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Social movements

Why You Shouldn’t Fear Old Age and Other Insights from the 2018 National Bioneers Conference

By Abby Quillen

Why You Shouldn't Fear Old Age and Other Insights from the 2018 National Bioneers Conference #bioneers

A few weeks ago, my sister white-knuckled the steering wheel as we crossed the five-mile-long Richmond Bridge that soars above San Francisco Bay between Oakland and San Rafael. Commuters still wove across six lanes of traffic at nearly 9 p.m on Highway 101 in San Rafael. We pulled off the freeway, wound through palm-tree lined streets, and checked into a cozy Airbnb about a mile away from the Marin Center. We were there to attend the 29th annual National Bioneers Conference.

We weren’t sure what to expect. But we were long overdue for a sisters’ getaway. We explored Iceland, Puerto Rico, the Baja peninsula of Mexico, and remote parts of Colorado together when we were in our late teens and early twenties. With jobs and mortgages (and my two small children), our travel opportunities have winnowed over the past decade. The Bioneers Conference looked like an interesting event to attend together.

We didn’t expect it to blow our minds.

It did.

I’m still digesting what I learned there, but I’ve compiled a few insights. First, what’s Bioneers, you may be asking.

What’s the Bioneers Conference?

Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons started the Bioneers Conference in 1990 in New Mexico. It’s a conference committed to “connecting people with each other and with ideas that could positively transform the world.”

They invite leaders from the environmental movement, the social justice movement, and indigenous communities. This year’s keynote speakers included Michael Pollan and Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatters.

In the past, Naomi Klein, Terry Tempest Williams, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jeremy Narby, Charles Eisenstein, and other inspiring thought leaders have spoken.

Insights From the 2018 Bioneers Conference

Here are a few of the thoughts I’ve been mulling over since the conference.

Old Age Isn’t As Bad As You Think

Do you fear dementia, nursing homes, and loneliness in your older years? Ashton Applewhite wants to dismantle those common stereotypes about aging. Only 2.5% of people will be in a nursing home and 8 of 9 elderly people will stay cognitively fit throughout their lives, according to Applewhite. Moreover, most of us will be happier when we’re old.

Applewhite urges people to stop age shaming. What’s age shaming? It’s making something that shouldn’t be shameful into something that is. It may include:

  • Dying your hair
  • Not mentioning your age or lying about it
  • Slathering on “anti-aging” products
  • Dreading your birthday
  • Frowning when you see a wrinkle in the mirror
  • Scoffing about how old a celebrity looks

It also includes discriminating against workers on the basis of age. Two-thirds of workers report facing ageism at work, according to Applewhite.

Applewhite insists we must challenge negative messages we’ve internalized about aging. After all, ageism is the only discrimination we wage against our future selves.

Besides, most of us intuitively know that aging enriches us. It makes us wiser, more interesting, and more empathetic. Few older people would wish to return to a younger age.

The elderly population is growing. There will be 78 million people over 65 years old by 2035, compared to 76.7 million under 18. Feelings about aging matter. People with positive feelings about getting older are less likely to get dementia, and they live seven years longer on average.

“When we build a better world for old people, we build a better world for all of us,” says Applewhite.

We Can Heal Divisions

It’s a polarizing time. But the Bioneers Conference gave me hope we can heal. The conference celebrates indigenous wisdom and solutions to the world’s problems and brings together leaders from native communities all over the country. More than fifty indigenous leaders shared their fights to save aquifers, springs, waterways, oceans, salmon populations, and forests from oil pipelines and mining contamination.

We’re facing an unprecedented ecological crisis and we need to listen to indigenous voices about how to heal it. Human communities flourished in the Americas for thousands of years. Europeans thought they’d stumbled onto a natural Eden, but Native Americans deserve some credit for the lush landscapes here. They were brilliant land and ecosystem managers. They used controlled burning and other methods to shape the land for their purposes while fostering healthy conditions for all life.

Native Americans are not always thrilled to share their wisdom or customs with non-natives. Colonization brought disease, malnutrition, warfare, and genocide to their communities.

