KAYTE YOUNG:  From WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, I'm Kayte Young, and this is Earth Eats.

7. NIESHA DOUGLAS: Should we not address the fact that people are still making $7.25 an hour and paying 800 plus a month in rent or cannot afford childcare? You know, could we really say that, that food is the issue if we don't address those problems first?

KAYTE YOUNG:  This week on the show, we talk with the authors of Everybody Eats, a book about food justice interventions in Greensboro, North Carolina. And we hear about an anti-racist toolkit for farmers' markets, plus an interview with Cardinal Spirits chef Abel Garcia. And a recipe for a melt-in-your-mouth treat made from spring flowers. All that and more coming up on Earth Eats after this.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thanks for listening to Earth Eats. I'm Kate Young, and Renee Reed is here with some food and farming reports from Harvest Public Media. Hello, Renee.

RENEE REED:  Hello, Kayte. Fallout from the war in Ukraine is making it hard for Midwestern farmers to plan out what they're planting this spring. Crop prices are all over the place. The cost of fertilizer is at an all-time high, and farmers are being encouraged to plant more wheat amid potential losses from Russia and Ukraine. Jennifer Hillman is a senior fellow at the Council on Farm Relations. She says all that uncertainty is making farmers' decisions difficult.

JENNIFER HILLMAN:  Farmers, like everyone else, are reluctant to plunk down a lot of money in the absence of some kind of guarantees, or insurance, or backing if there is a risk that tomorrow everything could turn around and become very different.

RENEE REED:  Hillman says the US government should provide some financial assistance to farmers in order to keep up domestic food production. Two big Midwestern organizations are teaming up to feed refugees fleeing the Ukrainian war zone. As Harvest Public Media's Dana Cronin reports, they've secured sea ports and shipping containers, as well as a warehouse in Poland.

DANA CRONIN:  Illinois-based Midwest Food Bank and Missouri-based Convoy of Hope are sending food and supplies to Ukrainian refugees. Mike Hoffman is the logistics director for the Midwest Food Bank. He says they've already sent over one sea container, which can feed about a quarter of a million people, and they plan to ship at least two more.

MIKE HOFFMAN:  This isn't something that's short-lived. This is going to be a long-term commitment. Let's say the war ends tomorrow. It'd be awesome, but there's a lot of infrastructure that's totally gone over there, and they're going to take a lot of support, a lot of need for quite a while.

DANA CRONIN:  Hoffman says those containers have been entirely funded by community donations. I'm Dana Cronin, Harvest Public Media.

RENEE REED:  Food prices could be five percent higher in 2022 compared to last year. That would be the biggest one-year increase in 14 years. The latest report from the University of Missouri's Agricultural Research Group cites labor costs, fuel prices, and supply chain issues among the contributing factors. Pat Westhoff leads the group. He says some foods will see especially high prices.

PAT WESTHOFF:  We have much larger increases year over year for meats, for fats and oils, for fresh fruits than you do for most other products.

RENEE REED:  Westhoff says Russia's invasion of Ukraine will also likely have long-lasting effects on food prices, lengthening the amount of time before food inflation rates get back to normal. The average increase in food prices is two and a half percent. Thanks to Harvest Public Media's Jonathan Ahl and Dana Cronin for those reports. For Earth Eats, I'm Renee Reed.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Farmers markets across the Midwest are summer havens. A welcoming community gathering space rich with healthy fruits, vegetables, and local goods. But people of color, both vendors and shoppers alike, have been systematically excluded from these spaces. A new initiative is trying to change that. Harvest Public Media's Dana Cronin spoke with Midwest-based Julialynne Walker, who helped the Farmers Market Coalition develop an anti-racist farmer's market toolkit.

DANA CRONIN:  So, before we talk about the toolkit itself, I'd like to hear your perspective on racism at farmers markets. I'll be totally honest: when I think of farmers markets, I think of them as predominantly White spaces. Why is that?

