THE FEED

THE FEED

THE SECRET LIFE OF AMAZING FOOD AT ZINGERMANS

THE SECRET LIFE OF AMAZING FOOD AT ZINGERMA

Issue No. 38: Couscous
from Tunisia
Our annual Balsamic Vinegar Sale is back
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and Delicatessen.

In the mountains and valleys that stretch across North Africa, theres no
guarantee of a good harvest from year to year. Thats nothing new for
the Berbers. Theyve been farming olives, wheat, vegetables, and fruits
there since before Carthage was founded in 814 BCE. (The name Berber
actually comes from the Roman name for the people: barbarians. In
their own language, Berbers call themselves Amazigh, or Free People.)
In a good year a Berber tribe would grow plenty of food to sustain
themselves. But even in a good year, the farmers learned to look ahead
to the future. What if the next year theres a drought and the harvest is
limited? And what if that happens two years in a row? Or what if, after
a year or two of bad harvests, a hungry neighboring tribe invades and
pillages their food supplies? Those were all common scenarios for the
semi-nomadic Berbers.

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Like most people looking to preserve food before the days of refrigeration, the Berbers used what they had on hand: salt, oil, sun. In Tunisia,
smack dab in the middle of Berber land, sun drying has always been the most
important method of preservation. Drying not only preserves, but it also makes the food
weigh less. Should the tribe decide to pack up and move, they could take it with them. The Berbers sun-dried everything: tomatoes, stone fruits, peppers. And to preserve wheat, they would sun-dry couscous.
The basics of making traditional couscous are pretty simple. You take semolina flour and mix it with a bit of salt and
water, rub it together to form tiny balls of dough, and then dry em out. Today, though, most couscous is made with
big, industrialized machines. The whole process can be completed in a couple of hours from start to finish, including
just seven minutes for mixers to form the balls and then a whopping eighteen minutes to dry them in huge rotating
ovens.
There are still a few producers out there making couscous the traditional, slow way that the Berbers would have
made it. The best couscous I know of is made by Majid Mahjoub, himself a descendant of the Berbers, and his company Les Moulins Mahjoub. Mahjoub couscous is mhamsa (hand-made, in Arabic). Using the Razzag variety of wheat
that they grow organically on their own farm, they roll every little ball of couscous by hand, the way its been done
for millennia. For that reason, this couscous is a little bigger than most, and you may notice that it looks a tad less
uniform. Thats a good thing. After the couscous has been shaped, it dries in the sun. That drying doesnt take minutes
or hoursit takes days. All told, a batch of Mahjoub couscous takes about ten days from start to finish.

All that time drying in the sun has a huge impact on flavor.
Its like the difference between bread thats allowed to slowly rise and proof for most of a day versus the stuff thats
baked as quickly as possible. The longer drying time allows the couscous to develop deeper, richer flavor. In essence,
couscous thats produced as quickly as possible tastes like flour while couscous that is made more slowly tastes like
bread. The exact same thing happens with the flavor of traditional pastas that are allowed to dry slowly rather than
being baked as quickly as possible. Mahjoub couscous is wheaty, toasty, nutty, and earthy, with a chewy, firm, toothsome texture. This is no boring grain to be relegated to the corner of the plate and smothered in spices and sauces.
I still remember the first time I tasted Mahjoub couscous. It was a little more than six years ago. The first bite stopped
me in my tracks. I had no idea that couscous could be so delicious. But once I got over the surprise, I went back for
more and more and more. I still always keep a jar or two in my pantry and cook it at least a couple times a month.

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Cooking couscous is as easy as boiling water.

Seriously. You bring a pot of water to boil, add the couscous, bring it back to a boil, take the pan off the heat, put a
lid on it, and let it sit. After ten minutes, you fluff the couscous with a fork, and its ready to eat. Majid visits us in Ann
Arbor from time to time, and hes cooked up some outstanding couscous dishes for us. Here are a few of my favorites:

Couscous with tomato

sauce and a perfect egg
This is one of the simplest ways I
know of to serve couscous, and conveniently, its also one of the most
delicious. After cooking the couscousroughly 1/3 cup per person as
a side dish, or a bit more as a main
dishstir in a bit of good extra virgin
olive oil to keep it from sticking. Dish
it onto plates, and then on top of the
couscous, spoon a healthy dollop of
your favorite tomato sauce, warmed
on the stove. Then top that with an
egg. Im partial to a poached egg with
the yolk still soft and oozy, but you
could use a fried egg, a diced hardboiled egg, whatever kind of egg fits
your fancy. Sprinkle with salt and
a grind of fresh pepper, and serve
immediately.

Couscous Salad

Sweet Couscous

To serve four to six people, use 1

cups of couscous. Once its cooked
through, stir in a couple tablespoons
of good extra virgin olive oil, then let
it cool. While it cools, dice a bunch of
vegetables: an onion, two tomatoes,
a sweet pepper, a cucumber, a little
fresh mint, and a preserved lemon.
When the couscous has reached
room temperature, stir in all the vegetables along with a few capers and
a splash of white wine vinegar. Once
its all mixed up, refrigerate it for half
an hour or so to chill and let the flavors meld. Just before serving, taste
and add salt if needed.

Majid uses three parts milk to one

part couscous. Bring the milk to
a boil, and add the couscous. Let
it simmer for five minutes, then
remove it from the heat and let it
cool a bit. Thats itits ready to
serve. Majid likes to add a bit of jam
to it, but he also recommends adding a little sugar to sweeten it up a
bit. Since hearing about the recipe,
Ive made it with a little maple syrup
and cinnamon, and that turned out
pretty delicious. Majid likes to eat
sweet couscous for breakfast. In
the summer he likes to make it the
night before and keep it in the fridge
overnight, then serve it cold, like a
couscous version of rice pudding.

Val Neff-Rasmussen

The Feed is a deeper look into the foods we sell at Zingermans.

Each issue focuses on one product. Find more stories online at thefeed.zingermans.com.

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ISSUE # 257

SAVE
$75

UP TO

JAN-FEB 2017

SANTA BROUGHT US A KOREAN RESTAURANT FOR CHRISTMAS!

Last month, the newest Zingermans business, Miss Kim, opened up in Kerrytown on Kingsley Street, just a block and a half to the west of the Deli. Aside from its
beautiful, intrinsic alliterationMiss Kim, a Korean restaurant, in Kerrytown on KingsleyI, and pretty much everyone at Zingermans, are super excited about
this new opening! Good eating, good business and good learning are all at hand.
Managing Partner Ji Hye (pronounced Gee-Hey) Kim is at the helm, cooking in the kitchen, greeting guests in the dining room, studying history, sharing her
culture and all the eighteen thousand other little things that chef-owners of restaurantsKorean or otherwisedo every day! If you come by youre pretty
likely to meet her in person. Youll also recognize a fair few other longtime Zingermans staffers - Amos Arinda, from the Roadhouse, to run the bar; Nick
Dellapenna who spent three years in the dining room at the Roadhouse will be out front; and Thomas Wilson has come down from the Bakehouse to be Ji Hyes
right-hand man in the kitchen.
Like all of us who work here and all of the businesses in the Zingermans Community, Miss Kim will be highly imperfect; new restaurants in particular, take time to get
going and work out the kinks. Imperfections and all, Im extremely excited that this long time project is coming to fruition!!

Thanks to Ji Hyes patient teaching, were having a great time

inside the organization learning about Korean cooking and culture over the last few years. Like all our food at Zingermans, Ji
Hyes work with Miss Kim has been to make traditional recipes,
but with the super high quality ingredients that we have long
been so committed to at the Deli, Bakehouse, Roadhouse,
Coffee Company, Candy Manufactory, Creamery, Catering and
everywhere else.
Some of the dishes you may know, like bibimbop, kimchi, and
the pork buns that Ji Hye has spent four years perfecting at our
San Street cart and the pop up dinners at the Bar at 327 Braun Ct.
Other dishes will likely be new to youbuh-sut-jook (black rice
and barley porridge), and my personal favorite tteok-bokki,
strips of spicy rice cake with pork topped with a soft boiled
egg. The menu will, as everything we do, evolve and improve
over time. We want to make bibimbop as much a part of the
Zingermans Experience as corned beef, Sourcream Coffee Cake,
reuben sandwiches, Ethiopian coffee, handmade cream cheese,
and fried chicken.

