KAYTE YOUNG: Production support for earth eats comes from: 

Bill Brown at Griffy Creek Studio, architectural design and consulting for residential, commercial and community projects. Sustainable, energy positive and resilient design for a rapidly changing world. Bill at GriffyCreek.studio.

And Insurance agent Dan Williamson of Bill Resch Insurance. Offering comprehensive home, auto, business and life coverage in affiliation with Pekin Insurance. Beyond the expected. More at BillReschInsurance.com

(Earth Eats theme music)

From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, I'm Katye Young and this is Earth Eats. This week on our show in honor of WFIU's 70th anniversary we're bringing you a few stories from the archives. You'll hear Annie Corrigan, Earth Eats’ founder and longtime host interviewing Lynn Schwartzberg of One World Catering. She joins Marie Shakespeare in her kitchen to bake scones, and she takes a tour with Candace Minster of the White Violet Center for Eco-justice to learn about raising food and alpacas. And we have a current story from Harvest Public Media, the first in their series on food insecurity exacerbated by the pandemic. And we have a big announcement at the end of our show, so stay with us. 

The number of families struggling to afford food has skyrocketed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Overall rates of food insecurity have more than doubled in the last six months. And certain groups have been hit harder, black and Hispanic families are about twice as likely to struggle as white families. Harvest Public Media's Dana Cronin paid a visit to one Illinois family to see how they're getting by. 

DANA CRONIN: Everything the Pleasure family cooks and eats revolves around their garden. 

JOSHUA PLEASURE: We have gotten a lot of tomatoes from this one. 

DANA CRONIN: Ten-year-old Joshua has been gardening since he was little. Right now they're transitioning the community garden plot to fall, harvesting tomatoes and planting squash seedlings. 

JA NELLE PLEASURE: Oh I'm cooking literally everyday with something that I've grown, every day. Which I absolutely love because it saves trips to the grocery store. 

DANA CRONIN: Joshua's mom Ja Nelle Pleasure says food has always been central to her family. One of their favorite activities is to spin a globe, put a finger down and cook a dish from that country. But they haven't done that since the start of the pandemic when Pleasure says things got hard. 

JA NELLE PLEASURE: There's not a bit to tighten, there's no wiggle room here. I have... I'm unemployed. They're limited things I can do. 

DANA CRONIN: She became a single mom of three kids when her husband left two years ago. Without his stream of income it became difficult to afford the basics, including food. Then came the pandemic. She lost her job almost immediately and when her kids' schools shut down it meant no more school meals. She is however receiving a $125 per month through an expanded food stamps program. 

JA NELLE PLEASURE: I spend a literally a $125 I can spend in like a week. Because my kids eat like grown men, like a football team. I don't know where they put. 

DANA CRONIN: Pleasure doesn't waste anything. Her kitchen counter is lined with jars of pickled vegetables from the garden and her freezer is stacked with leftovers. A self-described coupon queen, she shows off her pantry where she stockpiles food she finds on sale. 

JA NELLE PLEASURE: The organic made with fruit juice, and they're like fruit pops but these are normally, what'd she say? $6.59, and I got them for a dollar. I was like, "I'm gonna take forty of those, thank you." 

DANA CRONIN: And yet sometimes it's not enough. That's when she pays a visit to the local food pantry where her kids used to volunteer. 

JA NELLE PLEASURE: When we actually had to be participants in it, I think maybe there was a little bit of confusion for them... like I don't want to put words in their mouth but it maybe was a little shameful. Like "Why are we here? Why do we have to do this?"

So I stopped bringing them, because looking at that and looking at them, it made me feel like less of a parent. 

DANA CRONIN: Pleasure is far from alone in the struggle to afford food. 

DIANE SCHANZENBACH: Food insecurity rates have spiked really dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

DANA CRONIN: Diane Schanzenbach directs the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University and has long studied the issue. She says food insecurity rates for families with children have tripled during the pandemic. 

DIANE SCHANZENBACH: And it's quite disparate across different groups. So the rates of food insecurity are higher for black, and Latino families. 

DANA CRONIN: By higher she means much higher. Black families like the Pleasures report rates of food insecurity twice that of white families. And the pandemic has only made things harder as unemployment shot up so did prices at the grocery store. Schanzenbach says congress can help families like the Pleasures by increasing food stamp benefits. Ja Nelle Pleasure says she grateful for the help she has received. 

