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

LAURA SCHEPER: And then we can answer the question of, based on life experiences, based on the thoughts that have surfaced for everybody, what if anything are you wondering? What kind of questions come to mind?
KAYTE YOUNG: On today's show we talk with Laura Scheper and Kayleigh Dance about pairing food with art for socially distanced cultural events. We visited teaching kitchen featuring Japanese food and talk with chef and owner Mori Willhite. And Josephine McRobie talks with a sweet
Earth Eats is produced from the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. We wish to acknowledge and honor the indigenous communities native to this region and recognize that Indiana University is built on indigenous homelands and resources.  We recognize the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee people as past, present, and future caretakers of this land.

Renee Reed is back with Earth Eats news. Hello Renee.
RENEE REED: Hello Kayte. The USDA is expanding its pandemic school lunch program to pay for meals over the summer. In the past schools, libraries and other sites provided meals. This year families who rely on reduced or free lunch will receive about $375 per month for meals when classes aren't in session. Aubrey Mancuso serves as executive director of the Nebraska voices for children nonprofit. She says direct payments have been shown to be effective in fighting hunger.
AUBREY MANCUSO: I think it's just a different experience for families, and it's just a lot more empowering to be able to purchase the food that you and your family want and need.
RENEE REED: Research by the Brookings Institute last July found the pandemic EBT program reduced child hunger by 30% in the week after distribution. The temporary program is funded through the summer of 2022 under the American Rescue plan passed by Congress in March.
Temperatures dipped to below freezing across the Midwest last week and farmers are tallying up their losses from the cold snap. Emmett Johnson co-farms Buffalo Ridge Orchard in Eastern Iowa, she said she expects a 30-50% loss in her apple crop but is planting vegetables to offset those losses.
EMMETT JOHNSON: I think there's going to be a little less income in the orchard. We can maybe offset that with some starch crops such as potatoes, and beets, carrots.
RENEE REED: She adds damaged throughout the orchard isn't as much as they expected. Her husband drove a heater to the orchard to keep the ground warm and control the humidity to prevent a massive of crop loss. Thanks to Harvest Public Media's Christina Stella and Katie Peikes for those reports. I'm Renee Reed.
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KAYTE YOUNG: Baking in the fall lends itself to all kinds of ubiquitous flavors, from maple to ginger to you guessed it pumpkin spice. But as the weather warms adding a seasonal touch to treats can take some imagination. Producer Josephine McRobbie visits with one baker who has this down to a science.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Anisette Sweet Shop is nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood near downtown Raleigh North Carolina. With its distinctive Ivory and creamsicle color scheme the store fits right in among the streets lined with daffodils in crepe myrtle trees.
NICOLE GROTH: Lots of nice colors peachy colors, with an occasional strong square element to make it not seem like a little girl's tea party or whatever. (chuckles)
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: My fellow Bloomington expats in Nicole and Jason Evans Groth have owned the Sweet Shoppe & Coffee Market for almost five years. When covid-19 affected their ability to have customers in the store, they have to figure out how to bring Anisette's ambiance outside.
NICOLE GROTH: So people used to enter, and we had these beautiful marble-top tables with the glass case on it. And one of the saddest things was trying to figure out, so that's where you would see the food when you first walked in, and so trying to figure out how we can still display everything and have people... you know when you see food you're more likely to want it. So the front of the building has this nice big picture window where we put shelving.
And we bought what we call the robot which is kind of like an old-fashioned spinny pie refrigerator. So that's been a nice addition in covid times. Children love the robot. Adults, well, everyone loves the robot. 
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JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: And now the deserts spinning slowly in the window can advertise not just what's for sale, but what's in season. In the cold months there's vanilla pumpkin cake, cranberry scones and bourbon cream pie. In the summer...
NICOLE GROTH: Never-ending peaches, there will be blueberries for at least a couple months. So just like bright and bold and lots of color. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: And here in Central North Carolina there's a long Springtime season.
NICOLE GROTH: Spongy, kind of like small Bundt cakes but we're gonna put that cream on top. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: I'm here while Nicole and her staff prep the week items to talk to her about the flavors and ingredients she thinks about when the weather starts warming up. 
NICOLE GROTH: In preparing for this I was flipping through our Instagram to see what's been happening recently. I noticed a lot of things that have fluffy white stuff on top, so maybe I'm thinking of the bunnies? I don't know, I have no idea!
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: When I stopped by in April, it's a little cold for some produce but there are still apple varieties everywhere.