JULIALYNNE WALKER:  Exactly. And I think that it is a reflection of our society overall. And it's a reflection of beliefs that we hold that certain institutions are for certain people. And so when people are put into positions of power, however limited those positions may be, they make decisions that are consistent with their environment, decisions consistent with what they see around them. And so if you consistently visit farmers markets that are all White, you don't think about what do I need to do to make sure that all people in the community are represented? Whether it is the information you immediately disseminate, or whether it's how you structure your market, or even in terms of the items that you have. A couple of times, I would walk in and say, "Which vendor has okra?" And they would just look at me. Or, "Which vendor has collard greens?" "Well, none of our vendors." Well, I don't want kale, [LAUGHS] You know? So, if you really want to attract a particular market, then it's important to have the foods that that market wants. Otherwise, we won't come.

DANA CRONIN:  So, tell me about the toolkit. What is the overall goal?

JULIALYNNE WALKER:  I would say to get people thinking. And then to get them to act based on new thoughts that come up. So, it's to help you think through. As I said before, in terms of messaging, how do you step back and look at the kinds of materials you're using, look at your market, look at the vendors, and at each level of the process ask yourself, "What is the message being sent if I were to look at this from a different perspective?" So, whether you are a for-profit, a non-profit or a municipal agency, within each level you have to talk about decision-making. Who's at the table to make the decision? Whose voice is weighted? Whose voice is listened to? And then once the decisions are made, how are those decisions implemented? And, finally, is there a process by which we evaluate what happened and then reassess at some future point?

DANA CRONIN:  What is your hope for the future? What do you hope a typical farmers market might look like down the road?

JULIALYNNE WALKER:  Well, I would hope that it really is reflective of the community, and that we have all kinds of people involved. Representation is not just in terms of food, but it's in terms of the activities, the music. We really make it holistic, and I know that that's only possible when everybody is seated at the table. So, I hope that at a minimum people who pick up the Anti-Racism Toolkit will begin to work on how do I make sure that everybody is at the table? And once they're at the table, listen to them.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That was Julialynne Walker, a market manager based in the Midwest who helped develop a new Anti-Racist Farmers Market Toolkit. She spoke with Harvest Public Media's Dana Cronin. Find more at Harvestpublicmedia.org. After a short break, a conversation with the authors of Everybody Eats: Communication and the Paths to Food Justice. That conversation when Earth Eats returns.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Kayte Young here. This is Earth Eats. Confronted with a glaring social problem like, say, food insecurity in a community, the impulse to act, to try to do something about it, comes naturally, particularly to those in the social service sector. But well-meaning plans don't always have the outcomes we hope for, especially if those plans don't involve those most affected by the issue. A new book from University of California Press focuses on food justice conversations and interventions in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Josephine McRobbie spoke with the authors about what they learned in their research, and what questions remain to be answered.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  Dr. Niesha Douglas and Dr. Marianne LeGreco are the authors of Everybody Eats: Communication and the Paths to Food Justice. The book is focused on food insecurity and food access programs in Greensboro, North Carolina. Between the years of 2009 and 2019, Greensboro was named on the Food Action and Research Center's list of major US cities experiencing food hardship. It topped the list in 2015. When the two professors met, momentum was already growing to address issues of food disparities in the area. Some activities were centered around the historically Black neighborhood of Warnersville. Here's Dr. Niesha Douglas.

1. NIESHA DOUGLAS: During this time, there was a feasibility study done by Mark Smith, who's an epidemiologist at Guilford County Health Department. And so they were doing this study around key areas in Greensboro, and they did it in zip codes. One of the zip codes was the Warnersville area, where they identified people who were having issues with high blood pressure, diabetes, and some of these preventable diseases.
2. MARIANNE LEGRECO: So, one of the things that Mark noticed was the Warnersville neighborhood has the highest rates of poverty, but also the highest rates of chronic health problems, and so he was really interested in working more closely with people who lived in that neighborhood to figure out where some of these problems and disparities and barriers might be coming from, and what the people in the neighborhoods were interested in focusing on as a way to address them.
3. NIESHA DOUGLAS: And one of the issues was food and the access to food. And how many grocery stores are within a one-mile radius, and can people get to the grocery stores, and how do they get to the grocery stores, and what are they eating, or what are they picking up, and do they have enough money? And also during that time, community gardens were starting to pick up a little bit more steam, where people were wanting to grow their own food. Not because they were hungry, but because of health reasons. They wanted to go back to gardening in a way that would save them money and also benefit them health-wise.
4. MARIANNE LEGRECO: And he invited us to become part of the conversations that were going on in Warnersville. Not long after that is when we started making news with the FRAC headlines. With the Food Research and Action Center. We were really well-positioned, I think, as community groups, to keep those conversations going. And we had already started to speak with folks in the neighborhood who had identified things like urban gardens and community farms, mobile farmers markets, community stores, better walking paths, as things that they wanted to see in their neighborhoods. And, honestly, that's how Niesha and I met. We had started to work on implementing some of the farmers markets and mobile farmers markets ideas. And Niesha lived in the neighborhood. She'd been invited to become a part of some of the interventions themselves, and that's how she and I met and started to talk.