JA NELLE PLEASURE: That took like a huge weight off my shoulders because now I just have to worry about "Will the power be on?" You know, as opposed to "Power or food?" 

I'd rather my kids eat then have lights, like we can get candles, not a big deal. 

DANA CRONIN: Even if it was in the dark, she says she's always been able to put some kind of food on the table. I'm Dana Cronin, Harvest Public Media. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That story is part of a series from Harvest Public Media, taking a deeper look at how food insecurity in the U.S. has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Listen for more in their series in the coming weeks. 

And next we have a story from our archives with Annie Corrigan, longtime host and founder of Earth Eats. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: There's a special place in West Central Indiana that which we'll spend much of today's show. It's the White Violet Center for Eco-justice at Saint Mary of the Woods. They grow food using organic practices, they are an educational facility for new growers, they have alpacas, and they've been doing this since the mid 1990's. The entire Saint Mary of the Woods campus is about 12,000 acres but the garden is only about five acres. Trust me they do use it its full potential. 

CANDACE MINSTER: You could think of this like preschool. So the greenhouse is the nursery school I suppose you could say. And then preschool is where they go before they're ready to head out into the big world of the field. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: That's Candace Minster, the garden manager and fiber projects coordinator for White Violent Center. She's also a new mom which is maybe the root of that analogy. She's showing me around the cold frame, they also have a greenhouse and a passive solar high tunnel, all of which let them do four season growing. Minster went to school at Indiana University making her own major in ecology and religion. Her religion in food justice naturally grew out of that. 

CANDACE MINSTER: I just wanna grow food for people. I mean it's something that just fills a very deep need that I have. So I would be doing this anyway, so it's great that I have people to do it for. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: The gardens provide food for the two kitchens on the Saint Mary of the Woods campus. Last year they donated 3% of their harvest to area food banks, and they also have a CSA program which they hope will top 100 shareholders this year. 

There are six interns working at the White Violet center, two of whom are in inside washing the first harvest of the gourmet lettuce mix. 

(Sound of water running)

TARA ELMORE: This is the spinner, I'm not sure if it has a technical name, but for me it's the spinner. 

INTERN: It's the chef master. 

TARA ELMORE: (laughs) Chef master, it does have a technical name, I feel so bad for it now. And it's just gonna spin the water that has been collecting. We shake it, give a good spin so it'll get all the excess water off of it. It's gonna make a lot of noise. 

INTERN: Let's do it.

TARA ELMORE: And it's fun. 

(Sound of machine whirring) 

TARA ELMORE: (laughs) Tada! Dry happy lettuce. (laughs) 

KAYTE YOUNG: That was Tara Elmore, an intern at the White Violet Center. And since this story is from 2017, the Terre Haute farmers' market may not be happening today. You can find updated information about the White Violet Center at EarthEats.org. 

These archive stories from Annie Corrigan are in celebration of WFIU's 70th anniversary. And we're in our Fall Fund Drive this week and we hope to reach a total of 1,950 sustaining members in honor of WFIU's founding year of 1950. If you can contribute to our goal go to WFIU.org/donate to make your pledge in support of WFIU and Earth Eats. Thank you. 

We'll return to Annie's tour of the White Violet Center in second half of our show and more from the Earth Eats archive. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] Coming up - baker Marie Shakespeare.

[Interviewing] Alright, scones. What is a scone? 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: It's a sweet biscuit, I guess. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Sweet biscuit? 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Yeah. Well, yeah. It's a breakfast... you've had scones!

ANNIE CORRIGAN: I know but I can never really... I guess they're like triangular or square they tend to be crunchier, more brittle. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Crunchy? Flakey, they should be flakey. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: I've never had a flakey scone.

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: You have not had a flakey scone?!

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Teach me.

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Alright. 

(Earth Eats production support m`usic) 

KAYTE YOUNG: Production support comes from: 

Bloomingfoods Coop Market, providing local residents with locally sourced food since 1976. Owned by over 12,000 residents in Monroe County and beyond. More at Bloomingfoods.Coop.