NICOLE GROTH: The chamomile is really nice, and especially for this time of year they have such a floral flavor. This weekend we'll have apple and gruyere cobblers. Apples with a little bit of nutty cheese. And it's chilly outside but there's a nice breezes, so it's all these sort of soft gentle flavors. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Tunnel grown winter strawberries are one of Nicole's favorite transitional spring ingredients. 
NICOLE GROTH: They're grown in the colder months under like a little canopy of some sort. And those berries in particular get so so sweet. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: They can be used to top a variety of cakes and buns with a technicolor glaze. 
NICOLE GROTH: Every once in a while we'll have someone who questions if they see an item that has like a really pink glaze on it. We have to convince them that it is not food coloring, but the fruit will just give you these colors. There is no reason to not just take some strawberries, raspberries, whatever, blend it up, mix it with some powdered sugar and see what happens. 

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Southern Ground is a new cookbook by Carolina Ground, the mill that supplies Anisette Sweet Shoppe with flour. The tour of Southern Craft Bakeries features Nicole's recipe for mascarpone cake, a staple she adapts for whatever fruit is in season. 
NICOLE GROTH: For the bases with mascarpone cake, which really just means that most of the fat in the cake is from mascarpone cheese rather than butter. And so it's this really nice dense and kind of silky texture. And then this one has dried chamomile in it and little studs of fresh strawberries.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: The chamomile is a nod to the time when gardens are starting to fill with fresh herbs. 
NICOLE GROTH: And I think that that's something that the people may be shy away from in the baked goods, nice herbaceous aromatic flavors, like last week we had a rosemary cream pie. So using rosemary, and well lavender of course. And these are all things that of course you're using dried, so don't necessarily have to worry about getting them fresh right now when you might when it might be harder to find.
We had a customer who brought us bay leaves from her backyard recently. And so that is one ingredient and I happen to love the flavor of bay leaves, but that's one ingredient that we can then use to inspire all sorts of things. 
If you put it in the pan and then put cake batter on top of it and bake your cake you will get that flavor throughout the cake. I came up with this ricotta cheesecake recipe where we're putting the bay leaves on top, mostly because I wanted to be able to see them because they're so pretty. So in that case, peel them off before you eat the cheesecake but those bites where the bay leaves, you're getting that flavor, like pretty intensely and then the rest of it is just like this real nice clean cheesecake flavor.
One really nice ingredient can inspire a lot of dishes. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Every month Jason makes a 3-hour drive across the state to the Carolina Ground Mill, to pick up bags of bread, rye and pastry flour. Nicole thinks of these ingredients as being as fresh and changeable as fruits.
NICOLE GROTH: It's all whole grain so there are no parts of the wheat removed. So you're getting all of the beautiful nutrients, and the fat, and flavor. And every time we get a new batch there's always a chance that it's going to act a little differently.
For some people they might think, "What a nightmare" because you have to rework your recipes or whatever, but it's food! It's essentially produce. There's a lot of having to react to the flour which I totally appreciate because we want to treat it like food get the most out of it in terms of flavor and texture and what not. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Anisette Sweet Shoppe is small enough that the two owners can buy ingredients on a whim from the co-op or the farmers' market rather than buying everything wholesale. And this means that Nicole is often tweaking her baking recipes.
NICOLE GROTH: I think of it as cooking. You need to adjust to the ingredients, sometimes there are items that maybe midway through you have to change the temperature on the oven. I think of it as like a cooktop. This is where it comes back to us being very small-scale, small batch. Because anybody who's operating a large wholesale bakery, those things are really impractical, but this is essentially a small bakery cafe. And so we can work in small batches and actually adjust to the food. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: And in the spring there are plenty of ingredients to play around with, not just for the taste but also for the mood boost that many of us need right now. 
NICOLE GROTH: So I feel like it's a good time for items that lift up happiness. We've just come out of a very long winter, so really nice comforting, soft foods. 
KAYTE YOUNG: That story comes to us from producer Josephine McRobbie. Find more on our website EarthEats.org
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LAURA SCHEPER: I think for me what I didn't expect was actually how many different perspectives there were and how differently people look at art. 
KAYTE YOUNG: The pandemic has changed the way many of us experience education, dining, socializing, and culture more broadly, including the visual arts. Here it in Indiana University in the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Laura Scheper had to find new ways to engage the public with the Museum's collection. 
LAURA SCHEPER: I'm Laura Scheper, my pronouns are she and her. I serve as the public experiences manager at the Eskenazi Museum of Art located on the Indiana University Bloomington campus. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Her role is to design experiences that facilitate connection between the artworks and the people visiting the museum. Without visitors in the physical space at the museum, Laura faced a challenging situation. She found inspiration in an informal Zoom call between her family, and another family - friends of hers for, where they cook together for a socially distanced culinary experience. It was so much fun that she thought it might make for an engaging experience with the museum.