 Niesha was working on her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and I was working at that time as an assistant professor but eventually associate professor at UNC Greensboro.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  Everybody Eats contains case studies of programming in Greensboro from 2009 to 2019 that aimed to address food hardship and access. The professors look at the successes and failures of these interventions through the lens of communication studies.

1. MARIANNE LEGRECO: People often underestimate the role that communication plays in the community engagement, in the mobilizing of the resources, in the sustaining of the conversations. There were a couple of times when newcomers to the partnerships and to the relationships would be facilitating conversations and they would introduce me, and they would say, "Oh, and this is Marianne. She's a communication professor at UNCG. She manages our social media." And I would say, "Wait, wait. There's a little bit more to it than that." How are you going to handle some of those tensions? How are you going to prioritize certain needs over others?
2. NIESHA DOUGLAS: Particularly in Warnersville, there was a recurring theme where people would come into the neighborhood and say, "You guys need this, and so this is what we're going to do." And then after it didn't work, they would leave. There's a residual effect that happens when people come in and try to create something and it doesn't work. Because I was from the neighborhood and understood its culture, I knew a little bit more. I knew what would work and what wouldn't work, because we've seen it before. The residents would be very leery of having anybody come in and try to create something when they weren't involved in the process. And they are very active within the neighborhood, and they want to be involved. They want to preserve, number one, the history of the neighborhood and the integrity of the people that live there. But they also want to see change, but on their own terms.

 So, throughout the book, there are conversations that Marianne and I have, trying to work through what we were experiencing. I remember when I first heard the term "food desert," I thought, desert? Desert means desolate, with no life. It means dry. When I think of a desert, that's what I think of. I think of the Sahara Desert with just sand and heat, and no life.

1. MARIANNE LEGRECO: "Food desert" was a USDA term that was used to delineate neighborhoods that a certain number of the population lived below the poverty line, and a certain number of the population was at least a mile away from a grocery store. And "food swamp" got used as an extension of that metaphor to talk about neighborhoods with high concentrations of low quality food. And the USDA has moved away from some of that terminology.
2. NIESHA DOUGLAS: When they come up with these terms, to me it seems like there are a lot of racial undertones associated with it. Because a lot of people connect poverty with Black and Brown communities. They use some key terms like "low income," "poverty," "desert," "swamp," to make it seem like these people are suffering. If you're relating "swamp" to a specific area, a lot of people won't want to come there. Right? I always had a problem with how people would label certain neighborhoods, because I would feel like there was misrepresentation. Or they're trying to take away from what the neighborhood is really like. For example, Warnersville was a thriving community.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  At the end of the Civil War, a Quaker educator, lawyer, and minister named Yardley Warner purchased land in southeast Greensboro, the area now known as Warnersville. He bought 35 and a half acres and then sold parcels to formerly enslaved people at low cost.

1. NIESHA DOUGLAS: So, they started developing and building themselves. It became a really thriving community back in the 1920s and 1930s. In the community where my grandmother grew up, she would always say, "We had this, we had movie theaters and beauty shops and everything was Black-owned, and everybody was doing their thing and everybody loved it." Until rezoning came in and they started breaking up people.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  The Warnersville Community Garden required several years of planning by multiple stakeholder groups to open and, more importantly, to thrive. It currently operates with a paid farm manager and as an urban teaching farm. Understanding the neighborhood was key to breaking ground.