When Paul or I teach our new staff orientation (see Secret #49
in Zingermans Guide to Good Leading, Part 4 for more on that)
we tell everyone that our hope is that one or two of them will go
on to become managing partners in the Zingermans Community
of Businesses. That the only criteria needed to qualify to really

Ari: Why Korean food?

JK: Well, as funny as it sounds,

because Im in Michigan.
Because I cant get the dishes that my mother made me.
Michigan is diverse, but Ann Arbor doesnt have a huge Korean
community. I guess opening the restaurant is my way of connecting with my roots after I emigrated. Connecting to the
community through food.
To me, authenticity is very personal. What you had with your
grandmother is unique. Tradition is more objective. I can study
it. Both can exist. We dont claim to provide the same authentic experience your family gave you if youre Korean. But
were going to go back and study and understand the history of
Korean cuisine in the dishes.
We interpret tradition in the here and now. Michigan is an
essential part of our identity. Were not looking to transplant
everything and replicate. Were looking to learn from tradition
and see how that works here in Ann Arbor in 2017.

On the sign out, front it says, Really

great Korean food and drink. What does
that mean?
JK: The opening menu will reflect both our history at San
Street and where we want to go forward. What were shooting
for is Korean food done on the level of what other Zingermans
businesses do. Full-flavored, traditionally made, traditionally
inspired and using really great ingredients.
The menu will include some of the things that longtime loyal
guests have been waiting for from our San Street cart and from
all the pop-ups we did over the last few years. The big news for
our loyal customers is that our buns and spicy rice cakes are
back. We spent a lot of time making those dishes really great.

ISSUE # 258

JAN-FEB 2017

start the ball rolling are a commitment to our shared values,

vision and mission, the willingness to learn, to work ones butt
off, care about collaboration, and to be committed to the community (both the Ann Arbor community and the Zingermans
Community). Opening Miss Kim is one of the high points in our
organizational history.
You can read more about Ji Hyes journey on the path to partnership in Gauris excellent interview to follow.

Getting Miss Kim going is a big part of our 2020 Vision for the
Zingermans Community of Businesses (if you want to see the
vision, email me at ari@zingermans.com). Making that vision a
reality to establish another local business, led by a passionate
managing partner who will be actively present on site, someone
who cares deeply about the cooking and culture is what it's
all about. There have been many things that have happened
to make that vision a reality over the last ten yearsour staff
ownership program, fostering a diverse community, our focus
on teaching and living positive energy, our emphasis on reducing our environmental footprint and our efforts to raise entry
level wages. Miss Kim is the latest chapter!

food is really delicious, the space looks really great (thank you,
Lori Saginaw!), and we get the chance to learn about Korean
traditions and cooking under Ji Hyes wise and gentle guidance.
As per Ji Hyes vision, this is a chance to put the highest quality
ingredientsthe same kinds of things wed use at the Deli, the
Roadhouse, the Bakehouse, etc. into the mix of traditional
Korean recipes. Pork is coming from Niman Ranch, Black Rice
from Anson Mills, produce where we can (stay tuned for
spring its right around the corner, right?), spices from our
friends at pices de Cru in Montral and much, much more! Oh
yeah, theres a bar with wine and beer, and a whole range of
non-alcoholic drinks. Its all making me hungry right now as I
think about it.

In nature, the healthiest ecosystems are the most diverse. We

hope from the heart, with all weve got, that Miss Kim will help
make Ann Arbor a better place to live and eat. Bringing something special, a new style of dining, a new perspective from a
smart, creative woman, will enhance this already wonderful
Washtenaw County community in which we live and work.
What do you think? Meet me at Miss Kim?

While most of the business world is happy to move quickly to

crank out copies of whatever has already worked, here, we like
to slowly and carefully craft originals. On top of the fact that the

There are also a whole range of new things. Were gonna have
our own take on bibimbopserved in traditional stone bowls
and made with fresh vegetables from local farmers. Well have
a porridge made from black rice and barley that will be topped
with a whole array of mushrooms. Some fresh fish dishes. Salt
and pepper shrimp.

Tell me about the drinks...

JK: We dont have a lot of room, so well keep it limited to
about a dozen wines that well offer by the glass and the bottle.
We have a full bar, so if you want a martini, well have it!
Amos [Arinda, whos managing the bar after ten years of working at the Roadhouse] is really working with Korean flavors.
Hes been studying Korean cooking and came up with things
like sesame syrup. Things that end up in the desserts, toowe
can put them into the cocktails and the non-alcoholic drinks.
Date syrup and sesame syrup. And it really tastes Korean, even
though he came up with it!

And for dessert?

JK: Theres not that big

An inside look into the latest

Zingermans (ad)venture with
managing partner and chef,
Ji Hye Kim and Ari Weinzweig

Whats the spicing like?

JK: Theres a preconceived notion that Korean food is very
spicy, but theres actually some that are spicy and some that
arent. Were going for balance. Korean cooking has a lot of
faith in the diner... spices are often served on the side, so
people can control it themselves. Thats why its so important
to pay so much attention to the vegetables. Even if you use
little of the spicy sauce, it will be a delicious meal.

Is this the kind of food you can eat

frequently?
JK: Im hoping this is a place that people will come over and
over. You can get both a snack and a big meal and we welcome
all of that. Some dishes are spicy some and some arent; some
are big and some are small; so you can pick and choose.

of a dessert culture in Korea. So

were gonna have a little more fun with that...gelato from the
Creamery, pastries from the Bakehouse, and a fruit dessert. Its
an area were gonna give ourselves more room.

Will the menu be big plates? Small plates?

JK: Were gonna have smaller plates available that you can
easily add sides to to make a fuller meal. And also a few entre
sized items that you can order just for yourself. Those will
come with rice and sides. But the smaller plates will be more
like drinking food: order with everybody, drink, and try things
together.

REALLY GREAT KOREAN FOOD!

ff in kerrytown
Back in November, on what would turn out to be Ji Hye Kims last free day in a long time, ZingTrain eagerly interviewed her about
what it meant to be a partner of the Zingermans Community of Businesses and opening our newest businessa Korean food restaurant and bar - Miss Kim.

ZingTrain: Tell us the story. Start at the very

beginning.

pushing the capacity of the process. So Kristen and I met with

Ari and Paul and we figured out what the next steps were.

Ji Hye Kim, Managing Partner of Miss Kim:

And then stuff just started happening. I realize now that this is
one of those intangible thingsthe power of vision, the power
of being part of a connected community, the power of walking
through an open door when youre ready.

I think to tell the story of any new business from the very beginning, you have to start at the point where someone realized
they wanted to be a business owner. So thats where I will start.
Before coming to Michigan, I helped someone else open their
business. I loved that entire experience. Working with practically no oversight. Creating the systems and an organizational
culture from scratch. I felt a freedom and sense of ownership
of that.
That experience is when I knewI knew I wanted to own my
own business. I suppose thats where this story starts.

ZT: So why did you leave? Why did you

walk away from all that?
JK:

Well, I didnt like the industry. That entire business was

based on numbers. I wanted something more tactile, visceral,
direct, honest and pleasurable!
I hadnt realized it yet but food is all those things and Ive been
longing for the Korean food I grew up with for a very, very long
time.

ZT: How did you get to Zingermans?

JK: When I moved back to Ann Arbor, I lived a couple of blocks
away from Zingermans Deli. One day, I walked in. I tend to be a
pretty shy shopperI dont talk much and I mostly focus on the
sign copy to make my choices. But before I even knew it, the
person at the cheese counter had dismantled my usual armor
of shyness and totally charmed me, and we were just talking
about a piece of cheese! Funny thing is, I dont even think he
was trying, he was just telling me about the cheese. It was the
best service Id ever received. Best of all, the cheese was outstanding! I was intrigued.
Then I read a piece in the New York Times about Zingermans 25th
anniversary. I was hooked. I started researching Zingermans
and the more I read about itthe leadership style, the business
model, practicing Open Book managementthe more interested
I became in working there.
And then there was the food.
I was 27, going on 28, at the time. The years at the start-up had
been intense in an industry I did not even like. So, I gave myself
permission to play until I was 30. I figured it was low risk.
Just long enough to scratch that food itch and then I would get
serious with my life.