She enlisted the support of a local foodie and social media influencer Kayleigh Dance. 
KAYLEIGH DANCE: Hi my name is Kayleigh Dance, I am a social media specialist at Indiana University and I'm also a food influencer in the Bloomington community. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Together they crafted a series of art and food pairings for monthly zoom sessions throughout the semester. For each session they invited someone from the food world to identify an object from the Museum's collection, something they felt drawn from a number of options that Laura shared with them digitally. Next they would think of a food pairing for the object and would join the food and art pairing Zoom session for a discussion. Participants could see the artwork ahead of time and consider their own food pairings and possibly even prepare them to enjoy during the session.
Laura's expertise is in guiding people towards engaging with art. 
LAURA SCHEPER: The way it works is that we start with what we call a visual menu, and that menu is in artwork. Typically in most episodes will look a single artwork together, and then I facilitate conversation. So with that were asking people to look closely at the artwork, and we start by asking what do you see? And we ask people to describe with as much vivid detail as they can what we're looking at together. 
So at that point we're not talking about memories, or other things. We're just strictly noticing the details of what we can see. And with any of these conversations the more people who are contributing, the more perspectives, we each notice different things. Kayleigh's eye might be drawn to something than my eye is drawn to. And the more people who are contributing we're going to pick out different details and that's going to lead us to a richer conversation and ideas in to in terms of food pairing.
After we talk about what we see, the next question that I typically ask is based on your own life experience, based on what you can see in this image here, what kind of thoughts come to mind? What are you thinking? 

Once we talk about some of the thoughts, and what we're thinking we're looking at the image, then we can enter a question of "Okay, based on life experience, based on the thoughts that have surfaced for everybody, what, if anything, are you wondering? What kind of questions come to mind?"
And from there that's a natural lead into what kinds of food or beverage might pair with this particular artwork based on all these ideas that emerged, and people's curiosities, you start wondering one thing leads to another. 
There's usually by then a vibe or a sense of feelings or different things that might be thoughts and so forth, and then we'll listen to ideas from the community from participants who were at the table, and then we'll take turns, Kaleigh and myself, and a featured guest, revealing specifically what did each of us choose to pair with this particular artwork. 
KAYTE YOUNG: One of the things that appeal to me about the series is that there are no wrong answers when it comes to pairing food with art.
LAURA SCHEPER: I hope that everybody knows there's no right answers, cause I'm not sure if that's true. Honestly I really hope that, and I try hard to communicate that, it would be easy to think "Oh, I don't know like I'm not a chef. I don't know how to fancily do a food for an artwork" Or maybe you have to replicate the artwork and paint it.
KAYTE YOUNG: Not a chance!
LAURA SCHEPER: I hope that people realize that there's no right answer and the beauty of it is just expressing and finding a way to connect with it in your own life. And when I reached out recently to Mori she said, "Oh yes but I could use it but there's no connection to food."

I was like, "Well there doesn't have to be, we're gonna add the connection to food." (chuckles)
KAYLEIGH DANCE: I think for me what I didn't expect was actually how many different perspectives there were, and how differently people look at art. The individuality aspect of it is so cool because people do have different life experiences even if there are common denominators between two people, no two people are the exact same. So for me when I'm sitting here listening to other people share their stories, share their experiences, and share their thoughts on these pieces, it's really cool because in a way I'm getting to know this single person. And for me it's been really important to amplify my connection with other people because again we are in a pandemic. I can't go see everybody all the time. And one thing that I truly miss is going out and getting dinner or brunch with my friends.
So by doing this series that's essentially what I'm doing. Everybody who logs on whether it's 20 people are 40 people, they're all my friends at that point. We're getting to know each other we're connecting over zoom. And it's again just a reminder that basic human connection is just something that's so important. And I really feel like today we're taking advantage of all that we can in order to keep that connection.
LAURA SCHEPER: We think it's connected on a level beyond what I expected in terms of the feedback and the messages that I get, that people are just really appreciating right now the opportunity to do that.
KAYTE YOUNG: Food can serve as a familiar entry point for people who may not be used to talking about art. 
KAYLEIGH DANCE: A lot of people don't have experience with art, and I was actually one of those people before Laura approached me. Of course I've been to museums, and I've seen art before, but I just kind of had a blind eye to it. I would see these art pieces and I would be like, "Wow that's really pretty." But what am I supposed to be feeling? What am I supposed to be doing? What am I supposed to be thinking? And I had no idea that it was more of this personal connection. It's more of, well what do you see? What do you think?