1960. NIESHA DOUGLAS: I will give an example of my grandmother. My grandmother purchased her house in Warnersville in 1960. During that time, people had their own gardens. She grew tomatoes and cucumbers in the backyard. But they also were growing food for themselves. There's a connection between me growing food for myself and me growing food for other people. I feel like there's something within our DNA that triggers times in which we were working for free. We were working in yards and fields for free. There's a connection to slavery, and I remember having a conversation with someone in the neighborhood, and they said, "No, we're over gardening. We've moved on from that." And I thought, "Hm." There's a negative connotation about growing food for other people. And not just other people, but people that don't look like you.

 So, they shied away from that. They didn't want to be involved. Plus, a lot of the residents were older and could no longer be in the yard pulling weeds or harvesting or watering, because it was hot. That played a role, too. They were still hesitant to the idea of a new program or a community garden or urban farm. If you were to speak with some of the community members, you would have learned the historical reasons why they question whether programs need to be placed within Warnersville, because of things like that.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  Another case study looks at a series of pop-up and mobile farmers markets in Warnersville and other neighborhoods in Greensboro.

1. MARIANNE LEGRECO: It's using a food truck model in some ways to make a location mobile so you're getting the resource, the intervention, the food, to where the people are. And it was particularly needed because we face a lot of financial constraints in Greensboro and Guilford County when it comes to starting up new food, retail, and business spaces. And we cover a little bit of that in the Downtown Greensboro Food Truck pilot project intervention. We were able to get some policies changed that then made it possible for us to do things like mobile farmers markets and take food trucks onto institutional spaces.

 And so we were able to test out ideas like is it easier to catch people where they live and try to do a mobile or pop-up market, or is it easier to catch people where they frequently go? So, for example, we tested out ideas at Cone Health facilities, which is one of our major health care providers in Greensboro. We were able to pop up the mobile Oasis Farmers Market there in one of their parking lots.

1. NIESHA DOUGLAS: We also set up shop at social services, where a lot of people would go to apply for food stamps or WIC or whatever social service was needed. And so that was another site that we felt would be productive if we were to go where people were getting services for their families, and then they could also get a peach or an apple or groceries using their EBT card.
2. MARIANNE LEGRECO: And we learned the need for SNAP, EBT, and WIC through our initial pop ups. That was the first big piece of feedback we got from folks. They said it's great that you all have this, but if you're going to do it long term, you're going to need to be able to accept SNAP/EBT. And it also created a space where people realized that if you can incentivize people to use SNAP/EBT at farmers markets, it's also good for the farmers and local vendors because those funds are staying in the community.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  The book also examines downtown food truck legislation, an immigrant-owned restaurant tour called Ethnosh, as well as an incubator kitchen.

1. MARIANNE LEGRECO: Addressing food insecurity is not only about addressing food access. It's about addressing intersections between access and poverty. And so some of those programs helped to address the poverty side of things by allowing people less financially risky entry points into food markets, like through the food trucks. It also encouraged people to buy food and support local restaurants through programs like Ethnosh, and to support restaurants owned by immigrants and first generation folks who are serving the food from the cuisines from their background and culture. It also created lower-cost entry points like our kitchen incubator programs, so that people could test whether they wanted to start up a food business without having to take on such huge financial risks as opening up their own kitchen to decide whether or not to sell their jams, jellies, sauces, and things of that nature.

 But even more so, I think it's about changing the culture of how we talk about food. When we are willing to test out some of these ideas, we're continuing to center food as something that's important to our communities and our cultures. Honestly, I think the way that the intervention shaped the bigger picture conversations around food is the single biggest impact that all of those interventions combined had. Because if you look today, some of them are very different than when they started out. Some of them have completely different partnerships, some have morphed into something different. Some are on hiatus, and some have ended completely.

 At the same time, everyone across the board in Greensboro and Guilford County will acknowledge that we now speak differently about food and food security than we did ten years ago. We know a lot more about how food systems work, we know a lot more about how all of the different pieces fit together, and I think, most importantly, we know more about how to work in partnership to create some of the networks that are needed to make sure that people have access to food. For me, this really came into sharp relief during the pandemic. Small business are closing, kids can't get food at school. How do we make sure that we're still using these relationships that we've built over the last ten years?

 We were able to engage the community so quickly that within a week we were able to move on to some of the mobilizing resources stages of it. We were able to do things like implement advanced ordering and drive-through pick up systems at two of our farmers markets. So, they never even had to close down during the lockdowns around COVID.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  Since topping the FRAC food hardship list in 2015, Greensboro fell to number 14 in the most recent study year. But the process of writing a book about some of these food justice strategies has brought up more questions than others. Dr. Douglas wants to see a broader conversation moving forward.

