lobster cooker in Freeport in high school and then, you know, moving to North Carolina and getting more into fine dining and being introduced to places that cook at the James Beard house and then moving back home and realizing that Hugo's, you know, is hiring and they actually wanted me to work there. And it was this kind of being around people who just revere food and who really take it seriously and more than that want their customers to enjoy, you know, something a little bit different or a little bit unusual. And that's just exciting to be around. I learn every day. And what's more exciting is getting people to feel that excitement and appreciate and somebody who comes in and is nervous about eating something like a blind tasting, they're not in control and they don't know what it is to take those first couple bites and get comfortable and enjoy it and realize it's fun and it's food and it's not that big of a deal. It's a good time. Enjoy it and eat it and share it with friends and talk about it. I think that's the mentality of Hugo's is take, take this food and enjoy it. And it's elevated, but it's fun. And that fun definitely translates to eventide. It is a light, bright, happy, just wonderful place to be. The food is unreal and it's really satisfying for me as a server to say I can recommend anything and I know that they'll like it, I really do. I know that they'll enjoy it. So I don't know, I really enjoy working in both places and I think, you know, if I can share that passion that I have about the food in those two places and share that with the readership of the Maine Magazine, you know, this will be a great partnership.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, tell me about some of the other places that you've visited and blogged about. One of my favorites, I think was one of your first and that was the Green elephant. It's one of my favorites because I tend to eat, eat more plant based foods. Was that a challenge for you considering that you don't consider yourself a vegetarian?

Amy Anderson:

No, it wasn't a challenge. It was a fun learning experience. I hadn't seen some of those foods before and was just blown away at how beautiful they were presented and how delicious they tasted and there was no meat and I love that. And I think that, you know, moving forward in all the restaurants that I've been going to, I try really hard to put in a vegetarian order or a gluten free order just to see and for as much, you know, I'm learning people who enjoy those types of diets might want to read about those instead of the, you know, meat focused writing. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens with me going forward and. And ordering more vegetarian items. But Green Elephant was for sure fun. And it's special because it was my first blog for the Maine magazine. So, yeah, that one was fun to do for sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And on the other side of it, I believe you went up to Primo and they have a reputation of basically doing what, nose to tail? Is that what I understand?

Amy Anderson:

Every fall they slaughter their animals and have like a big celebration of respect for their life and. And thanks for the animal themselves. So I did. I went up and tried a nose to tail tasting and that was very meat centric. It was delicious and fun. And, yeah, I'm experiencing a lot of different things and hopefully sharing this information with the readers.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What do you have on the docket coming up? I know you just did sea Glass. Not too long ago out at in

Amy Anderson:

by the Sea, I visited from BNDU in Camden, and what an amazing place. The chefs there had worked at 555 and traveled and opened their new place in Camden. And it is French peasant food, elevated and amazing. But, you know, I think I say that about every place that I go,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

because I know you seem very enthusiastic

Amy Anderson:

about all of these places because they are. They are. Even if they're not new to me. You know, going in with a different set of eyes and going in, you know, from a different perspective is all very new and exciting. So I'm really having a good time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Amy, it's clear from your enthusiasm that you're doing something that you love. Whether it's being part of Hugo's or Eventide or blogging online or writing for Maine Magazine. You've surrounded yourself with things that you love to do and places you love to be, food you love to eat. How did you get to that place? So many people don't.

Amy Anderson:

That is true. That is very true. I think by combining my love of food and my love of writing, I've always had jobs that I've really enjoyed. And when I found that I no longer enjoy them or I'm not learning or I'm not happy, I seek something else out. And that's happened in a progression of restaurants. It's happened in a progression of writing jobs. You know, I can't really pinpoint what it is that I search for. I do know that I like to be around inspiring people. I like to be around fun people. Laughter is really important, and a learning environment is really important, too. And I feel like with food and with writing, you can just continue to grow. You can learn new things, you can taste new things, share new things with people. And, you know, I really feel like I found that in Hugo's. And from that point, things have branched off. You know, connections were made with Maine Magazine and that new restaurant, Eventide, opened up, and I was able to have a part in all of that. So, you know, it's really important to me just. Just to be surrounded by friends and family, and that's what all of these places have become for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you opened yourself up to doing the things that you love to do and being with people that you love to be with.

Amy Anderson:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I would say that having spent time at both Yugos and Eventide and been in the food community, there is a sense of family that seems to emerge and the sense of community. And I know that we interviewed Arlen Smith last year, and I've spent time with him and with Roxanne, also from Hugo's. And it's more than just the food and the taste of things. It's how things sort of fit together in life. How you savor what's going on around you, whether it's going into your mouth or whether it's sort of the energy of the people.