That kind of opened up my eyes to the art world. Now I walk into museums and I'm like, "Oh let's stop, I really want to stare at the details of this." And I always start asking questions with my friends now. I'm like, "What do you think like the artist was thinking when they painted this color instead of something else?" And it's so cool because it's just like I have this new lens now. And again it is thanks to you so I'm very thankful that you're introduced to me. 
LAURA SCHEPER: Food is universal. We have all experience with food. It can feel like a safe entry point or something familiar, it may be an easy way to start talking about it. I think a great example would be one of the earlier artworks we looked at with executive chef David Talent. It's a painting of a forest stream, and as he talked about that and described what he saw, he had memories of walking across campus in the fall. And for me I was thinking picnics and other things, but for him thinking through the fall and the crunchiness the leaves, and he talked about for him but there was a seasonality to butternut squash in the local farmers asking him, "David are you ready to start cooking?" And they've got the squash and it's coming out earlier than he is ready for. He's not ready for the winter, and that change. And he said, "Not until leaves are down" that he starts to buy this and use this. 
So he's bringing a really interesting personal connection just by looking at that image and starting to describe the leaves on the ground and what's he's seeing, and the trees and the change of seasons.
KAYTE YOUNG: I asked if they could think of any examples of what a guest chef chose as their pairing. 
LAURA SCHEPER: Our featured guest was Candice Boyd Wiley of Food Love Talk, she is based in Indianapolis. The artwork she selected was titled "A study for support" There's actually a mural in Cleveland that this artist had made so the painting that we have us a watercolor painting the way the artist was preparing to make the mural. It is by the artist Darrius Stewart. It is a watercolor on a white piece of paper. Most of the painting is in the left half of the image, it's vertically oriented. You can see a woman with slightly darker skin and dark hair, and she is looking downward and gazing downward at a young boy of dark skin. He's got very short hair. He's only visible I would say from the neck up. Does that sound right? 
KAYLEIGH DANCE: Yeah. 
LAURA SCHEPER: They are reaching toward each other. Their eyes are connected. Lovely work. 
So I think when we started to look at it together and describe, people were starting to see that connection between the adult female and the child. And we're thinking about the feelings of connection, and safety, and belonging, and uplifting. We wondered what was on their minds? What with what conversation was happening? What was she saying to him?
And then Candace paired it with several foods, it was actually more than one, which was a beautiful thing that evoked those feelings of connection. I think she had her braised collard greens, I should've looked at my notes before going in. 
KAYLEIGH DANCE: She had cornbread too. 
LAURA SCHEPER: She had cornbread, yes. And she had a cabbage with Johnny cakes, it was fantastic. There are several recipes I want to go back and look at again. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I asked Kayleigh what she had paired with the artwork. 
KAYLEIGH DANCE: I ended up pairing it with this southern style country potato chowder, which is something that my mom used to make for me every time I was sick. And it just reminded me like the mix between the art and the cold weather outside. I wanted to go home so the bad. So I made this chowder kind of just in her name essentially. And for each episode I do take photos of all the food that I had. So the image that I had posted was the bowl of soup, with a little Polaroid of me and my mom when I was younger almost kind of a little younger than the boy in the art piece. But I also had a little handwritten note of the most recent card that she had sent me. So it was very sentimental. But yes I did have a pairing.
KAYTE YOUNG: Sometimes the featured guests prepare their food pairing during the session. Mori Willhite of Katsumi's teaching kitchen at selected in ornate ceramic piece of stacked circular boxes has her art object. Then she taught a cooking lesson. 
KAYLEIGH DANCE: She had made a Bento Box. She taught us how to make sushi actually on the episode. Such a cool experience! I wrote down her rice recipe almost immediately. I am so excited, and I'm so determined to make my own sushi roll one day. 
KAYTE YOUNG: We'll be talking with Mori Willhite later in the episode. Even though meeting as a group for an art and food pairing workshop may still remain out of reach, the museum is now open to visitors and you might have a chance to see some of the artwork in person.
KAYLEIGH DANCE: I do visit the art museum to see the art works in real live and I get surprised every time. So one of the artworks that we had seen it was so much smaller than what I had expected. It was really like this big. 
LAURA SCHEPER: The base was like this!
KAYLEIGH DANCE: And it's so tiny but when I was looking at it I'd imagined it to be this giant thing. And so when I went to the museum it was like a little scavenger hunt. I got to see some really cool art along the way while I was trying to find this art piece. 
LAURA SCHEPER: That's a great point, I think seen that in person I feel the same way as you. It was smaller than I expected on that particular, it's a Japanese face. I remember you paired it with mochi, and I thought that was a brilliant! Like not only the colors in it, and the flavors inside, but even that roundness in the size. I thought brilliant!