Elizabeth Ruh, Enrolled Agent with personal financial services. Assisting businesses and individuals with tax preparation and planning for over 15 years. More at PersonalFinancialServices.net

And Bill Brown at Griffy Creek Studio, architectural design and consulting for residential, commercial and community projects. Sustainable, energy positive and resilient design for a rapidly changing world. Bill at GriffyCreek.studio.

ANNIE CORRIGAN: So I told you that we're baking scones today with Marie Shakespeare. Come into her kitchen with me. 

(Sound of kitchen cutlery clattering gently)

She's a part time baker at One World Catering, a job she's worked for only a couple of years. She came to the professional food world later in life and because she thought it'd be fun. Now as Marie puts it, she's a part of a team of ladies of a certain age who do a lot of the baking at One World. But okay, let's start with these scones. 

(Gentle guitar music) 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: We are in my kitchen in the southside of Bloomington. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Where it all started. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: That's where it all started. Oh sure, yeah it is. (laughs) 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Okay what are we doing today? 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: We are going to make apricot almond scones. 

I'm also a lighting designer and I teach lighting at IU and my students are forever misspelling 'sconce' as a 'scone', so on the last day of class this year I brought them these scones and said, "These are scones, they're not... they don't light up. They're delicious." And so that's what we're gonna do. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: (laughs) Okay.

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Okay, so there is a filling part to the scones that have apricots, honey, lemon peel, lemon juice and water. And that needs to cook a little bit and then it needs to cool before we mix it into the dough because scone dough has cold butter in it. So I've learned from doing this wrong a number of times (laughs) to make it, chill it, get it to a nice happy temperature with the other ingredients. So we do that first. 

Okay, I have everything in there now, I just kind of (makes a sound). So put this away for 10 minutes or so. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] Then she puts this mixture in the fridge to cool it down. She's shifted the dry ingredients together.

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: I am now involving the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients with my gloved hands. I'm trying to get things evenly moistened. And it's crumbly. It's a crumbly dough but when I knead it a little bit it'll come together. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] But it shouldn't be too uniform because you don’t want to overwork the dough, or it'll become tough. You can see the little pebbles of butter throughout. Then she rolls the dough out into thick discs and uses a straight edge to cut them into sixths. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Now...

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] Don't saw at the dough or twist your cutter. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: When you cut you have to go straight down. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Like little scone-lits. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Yeah, baby scones. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] What we're looking for is scones that rise nicely, they don’t tip over, and you can see the layers. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: They have some of the lovely characteristics of a croissant without the incredible time and pain of making croissants. I've made them a couple times and that's when Lynn said, "You can make a croissant? Oh you can work for me." I went, "Okay". 

(Flute music)

LYNN SCHWARTZBERG: My name is Lynch Schwartzberg, I'm the general manager of One World Catering. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Lynn also started as a home baker. She was running a small business out of her kitchen called Bakery Girl. 

LYNN SCHWARTZBERG: And I wasn't sure I was ready to have a full-time life doing it, and I was gonna use some space here and Jeff said, "Well we'll never use all this space." 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: That's Jeff Mease, Cofounder and CEO of One World Catering. He allowed her to use space in their professional kitchen. 

LYNN SCHWARTZBERG: So he brought me over and you know the kitchen was quiet and the walk-ins had all this space in them and I thought, "Huh, that could be interesting." 

And then I decided I hated my job. So I sent an email out to a very small group of people that knew me in various ways, and I was very honest and I said, "This is my skillset, if you ever think of anything that you could use me for, I'm looking to change my life." 

And I got an email from Jeff! And he said, "Why don't we go have breakfast?" 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: That was five and a half years ago. Lynn started out working 20 hours a week, mostly baking for One World. As the business grew so did her responsibilities. She realized she needed help with all that baking, and that's where her friend Marie Shakespeare comes in. 

(Accordion plays) 

Marie has always worked lots of little jobs from teaching lighting design classes at Indiana University to teaching yoga. She always tries to work a 'toy job' as she calls it. She makes a little money doing it but it's more about the fun than anything else. Well a couple years ago her toy job just wasn't cutting it anymore. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: You know I don't know, just things always change and shift. And there was one day that I said to myself, "You know, I wonder if I'm really still having fun here. I think I'll write down every shift I work, kind of on a scale of 1 to 10 about how much fun I'm having." 