Two brutal examples:

  • In 1775, King George II passed a proclamation paying settlers for delivering the scalps of Native Americans. The crown paid fifty pounds for adult male scalps, twenty-five pounds for adult female scalps, and twenty pounds for children’s scalps. The scalps were called redskins (which is still the mascot for the football team of the U.S. capital).
  • Between 1879 and 1919, thousands of native children from 141 tribes were removed from their families and placed in boarding schools. Not only were the children separated from their families, communities, and culture; they were “malnourished, overworked, harshly punished and poorly educated,” according to a 1920 report. Hundreds of native children died in boarding schools because of disease and harsh conditions. Native Americans only gained the legal right to refuse their children’s placement in off-reservation boarding schools in 1978.

If Native leaders can come together with the descendants of colonialists to talk about solutions, what other divisions can we begin to heal?

We Should Understand and Honor the Past

Many of the speakers at the conference gave thanks to the Coast Miwok. The land we call Marin County is their ancestral homeland. There were 2,000 Coast Miwok in 1770. By 2000, there were only 170 (according to Wikipedia).

After Bioneers, I’m committed to learning more about the indigenous tribes and nations who lived for thousands of years on lands where I live and visit. This isn’t about idolizing First Nations or thinking their societies were perfect.

It’s about respecting that dynamic cultures once flourished in places we now live. People called these lands home and buried their ancestors on them for generations.

Colonization had the brutal legacy of erasing people, languages, stories, and cultural knowledge. Fortunately, we’re in the midst of a resurgence. The Native American population increased by 26 percent between 2000 and 2010 (compared to a 9.7 percent growth of the general population). And indigenous communities are reviving languages that were thought to be dead.

Want to know who lived where you live now? Check out this amazing map (with the caveat that all maps are colonial artifacts that may misrepresent reality). There’s probably a Native American museum or cultural center near you where you can learn more about your region’s indigenous peoples.

After Bioneers, I’m also interested to learn more about my family’s cultural history, traditions, and homelands. My sister and I plan to go to Scotland in the next few years to find out more about Scottish ancestors on both sides of our family and to Delaware to learn about our Delaware Moor ancestors.

Health Starts in the Soil

When physician Daphne Miller went to an Amazon tributary in Peru to fill in for a doctor there, she was shocked to discover the illnesses she usually treated didn’t exist there. No diabetes. No heart disease. Instead, she found a lot of well old people. What was their secret?

At first Miller was convinced it was their diet. She wrote a book called The Jungle Effect about the healing properties of native diets around the world. Later, Miller realized she was wrong. “It wasn’t their food; it was their soil,” she says.

If you haven’t heard, the nutrients in our food are disappearing. According to one study, we need to eat eight oranges to get the same amount of vitamin A our grandparents got from one. Timothy J. Lasalle, a former college professor and CEO of Rodale, who sat on a workshop panel with Miller, blames tilling for some of those nutritional declines. Tilling means using a hoe or tractor to break apart the soil before planting. Lasalle champions a regenerative agricultural method that combines organic methods with zero tillage.

Josh Whiton has an even simpler solution for those of us who don’t farm. We throw away 1.6 billion tons of food waste every year. Why not transform it into nutritious soil, starting in your own yard? Whiton runs the company MakeSoil.org, which encourages neighbors to share compost bins. Except Whiton doesn’t like the term compost. He suggests neighbors join forces to become “soilmakers.”

When Whiton asked his neighbors in an apartment complex to make soil with him, he was surprised that many of his neighbors had environmental awakenings. Some of them changed their lives entirely afterward.

Whiton contends we treat the planet like garbage when we throw food away. When we start regenerating the earth with it instead, it changes us. “It’s a relief,” he says, “We’re ashamed to be human.” Many people go on to become gardeners or activists.

“Soil makers should have a revered place in our society,” Whiton says.

Conclusion

“Bioneers is a natural antidepressant,” Kenny Ausubel, the co-founder of the conference, said in an interview.

It’s true that I feel more hopeful, inspired, and excited about the future. But I’m also still trying to get my bearings. We were only at the conference for four days, but it felt like entering another culture.