KAYLEIGH DANCE: I had no idea. I didn't realize it was that small so when I saw it afterwards, I was like, "Oh, I hit that on the head." 
LAURA SCHEPER: Yes. And that one we think it could be used for as a vase in a Japanese tea ceremony, so I went over to Cup and Kettle and got a tea to go with it. I believe it was an orange blossom tea based on some of the coloring in it. And then Eric Schedler from Muddy Fork Bakery paired it with a croissant with this particular technique where different types of clay are layered together in a very intricate way. So he likened it to the way a croissant is layered with layers of dough, there's a lot of similarities there. Again, just very interesting directions. 
KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: Yeah so he's getting into like the structure of how something is made. And Dave Talent was giving in to what are the associations of the season. And that's really interesting. And Mori was talking about how she might use this or someone in her family might use this object, so that is a lot of really interesting connections. Maybe you can't visit the drawing in person, but maybe you could go looking for that mural. 
LAURA SCHEPER: Sure.
KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: Maybe that's something you'll get to experience in person, and you would know to look for it, and you might get to actually see it. 
LAURA SCHEPER: Sure, and then you might actually have new connections to it having been in that conversation together with everybody, the memories might mean something different than if you had not had that conversation with a guy on the street. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Well thank you both so much you guys, I had you over here a little longer than expected. 
LAURA SCHEPER: Thank you and thank you for asking and the opportunity to have this conversation today. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Today our guests were Laura Scheper and Kayleigh Dance with the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Museum of art at Indiana University. Find more about their work at EarthEats.org. I'm Kayte Young and you're listening to Earth Eats. Stay tuned for a conversation and recipe with Mori Willhite of Katsumi's teaching kitchen. 
(Music interlude) 
Kayte Young here, you're listening to Earth Eats. One of the featured guests for the Eskenazi museum's food and art pairings was Mori Wilhite. 
MORI WILLHITE: My name is Mori Wilhite. I am the owner operator of Katsumi's Teaching Kitchen.
KAYTE YOUNG: Mori has been running the teaching kitchen for about six years but recently moved her business into a storefront on Main Street in downtown Beech Grove, on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Mori describes herself as a snob when it comes to Japanese food. She said she gets that from her mother. 
MORI WILLHITE: Not only my mom, my mom is a snob because my grandparents were. One of the earliest earliest memories I have a cooking is what I was like five or six in Japan, and I was helping my Japanese grandmother cook. And so whenever I get sad lonely depressed as I got older I always start cooking Japanese food and just makes me feel happier. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Do you remember what she was making?
MORI WILLHITE: She was busy making whatever dinner it was, but she would have me wear the oversized Japanese apron, and the cut up something very badly, and then made sure everyone knew, "Oh Mori helped today, she cut the green onions!" stuff like that. So it's just food for I think not only me but everybody. If you have good memories with your family through cooking and all that stuff in the kitchen, that's what it represents most to me. 
So I was born in '63 and we were in Japan for a little bit in the late 60's and back then sushi was only eating for special occasions, not as frequently as it does now. So for me sushi is like, "Oh my, something good happened." But now it's everywhere. 
Then plus my dad, he's American someone, so he's a Polynesian too. So I've been eating Japanese style food and raw fish since I can remember. 
We moved back to the states, Dad was in the Marine Corps. And Mom, we were in San Diego, you couldn't take the Japanese out of the girl. So Mom start cooking real Japanese food. And her parents, my grandparents, were sending in monthly Japanese rice and soy sauce and seaweed because there's nothing adequate in San Diego. So we ate like that.
I learned quickly that just because it's a Japanese restaurant it doesn't mean you're going to get what you got at home. And so that's why my sister and I, we didn't formally study cooking of course, but our taste buds were very refined. And as we grow up, as you grow up, you eventually have to leave home. That's when I really started learning how to make Japanese food because unless I learn how to make rice I couldn't wait till Thanksgiving or Christmas when I came back. I mean it's just no way I was going to give it up.
When I went to college of course I made friends with Japanese students, and we did cookouts there and I would pick up something here and there. What's even funnier is I was in the Army, and as soon as I settled somewhere, I'd have my mom send for my rice cooker. She sent it to me! (chuckles) I had my rice cooker with me in the barracks and I made Japanese food because I can't live without it. And you get bored, so you start expanding your menu. 
KAYTE YOUNG: She describes herself as more of a teacher than a chef. She has a background as a Japanese language instructor, but she's found that sharing food is a fun way to connect with others around Japanese culture.
MORI WILLHITE: Everyone's happy around food. Everyone's even happier around good food. 