7. NIESHA DOUGLAS: The more we thought about it, we thought, is it really a food issue more than it is a poverty issue? Should we not address the fact that people are still making $7.25 an hour and still paying 800 plus a month in rent? Or still cannot afford childcare? Can we really say that food is the issue if we don't address those problems first? I know when people make more money or have more residual income, they do spend more money on good food. They want to make healthier choices. But I think these questions are something that we as a community could have deep and meaningful conversations about. Any time we bring up poverty, nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to talk about raising the minimum wage. Nobody wants to talk about income-based housing. Nobody wants to talk about affordable health care. You can't put a Band Aid on a gunshot wound because that's not the treatment you need to treat that type of problem.

 Those are the type of conversations that I'm willing to lead and be a part of. I would like to see other things happen, surrounding the conversations about food.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE:  Everybody Eats: Communication and the Paths to Food Justice is available now through University of California Press. For WFIU's Earth Eats, I'm Josephine McRobbie.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Find more about the book and about the history of the Warnersville neighborhood at Eartheats.org.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Still ahead, a conversation with the executive chef at Cardinal Spirits, and a recipe for a sweet treat made with locally foraged spring flowers. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Welcome back. I'm Kayte Young, and this is Earth Eats. Just before the coronavirus pandemic shut down bars and restaurants here in Bloomington, Cardinal Spirits had just brought on a new executive chef. Before Abel Garcia had a chance to debut his culinary vision for the restaurant, Cardinal Spirits had to pivot the focus of their operations to survive the pandemic restrictions. The distillery immediately started producing hand sanitizer, which, if you'll remember, was in short supply in those early days. And they put energy into canned cocktail production and carryout. Eventually, they offered food for takeout, as well.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Last week we did a recipe video shoot at Cardinal Spirits for the Earth Eats YouTube channel. Chef Abel Garcia shared two fun recipes with us, which will soon be up on YouTube. I took the opportunity to sit down with Abel Garcia with my microphone to talk about how things are going at the restaurant.

ABEL GARCIA:  My name's Abel Garcia. I'm the executive chef at Cardinal Spirits in Bloomington, Indiana. Been the chef for a little over two years, and I came in the February right before the pandemic. So, call it timing or whatever you want, but something aligned to get me here. It was one of those things where I was ready to hit the ground running, and then as soon as the pandemic hit, it was hold the brakes and let's see what the company as a whole did. Between taking myself and our bar team, the whole company twisted on a dime and said we're doing all the sanitizer. And out of that we became the first people in the state to make sanitizer. Very interesting, but I'm glad it's over.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And then at some point, Cardinal did start offering food for takeout. How did you adjust your menu to that, and how did you adapt to that situation?

ABEL GARCIA:  That first started off with me getting COVID. I was asymptomatic, so I just had to stay at home. I lived with roommates who worked at bars, so I had to stay in my room unless I had to use the rest room or take a shower or let my dog out. I was very isolated, so I was ordering takeout for about ten days in a row. That's how the idea for the menu started. It wasn't necessarily about what I wanted to offer for takeout, but what are the failures I see in the takeout that I'm getting. And that came down to fried items, no-nos, is this sauce holding as it's going there? And that got the ball rolling to be, like, if we're going to do carryout, let's focus on something that's going to last in a box for up to 15 minutes.

 I have friends who live in Ellettsville. And they were really nice about if I had an ice cream coming out--which we have and you can try it. But when that ice cream came out, I asked, "Can you drive from Ellettsville, pick it up, and drive it back home, and tell me what you think?" It would be nice for them to say, "It was almost melting, but I threw it in the freezer for five minutes and it was good to go." And that's good enough R&D for me to say, even my friend with two kids and a minivan driving all the way to Ellettsville, it still worked.