“I feel like we spent a few weeks in the bottom of the Grand Canyon,” my sister said as we drove through Oakland on the way back to the airport. I haven’t rafted down the Grand Canyon, but I knew what she meant. It’s jarring to return to our society. Violence and mass extinction are in the headlines, and my young boys beg me for violent video games and junk food, as most do. These societal norms feel even more wrong after Bioneers.

That said, I’m glad we went. Before we left, we hiked through an oak and madrone forest with stunning views of San Francisco bay. I snapped a picture. Later I posted it on Instagram and typed the caption, “My sister and I hiking in beautiful Marin County.” But I couldn’t leave it at that. Yes, this land has been called Marin County for 168 years. But before that, the Coast Miwok had hunted dear, gathered acorns, and buried their ancestors there for more than 4,500 years. The least I could do was acknowledge them.

Have you traced  your family’s history and/or been to their ancestral homelands? Leave me a comment! I’d love to hear about it.

November 11, 2018Filed Under: Social movements Tagged With: 2018 National Bioneers Conference, Ageism, Bioneers, Indigenous Wisdom, Kenny Ausubel, Michael Pollan, Nina Simons, Patriarchy, Patrisse Cullors, Regenerative Agriculture, Soil

Make Your Own Reusable Food Wrap

By Abby Quillen

Want to downsize your plastic use, but not sure where to begin? Plastic wrap (also called cling wrap, clingfilm, or plastic film depending where you live) is a great place to start. Keep reading to learn why and how to say goodbye to plastic wrap by making a simple, eco-friendly alternative.

Plastic Wrap May Contain Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals

Plastic wrap is a cheap, easy, and convenient single-use plastic, and millions of Americans use it regularly. Have you noticed plastic wrap isn’t as clingy as it used to be? That’s not your imagination. More than a decade ago, manufacturers switched from using polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to low density polyethylene (LDPE) for household plastic wrap products because it’s considered safer.

The old plastic wrap made with PVC contained compounds called pthalates. When food was covered by plastic wrap for long periods or microwaved in it, pthalates leeched into food. That’s a problem because pthalates are endocrine disrupting chemicals that are linked with genital abnormalities in fetuses and neurodevelopmental problems in children. Moreover, in animal studies, they’ve been linked with early onset of puberty, low testosterone levels and sperm counts in males, and other hormonal and reproductive problems.

Breathing a sigh of relief that plastic wrap is no longer made out of PVC? Not so fast. Preliminary studies suggest LDPE may also leach a number of chemicals. More studies are needed. Moreover, the plastic wrap used in your grocery store deli and meat section isn’t the same plastic wrap you buy for home use. It’s called “food service film,” and it’s still made out of PVC. You’ll notice it’s clingier than the home product, which is a sign it contains a plasticizer.

While pthalates have been removed, some plastic wraps may contain a endocrine-disrupting chemical called diethylhexyl adipate (DEHA). DEHA is known to leech into foods, especially high-fat foods such as cheese and meats. DEHA has not been tested for its effects on humans, and it’s been linked to liver tumors in rats.

Plastic Wrap is Polluting the Oceans

When it comes to plastic wrap, the health of all ecosystems are at stake because single-use plastics are contributing to a what the Director for Ocean at UN Environment has deemed “a planetary crisis.”

About half of the 350 million tons of plastic produced globally every year are single-use plastics. Single-use plastics are:

  • Designed to be used once
  • Non-renewable
  • Non-recyclable
  • Non-biodegradable
  • Made of potentially toxic materials

When single-use plastics sit in landfills, they leak toxic chemicals into the groundwater. Worse, 32 percent of plastic packaging never makes it to a landfill or recycling plant. Instead, it flows into the oceans, where it causes devastating effects to ocean life.

We’ve gotten used to the convenience of single-use plastic, but in most cases, there are effective alternatives. For instance, you can say goodbye to plastic wrap forever by making reusable food wrap. Bonus: the process is simple and requires only a few supplies.

How to Make Your Reusable Food Wrap

Let’s get started!