KAYTE YOUNG: And running her own cooking school allowed her the flexibility she needed when she was caring for her elderly mother and her child with special needs. She started with what she knew from her family, and then dove in the research in Japanese Cuisine to fill in the gaps. 
MORI WILLHITE: Cause people, when they ask you questions you better know the answer type-thing. So yeah a lot of it, thank god my mom was a food snob, because a lot of the stuff, especially here in the U.S., especially here in Indiana, she would tell me how she would get some of her things.
So one time we're having a sushi at my mom's house and then you know that tin container I have to put the seaweed in, so I picked up my mom's, I opened it. And the seaweed looked molded to me. And my mom's all typed out, "Oh my gosh she's keeping the molded stuff." I go, "Mom you should throw this out, it's probably bad." 
And she goes, "No, you don't understand." and finally she confessed back to traditional Chinese medicine, when you ingest gold it's good for you joints. So my mom, I knew she had gold dusted green tea, and gold dusted salt, my mom had gold dusted seaweed. "Mom what the, what is this?" Well, she didn't want to share, because it's gold. God forbid she share it with her first born or something, she shared with her grandson. She wouldn't share... I go, "Mom I don't have to eat this but okay thanks for telling me." It's just totally hilarious in retrospect that she's hiding her gold stuff. Most people invest it, but my mom's eating this stuff so. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Her mom's insistence on high-end Japanese ingredients did come in handy when Mori started her teaching kitchen. She knew where to get all the supplies. In her classes Mori takes the time to talk about specific ingredients and where to find them locally. And she goes over the different grades of rice and why it's worth paying a bit more for the good stuff, without going overboard as her mom sometimes did. Mori tells the story of her mom once paying $75 for a bag of the new crop of her favorite rice. 
MORI WILLHITE: You couldn't wait a week mother? That sort of thing, because she just misses how, I understand and I go, "Next time you buy something like that don't tell me. I don't want to know." 
KAYTE YOUNG: Mori's food and art pairing with the Eskenazi Museum of Art took place on a Saturday afternoon in January. The artwork she chose was a round stacked porcelain lunchbox, lavishly decorated with intricate patterns in shades of orange, and red, and blue. Laura Scheper and Kayleigh Dance lead the discussion of the artwork and guided participants to spend time looking at photos of the piece, and to share thoughts about associations they made. Mori talked about her first impressions of the piece. 
MORI WILLHITE: What I like about this five tier Bento, it makes you anxious that the foods gonna be, when it's the outside and the containers are that pretty, what is the food gonna be like? 
KAYTE YOUNG: Other participants talked about what the piece brought up for them, questions they had, and they speculated on whether the piece was decorative or something that was actually used for food. 
Laura shared information about the history of the piece, where it came from and the type of porcelain that was used. Mori talked about the symbolism of the turtle and the crane figure she noticed on the top of the domed lid of the box. And she wondered if it might have been intended as a wedding gift. 
MORI WILLHITE: Symbolically in Japan, when you go to a Japanese wedding, a tradition that they have is a crane as a present, because the cranes are monogamous. They mate with the same partner for life. And also there's a turtle on the bottom. Turtles represent 10,000 years of continuation or longevity. So that's why I brought up the wedding and hopefully you have a very stable monogamous relationship, for 10,000 or whatever. That's why I brought it up. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Then Laura shared some background information on bento. 
LAURA SCHEPER:  So a Bento itself is a takeout or a home packed meal of Japanese origin. Though it's also used in other countries as well. So a bento box is a box or a container for that meal. They can range from a massed produced disposable container, to lacquerware, so in this case we're looking at porcelain. I think one thing Kayleigh asked is the right question, about when we might actually use this? And I think maybe for a very eloquent occasion.
Just a bit more on bento, for context, in Japan bento are readily available as takeout in a lot of different places, like a convenience store, a treat shop, a train station, or [inaudible] but it's not just for takeout meals. Japanese meal makers and others put time and energy to carefully prepare lunch boxes for their spouse, or their kids, or themselves. 
KAYTE YOUNG: The discussion moved to what foods people had paired with the art object. Laura talked about a sesame ginger tofu dish. Kaylee mentioned some Japanese sodas she found at b-town International Market. And Mori said that she had chosen sushi. 
MORI WILLHITE: The sushi has colorful, vibrant colors, which would set off the vibrancy of the food as well. 
KAYTE YOUNG: After the food pairing discussion, Mori lead the participants through instructions for making a California roll. She talked about the importance of rice in sushi making. Mori makes the point in her sushi instruction of breaking down the origins of the word Sushi. 