 And that's how it kept going from there. A lot of places around town were still doing French fries for delivery. I saw someone do mussels for delivery. I don't know why they were doing that, but it was one of those examples of, "Let's not do that one." I had to rethink what carryout meant. We were also thinking about delivery. We couldn't find a delivery service we really enjoyed. I used to work in pizza back in the day, and when we had our delivery drivers it was very much a thing where they had to look a certain way, they couldn't smell like cigarettes. They had to work in a timely fashion. So, just from that standpoint, you don't always know who's picking up the food and dropping it off to you. And when that person might be the only face of the company you'll see, you need to think about whether that's the direction you want to go. We said, "No, a little more personal than that." We wanted to see our guests anyway, so having carryout and having a bottle of carryout as well, it made more sense for us to do it that way.

KAYTE YOUNG:  What kinds of things did you offer in those first menus?

ABEL GARCIA:  We needed to have something close to a burger. But we knew we couldn't do a burger because the temps would fail because of the carryout time, as we were talking about. One thing that's on our menu to this day that came out of that carryout is our steak sandwich. Take a whole, big old rib eye, treat it like prime rib. Slice it, sear it. Nice and easy, we finish it with our Lakehouse Rum Onions. They're here in house, and it takes almost an entire bottle to make that sauce, which is deliciously boozy and spicy. And then brioche bun, some greens, and a bourbon soy aioli sauce we make here in house. That was one of the things for carryout that not only showcase our booze products but something that's just as delicious and could hold up to that 15 minute window of time. And when we're going into our dining, that was probably the easiest choice when people said, "Please do not take that away."

 Love that meat, you know. It was everything. From just because it was more tender than a burger to older folks saying "I love not having to bite through it all the way." It just pulls apart. So, it was something that not only worked for what we were trying to accomplish, but it was so well received that it had to come on to our main menu. So, that was a really nice one.

KAYTE YOUNG:  What other kinds of things did you offer?

ABEL GARCIA:  Our veggie burger at the time was an interesting take. We wanted to do something that nobody else was doing at the time; black bean burgers in Bloomington are just played out. So, we wanted to do something different. We offered a beet patty that was a little softer. And to encase it, we did a rice paper wrap around it. And we finished that with something like the sauce we were doing earlier, but it was a Mae Ploy cucumber and red cabbage slaw that went right on top of that, and some fresh apples. It was a very interesting take on root vegetables, fresh apples, and an Asian twist on there. It just happened to work, and people really enjoyed it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It's really exciting for vegetarians to get something that's not the typical. And that same amount of care has gone into creating it, so that's really nice. Did that take off well? Were people coming in and picking up takeout food?

ABEL GARCIA:  Yes, absolutely. We had our good days and bad days like everyone else, but I can definitely say we were on people's rotating list of where to get it. We were either that Wednesday spot, Friday, however you want to put it, but it was nice to see the same folks coming back again. The whole industry including not just the workers but the guests were understanding about what was going on with the supply chain failing for us. But luckily for us, it didn't hit us too bad because we deal with so many small farmers. Sure, their prices went up a bit here and there, but they were still available to us, and people enjoyed that we were still keeping up with staying as local to Indiana as possible while still offering something great. It was very challenging, but still nice.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Cardinals Patio and Dining Room are now open for in-person dining. But they're still working out how to handle the seating at the bar.

ABEL GARCIA:  If you've ever been into our restaurant, it's just a long shotgun bar. So, it's very close quarters at any given time, even with the space we have open now. So, we want to make sure that before we get elbow to elbow, we're past this.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So, you're back to creating menus for dine-in. What is your approach to the menus? Is it seasonal? Do they change?

ABEL GARCIA:  Yes, they constantly change. Getting out of that pandemic, with rehiring, it took us about a year and a half to get the full team we wanted in here. The first menu rollout once we came back to dine-in was a little safer compared to things I've done in the past. But now with the spring menu rollout, we can see a more intricate side of things, a more in-depth flavor profile, and last minute knife works. We're really putting some pressure on and getting things done at the last minute. So, my team might not like me for that, but it's what the city deserves. We're just trying to make sure that while doing the seasonal changes, we don't overlook the main thing we're trying to do here as far as my cooking and my approach to it, which is staying honest to what we're doing.