Gather these supplies:

  • 100% cotton cloth
  • Pinking sheers (scissors that cut a zigzag edge to prevent fabric from fraying)
  • Beeswax beads (buy at a local craft store or online)
  • Baking sheet
  • Parchment paper
  • Kitchen tongs
  • Clothes hanger

Follow these simple steps:

  1. Wash, dry, and iron the fabric.
  2. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
  3. Use the pinking sheers to cut the fabric into a few different sizes of squares and rectangles. Make sure each piece fits on the baking sheet.
  4. Line the baking sheet with parchment paper.
  5. Place a piece of fabric on the center of the baking sheet and sprinkle it evenly with beeswax beads.

  1. Bake in the oven until the beeswax is melted, usually about five minutes.
  2. Inspect the fabric. If any parts aren’t coated with wax, add more beads to that section and bake for a few more minutes.
  3. Remove the fabric from the oven using tongs.
  4. Hang the fabric on a clothes hanger for several minutes until the wax is dry.
  5. If any melted wax pooled on the baking sheet, place another piece of fabric on it to absorb it, and start the process again.
  6. Repeat until you’ve coated all of the fabric pieces in beeswax.

Congratulations!

You’ve made a durable, reusable alternative to plastic wrap. It should be stiff put bendable. Use it to cover bowls or containers, to wrap cheese in, or fold it up to use as a snack pouch. Wash it with gentle soap and cool water when needed. It should last several months. And at that point, you can repeat the process to re-wax it if desired. Celebrate! You’re keeping the questionable chemicals in plastic wrap away from your food and out of the waste stream.

If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy these related posts:

  • 12 Easy Ways to Use Less Plastic
  • Simplify Your Personal Care
  • Become the Solution
  • Redefining Wealth
  • Want Happy, Healthy Kids? Walk With Them.
  • Making Economic Exchange a Loving Human Interaction

May 7, 2018Filed Under: Health, Simple Living, Social movements Tagged With: Beeswax food wrap, Beeswax wraps, Beeswraps, Plastic wrap alternative, Plastic-free living, Reduce Reuse Recycle, Reusable food wrap, Single-use plastics

10 Nonconformists Who Could Change the Way You Think About Life

By Abby Quillen

Do you love having your mind blown?

Me too.

I learned the word iconoclast in college, and I loved the word instantly. It describes a person who attacks cherished beliefs and institutions.

I was familiar with the concept. My dad wrote a column for a major newspaper for 26 years in which he delighted in attacking cherished beliefs and institutions. He received hate mail regularly, got a few death threats, and was sued by a local politician for libel. The lawsuit was thrown out in three courts. None of it seemed to bother my dad much. He said it was part of the job.

While most fathers may worry if their kids break rules, my dad worried if his daughters followed them too readily. My straight-A report cards caused him some stress.

He was proud of me, but he was a tireless advocate for people thinking for themselves, and he didn’t detect a high priority for that in the school system.

In the end, my dad’s values wore off on me because I’m nearly constantly seeking a state of cognitive dissonance. That’s the mental discomfort experienced when a person simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.

Caution: New Ideas May Shake Your Worldview

Just as fish don’t realize they’re swimming in water because they’re immersed in it, we can lose sight of the peculiarities and injustices in the culture and systems we’re immersed in.

That’s why it’s important to pay attention to outside-the-box thinkers, especially during polarizing times. Here are a few original thinkers who have challenged and shaped my thinking over the past decades.

  1. Susun Weed

Who she is: An herbalist, author, and women’s health advocate

Why her work may shift your worldview: She articulates an empowering approach to health that she calls the Wise Woman Tradition, which focuses on nourishment, simple and easily accessible remedies, and honoring nature’s cycles. She’s critical of many popular alternative medical treatments, including essential oils, elimination diets, and cleanses.

A good introduction to her work: This article

  1. Katy Bowman

Who she is: A biomechanist and author

Why her work may shift your worldview: She explains how sedentary our society is and how it affects our bodies, our worldview, our nutrient levels, and most of our modern scientific research. She offers an antidote with an extensive library of exercise programs, books, interviews, and educational materials.

A good introduction to her work: This video

  1. Dr. Christiane Northrup

Who she is: A OBGYN, author, and women’s health advocate

Why her work may shift your worldview: She’s been a female pioneer in the male-dominated world of women’s health care for decades. She articulates an empowering view of health care that emphasizes the wisdom of women’s bodies and natural cycles and rhythms. She’s critical of many standard preventative medical tests and writes about normal and healthy but taboo female experiences, such as menstruation and menopause.