ZT: Youve been at Zingermans for almost

a decade now. Youre a partner and just
opened our newest business. How did
that happen?
JK:

I started my life at Zingermans in the Retail Department

at the Deli. It seemed only fitting given that a piece of cheese
had changed everything. Besides, none of the other Zingermans
businesses I applied to called me back!
So I focused on learning every aspect of the retail business.
I learned how the numbers worked, how we took care of the
food, the kinds of relationships we built with our producers and
vendors, and how we interacted with each other.
Back then, I had no aspirations for partnership at Zingermans.
I didnt know at the time that I wanted to open a restaurant,
and an Asian food restaurant seemed like a bit of stretch as a
companion business for a Jewish delicatessen!
It wasnt until someone else opened that door that I started
considering it.
One of my co-workers at the Deli, Kristen, put forth a vision for
an Asian restaurant as part of the Zingermans Community of
Businesses. She asked me if I was interested.
And I walked through the door.

ZT: You mean you walked through that

door and got on Zingermans Path to
Partnership?
JK:

Back then, the Path to Partnership wasnt quite as formal

and detailed as it is now. An Asian restaurant was definitely

We decided that a food cart would be a low risk way of incubating and testing out the business we were proposing. The very
next day, someone told me that their friend was trying to sell a
food cart! So we bought that cart and called it San Street. Then
a local business owner decided that he wanted to open a food
cart courtyardMarks Carts. It came complete with a common
commissary kitchen! And soon we were there!
Turns out that Marks Carts was not just an incubator for our
idea, it was also a great incubator for being part of a community of businesses. We had a shared kitchen space and we had
to self-organize to make it work. Much like at Zingermans, the
company was awesome. We were a group of driven, scrappy,
small business owners working hard to succeed.
The following four years are a bit of a blur. We really pushed
the capacity of that food cart to its limit. We got a second food
cart. We started catering events and doing pop-up dinners.
Zingermans was pretty busy in those four years, too.
When we all emerged from those four whirlwind years,
Zingermans had a much more formal and well-articulated Path
to Partnership and I was ready to get on it.

ZT: Talk about the process. What made

you finally get on the Path to Partnership?
What was it like?
JK:

Becoming a partner at Zingermans is an interesting process. People have repeatedly asked me, Did they make you
jump through a lot of hoops? My response: Whos they?
Its a very well designed process. Its flexible. It allowed me
to do things at my own pace, which was important for me. It
allowed me the time I needed to explore. It allowed me the
space I needed to articulate the answers to Who is this group
that I am going to be a part of? What is their culture? How do
they operate?
And I got my answers. I held my own and did not go forward
with each step in the process until I was ready. While I was on
the Path to Partnership, I saw our organization from an entirely
different perspective. I got to know Zingermans (and myself!) at
every level. Everyone offered to help. Everyone was on my side.
And everyone was recruiting and advocating for even more
people to be on my side. The organization was peppered with
people proudly sporting San Street t-shirts!
The summary? The Path to Partnership process itself is the best
representation of what it means to be a partner at Zingermans.
Its truly well designed.

ZT: What is it like becoming a Partner at

Zingermans?
JK:

In going through the Path to Partnership process, you talk

to a LOT of people. Every partner at every single business. You
learn to advocate for yourself and your business. You learn to
ask for help. Everyone you talk to has an opinion that you need
to be able to meaningfully consider and then decide what you
are going to do. Youre asked to trust people with your personal
future and your business vision and sincerely give them the
opportunity to influence it.
And the trust. At Zingermans, youve got to buy in. And Im not
talking about the money, which you also need to do. Buy-in
means that you buy-in to the way Zingermans operatesthe
vision, the guiding principles, open book, servant leadership.
The whole thing. If you dont like it, you dont get to stand by
the sideline and not comply. You also dont get to maliciously
obey. If you dont like what youre being asked to do, you bring
a better option to the table and sell it to everyone else.
When I started on the path, I was not sure I was the best person
to start a business within the Zingermans Community. I have a
lone maverick side to me that enjoys making unilateral decisions. By the time I was done with all that talking and collaborating, I knew exactly what it would mean for this lone maverick
to get herself 17 partners!

MISSKIMANNARBOR.COM

Join ZingTrain January

19th & 20th for their
Managing Ourselves
Seminar!
For more information,
visit: zingtrain.com/
upcoming-seminars

ZT: What were your biggest learnings

from the process?
JK: The most transformational thing I learned was this: being a
partner at Zingermans is not about relinquishing control, which
had been my biggest concern.
I realized that Im not an expert at everything and Zingermans
was offering me many resources. Not only the systems and
processes that have been vetted over three decades, but also
the collective wisdom and support of the entire organization.
A team of 700+ people who were rooting for me to succeed and
looking for ways to contribute to the success of Miss Kim.
I had imagined being independent and being part of the
community as opposites. Its more complex than that, even
paradoxical. Being on the Path to Partnership, I learned that
its about being both independent and functioning within a
community at the same time. Its about making better decisions
by having access to more information and expertise than you
might ever have had the capacity to gather as a small business
owner. Being part of the community doesnt mean that you lose
autonomy. It does mean that youre committing to being a part
of the community, engaging in dialogue and giving and accepting help when needed.

ZT: Which brings us to the best part. Tell

us about the food.
JK:

There arent many of absolutes in this organization,

because we dialogue a lot and make decisions by consensus
but one of the absolute absolutes is the quality of the food. Its
so inspiring to be part of an organization that holds you to that
high of a standard and inspires you to keeping reaching for
higher. We may not have a lot of experts on Korean food, but
we have a lot of food experts here and they understand how
good food tastes!
Zingermans totally understood my obsession with the texture
of the pork buns and tteok-bokki. My fascination with fermented food. Even my irritability on the misrepresentation of kimchi
in the western world! My numerous trips to Korea to research
and learn, the many opportunities I took to go work in the
kitchens of chefs more experienced than myself; at Zingermans
no one ever questioned the ROI of that time and money.
Zingermans asks probing questions. What is the traditional
version of the dish? What is the original form of this ingredient? How will you represent it here? Questions like these are
important to me and totally par for the course at Zingermans.
Taking the time to answer those questions has made for a much
better menu at Miss Kims.
Why wouldnt you want someone to walk into your restaurant,
invest a lot of time and energy in evaluating every detail and
then give you thoughtful feedback in a way that you understand
and can hear? Now multiply that someone by 700 and youve
got Zingermans. Its like having hundreds of pairs of eyes and
ears and millions and millions of taste buds!
For more details about the path to partnership, please email
zingtrain@zingermans.com and well send you a slew of really
cool and useful stuffwebinars, process timelines and more!

ISSUE # 257

JAN-FEB 2017

Buy one catering order,

get one half off!
a Zingerman's Catering annual event!
Place a Catering order for pickup or delivery, and youll
get your next order of equal or lesser value half off!

januAry
& FebRUarY
ONLy!

Order whatever youd like warm pot pies for your family gathering on Sunday, a Deli Sandwich Basket for
your office the following week, and anything else you have in mind, and youll get half off the lesser order.
This offer is good for orders that are picked up or delivered from January through the end of February, so call
and order as many times as youd like!

This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. Only valid for orders from Zingermans Catering.
Discount will not be applied to equipment rentals or service staff. Service fees for events will be based on non-discounted totals.

pot pie bag lunches

Its Pot Pie season at Zingermans Catering! Weve combined the warm, buttery goodness of our housemade Zingermans Deli Pot Pies with the
crowd-pleasing convenience of our bag lunches to create the ultimate winter feast for your officeZingermans Catering Pot Pie Bag Lunches.
Pick from a bevy of individual pot piestheres a flavor for every palette! Each pie will be sent hot, with a tossed green salad, balsamic vinaigrette,
a mini brownie, napkin and utensils. All this for only $17.50 each!

Call 734.663.3400 or go to zingermanscatering.com to make your

next staff meeting a comfort-food feast!