 If we're going to do a brown sauce for a steak, you bet that started with a 30-hour chicken or beef stock somewhere. I've been around in plenty of these restaurants and seen some shortcuts and luckily for me hanging out with chefs like Dave Talon, Seth Elgar, and Jeff Finch -shout out to those guys -they taught me that you're going to have a headache because this is just the way it needs to be. If you're going to do this kind of sauce, you need to start with chicken stock. You need to start with this. And it's nice to see that integrity in their cooking and how they passed it on to me and I do my absolute best to keep that going. That creates a lot of headaches and time constraints in the kitchen, but at the end of the day you can't forget the flavor. Some people always ask me what we do to it. It sounds super simple, but you've got to find the time and the love for it. That's all it really is.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Chef Abel Garcia discovered his love for food and cooking when he took some time off from college. He'd been on a path towards a law degree, but he was questioning whether or not it was a good fit for him. He took a year off and found himself in the restaurant industry. He fell in love with the work and the culture.

ABEL GARCIA:  Just the pace of it. My family has always done big parties, and even if it's just our own family it's heavily catered. You're not leaving with an empty stomach. So, having that kind of catering in my family for just about any occasion made it really easy to think this is just like being with family all the time. And not just being with them but being with them at the best times. Those big party days like 4th of July, Christmas, all those holidays, and to make it happen daily and get paid for it was the road I wanted to go down. It was a match made in heaven that there was something that I knew I could never learn everything about. And I would have to keep researching. It keeps surprising me to this day, no matter if I use something as old as Jacques Pépin's father's recipe or something as modern as some new molecular gastronomy. I love waking waking up nervous not knowing something and having to approach it.

 Coming to that over the years and working with some of the chefs I mentioned, they really spark your interest. Having those people reaffirm what you're doing and make it look possible was the other part of it. I thought, "Yes, I can do this."

KAYTE YOUNG:  I asked Chef Abel Garcia to share his vision for the work he's doing at Cardinal.

ABEL GARCIA:  I'm really enjoying making things happen in Indiana. People that are doing things for Indiana, that are growing things from Indiana, need to be sold to people in Indiana. And I think that's what the next phase of my cooking here is. We have a farmer working with us to grow the 75 variety cornmeal that I was talking about. That's just as simple as seed preservation. We're just going to have those varieties of corn. We're going to have four coming in, and we'll focus on that as bread and butter boards. We're going to have three different types of cornmeals, three different types of butter. We'll have a lemon herb, a bone marrow butter and a duck fat butter to go with all those.

 So, it's three different crazy butters going with three different crazy types of cornmeal. And it's really just about letting people take in those different types of corn, because they all have different levels of sweetness, bitterness, and grit.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So, is it going to be made into a cornbread?

ABEL GARCIA:  Yes. It's such a classic southeast American and also Indiana thing. We do corn in Indiana, I think we're the fifth largest producer of corn right now. It's something so simple that it's overlooked. And now it's time to say, hey, people in Indiana are growing this heirloom corn in Indiana, so if you want to invest in Indiana, buy this cornbread. But, yes, get your reservations in. Get something inside or outside. Right now we have our spring menu rolling, and it's looking like late June is going to be our next menu rollout for the summer. If you can't make it now, put that on your calendar for the next time you can visit.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Thank you so much for talking with me today.

ABEL GARCIA:  Thank you. I appreciate it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  That was Chef Abel Garcia, the executive chef at Cardinal Spirits, a local craft distillery with a tasting room and restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana. Subscribe to Earth Eats on YouTube so you won't miss those recipes he shared, coming soon. Find links and more on our website, Eartheats.org.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Hey. So, I have some great news for local listeners. Or any listeners who have black locust trees growing in your area. We might actually get some locust flowers this year. Last year we got a late frost just as they were blooming, so we didn't get to harvest any. It might have happened the year before, too. I don't know; I was distracted. Early days of the global pandemic and all. This is the year. I've been saving this next recipe for two years, and I'm excited that we finally get to share it. Dedicated Earth Eats listeners might remember a recipe from a few years back. Chef Daniel Orr makes a locust blossom jelly. You can find the recipe for that on our website, Eartheats.org.

 This recipe for black locust flower fritters comes from my partner Carl. He's the only person I know who makes these, besides his brother, who lives in Kentucky. So, for this one I had to look no farther than my own backyard. Well, and down the street for the flowers. Locust flowers are easy to spot. Just look up. The trees are usually pretty tall, with dark bark and branches dipping down covered in lacy clusters of shimmering white flowers. You can usually find them late April, early May, and they stand out since most of the other trees have already leafed out.

