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Home / Ferment Blog / Good Food Awards speech: “Pickles Are Not Obsolete!”

Posted January 20, 2012 by Dan

Good Food Awards speech: “Pickles Are Not Obsolete!”

Addie and I are just back from the Good Food Awards in San Francisco, where we were honored for the 2nd year in a row for our Organic Garlic Dill Pickles.  While our first experience at the Good Food Awards in 2011 was quite special, this time around we were fortunate enough to receive an additional honor:  Real Pickles was selected by our 10 fellow pickle winners from around the country to deliver the acceptance speech for the group!  (Thanks, picklers!)

At the ceremony, each pickle winner was called up to the stage and received a Good Food Awards medal from renowned chef and food activist Alice Waters.  And, then I delivered the speech:

Thanks very much. My partner Addie and I are thrilled to be back at the Good Food Awards for a 2nd time as part of what is again a fantastic pickle posse!

I think pickles are a really great fit with the Good Food Awards, with its focus on helping to bring good food back into the American diet, promoting both taste and social responsibility.  Pickle-makers in the United States have much to offer on both counts, and I would say the winners here tonight are clear illustrations of that.

Those engaged in the craft today are drawing on pickling traditions from around the world to produce tasty pickles, as three of tonight’s winners did – Farmhouse Culture, Spirit Creek Farm, and Firefly Kitchens – in creating a version of the Salvadoran classic, curtido.  And we are drawing on the American pickling tradition, as Cuisine En Locale did to produce their winning pickled peaches (which I’m very excited to try).

Some of us here (like Olykraut) are using the traditional fermentation process to make our pickles, while others (like Miss Jenny’s and Let’s Be Frank) are using the modern vinegar approach.  Both are great ways to preserve the wonderful flavors of organically-grown produce and indeed to enhance those flavors along the way.

Pickle-makers are also making major contributions in the realm of social responsibility.  Our special tool of course, our not-so-secret weapon, is our ability to take perishable fruits and vegetables and make them non-perishable, and yet still tasty and nutritious.

In an industrial food system – with monoculture farming and long-distance food transport (both made possible by cheap fossil fuels) – one might be tempted to wonder if pickles are obsolete.  I mean, why bother with making dill pickles for winter when we can just buy in cucumbers from Mexico, right?  Part of the answer, of course, is:  Who really could live without pickles?  (I know, I might be a little bit biased.)

But, as it turns out: pickles are not obsolete anyway.  Because, as more and more Americans are coming to realize, our industrial food system is broken.  It doesn’t work.  It’s causing or exacerbating a huge list of ecological and social ills, from climate change and soil erosion to human disease epidemics and the decline of our rural economies.  What we need instead is a regionally-based organic food system where everyone (not just the privileged few) has access to healthy food from small producers located (whenever possible) within their own region.

And in such a food system, pickles are an essential food:  one that can keep people eating nutritious fruits and vegetables from regional sources all year long, regardless of how cold the weather gets.

Our contribution to building a regional, organic food system is an important part of what we pickle-makers are being honored for tonight.  So many of the winning producers here have developed close relationships with their local farmers to source their ingredients, as we have done in Massachusetts at Real Pickles, Sour Puss Pickles has done in New York, and Emmy’s has done here in California; while others are growing ingredients themselves, like Ann’s Raspberry Farm.

And, thus, just as practitioners of each craft being honored here tonight are contributing to the task of making “good food” the norm in America, so too are those of the pickling craft.  And, I think I can safely speak for all of my fellow pickle winners when I express sincere gratitude to the organizers of the Good Food Awards for doing your part to help promote our work and achieve wider recognition for it.  So, thank you very much.

Tagged: fermented pickles, Good Food Awards, pickles, Real Pickles, REGIONAL, small business, SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

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Join us in signing up for this year’s @FoodSolut Join us in signing up for this year’s @FoodSolutionsNewEngland 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge running from April 5-25th! Help dismantle racism in our #foodsystem, raise awareness, shift attitudes & change outcomes. #FSNEEquityChallenge #foodjustice http://fsne.info/FSNEEquityChallenge
A future Organic Dill Pickle! Celebrate spring! ☀️🥒 
Repost from @atlasfarm
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Bug's eye view in the Atlas Farm greenhouse! The cukes have been clipped to trellis strings in preparation for a sky-ward growth spurt. Just a couple months 'til we're harvesting! #atlasfarm #organicfarming #greenhouse #cucumbers
We are so excited to be able to start the vaccinat We are so excited to be able to start the vaccination process as food and ag workers! We greatly appreciate all the hard work happening in our community to make sure that everyone who wants to be vaccinated gets vaccinated! 

#RealPickles #MeetThePicklers  #PackedWithAMission #fermented
Repost from @theblackaisle_ • DEBT RELIEF IS COM Repost from @theblackaisle_
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DEBT RELIEF IS COMING TO BLACK FARMERS. 

Many white people have become aware in the last year of the discrimination that Black Americans face in policing, voting, health care and more. Few, however, may recognize that systemic racism led to another grave injustice, one that underpins many other forms of exploitation: More than a century of land theft and the exclusion of Black people from government agricultural programs have denied many descendants of enslaved people livelihoods as independent, landowning farmers.

African-American labor built much of this country’s agriculture, a prime source of the nation’s early wealth. In the years since the end of slavery, Black Americans have been largely left out of federal land giveaways, loans and farm improvement programs. They have been driven off their farms through a combination of terror and mistreatment by the federal government, resulting in debt, foreclosures and impoverishment.

Read the full story on theblackaisle.com. LINK IN BIO
#blackfarmers #farming #blackgardeners #blackfarmer
Spring is just around the corner! Help it along by Spring is just around the corner! Help it along by sipping our Organic Beet Kvass, a fermented infusion of beets, onions and savory herbs. We think the earthy flavor tastes like springtime! This Good Food Award winner can be enjoyed as a sipping tonic, in salad dressings, or as a classic stock for end-of-winter vegetable soups. How do you like your kvass? 

#RealPickles #fermentation #ferments #beetkvass #spring #lactofermentation #beets #organic #vegan
Meet Andy! Andy has been working as a production a Meet Andy! Andy has been working as a production assistant at Real Pickles since 2012. He joined the team after learning that Real Pickles was transitioning to a worker-owned co-operative and he wanted to be a part of a business that he could truly believe in and feel really good about. He quickly became a worker owner and joined the board of directors. In addition to being passionate about the mission driving the work at Real Pickles, Andy loves the people he works with and says that each workday he feels like he is glimpsing a better world, “It’s like we’re on a trip in a van with these people and we are just trying to keep each other happy!” When Andy is not at Real Pickles he can be found making music or creating beautiful pieces of stoneware pottery that he sells at various galleries and art fairs throughout the country. Andy plays guitar with a few bands and is working on a project with his young grand-nieces co-writing songs and producing an album. He also plays music every week at Real Pickles with our fermentation manager, Katie!  Andy says that he feels lucky to be a part of the Real Pickles family - but we think we are the lucky ones! Andy is a true treasure to work with. 

#MeetThePicklers #RealPickles #PackedWithAMission #fermentedandraw #fermented #peekbehindthemask #organic #pickles #kraut #coop #workerowned #fermentation #andrewvanassche #potter

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