Handmade pot pies to

cheer up your winter blues
ClasSic Chicken Pot Pie

Darinas Dingle Pie

Free-range chicken hand-picked off the bone and blended with big
chunks of carrots, celery, potatoes, onions and herbs. Wrapped in
a handmade butter crust. Its the perfect lazy cook winter meal; its
warm, filling, and easy as pie.

A salute to the miners on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland: This pie

is made with lamb from Hannewald Farm in Stockbridge, MI, loads
of potatoes, rutabaga, onions and a dash of cumin and rosemary.
Wrapped miner-style (no tin) in a butter crust.

John H. Turkey Pot Pie

Harnois & Son Farm turkey with big chunks of celery, carrots,
onions, and potatoes, spiced with Turkish Urfa pepper and fresh
herbs. Then wrapped in a handmade butter crust.

Fungi Pot Pie

(Vegetarian selection!)

A fun pie for the fungiphiles! Michigan Maitake Mushrooms, Tantr

Farm Organic Shiitake Mushrooms and a little Balinese Long
Pepper, tucked in an all-butter crust.

$10.99 Each
2016 DSE INC.

ISSUE # 258

Pot pies are available frozen,

ready to heat, or ready to eat!

JAN-FEB 2017

The Red Brick BeEf Pot Pie

This beef pie is our heartiest one yet. Packed with big chunks of
all-natural beef from Ernst Farm here in Washtenaw County, carrots, potatoes, and fresh herbs, and wrapped in our handmade
crust.

Cheshire Pork Pie

Made from a 4-H Tamworth hog raised by Nic Harnois, a future
star farmer from northern Washtenaw Co. Braised with onions,
apple cider and spices, then stuffed in a handmade pastry crust
with apples from Kapnick Orchards in Britton, MI. Wrapped minerstyle (no tin).

stock up and save!

Buy 10 or more, take 10% OFF!
Buy 20 or more, get 20% OFF!!
Buy 30 or more, get 30% OFF!!!

JANUARY & FEBRUARY

Available at the Deli,

starting at 11am all month long!

January

And I Would Do Anything for Loaf $13.99

One of our long time regulars, a smart, well-travelled, guy who cooks and eats great food with a high degree of regularity, pulled
me aside at the farmers market a few weeks ago. This is a person I respect, both as a solid member of the community and as a
cook. As we say in the food business, The man knows how to eat! Anyway, he pulled me close to tell something and started
speaking in a quiet voice. When that sort of thing happens I start getting a bit anxious I never know whether Im about to
hear something really critical or something really complimentary. In this case, he leaned in, and almost in a whisper, said, Ive
got to tell you. Those spices from pices de Cru... life changing! I threw out everything else I had. Thats all we use now. Theyre
a revelation!
We now have over a hundred offerings in house. Some of my personal favorites are the wild Uzbek black cumin, the fennel
seed, the special selection Spanish paprika, the blackening spice, the cloves... but honestly, I think most everyone who works at
the Deli and cooks will have their own. Come down and take a smell and pick a few out to take home. Its a small and relatively
inexpensive way to brighten up the short and all too often dark days of a Michigan winter. A small tin on your counter and in
your cooking can make all the difference!

JANUARY

Aleppey Turmeric
Turmeric is getting lots of press these days when it comes
to health issuesit contains lots of curcumin which is being
credited for helping cure all sorts of ailments. Antiseptic, anti
inflammatory, antibacterialit seems to be the magic cure for
nearly everything. In the meantime, its of high import to me
because of the role it plays in the kitchen. Turmerics bright
yellow color and subtle but still significant flavor are only
lightly used in most American cooking. But its a long time
superstar in the cooking of much of the rest of the world. This
turmeric is from what the West generally refers to as Aleppey,
or as its known in India as Alppuzha, in the Kerala district.
Turmeric from Aleppey has twice the volatile oils of less costly offerings. As always, there are lower cost alternatives but...
we get what we pay for. What the folks at pices de Cru have
tracked down for us is some of the best around. Turmeric
is in the ginger family and it has a slight hint of ginger in its
flavor and aroma, along with a bright citrus scent, and a touch
of earthiness. Its a hugely important addition to many curry
blends, as well as North African tagines, masalas and other
magical mixes. I like it in fish or seafood stews (makes me
hungry just thinking about it vegetables, pieces of fresh
fish, fresh shrimp or scallops simmered in a bright yellow
turmeric-scented sauce).

FEBRUARY

Warm up with a plate of classic American fare: Meatloaf and

golden mashed potatoes. Pork and beef meatloaf, enlivened
with rosemary and dijon mustard, teams up with creamy
mashed potatoes, in a one-two punch that will be sure to drive
your winter blues away. This dynamic duo comes with your
choice of side salad from our deli case.

February

Lasagna is for Lovers $14.99

Its a love affair for your taste buds. Layers of lasagna noodles held together by a trifecta of cheeses provolone, farm
cheese, and grana padano, smothered with garlicky tomato
sauce seasoned with rosemary and thyme. Comes with your
choice of side salad from our deli case.

Korean Chiles
As you likely know, I have a deep passion for traditional food.
Im always about going back to the old ways, to tracking back
recipes to earlier eras, studying cultures and cuisines to peel
off layers of modern meddling. But the funny thing, history
major that I am, is that if one goes far enough back, we often
find that ingredients that are currently rock solid staples
of many traditional cuisines were not always present in the
cooking of their country. There were not always potatoes in
Ireland; North America had no bacon, beef or cheese; Italy
had no tomatoes; Hungary had no paprika; France had no
chocolate; no one but the Ethiopians enjoyed coffee! And
Koreaknown around the world for the spiciness of its traditional cookinghad no chiles!
Of course, today... all of those realities are ancient history.
Culinary historians seem to place chiles' arrival on the Korean
peninsula to sometime around the 15th century. Ji Hye Kim,
managing partner at Miss Kim, our new Korean restaurant
in Kerrytown (see p. 3) said, Arriving in Korea only a few
centuries ago, chiles have a fairly shorter history in Korean
cuisine (remember, Korean history spans over 5,000 years),
but Koreans really took a liking to it. We were already into
pungent flavors of garlic and ginger, we were already very
fond of anything fermented, and chilies fit right in. Not all
Korean food is spicy, but chiles do reserve a special place
in Korean cuisine. And they are featured prominently in the
dishes at Miss Kim.
These special chiles have only recently arrived from Korea
to pices de Cru in Quebec. The cultivar is a hybrid with no
particular name, one theyve developed to grow large and
somewhat spicy. The Korean pepper is grown by a family company thats evolved a great deal during its 30 years in business
(what a coincidence!). Their quest to make ever-better kimchi
led them to grow and process their own chili powder. Soon,
the Kim family was surprised to find they had reached a rarely
attained level of quality, and started selling the chili powder,
too! It is grown around Cheongsong, a well-known pepper
growing region in the East.

January

now $6.70, was $10/tin

These bright orange mussels
are harvested from platforms
in the Galician estuaries.
After being fried in olive oil,
they are preserved in a traditional Spanish sauce called
'escabeche'. They're velvety,
meaty, briny and tangy. An
exciting and essential addition to anyone's tinned fish
collection!

pearlescent dark chocolate shell.

Our truffle case will be lovingly overflowing with confections of all kinds,
ready for your sweetheart. Come visit
us in the Next Door chocolate corner,
where well craft your dream box!

Zingerman's Portuguese
Sardines
now $5.35, was $7.99/tin
These coveted Portuguese
pilchards have a deep flavor softened by olive oil.
Melt-in-your-mouth tender,
they're delicious as-is, in a
dish of pasta or on a slice
of crusty bread topped with
good olive oil, a squeeze of
lemon, a sprinkle of black
pepper and a pinch of sea
salt. Also, check out the awesome artwork on the box!

drink of
the month
January

Ultimate Indulgence
$4.75/cup
Rich and decadent chocolate
mocha made with real salted
caramel sauce, served with
whipped cream and a Bquet
caramel chew on the side.

