Lucid Food_ Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life - Louisa Shafia [23]
Add 5 cups water and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the lentils have cooked into a purée, about 20 minutes. Taste and add more salt, if necessary.
Just before serving, stir in the spinach and cook for 1 minute to wilt.
Potlucks, Picnics, and Supper Clubs
I love going out to restaurants to eat. Good food and wine, a welcoming staff, a pleasant ambience, and no cleaning up—what’s not to like? Still, restaurants are no longer the only way, nor the most environmentally sound way, to dine out. Over the last few years, I’ve discovered that there’s immense satisfaction in crafting your own special shared meal, or enjoying someone else’s communal, creative supper.
A few years ago, some friends of mine in New York started a traveling potluck dinner called the Floating Feast. Each month, one of the thirty or so members of the group volunteers to host the event in his or her home. What ensues is a long, rollicking evening of heart-to-heart chats and unrushed group discussions. Guests migrate from chair to floor to standing with plates and drinks in hand against the backdrop of a homemade buffet comprised of dishes varying from the complex to the minimalist. Although the food is often quirky and the setting occasionally spartan, the cost is a fraction of that of eating out in a restaurant, and the experience is intimate and unimpeded by the standard restaurant time frame, which requires that servers “flip the tables” every 1½ hours or so.
One increasingly popular trend is the supper club or underground restaurant, where a meal is served in someone’s home for paying guests. The person preparing the food may or may not be a trained chef, but he or she always knows how to cook.
For the last year, I’ve been visiting a supper club in a small house in Queens, New York. A few times a month, dinner is served to thirty guests for a reasonable $35; guests bring their own wine. At times, the food is stellar. At other times, it’s less than perfect, but the host is a brilliant entertainer, and the strangers at the table are always interesting.
On special occasions, I drive out to an organic farm in New Jersey that has been holding these sorts of dinners for years. Once a month, the farmer invites a restaurant chef to cook a vegetarian meal for eighty people featuring produce grown right there on the farm. The meal is held in what was formerly a barn, lit warmly with white string lights. Guests sit at long communal tables and are served each course by a group of teenaged country kids and the farmer’s own children. In the back, there is a broad table where you can refill your glass of homemade sangria. After dessert is served, there’s a big bonfire outside that is perfect for tipsy philosophizing late into the night. (I will always be partial to this farm because on my birthday the farmer let me come and gather elderberries and black walnuts from trees on his property.) The experience of these farm dinners encompasses so much more than just food. They are an ideal way to get in touch with where your food comes from.
Beyond their social and culinary rewards, these alternatives to the conventional restaurant format touch on serious issues of sustainability, too. Fair labor practices, along with conditions that support the health of workers, families, and communities, are generally considered to be an essential part of long-term environmental solutions. It’s common knowledge that most of the grueling physical labor necessary to operate a restaurant kitchen is often done by immigrant workers who are paid the minimum wage or less. Naturally, we should support restaurants that operate under good labor policies, and we should support legislation that seeks to change and improve poor working conditions. Just as importantly, supper clubs—unlike restaurants—encourage