MORI WILLHITE: That's where the word sushi comes from. "Su" is vinegar, and "meshi" is rice. So it's supposed to be about the vinegared rice. 
KAYTE YOUNG: This was a revelation to me. I always thought that sushi was all about the raw fish. But it makes sense to me. I've enjoyed plenty of sushi rolls with no seafood at all, with avocado, cucumber, or even asparagus in the center of that cylinder of sticky white rise cloaked in a sheet of shiny nori. My enjoyment of sushi has so often been about the elegant marriage of all of the flavors and textures. Dipping each piece in soy sauce, topping it with a dab of Wasabi, a sliver of pickled ginger. I always feel so awake and alive after eating sushi. And the few times I have not enjoyed Sushi, I will say it was the rice that ruined it.
If you've ever been fooled into thinking a tray of Supermarket Sushi might be a good idea, you know how disappointing it is to bite into that cold and crumbly rice. So it makes sense to me that Mori starts her instruction with rice. It's at the heart of making good sushi. 
Mori recommends that her students take photos of the rice bags and other ingredient packaging in her class as a reference for when they go to the international market. They'll know what they're looking for. 
MORI WILLHITE: Grades, all of this, the premium short-grain, super premium, it's all about the rice for sushi. The high-quality wise will make a difference as far, there is actually taste at this level. When you choose a rice, the more you choose, there's a sweetness to it. But more aside from the taste is that stickiness. You want your sushi rice to be just sticky enough so when you mold it, it will hold it's shape. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Mori walked participants through an abbreviated set of instructions and demonstrated the assembly of the California roll. Then she placed her cut Sushi circles within the context of a Bento Box Meal that she had put together before the session. It was a lovely display of edible art.
When I had the chance weeks after the food and art pairing event to taste sushi that Mori had made after hearing about her careful selection and preparation of the rice, I was convinced good rice makes all the difference. 
Visiting with Mori in her Beech Grove teaching kitchen, I was struck by her generosity. She readily reveals all of her secrets to making the perfect sushi rice, how to build umami flavors for a simple miso soup. 
MORI WILLHITE: Get that umami flavor out and then I'll strain it in a second. 
KAYTE YOUNG: After building a broth base called dashi by slow simmering water, dried shiitake mushrooms, dried Anchovies, and kombu - which is a type of seaweed, Mori is now adding the Bonito flakes. They're made from dried smoked fish that's been shaved into very thin flakes. 
MORI WILLHITE: Strain it all out because you just want the good juices and everything. 
KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: So the Bonito flakes weren't in there very long. 
MORI WILLHITE: Uh-uh. They're very thin. You see that apple juice coloring? That's the dashi. This is the miso paste I use. You want to make sure that the miso paste dissolves properly. In the ladle I put some miso paste and I'm using my chopsticks to break it up, dissolve it better.
KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: So you added some of the broth to help. 
MORI WILLHITE: Correct. It'll help it to dissolve quicker and better. I'm just adding. As I add some, some of the miso paste already goes into. So this will just make it more.
 The thing with the miso paste, since they have some micro-organisms in there, live ones to help with your lower gut, you don't want to have that water too hot cause it'll kill them. I'm gonna turn it down some more.
KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: So you always add that at the end, right before you serve it?
MORI WILLHITE: Yes. This is the easy part. The broth is what takes the most time if you're doing it from scratch. Here's some tofu that I cut up. The green onions I usually wait to about when I serve it, because they wilt so quickly and stuff. So in our family we put a little bit of sake in there to enhance the flavor. So dry is better. Understand, eyeball it, (add) just a little, like a teaspoon or so. Right before, towards the end. Cold days like this miso soup is best. 
KAYTE YOUNG: While I was there, Mori also demonstrated how to make spring rolls, California sushi rolls as she had done in the art pairing session, and she even showed me how she bakes a cake in her rice cooker. 
MORI WILLHITE: I can't believe we flipped that out of the rice cooker but it's one of those hacks that just turns out. I try to promote a lot of Americans go, "I don't want to just get one appliance to do one thing". Oh no, you can make cake, you can make mac and cheese, I try to introduce other stuff.
And as a good auntie Mori, most of my friends, their children go to college so I buy them a proper rice cooker, and I give them a bag of rice. If that's not love I don't know what is. So they spend time with me, make the rice, make all these Japanese dishes. So don't call me and tell me you're hungry, I sent you to college with a bag of rice. You know how to make stuff. 

KAYTE YOUNG: With the covid-19 pandemic hitting the U.S. just as Katsumi's teaching kitchen had moved to its new location, Mori had to make some adjustments. She started teaching classes over Zoom, and even built her own DIY overhead camera mount out of PVC pipe. 