VALENTINES CHOCOLATES
F ROM ZINGERMANS DELI
Fran's Salt Caramels Valentines Day
Chocolat Moderne Chocolate Covered
A perennial favorite here at Chocolate Dipped
Zingermans. Copper kettle cooked
Strawberries and
Cherries
caramels, dipped in either dark chocolate and topped with grey salt or milk Chocolate Covered
Amarena, mon amour! Joan from
chocolate and smoked salt.
Chocolat Moderne specifically selects
MarshmalLows
Italian Amarena cherries for their
Available for pre-order! Call 734-663- pleasantly tart flavor; they plump up
Custom Box of
5282 to pick up at Zingermans Next beautifully during a bath of vodka
syrup before being sealed up in a
Door 2/13 & 2/14.
Chocolates

february

Mussels in Escabeche

february
Chocolat Moderne
Kama Sutra
$3.75/each
Thick and velvety drinking
chocolate inspired by the
warming spices of India.
Featuring dark Valrhona
chocolate, cardamom and
clove blended perfectly with
coconut oil.

January

Sparky, Get Your Zing On! - $17.50/each

A collaboration of meat-loving hearts and minds. Corned
beef, turkey, provolone, chilies, tomatoes, yellow mustard
and Russian dressing on onion rye.

february

JereBear's Smeatheart!
$18.99/each
When we brought in Wagshal's Montreal style smoked brisket, Jeremiah master of configuring creative, delicious
sandwiches knew he had an incredible ingredient on his
hands. The smoky, almost-butter-like-tender beef pairs with
scallion cream cheese, roasted red peppers, and a small
amount of honey on a toasted onion roll to make a richly
sweet and spicy meal!

ISSUE # 257

JAN-FEB 2017

After completing Zingermans Guide to Good Leading, Part 4; A Lapsed Anarchists Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business this summer, I've decided to take a turn back to food writing for a
while. The next book will be a collection of essays taken from 200+ issues of the newsletter, pieces that were written and put in print over the last thirty years. The working title is, as weve been
saying since we opened the Delis doors in 1982, You Really Can Taste the Difference.
In working on them, I decided not to do any big editing. Rather, we made the call to leave them essentially as they were when I originally wrote them. Given that might have been five, eight,
eighteen or thirty years ago... you can imagine how hard it is for me not to want to start them over, improve them; to do more research, refine the writing, edit out errors, make them current.
But... I realized in starting the work that compiling these essays as they were in the moment they were written is in itself of interest. Because our work here at Zingermans has been such a big
piece of the progress of the food scene in the U.S., it makes sense to let them stand as historical documents. Because each has been essentially left alone, imperfect as it was, and now still is,
helps shine a light on where the food world in general was when I wrote it. It shows, too, what was happening in my own head, what I was struggling with or super excited about. Having just
finished reading Anne Zimmermans very fine biography of M.F.K. Fisher, I can say with a pretty high degree of confidence that while each piece will, of course, be somewhat out of date, like any
historical document, it's "out-of-dateness" makes it as interesting as whats actually in it.

For me, fear comes in two forms, both of which work their way
into my mind on a regular basis. Im rarely consciously aware
of them when they start, but both pay me visits pretty regularly.
(In fact, I fear there might be more than two forms, but I havent
thought of them yet.) First, and easiest to own up to, theres the
sort of fear thats well founded, and of obvious value in living in
a safe and healthy way. Stuff like Im afraid to stick my hand in
a fire or Im afraid that if I dont pay attention when Im driving I could crash. Or in a work context things like, If we dont
taste test the food we prepare and serve constantly, Im afraid
that our product quality is likely to suffer. Being fearless in the
face of issues like these would, its safe to say, be sort of stupid.
Which is why Ive come to look at these as good fears.
Then theres the other, less desirable, form of fear that regularly
rises up inside my brain and my body. While on the surface this
fear feels much like the other above, ultimately, its actually on
the opposite end of the emotional spectrum from those first,
well-founded fears; its fear that limits me, fear that leads to
feelings that often hold me back from doing what I need to do.
In honesty, Im usually actually afraid to even admit to having
these fears in the first place. But hey, the truth is that, like it or
not, Ive got em. Rather than helping me stay safe, these fears
keep me from doing what I need to do; if I let em get the better
of me, I end up enhancing the status quo instead of challenging
it and changing it, hopefully for the better.
There are a thousand things that fall into this second category;
progress comes for me from tackling them in manageable
bites, usually one or two at a time. Which is why I decided to
get down to it and actually put fingers to fret board and write
something about African American cooking. Lord knows Ive
been thinking about it long enoughthough I dont like to admit
it, the second sort of fear has held me back. The truth of the
matterlet me get it over withis that I have a pretty deep hesitation in writing about African American cooking. Im not an
African American. And, because its not my heritage, I have this
fear of showing disrespect for African American culture, a feeling that I should never presume to know what I havent lived, a
fear thats kept me away from doing the right thing, from doing
the writing I know that I need to do.
Fear, though, is only the negative part of the picture. Instead
of contributing to people staying comfortably, if often unconsciously, in the status quo of separation and stress that most of
us have become so accustomed to around these issues, I want to
build communication and positive connection. I want to bring
people together over stuff that they currently avoid, and to do
it in ways that might in some small day-to-day delivery, make a
positive difference in our community. My hope is, ultimately, to
help to close gaps, by providing a chance for people to connect
over coffee, cornmeal and cake.
The truth is, I guess, that this vision has been working pretty
well when I look back on all the writing and teaching work Ive
done over the years here at Zingermans. This subjectfood,
race and African American culture, arising as it does out of the
horrors of slavery, segregation and the violence surrounding
the Civil Rights Movementjust feels a lot more loaded than
most. But the truth is, I think, that the subject is only loaded
because of the fearmy own and, although I could just be projecting, others as well. And the best way I know to off-load that
loadedness is to get the topic out there in the open, to talk, to
teach, to make it all real. And to get started on the road to making the vision above a reality, Ive got to get over the fears, the
social taboos, the worry about what others will say and my clear
lack of genetic credentials and... just do it.
As I pondered this problem I realized the truth is that Id had
pretty similar, if less loaded, sorts of hesitations when it came
to writing about Italian, Spanish, or French foods for the first
time. Im not from any of those places and Ive got a ton more
study to do on each of those subjectsthe learning never ends,
so its hard to feel like I really know enough to put something

ISSUE # 258

JAN-FEB 2017

on paper. At best, even after thirty years, Ive barely scratched

the surface of what I need and want to know. And yet, Ive gotten over that fear, written and taught at length about all those
other cultures and it seems to be working, so... why not this one
as well?
Thinking further still, it became even clearer that Id also
successfully taken on this challenge by writing about foods
that were completely outside my upbringing. Although many
Americans have grown up eating foods like country ham, bacon,
and oysters, I definitely did not. In fact, I dont think I ever even
ate them at all until I was probably about eighteen. To do the
writing about them I guess I gradually made peace with the reality that Id never be able to relate to oysters in the way that
Tommy Ward (third generation oysterman in Apalachicola) or
Bill Taylor (fourth generation in Olympia, Washington) will. That
Id never have the relationship to country ham that Sam Edwards
or Nancy Newsom (both third generation ham curers) have. But
Ive come to accept that we all have our own experiences of
thingsand out of that acceptance have come long essays and
professional presentations on all three of those subjects.
As a history major, one thing I know to be true is that there is no
objective history, only the reality that we develop for ourselves.
As Stas Kazmierski, one of the [former] managing partners in
ZingTrain (our training and consulting business) taught me ten
years or so ago, everyones truth is their own. The truth of
the matter is that in my world, studying, learning, cooking and
teaching are actually THE highest forms of honor I can pay to
anyones beliefs, culture, or in this case, cooking. Learning, for
me at least, begets liveliness, which in turn creates more education, better food and stronger connections to the people from
whom I learn.
I think it was five years ago that I went to my third (their seventh) Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium down in Oxford,
Mississippi. The formal conference title that year was Southern
Food in Black and White. The Symposium took up the rarely
discussed but very important, I think, relationship between race
and food in the South. In the process, the group broke down
barriers by openly talking about the taboos that surround food,
race and politics, but doing so while sharing food, good learning
and having some serious fun in the process.
I have very vivid memories of that conference. Bernard
Lafayette, a co-founder of Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) and a leader of the Civil Rights movement,
talked about food he ate while he was in the State penitentiary
in Mississippi. His strongest memory was of ice cream, brought
by a friendly white guard, whom Mr. Lafayette later helped by
assisting with the mans daughters college application. The
Rev. Will Campbell was in Oxford as well, invited to receive an
honorary degree (which he took with obvious delight), the first
time hed set foot in the state since hed been literally dumped
over the state line into Tennessee decades earlier. Begging, he
said, is hard work. You should try it some time. I did. I didnt
like it. Jazz musician Olu Dara, another Mississippi native who
lives now in New York City, was back in his home state for the
first time in decades, too. To my taste, he left more wisdom on
the table in half an hour of sharing thoughts than Id heard in
one place in a long time. Racism doesnt scare me, he said.
Its harmful to the person who has it, not so much to the person at whom its directed. Writer Marcie Ferris shared a story
shed learned from filmmaker Steve Channing, who produced
a documentary work film about the 1964 lunch counter sit-in
at the Greensboro Woolworths. (For more on the film, see
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/februaryone/film.html)
After the film had come out, the Greensboro 4 went out to share
their story with contemporary high school students in North
Carolina. At the end of one session they asked if any of the students had any questions. For an awkward minute or two, no one
said anything. Finally one student raised his hand and asked,
If theyd let you order, what would you have ordered? The
answer, A piece of pie. I just wanted a piece of pie.