And that lasted like two shifts and I went, "I'm not having fun anymore. That's just wrong." 

So I quit. And then Lynn said, "I really do need help in the kitchen. You want to come and cook? You want to come and try it? It'd be fun." 

LYNN SCHWARTZBERG: So she came over and started baking. And she's particularly skilled at scones, coffee cakes, she's kind of a breakfast baker, muffins. And she was terrifically helpful. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: I strive to work 12 hours minimum a week. And my goal is to make enough money to pay my health insurance premiums. I have lots of other little jobs here and there, but this is my toy job. 

LYNN SCHWARTZBERG: It's really funny because we live in a community where it's full of academics, and it's full of professionals, and being a regular worker is not exactly idolized. And we have all experienced some of that feedback. "Oh, such a lowly job. You do what? Oh." And we find it to be really gratifying. So we've had... you know, there's a whole class struggle that we've experienced which is really weird. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Okay, there's the music. 

(Oven beeping in the background)

Oh and I smell them, alright, yeah. Oh yeah, oh yeah, those are done. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: They're so much taller than the dough that you put in. 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Because that's the cold butter. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: That's the cold butter? 

MARIE SHAKESPEARE: Cold butter. The cold butter releases steam as it heats and does magic. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] Oh these were good. I became a scone believer that day. The recipe is just as easy as can be and it's on the website right now. Marie is right, baking is magical. Check out the recipes and the photos of our day together at EarthEats.org. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That was Annie Corrigan, long time host and founder of Earth Eats. Many things have changed at One World Catering since this story aired in 2017, including their location. Marie Shakespeare is no longer baking scones with One World, but Lynn Schwartzberg is the general manager. Find more at EarthEats.org. 

(Calm violin music) 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Welcome back to Earth Eats, I'm Anne Corrigan. 

CANDACE MINSTER: Just be careful where you step, the row covers can get caught up on your feet. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Candance Minster is showing me around the five acres of gardens of the White Violet Center for Eco-justice. The floating row cover is protecting the crops from insects and excess light, it also helps to cool down the crops during the hot days. We're inside one of their gothic style high tunnels, which is fifteen feet tall at their feet. 

CANDACE MINSTER: It seems excessively high for things like lettuce that grow low, but in the height of the summertime it helps to pass some of the heat out of here and get it away from close to the plants. And then the sides also roll up. And so in the height of the summer when it's pretty toasty, then we will have the sides rolled up, the big bay doors are both open, and we want as much air flow in here as we can get. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: There can be as much as a 20-degree difference from outside to inside this high tunnel. I visited Minster and her gardening crew in early May so spring crops like greens and carrots were at their peak. 

So let's just peer on inside, I see... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight... about ten rows of greens that are looking really healthy. 

CANDACE MINSTER: Yeah so right now everything that's in here was planted anew in the early, excuse me in the late part of the winter. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: I see these gorgeous carrots over there in that bin, those must be so sweet and delicious. 

CANDACE MINSTER: Yes, they're really nice. Carrots this time of year tend to be pretty brittle which means they have a really nice crunchy texture. They're not woody, they're...

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Brittle is a good thing?

CANDACE MINSTER: Yeah absolutely. Yeah it makes it tricky for harvesting but yeah it is a good thing. (laughing)

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Then you can get some snacks as you're harvesting now.

CANDACE MINSTER: That's right, that's right. Yeah, I joke around that we usually eat the drags, you know the broken carrots and things like that. They're so good, but they're just not pretty enough to sell (laughs) 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] The two woman harvesting crops today didn't do any snacking while I was there, but they did admit there is plenty of taste testing that goes on. They're armed with pairs of scissors, snipping outer leaves of the Russian kale plants. This is work made for young knees. 

CANDACE MINSTER: Yeah, it's good when you're squatted down you stand up, you squat you stand. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: I don't know how you guys do that.

[Narrating] Ann Testa works in the gardens which is a very different scene from her former jobs. 

ANN TESTA: I worked in Chicago, I was a sous chef at Cafe Absinthe in Wicker park, and I was a sous chef in Pastiche up in Uptown in Chicago. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] You can't imagine the noise and the stress of a professional kitchen when you're in this high tunnel, it's so calm, you don't even hear street noise. It's just the rush of the wind and the occasional snip of the scissors. 