MORI WILLHITE: And all the classes have been easy. Once you buy, you get the recipe and the shopping list. And I tell you call me if you can't find it, we will try to get something equal.
KAYTE YOUNG: I tried out one of the zoom classes with a few friends. We made a Japanese version of pork and cabbage pot stickers. It was fun to connect and to make food together from the comfort of our own kitchens. And even though she wasn't in the room with us, Mori made sure we understood each step including the tricky steaming and frying technique at the end. The pot stickers were fantastic. 
You can see photos, find the miso soup recipe, and learn more about Katsumi's Teaching Kitchen at EarthEats.org. 
(Music)

It's morel hunting season in much of the Midwest, and as Melissa Rosales reports for Harvest Public Media, people are scouring river bottoms to find the hollow sponge-like edible mushrooms. 
MELISSA ROSALES: Omaha Public School teacher Kristi Jones grew up hunting morel mushrooms with her father, Phil Finch. Right when the lilacs bloom she was used to getting a phone call from her dad to talk about the season. But this year was different. Her dad was sick with covid-19, when he died from a heart attack. 
KRISTI JONES: He passed February 24th, so the last time we actually got to mushroom hunt together was last spring. 
MELISSA ROSALES: Wendy Porter's steps over a log and ruffles up leaves on the ground with a stick. Porter and her father are hunting mushrooms near the Missouri river. The 51 year old Nebraskan and has been hunting them for thirty years. She's seen some Facebook groups for morel mushroom hunting in Missouri, but not one for Nebraska. So she started her own. 
WENDY PORTER: And to my surprise people were wanting to join left and right. I mean daily I get probably 20-25 people wanting to join. It's pretty cool. 
MELISSA ROSALES: The group now has more than 2,500 members. But the last two Springs haven't been good seasons because of flooding. 
TERSH KEPLER: Morel hunting is absolutely terrible because the land just gets wiped from the flooding we had a couple years ago. And so it's not good hunting the year after a flood. 
MELISSA ROSALES: Tersh Kepler is a morel hunting expert. 
TERSH KEPLER: But right now we're in a perfect time 2 years after the flood. So I predict this is going to be a really good year.
MELISSA ROSALES: Kepler calls it an addled treasure hunt. And like any good treasure hunt, there's a lot of secrecy. 
TERSH KEPLER: The one thing a morel hunter will never do is tell people exactly where they're going. 
MELISSA ROSALES: They're worried about people finding their secret spot and getting their mushrooms. Morels are really hard to find because they need very specific conditions to grow. The ground temperatures need to be between 55 and 60 degrees, and they only grow near freshly dead trees that still have a lot of bark on them. 
TERSH KEPLER: What makes them so popular is the fact that no one has been able to figure out how to commercially grow them yet. So they're usually in season, depending on where you live, for about six weeks out of the year. 
MELISSA ROSALES: Kepler says morel mushroom hunting is extremely popular. Hunters can sell the mushrooms for as much as $40 a pound, maybe even more when the season ends. Greg Wagner with Nebraska Game and Parks Commission says hundreds of people hunt morels in their state parks, but they're not supposed to sell them. 
GREG WAGNER: The appeal for people to go out and hunt morel mushrooms is the fantastic taste of them. There's nothing that tastes as earthy and peanuty as these morel mushrooms. 
MELISSA ROSALES: Wagner enjoys them fried in and butter and garlic. Kristi Jones likes them fried too. A few weeks ago she went hunting with her sons and nephew for the first time without her father. They had been hunting for nearly an hour and almost gave up.
KRISTI JONES: And I don’t know, I just kind of stopped and looked down and I saw one, and I just looked at Matthew my son and I looked down. And I said, "Thanks Dad" and there were about 9 more right around that one. And I just really felt dad there going, "Here you go, find the cluster."
MELISSA ROSALES: Jones says it's bittersweet to hunt without her dad but she'll never give it up.
KRISTI JONES: And I know my boys are planning to pass it down when they have kids. It'll just be a tradition that continues in our family. And I'm sure they'll tell stories to their kids about their grandpa. 
MELISSA ROSALES: Jones and encourages hunters to enjoy the time in nature and the peace and quiet whether or not they find anything. For Harvest Public Media I'm Melissa Rosales.
KAYTE YOUNG: Harvest Public Media covers food and farming in the Heartland. Find more from this reporting Collective at HarvestPublicMedia.org. 
RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eobon Binder, Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Payton Knobeloch, Josephine McRobbie, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks this week to Laura Scheper, Kayleigh Dance, Mori Willhite, and Nicole Evans Groth.
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 artist at Universal Productions Music. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.