Below is an excerpt from Zingermans Guide to Good Leading,

Part 4; A Lapsed Anarchists Approach to the Power of Beliefs
in Business. It is, though, as youll see, wholly relevant to
this essay, so Im adding it in here. Its a sad and painful
part of our collective past that few who are not of African
American descent given much thought to. My hope is to help
change thatboth the awareness of what once was, and to
make our organization and our community an actively welcoming place for people of every origin.

Beliefs in Business, 1902

Some social beliefs have, thankfully, changed drastically
over the years. Or maybe they havent changed as much as
we might like to believe. If you went to have dinner in a restaurant in the South at the time that Rocco Disderide constructed the Zingerman's Deli building, food might well have
been cooked and possibly served by African Americans,
but it would have been illegal for them to sit down at the
tablewith white people. Interracial marriage and interracial
eating were considered gravely dangerous to society, and
public policies were put in place to enforce those beliefs.
Jim Crow laws were referenced formally in the New York
Times in 1892, the same year Rocco Disderide arrived in Ann
Arbor, but they were based on the highly restrictive Black
Codes that had existed since the early years of the 19th
century.
As history professor Angela Jill Cooley writes in To Live and
Dine in Dixie, Laws against interracial marriage and in favor
of restaurant segregation regulated these taboos in southern society, but white families perpetuated them by instilling these two prohibitions in children, usually in nonverbal
ways. The power of beliefs? Cooley points out that it was
far more socially acceptable for a white person to have a
drink with someone who was known to be part of a lynch
mob than it was to share a Coke with a successful, community-focused African American professional.
In the North, the overt manifestations of these beliefs
might have been less formal, but they were still often very
strong. In fact, history would demonstrate that beliefs
speak louder than laws. Willis Patterson, professor emeritus of the University of Michigan School of Music, grew up
in Ann Arbor. Speaking about the 1940s, he remembers the
name of a good restaurant that was on a sign that said 'No
Blacks Allowed'. And I dont recall anyone saying that they
have been told that they were not supposed to go in there.
But somehow or another, the African American community
knew that we were not welcome in those places, so we
didnt go. Same went for lodging. The Allenel Hotel was
the classic hotel in Ann Arbor. Again, we understood that
that was not a receptive place to African Americans. In
fact, in the entire town in that era, he says, I am not aware
of there being a restaurant that they could feel they were
welcome.
This book is not a study in these beliefs, but there are many
sources that are, including Cooleys. Laws around racial
hierarchy ended nationally when Lyndon Johnson signed
the Civil Rights Act in 1964. If you want to see just how extensively the beliefs were formed in informal ways, take a twohour drive north from Ann Arbor to Ferris State University
and visit the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. It
houses over 10,000 pieces of commercial art that reinforce
racial stereotypes and taboos. Strong beliefs, as we know,
have deep roots; it took years of conflict in court to get local
and state laws changed. But legislation only cuts the beliefs
where they visibly spring out of the soil. The roots remain
alive below ground. And as we know, negative core beliefs
about race still spring up from below the surface with far
too much regularity. Many of the pieces in the museum at
Ferris State were produced in the last five or ten years.

Food, Fear, Race,

Art, and the Future
The Symposium planted some of the seeds that, in hindsight,
helped me move forward, to pass through the fears that Id let
prevent me from tackling this subject in the past. It took me a
while, but, finally, two years later, I took a deep mental breath,
shared thoughts with partners and key folks around our organization and scheduled the first African American foodways dinner
at the Roadhouse, to be held right after Martin Luther King , Jr.
Day in January of 2006. That year we cooked the meal from the
book of Howard Paige, a Michigan-based writer whose Aspects
of African American Foodways is considered a pioneering work
in the field. Thanks to the quality of Alex Youngs cooking (Alex is
the chef and managing partner at the Roadhouse), the hard work
of the Roadhouse crew, and a room full of interested customers,
the event went really well. So I took another deep, fear fightingbreath, and scheduled a second dinner for last January. That went
well toowe cooked from the first two African American cookbooks published in this country: Malinda Russells "A Domestic
Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for
the Kitchen and Abby Fishers What Mrs. Fisher Knows. And,
now, here we are in 08, about to put on our third annual event.
This year well be honoring the cooking and culture of the Gullah
peoples from the Sea Islands off the coasts of Georgia and South
Carolina. Sallie Ann Robinson, author of Cooking the Gullah
Way, Morning, Noon, and Night, will be coming to cook and
speak. Im not sure what the subject will be next year, but one
thing I know is that the African American culinary heritage is so
rich that well have no problem developing engaging and tasty
meals for years to come. Which is good because I hope to still be
hosting these dinners twenty years down the road, in the same
way that we just served up our 22nd annual Paella on the Patio at
the Deli this past September.

Learning
Backing up a bit, let me share one of my big early insights about
Jewish cooking, because its really helped to inform my understanding of African American foodways. Contrary to what I
believed growing up in Chicago, the truth of the matter is that
there isnt really any such thing as a singular Jewish food. If
there had been the way Id assumed, the Jewish cooking of the
world would have all revolved around matzo ball soup, chopped
liver, potato latkes, bagels and cream cheese and all that sort
of stuff. Boy, was I off basewhat Id assumed to be THE Jewish
foods were, in truth, just the particular style of Jewish food that
Id grown up with in a Midwestern family with Polish-, Lithuanianand Russian-Jewish roots. Much to my surprise, I discovered that
there are actually hundreds of other versions of Jewish cooking,
from places as far afield as Kazakhstan, Calcutta and Curacao.
What I came to understand (as others had long ago figured out), is
that Jewish cooking isnt tied to any particular dish, but rather to
a) the dietary rules of keeping kosher (dictated in the Bible and
expanded upon in the Talmud) + b) local ingredients, + c) cooking techniques and holiday traditions particular to countries in
which Jewish people were living.
With that in mind, I think the first big "a-ha" on the subject at
hand here was that there isnt really simple, singular African
American cooking any more than there is a Jewish one. I checked
in with others I respect to get their sense of this and heard much
the same thing. I asked Adrian Miller, whos been studying this
stuff for many years now, how he described African American
cooking: Well, he said, I usually tell people its just African
heritage cooking in the US, melding ingredients and cooking
from West African, Native American and European traditions.
Jessica Harris, African American culinary historian and a professor at New York's Queens College, had similar thoughts. She did,
however point out that, while there may not be a singular African
American style of cooking, Some things do bind us: okra, eating
leafy greens and drinking the potlikker, use of hot sauces and
peppers are pretty much universally prized in African American
cooking. In terms of the interplay of black and white, John T.
Edge, food writer extraordinaire and director of the Southern
Foodways Alliance (check out the website at southernfoodways.com) spoke poetically, but powerfully (as hes so skilled at
doing), and appropriately brought politics into play: I think its
important to acknowledge that the Souths fitful dance of black
and white has marked our food culture in significant ways. For
the longest time, that BASTARD Jim Crow dictated who could
sit down to dinner with whom. The thing wasour foods were
always integrated. Black-eyed peas and okra from West Africa
and the chess pies and puddings of Anglo-Saxon tradition have
long shared the same menu.
I agree with all three. Ive come to focus on a trio of broad components of what we know as African American food: the foods

and foodways that were brought to North America by African

people on the slave ships; the foods that were then integrated
with available ingredients, and then foods that were influenced by the cooking styles learned from Europeans and Native
Americans. Blended, iteratively and in no particular order, over
the last three or four centuries what one ends up with is, some of
the most flavorful, most American food we have in this country,
and what we could commonly call African American cooking.