Amy Anderson:

It's so true. It's a community. It's more than a community. It is a family. Family. You know, we all play off of each other's strengths and help each other with each other's weaknesses. And, you know, there's a. In a restaurant, there's. There's so much happening all the time that you have to learn how to click and you have to learn how to interact with each other. And I think once that happens, once that magic happens and that can, you know, be portrayed to the customers and they get it and they feel it. And I think that's similar to the blog. And writing for the Maine Mag is I think I really enjoy the food aspect of that, and I want people to read and enjoy what I'm writing because maybe they can take that information and check out a few places that they might not have wanted to before. They might not be vegetarians, but they might love to go to the Green Elephant because it's delicious and it's fun and they read it, and who knows,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

where can people read about these wonderful restaurants and these experiences that you're having? Amy?

Amy Anderson:

Definitely. On the Maine Magazine's website, there is a blog section. And I want to say every two weeks or so, there's a brand new restaurant listed up there. So you can get a whole plethora of restaurants and ideas, places to eat, all in Maine. Facebook, obviously. There's the Eat Main page in Facebook and. And they tweet as well, and I do, too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And there's also an Eat Main guide, I believe that's coming out pretty soon.

Amy Anderson:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we've been speaking with Amy Anderson, who is a blogger with Eat Main and a contributing editor to Maine Magazine. She's been speaking with us about savoring not only food, but life and relationships and community. We've been really privileged to have you spend time with us today. Thank you.

Amy Anderson:

Thank you so much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The title of this show is Savor, and when we think about savoring things, we can't escape the fact that adding a little bit of salt actually helps make things more savory. So we thought it might be a good chance to interview somebody who deals directly with salt, and in fact, salt from the coast of Maine. And this is Karina Napier, and she is the founder of Sea Change, which brings salt to the masses from the coast of Maine. Thank you for coming in and talking to us today.

Karina Napier:

Yes, hi. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So, Karina, you're a young woman and you've done other things besides this work. How did you come to be interested in salt?

Karina Napier:

I have to say, it was actually a bit of a. Bit of a fluke. A lot of things led me up to this point. I was living in New York City and going to school there, and I tactfully planned my escape route via the Peace Corps. And I went to West Africa and I lived in. Been in for two and a half years. And there, although I had come with a pretty strong background in my passion for the environment and for food, it was there that I really dealt with a lot of it firsthand and really in my face, there were a lot of people dealing with malnutrition in access to healthy food generally. I experienced it myself. I noticed that my health greatly degraded in that period of time and really Two and a half years isn't very long. So to understand people who were living there their entire lives and to see how it would affect them really gave me a lot to think about. And coincidentally, when I got back to the United States, nutrition and food and where we're getting it is a huge topic for us. I mean, it's everywhere we look in our media, talking with our neighbors and our friends. And so it was still on my mind and still a part of me, very much so. And so I went out to California to work on a farm. And before I left, I had a very wonderful encounter with a gentleman here in Maine who wanted to hire me to work on his farm and didn't work out for timing, bad season arrangements and that kind of thing. But when I returned, we kept in touch, and he wanted me to grow tomatoes on his land. And it was also, again, like the wrong timing. It just didn't work out. But we kept talking, and he wanted to harvest sea salt. And I, coming back from California, had learned so much about the popularity of seaweed and how valuable it is to our health. And so that was my idea, like, harvest seaweed. We've got a massive supply here in Maine and a wonderful opportunity that hasn't really been explored 100%. So we started to do that, and with perseverance and patience, we found a sea salt supplier in Lubec, Maine. And while we explored seaweed very thoroughly, our leads weren't taking us where we wanted them to go. And so we dropped that, which I hope is temporarily. Hopefully, we'll pick that back up again. And also, by the time it was ready to go on the shelves, this old Mainer was bored with salt. He was like, you know what? I'm good. I don't need to do this anymore. You take over from here. And so I have since then, and so I've kept the company going and the idea going, and here I am today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We know that salt as a mineral is very important for health, and there has been some controversy about salt. In fact, a lot of people have been put on salt restrictive diets over the last, say, 40 years because of blood pressure issues. But we're coming back around to understanding that not everybody is salt sensitive. And in fact, the right kinds of salt are very important to health. Did that lead into your decision to work on getting this product out there?