A good introduction to her work: This blog post

  1. Satish Kumar

Who he is: A philosopher, magazine editor, and university co-founder

Why his work may shift your worldview: He articulates a worldview that emphasizes slowing down, using your hands to make beautiful things, growing food, and syncing with natural cycles.

A good introduction to his work: This interview

  1. Charles Eisenstein

Who he is: An author and speaker who describes himself as a degrowth activist

Why his work may shift your worldview: He writes about the problems with our current cultural narrative and the need to develop a new story that reflects the “more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” He’s real and vulnerable and displays an expansive knowledge of diverse subjects.

A good introduction to his work: This video

  1. Dr. Kelly Brogan

Who she is: A psychiatrist, author, and activist

Why her work may shift your worldview: She has an empowering view of mental health care and believes people have the power to heal even the most complicated of mental health conditions. She’s moved into alternative care but continues to write case studies for mainstream medical journals.

A good introduction to her work: This interview

  1. Diana Beresford Kroeger

Who she is: An author, medical biochemist, and botanist

Why her work may shift your worldview: She invites people to form a new relationship with nature by merging scientific knowledge with ancient spiritual wisdom.

A good introduction to her work: This interview

  1. Robin Wall Kimmerer

Who she is: A plant ecologist, author, and professor

Why her work may shift your worldview: As a member of the Potawatomi nation, she merges scientific knowledge with indigenous wisdom to offer innovative solutions to ecological problems. She moves beyond a conservation approach and embraces humans’ important role in healthy ecosystems.

A good introduction to her work: This interview

  1. Jeremy Narby

Who he is: An anthropologist and author

Why his work may shift your worldview: He went to the Peruvian Andes to study the Ashaninca Indians as an anthropologist with a doctorate from Stanford. What he experienced there profoundly changed his worldview, and it may shake yours too.

A good introduction his work: This interview

  1. Alfie Kohn

Who he is: An author and speaker

Why his work may shift your worldview: He’s critical of mainstream education’s fixation with competition, punishment, rewards, testing, and homework. He champions parenting and teaching without using rewards or punishments.

A good introduction to his work: This article

Which Noncomformists Have Shattered or Shaped Your Thinking?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these related posts:

  • 5 Documentaries That Could Change Your Outlook on Life
  • 5 More Documentaries That Could Change Your Outlook on Life
  • 6 Books That Could Change Your Outlook on Life
  • 7 Video Projects That Could Change Your Outlook on Life

[Photo credit: Powderruns]

February 21, 2018Filed Under: Health, Social movements Tagged With: Activists, Alternative media, Alternative Medicine, Health, Iconoclasts, Non-comformists, Noncomformists, Outside-the-box thinkers

Become the Solution

By Abby Quillen

garden 005

I love brainstorming for solutions. That’s why I started this blog. I wanted to ponder answers to some of the questions I was asking myself after my first son was born, like how can my husband and I create a healthy, happy, sustainable family life? How can societies redesign communities for health and happiness? Four years later I’m still here brainstorming.

Often I come back to a movement that may hold some of the answers: permaculture.

Permaculture is a gardening movement that originated in the 1970s in Australia. Its “father” Bill Mollison defines it as “a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system.”

Sound confusing? I haven’t even gotten into the three tenets or twelve design principles. Honestly, I don’t wholly understand permaculture, which may be why I’ve yet to transform my yard into a food forest.

But I find it to be an incredibly refreshing and hopeful philosophy because it re-frames a tired conversation about our role in nature.

Most of us are well-versed on humans’ criminal performance as stewards of the natural world. Nearly all my earth science lessons from first grade through college ended with discussions of humans’ destruction: a hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, rampant pollution, global climate change. After my dad died, I saw a photo of a polluted landscape and immediately recognized the emotion I’d been feeling during all of these environmental lessons: grief. I’m sure I’m not alone in that emotion.

The environmental movement often espouses footprint reduction as the solution to the devastation. In An Inconvenient Truth, we saw a list of the same solutions I heard in elementary science classes: turn off the lights, drive less, buy energy efficient appliances.