a) Items that came here from Africa

Remember that the African footings of African American cooking are actually rooted in a range of cooking styles that are as
varied as Spanish food is from Swedish. If you take the time to
travel from Algeria down to Angola, or cross the continent diagonally from Morocco to Mozambique, youll experience hundreds
of different regional dishes, foods, cooking styles and cultures
of enormous depth and complexity, all of which are African. The
amazing complexity of these cuisines came together in North
America through the forced arrival of Africans from so many cultures and countries. In this short piece though, my goal is merely
to give some sense of what foods came west to the Americas.
Okra, known in a number of African languages as gombo or
ngombo is a staple ingredient of African American cooking.
The word went on to be used here for whats considered a classic New Orleans dish, but gumbo is also cooked extensively on
the Carolina coast, and in the cooking of the Gullah peoples on
the Sea Islands. Rice, (probably indigenous to Africa, as well as
Asia), rice growing skills
and rice cooking were Racism doesnt scare me,
certainly carried to the
he said. Its harmful to
colonies with African
peoples, and became the person who has it, not
the dominant crop and
cooking ingredient in so much to the person at
South Carolina. Blackwhom its directed.
eyed peas came to be
a staple of southern cooking, best known in the dish Hoppin
John, traditionally eaten for good luck on New Years. Its not
clear if sesame originated in Africa, Asia or both, but either way
it, too, played a big role in African American cooking, both as
seed and as oil. The latter helped to replace the olive oil that
many Europeans were more used to cooking with.
While I dont think very many people would class it as African
American, or even African, coffee probably counts here tooit
originated in Ethiopia. Open a bottle of Diet Coke last week? Kola
nuts came from the western Sudan. Going to visit New Orleans
(you should go, they need our business!)? Louisianas jambalaya
probably has its roots in the Congo. Eggplant and watermelon
also came from Africa. West Africans also brought their traditional meal-stylea starchy base (like yams, rice, porridge, etc.)
served with a savory meat or fish (either of which might well have
been dried first) sauce spooned over the top.
Corn, chiles and peanuts (from South America), originated elsewhere but were brought to prominence in North American cooking by African cooks. Corn was grown in Africa for over 100 years
before the bulk of the slave ships crossed the Atlantic. (Toasted
corn meal porridge is very common in West Africa today, where
its often referred to as Tom Brown. The name is derived from
English boarding school tradition). Same was true for chiles, as
per Jessica Harris comment above. While its unlikely to be universally true, historian Howard Paige takes the power of pepper
to high levels of cultural import: Hot peppers, he said, were
considered a measure of affection: The more copiously [a wife]
used hot peppers in her sauces, the more love she was thought
to have for her family, especially for her husband. If, indeed, his
food was bland, her love for her husband was not so hot!"

b) Foods that were native to the New World

The role of corn seems to have come to African American cooking from two directionsas per the paragraphs above, Africans
were cooking it long before they were brought forcibly to North
America. But when they came here they often found corn being
grown and consumed in new forms. Its no big revelation that
cornbread, grits, cornmeal mush, cornmeal coated catfish and
griddlecakes of all sorts are central to African American cooking.
The preparation of grits and cornmeal mush were likely learned
from the Native America tribes whod long been cooking porridges made out of cornmeal. (Europeansaccustomed to eating
oaten and other porridges, certainly came to use corn in colonial
era cooking as well.) Fresh corn came into play as well, often in
the form of the Native American succotash.

American cooking. So are sweet potatoes,

the connection isnt what most people think.
While true yams are a staple of native African
cooking, few Americansblack or whitehave
actually eaten them. But the African yams became
the sweet potatoes, which are often here referred to as
yams. And whether theyre baked, candied, roasted or put into
pies, sweet potatoes are central to African American cooking.
Sassafras for tea, pecans for pie, squash for casserole, all could
come into play in this context as well. And I dont want to leave
out one of my favorite dishes, Mississippi Delta tamales, both
because theyre really good to eat and because I love the mystery of its history. Made by many blacks and white folks on the
Delta, they take the Native American cornmeal and cornhusks
and turn them into a unique adaptation of the Central American
dish, but mostly made with cornmeal instead of the Mexican
masa and with beef instead of porka classic mixing of cultures
and cuisines.

c) European foods that had nothing to do with

either.
African cooks forced into service in white settingsin particular Southern plantation kitchenslearned to prepare foods that
Europeans longed for from their homeland. And many of those
dishes went on to show up in African American cooking. You can
see the influence in items like the Yorkshire Pudding thats in
Abby Fishers book or many of the recipes in Malinda Russells
1866 cookbook like Rose Cake, plum pudding, cream puffs, potted beef and blanc mange (calling for Irish moss as its gelling
agent).
Im not sure in which of these three categories to put greens,
but theyre definitely an important element in African American
cooking. They seem to have originated independently in Africa,
Asia and Europe as well. Wherever they came from, the style of
cooking that we now knowthe one pot dish, cooked long and
over low heat, with the broth (whats called potlikker) served
on the side, is very much African, and it became a mainstay of
African American cooking. In fact potlikker was understood to
be an important and nutritious ingredient in the daily diet. This
fact is a little known and little recognized African contribution
to American foodways. Potlikker is also deliciousask for a taste
next time youre in the Roadhouse.
Looking beyond origin into North American application, Adrian
Miller identified four well-recognized regional American cuisines that were heavily influenced by African foodways. First,
Theres the Lowcountry, he said. By that Id include everywhere that rice was grown, from parts of North Carolina down
the Atlantic coastline to Jacksonville, Florida. This would mean
the well-recognized Lowcountry cooking of Charleston, and also
the foodways of the Gullah people on the Sea Islands. With that
in mind, I should share that Im sort of stuck (in a good way) on
the story of Carolina Gold rice as it relates to African American
cooking. To quote from Karen Hess The Carolina Rice Kitchen, I
think it is safe to say that most, if not all, of the small growers of
rice were African Americans. First, they knew how to raise it, and
a good deal of the cultivation of rice in West Africa must have
been on a small scale.
Secondly, Adrian said, is the Creole cuisine of the lower
Mississippi Delta Valley, which you could extend along the river,
all the way through parts of Arkansas and Mississippi. (Jessica
Harris posits that this Creole influence extends well east to the
Florida coast, and to the west all the way into Texas.)
Third Adrian lists, the cuisine of the Deep South which, he says,
includes the rural cooking of the interior Southlarge swaths
of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia
where African Americans were densely populated. Foods like
fried chicken, barbecue (in all the various versions produced
across the South), biscuits, sweet potatoes, and cornbread, etc.
These are the dishes that most Americans likely envision when
they think of African American cooking. The fact that Southern
cooking and African American foodways overlap only makes
senseat the time of the Civil War over 90 percent of African
Americans lived in the South. From 1900 to 1960, during what
came to be known as the Great Migration, about 6,000,000
African Americans went north, taking their cooking with them
wherever they went. Interestingly, Adrian explained that,
although this meat and deep fat-focused cooking is now
nearly universally considered to be African American
food, the earliest versions of African American cooking
were actually primarily