CARL PEARSON:  So, I went out this morning to search for black locust flowers, and they were super easy to find. There are trees all along the beeline here in Bloomington just dripping with the flowers. And there are some trees in which the branches are low enough that I could just walk right up to them and start pulling flowers off. But sometimes you have to get a ladder to get to them. And now, I am pulling off the flowers off the stem one by one until I have four cups.

 The fritter batter is one and a half cups of flour and a can of seltzer water. Some people use beer, but seltzer water will work just fine. And then I've added a teaspoon of vanilla. Next, I will fold in these beaten egg whites that have peaks but are not too stiff. Folding the egg whites into the flour and seltzer water or flour and beer mixture. In the refrigerator I have four cups of black locust flowers that I picked this morning. I mixed those with a quarter cup of sugar and three tablespoons of orange flavoring. The recipe I have calls for Grand Marnier. But I just use organic orange flavoring that I found at the grocery store.

CARL PEARSON:  Now, I'm going to fold in these flowers that I mixed with sugar and orange flavoring. And I put those in the refrigerator for an hour. I got everything cold. And that's it for the batter. Now, I'm going to take them to the deep fryer and with one-third cup scoops I'll make four, five, or six fritters at a time. We'll see how many fit. And we'll cook them for four minutes per side.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Just to back up a bit, the first thing you want to do once you've harvested your flowers and picked them off the stems is mix them with some sugar and Grand Marnier or orange extract. Cover them, put them in the fridge for an hour. Next, you want to get your deep fryer ready. Fill it with peanut oil and set the temp at 375. Next, separate your eggs and beat the egg whites until they have peaks but they aren't too stiff. Now you're ready to mix up the fritter batter. Add the chilled and sweetened black locust flowers, and then it's time to fry the fritters.

CARL PEARSON:  Okay, so this a recipe I adapted from my brother's recipe, who, in turn adapted his recipe from Jacques Pépin, who recommends making acacia flower fritters as well, but I've never tried that. So, now I'm putting in quarter cupfuls of the batter into the 375 degree oil. You could make this on the stove top. But I'm making it in an electric deep fryer outside in my backyard on a beautiful spring day.

 This recipe makes a lot of fritters. And they're best in the moments after they've been made. So, to prevent us from getting sick to our stomach, we usually try and invite people over to have fritters with us. Our neighbors are due any minute, and these will be done in a few minutes.

CARL PEARSON:  The recipe that I have says cook them for four minutes on one side, and then turn them over and cook them for four more. But it looks like these are going to be done in a lot less time than that. This has been about three minutes, and I think they are done. I'm cooking these at 375 degrees. They're nicely browned, so I'm going to take them out and put them on a wire rack and let them drip off a little bit. Then we'll put them on a platter and sprinkle some confectioner's sugar on top to add a little grace.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Our neighbors arrive through the back gate. Robin and her three kids Lucia, Nova, and Collette. Lucia was the first to give them a try.

KAYTE YOUNG:  What do they taste like?

LUCIA:  Mm... Like a donut, sort of, except less sweet. Really good.

CARL PEARSON:  Can you taste the flowers?

UNKNOWN WOMAN:  A flower donut.

LUCIA:  Yes. A flower donut.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It makes a really good sound on the microphone.

ROBIN:  I bet. It's real crisp.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It melts in your mouth.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Melt in your mouth crunch. Doesn't get much better than that. You will notice the flowers even in all that fried dough. They have a lush fragrance and a sweet nectar-like flavor that mingles nicely with the orange. So, keep an eye out for those locust flowers in the next couple of weeks, and you can try this recipe yourself. You don't need a deep fryer. A heavy skillet or a Dutch oven works great, too. We have the instructions for black locust flower fritters on our website, Eartheats.org. That's it for our show. Thanks for listening, and happy spring.

RENEE REED:  The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Josephine McRobbie, Daniella Richardson, Peyton Whaley, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Special thanks this week to Niesha Douglas, Marianne LeGreco, Abel Garcia, Erica Sagon and everyone at Cardinal Spirits, Carl Pearson, Robin, Lucia, Nova, and Collette.

RENEE REED:  Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from the artists at Universal Production Music. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.