As you know, I’m all for finding joy in simpler lives. But I’m not convinced it’s the answer to our environmental problems.

Derrick Jensen makes a good point in his 2009 critique of simple living “Forget Shorter Showers”: “The logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. . . . we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.” Jensen is trying to provoke political action in his essay, but he captures how psychologically depressing and even destructive it is to think the way we can best serve the world is to disappear.

If our presence itself is the problem, how can we be the solution?

Perhaps that’s why when I first read about permaculture, I felt a rush of relief. The movement is not about shrinking, shriveling, or getting smaller. The ultimate goal isn’t disappearing. It’s about doing something productive that makes the world a better place. It’s about improving the environment through our actions.

In their memoir Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Garden Oasis in the City, Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates describe how they built a permaculture food forest that transformed their barren urban lot into a high yield food-producing habitat for fish, snails, frogs, salamanders, raccoons, opossums, woodchucks, bugs, and worms. “Imagine what would happen,” Toensmeier writes, “if we as a species paid similar attention to all the degraded and abandoned lands of the world.”

Permaculture is incredibly powerful because it inspires us to become the solution. It shows us that we can create systems of abundance where everybody wins.

What if we apply the same mindset to other seemingly entrenched problems? We’d probably be able to re-frame all kinds of tired conversations and focus on what we can design and create to affect the world for the better.

It’s the mindset that inspired Seattle to create Beacon Food Forest, seven acres of fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs and vegetables that will be open to the public for foraging, that helped Judy Wicks build a successful business while creating a thriving local economy in Philadelphia, and that helped a Spanish biologist build a fish farm in Southwest Spain that reversed the ecological destruction of the Guadalquiver River valley.

If you haven’t seen Dan Barber’s TED Talk about that Spanish fish farm, it’s an incredible reminder of what can happen when we become the solution.

Check out these resources for more inspiration:

  • Permaculture and the Myth of Scarcity – Charles Eisenstein
  • Natural World: A Farm for the Future – Rebecca Hoskings
  • Farmers Go Wild
  • Permaculture Research Institute

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February 18, 2014Filed Under: Gardening, Social movements Tagged With: Beacon Food Forest, Creativity, Dan Barber, Derreck Jensen, Eric Toensmeier, Garden Design, Jonathan Bates, Judy Wicks, Life Design, Paradise Lot, Permaculture, Permaculture Mindset, Permaculture Philosophy, Solutions, Solutions journalism, Win Win Solutions

How to Surround Yourself with Brilliance

By Abby Quillen

Photo by Joshua Rothhaas
Photo by Joshua Rothhaas

When I told my dad, a freelance writer for more than 30 years, that I was going to make a go at freelancing in 2009, he joked that I might try “something more remunerative, like looking for dropped change on the sidewalk.” He was exaggerating of course, but he was right that freelancing is not the easiest way to make money. It is, however, an amazing school.

I’ve learned so much from generating ideas, pitching, interviewing, researching, crafting articles, working with editors, and polishing pieces. If I had to pluck out one lesson to share from my freelancing adventures, it would be this: ask more questions.

It sounds simple, but learning how to interview people changed the way I approach everything from my friendships to my parenting to my writing. People love to share their stories. All you have to do is be curious, ask questions, and listen. It’s a sure way to improve any relationship, project, or boring activity. And you’ll likely find out you’re surrounded by fascinating geniuses.

February 5, 2014Filed Under: Family life, Parenting, Social movements Tagged With: Conversation, Curiosity, Freelance Writing, Interviewing, Life Lessons, Lifelong Learning, Questions, Relationships

The Best Fast Food You’ve Ever Had

By Abby Quillen

Here’s my article about Portland’s food cart revolution, from the current issue of YES! Magazine. We’ve had a week straight of ice-cold fog, and these photos, taken last July, are making me delirious with summer longing (not to mention hungry).

P-town food carts 023

Portland’s Food Truck Heaven: How a New Kind of Fast Food Brings Jobs, Flavor, and Walkability

Immigrants and other restaurant workers get a way to rise in local economies. Communities get the best fast food they’ve ever had.

by Abby Quillen

At noon on a sunny day in Portland, Ore., in what not long ago was a vacant lot, customers roam past brightly painted food carts perusing menus for vegan barbeque, Southern food, Korean-Mexican fusion, and freshly squeezed juice.