(Sound of scissor snapping)

Testa has now worked on two ends of the food chain, the cooking, now the growing. She prefers what she's doing now. 

ANN TESTA: It's the product, it's like very pure. You don't add anything to it and it's just delicious as it is. Which I kind of... the older I get, the more simple I want things. 

(Sound of people walking over grass)

Yeah, actually those two grey boys like to fight. They're brothers. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Oh, oh! And there they go. 

ANN TESTA: Yeah. (Laughs) It's funny to watch an alpaca fight because they mostly just wrestle with their necks. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: If you've never seen an alpaca, they're all neck and all legs with tiny tiny tiny tiny little bodies. 

ANN TESTA: (laughs) Yes a lot of people confuse them with llamas, but they're in the same family, they're camelids. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Back again at the White Violet Center with Candace Minster. 

CANDACE MINSTER: That's the sound they make. 

(Sound of alpaca screeching)

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] That's Theo and Apollo making all the ruckus. There are about 40 alpacas at the White Violet Center, separated in various pastures throughout the grounds. They're raised for sales, breeding, and fiber production, and their manure is vital to the agricultural program. We made our way into a pasture with the two troublemakers and a very curious alpaca named Madison. 

CANDACE MINSTER: So Madison you'll want to watch him, because he likes to jump on your back. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: Jump on my back?! Okay. 

CANDACE MINSTER: Potentially (laughs). 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] Just don't turn your back on him and you're fine. Having the alpacas makes the White Violet Center a good model of sustainability according to Minster. 

CANDACE MINSTER: Most organic farmers live and die by compost and manures. And so you can purchase that form off farm or you can make your own. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: The alpacas produce plenty of manure for Minster and her team to use on the crops. When sister Ann Sullivan was forming her vision of the White Violet Center she wanted to incorporate animals that wouldn't be slaughtered for food. Having grown up on a farm herself, Sullivan wasn't fond of sheep. Alpacas seemed to fit the bill. So in 1998 they accepted a donation of their first six animals. 

CANDACE MINSTER: So the you... didn’t necessarily need a lot of them, you could get started with just a few. They're pretty easy on the pasture because they have a soft foot. They don't tear up the ground. They do produce an income for us through their fiber. They are... 

(Alpaca calls continue)

(both laugh) 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: They just won't stop. We're doing a radio interview!

CANDACE MINSTER: Yeah! (laughs) I mean it really is just like kids. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: They're doing hot laps around the pen here. 

CANDACE MINSTER: They are. 

ANNIE CORRIGAN: [Narrating] No alpacas were harmed in the taping of this interview with Candace Minster at the White Violet Center. What a magical place. 

KAYTE YOUNG: What a magical place indeed. 

(Earth Eats Theme Music Plays)

That was Annie Corrigan of the White Violet Center for Ecojustice in Terre Haute, back in 2017. Part of our archival episode in honor of WFIU's 70th anniversary. Find updates about the White Violet Center at EarthEats.org. 

And now for our big announcement. Starting next week we'll be expanding the show to a full hour. Check your local station listing to find out when Earth Eats will air.Hear Earth Eats, Saturday mornings at 7:00, and Sunday afternoons at 1:00, following the Ted Radio Hour on WFIU. You can always find episodes at EarthEats.org or subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast service.

That's it for this week's show, thanks for tuning in. 

RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Chad Bouchard, Mark Chilla, Abraham Hill, Taylor Killough, Josephine McRobbie, the IU Food Institute, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed.  Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.

KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks week to Annie Corrigan, Lynn Schwartzberg, Marie Shakespeare, Candace Minster, Ann Testa and Tara Elmore. 

Production support comes from: Insurance agent Dan Williamson of Bill Resch Insurance. Offering comprehensive home, auto, business and life coverage, in affiliation with Pekin Insurance. Beyond the expected. More at BillReschInsurance.com.Bloomingfoods Coop Market, providing local residents with locally sourced food since 1976. Owned by over 12,000 residents in Monroe County and beyond. More at Bloomingfoods.Coop. Elizabeth Ruh, Enrolled Agent, providing customized financial services for individuals, businesses, and disabled adults including tax planning, bill paying, and estate services.  More at PersonalFinancialServices.net.