Karina Napier:

Yeah, very much so. When we first started exploring this idea, I knew that I'd have to care about it. I learned very early on from my father when he was a salesman, when he was like, you know, a teenager making money for school. The key ingredient is you have to care about what it is that you're selling and learning about. Salt gave me so much information to absorb and that is definitely one of them. That salt, sea salt in particular is a key ingredient that we all can consume every single day. And if we are eating the right kind of salt, it doesn't have to affect us negatively and informing ourselves about what it is that we are putting into our bodies. Sea salt is definitely one of those ingredients that can help us feel better.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are the differences between the right kind of salt and salt that really isn't that beneficial for us?

Karina Napier:

Well, let's see. So table salt, which is what most of us are familiar with with, is typically mined from inland. And to get rid of impurities or to make it look cleaner, the salt is bleached. It is also filled with anti caking agents so that the salt doesn't clump. And any of those chemicals that are used in that process are bad for our bodies. And it also is removing the minerals that we need that are, that are natural in that salt. And so with sea salt, at least with mine, I can say for mine at least, is it doesn't go through a bleaching process, it does not have any anti caking agents. And since it is coming from the ocean, it has more minerals. Mine has magnesium, potassium and calcium for example. Although these are in small quantities, considering we are using it every day, this is going to help create balance in

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

our body, which is different from regular table salt, which is typically a sodium chloride. Is that correct?

Karina Napier:

That's correct. Once the salt has been bleached, all of the impurities, as they're called by industry standards, have been removed. So that means all the minerals have been taken out too. So you are left with strictly sodium and strictly chloride.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Briefly, talk to me about how it is that one harvests sea salt.

Karina Napier:

Yeah, it's an interesting process. I would imagine that there's multiple ways to have it harvest. We use. When I say we, it's really the gentleman who lives up in Lubeck who's supplying me with my salt, but he used a pumping and filtering method. So the salt goes through a 10 micron filter where rocks, seaweed particles are left out and only the salt is brought in. It goes through a, goes through a couple processes from there, bringing it down to a brine and then it's laid out on tables to dry for a certain period of time and then raked and then laid out again for the drying process into a crystal. And this takes about a week. And depending on what kind of grain you're looking for, then it's broken down even more. There's also. Apparently you can have it much drier. So if it goes into a shaker. I mean, there's so many different ways to create salt that I never would have even imagined.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

All of this reminds me that traditionally salt was considered a treasure. It was something that people traded that you didn't use a lot of, because as you described, the process that was once used, I think universally was quite extensive. The salt that you're selling now really is like that, too. It's in the little package that I went and bought from Whole Foods. I mean, you really do treasure it. It's not just some commodity.

Karina Napier:

Yeah, I think it's become. The value has certainly decreased. I mean, we used to use it as a form of money once upon a time, and now I see it more as an opportunity for people to take one little ounce of health into their hands and be conscious of that. Ideally, it'd be wonderful if everybody knew that this was something for them, whether they care about cooking or not, or whether or not they have time for cooking. But right now it is. It's a special. It's a special item that we need to be paying attention to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So does picking up some sea change, sea salt from Whole Foods or Lois Natural Marketplace or one of the many places that you're going to tell us about, does this help people savor their lives and savor the food that they're cooking?

Karina Napier:

That's the passion behind it. I mean, that's certainly the idea. I know that not everybody's going to have the same stance as I do when it comes to something like this. I mean, salt, a lot of us aren't paying attention to it. I get that. But to know that that's the position behind the company. I hope so. I hope that's what people can get.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So where can people find it?

Karina Napier:

Mostly in local stores here in Maine. So far, Whole Foods does carry it and sells out really well. Lois's in Scarborough, Micucci's Morning Glory out in Brunswick. Bath Natural Foods all the way up through Camden. Also, French and Brawn carries it as well. Belfast Food Co Op, they seem to be carrying very well. And my uncle has a store in Keene, New Hampshire, called you'd Kitchen Store, and he carries it for me there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Karina, do you have a website or a Facebook page?

Karina Napier:

Yeah, we have both. SeaChangeWork.com for the website and Facebook SeeChangeMain I believe.com but you can just type in see change in Facebook and you'll find us really easily.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, Karina, you've taken a very interesting product and brought it to market in an interesting way. So thank you for sharing your story with us.

Karina Napier:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's been great sharing your salt with us.

Karina Napier:

Oh yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Urge our listeners to go out and find some sea change, sea salt, and perhaps experiment with their own cooking.

Karina Napier:

Yeah, I hope so. That would be wonderful. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 73 savor. Our guests have included author David Buchanan, Amy Anderson of Eat Main and Corina Napier of SeaChange. For more information on our guests, visit DrLisa drlisabelisle.com the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's shows, sign up for our E Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest doctor and read my personal take on health and well being on The Bountiful Blog bountifulpath.com We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle hoping that our show inspires you to savor your world. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.