The smell of fried food and the tent-covered seating bring to mind a carnival, but a number of Portland’s food carts take a healthy approach to street food. The Big Egg, for instance, serves sandwiches and wraps made with organic farm-fresh eggs, balsamic caramelized onions, and arugula. Their to-go containers are compostable, and next to the order window is a list of local farms where they source their ingredients.

“We don’t have a can opener. We make everything ourselves, so it’s very time-consuming. And that’s the way we want it,” says Gail Buchanan, who runs The Big Egg with her partner, Emily D. Morehead.

The Big Egg usually sells out, says Buchanan as she hands a customer the last sandwich of the day, one made with savory portobello mushrooms. And on weekends, customers form a line down the block, willing to wait up to 45 minutes for their food.

Buchanan and Morehead dreamed of opening a restaurant for years. They had food service experience, saved money, and spent their free time developing menu items. “Then 2008 happened,” says Buchanan. Difficulty getting business loans after the recession convinced them to downsize their dream to a custom-designed food cart. When a developer announced he was opening a new food cart lot, Buchanan and Morehead jumped in.

Portland’s permissive land-use regulations allow vendors to open on private lots—food cart “pods”—like the one that hosts The Big Egg. Local newspaper Willamette Week estimates there are about 440 food carts in the metro area.

The food cart scene has taken off in Portland in a way it hasn’t in other cities—transforming vacant lots into community spaces and making neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly and livable.

Recent features in Sunset, Bon Appétit, Saveur, and on the Food Network have pointed to Portland’s food cart pods as tourist destinations. There are even food cart walking tours.

Despite their success, Buchanan and Morehead have found that running a food cart isn’t easy money. They both work 70 hours a week, most of it prepping menu items—their fire-roasted poblano salsa alone takes three hours to prepare. But they’re grateful for the experience. They plan on opening a restaurant soon, like a growing number of he city’s most popular vendors.

Many of those vendors are first-generation immigrants who’ve found a way to make a living by sharing food traditions.

P-town food carts 048

A few blocks from The Big Egg, Wolf and Bear’s serves Israeli cuisine from Jeremy Garb’s homeland. But it’s Israeli cuisine with a Portland influence, says his co-owner, Tanna TenHoopen Dolinsky. “It’s inspired by food in Israel, but we sprout our chickpeas and grill everything and don’t use a deep fryer.”

Wolf and Bear’s has grown to two locations and employs 12 people, and Garb and Dolinsky are considering opening a restaurant. “There’s a feeling of opportunity in Portland, and I think the rise of cart culture is representative of that,” says Dolinsky.

P-town food carts 112

Nong Poonsukwattana has made the most of that opportunity with her food cart, Nong’s Khao Man Gai, famous for her signature rice and chicken dish. She describes hers as the best kind of fast food: “Fast service but not fast cooked. It’s fresh. I serve happiness.”

Poonsukwattana arrived from Bangkok, Thailand, in 2003 with $70. She waitressed at five different restaurants, working every day and night of the week, before buying her own downtown food cart in 2009.

Now she has two carts and a brick-and-mortar commercial kitchen and employs 10 people. Recently she started bottling and selling her own sauce.

Poonsukwattana likes the sense of community in the food cart pods, “even though competition is fierce,” but especially the cultural exchange with customers, many of whom she knows by name.

“I think it’s always good to support local business, mom-and-pop shops, or small businesses with different ideas. It’s beautiful to see people fight for a better future for themselves.”

P-town food carts 117

Abby Quillen wrote this article for How To Live Like Our Lives Depend On It, the Winter 2014 issue of YES! Magazine.

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January 21, 2014Filed Under: Social movements, Whole foods cooking Tagged With: Entrepeneurship, Fast Food, Food, Food Cart Revolution, Food Carts, Healthy Fast Food, Local and Organic Food, Microbusiness, Portland Food Cart Revolution, Portland Food Carts, Portland Oregon, Slow Food, The Big Egg, Wolf and Bear's, YES! Magazine

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