Chiles are, as per the above, also an essential element of African

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vegetable based. When meat was used it was used sparingly and
mostly as a seasoninga bit of pork fat or chicken bones used to
season one pot stews, rices, quick breads or other dishesmuch
as it is in much of the Mediterranean. The richer dishes we all
know today became everyday items only when folks could afford
them after economic success or agricultural change made them
more affordable. Biscuits, for instance, were once a Sunday treat,
but became everyday food when inexpensive soft wheat flour
became available with the advent of mechanized mills.
The fourth geographic grouping Adrian identified is the cooking
of the Chesapeake Bay. This one, he pointed out, has dropped
off in prominence because weve overeaten the Chesapeake Bay
foods. But forty or fifty years ago, it was very important. The
excellent reputation for foods like terrapin, beaten biscuits,
oysters, and canvasback duck were all attributed to the culinary
achievement of black cooks.
Those four likely make up the main streams of African American
foodways, but I like to look, too, at the obscurities around the
edges, the little discussed but nevertheless interesting iterations
of cooking and culture. All of which makes me take into account
things like the cooking and influence of black cowboysyou
didnt see them on too many old TV shows, but roughly one in
five cowboys were African Americans. (See Robb Walshs The Texas
Cowboy Book for more on this subject). Similarly there are the
foodways of the Black SeminolesAfrican Americans who lived
with the Seminole Indian tribes in Florida. There are the black
homesteaders who headed out west, like the folks in Dearfield,
Colorado, where living was so rough that their version of African
American cooking was, fried potatoes for breakfast, boiled potatoes for lunch and more potatoes for dinner. Looking ahead, I
wonder how modern day influence of the significant influx of new
African immigrants coming from Somalia, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya,
Eritrea, and Ethiopia will be assimilated into the traditions that
African Americans have established over the last four centuries.
A while back I spoke at the JCC here in town on the subject of
Jewish cooking. I was telling stories of various Jewish foods
and their origins, when a woman in the audience, stopped me
and yelled out rather disdainfully, Look, just because its made
by Jews doesnt mean its Jewish food. In a way I suppose shes
kind of correct, but then again, if Jews prepare a particular dish
in the same way over a long period of time, do those not sort of
become Jewish foods too? In my study of southern Jewish cooking, one woman I talked to in Charleston, South Carolina told me
laughingly that all I needed to know on the subject was that down
South, Jewish food meant serving lox and bagels with grits. It
all comes together African American, Jewish, Native American,
and white European, in this snippet of folk history from Charles
Joyners very fine work, Shared Traditions: Perhaps the Jews of
Georgetown (South Carolina) were more like the Jewish family in
Anniston, Alabama, who recalled their, favorite Shabbos meal at
the dawn of the twentieth century as oyster stew; steak, ham or
fried chicken; Mamas homemade biscuits and corn bread, too;
Hoppin John... and sweet potato pie for dessert. (See Marcie
Ferris excellent book, Matzo Ball Gumbo for much more on the
subject of southern Jewish cooking.)

Books Telling Tales

In case you didnt already know it, I love books. Books are telling.
Whenever I start to write on pretty much any subject, I go to my
ever-larger stacks of em and see what comes up that might be
relevant. Because I never quite seem to make time to shelf them in
any very organized way I dont really ever know what Ill find, but,
I always find something interesting. In this case it was kind of wild.
First up on my stackliterally, right on top of a pilewas a short
book called Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Id gotten it as a gift from a guy who came to one of our ZingTrain seminars, but Id put off reading it for six months. Given the internal
struggle I was having, rustling up the courage to write on African
American foodways, I couldnt really resist reading it for the title
alone. Applicable? Absolutely. ...viewed objectively, Bayles
and Orland offered, these fears obviously have less to do with
art than they do with the artist. Yeah, Id pretty much accepted
thatthe problem here was pretty much all mine. What separates artists from ex-artists, the authors explained, is that those
who challenge their fears, continue; those who dont, quit. If Id
needed any reinforcement that fighting through the fear was the
right thing to do, Bayles and Orland were offering it up to me.
Your job, they conclude, is to develop an imagination of the
possible. That took me back to the vision of a positive connection
Id already been thinking about. Time to make the break and get
going on the writing.
Nearby in the stack was my copy of Malinda Russells A Domestic
Cookbook. Published in 1866, it was the first cookbook written by
an African American in the United States. We have reprints of it
for viewing or buying at the Roadhouse if youre out that way.
Obviously, I never knew Mrs. Russell personally, but Ive been
hearing about her and her book from Jan Longone, curator of
American Culinary History here at the Clements Library at the
University of Michigan for many years now. Jan always refers to
her in the first person as Malinda, as though the two women had

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been good friends, so sometimes I do too. Malinda is a fascinating

figure. She was born in Tennessee to a freed slave and, hence,
lived her whole life as a free woman. In the context of overcoming
fear to pursue an imagination of the possible, at the age of nineteen she set herself on course to return to her African roots and
made plans to go to live in Liberia. Sadly, her money was stolen in
the port before the ship sailed. She remained in Virginia as a cook,
later traveling with white women as a nurse. Struggling to make
ends meet and wanting to escape the struggles of the post-Civil
War South, she moved to Michigan, which she refers to as the
Garden of the West. She lived in Paw Paw, and thats where she
was when she wrote her book. The slim, but very significant volume, says a lot about how much African American cooking of that
era had already incorporated popular American recipes of that
erashe includes dishes like Irish potato custard, Indian pudding
and Charlotte Russe which hardly had roots in Africa.
From there the search through the stacks got even more interesting. Five down from Mrs. Russell, in a pile of small pamphlets,
I came upon something called the Southern Cook Book of Fine
Old Dixie Recipes. Oddly, despite the title, it was published like
Malindas Russells bookin the North, this time in Reading,
Pennsylvania. Written by three women I know nothing (yet)
about, it came out in 1935, nearly 70 years after Mrs. Russells
work. The light brown paper cover looked innocent enougha
nice line drawing of a pretty white woman in high heeled boots
and flowing skirts carrying what looks like a roasted turkey, on a
what I assume is a silver platter. At the bottom, under the drawing,
is the books subtitle322 Fine Tested Recipes, 40 Characteristic
Illustrations, 50 Poems and Spirituals.
Without anything other than sort of normal curiosity, I started
casually flipping through it. Many of the recipes are pretty much
what oned expect; Corn Cakes, Savannah Stewed Prunes and
Angel Food Cake werent much more than a mental shrug of the
shoulders. Other items were a bit more interestingGazpachy
Salad is a little known bit of Floridian foodways; Confederate
Coffee Cake caught my eye for the namenot sure from the list
of ingredients what made it Confederate but the fact that it
retained the name some 70 years after the Civil War is very telling.
But then, looking lower down and to the left of the coffee cake,
my attention was piqued by a recipe for Pickanniny Doughnuts.
Discomfort, started to set in. From there the strange feelings only
got stranger. As I looked through the book a second time, I realized that, aside from the recipes, on most of the pages there were
caricatures of black peoplethese were the 40 Characteristic
Illustrations mentioned on the cover. Often the drawings were
accompanied by the Poems and Spirituals, many of which were
loaded up, in what was pretty clearly not considered very controversial ways, with words like niggers and darkies and assorted
other racist images and stereotypes.
I guess I shouldnt have been at all surprised to find this stuff.
Racism is hardly a big secret, and Id read plenty of histories of
the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. But this stuff was
showing up in a cookbook, published in 1935, five years after my
parents were born, and seventy years after the end of the Civil
War. Seeing it here hit me in a weird way, one that every African
Americancook or otherwisehas, Im sure, experienced many
times. Cookbook or not, to me this is scary stuff. Political manifestos are one thingyou can find antagonistic material written
in support of most every crazy cause you can imagine. But when
racism and stereotypes are so "normal" that they show up in an
innocent looking cookbook, that tells you a whole lot more about
a culture. In this case, maybe more than we kind of want tobut
need to know, anyways. Which, I realized as I was reading, is probably pretty representative of the fear that keeps people apart, and
that continues to contribute to misunderstandings and leads to
or is informed byracial prejudices of all sorts.
With all that in mind, I guess I know that every culture and cuisineAmerican, African American, Jewish and otherwisehas
been formed by some melting pot of positive and painful, of
historical turbulence and upheaval, of local ingredients blended
with tastes that arrived from a long ways away. But the most
interesting belated glimpse of the obvious for me in studying
the origins of African American cooking came to me around the
dehumanization that it took to get peoples minds around making slavery ok. And, looking at the overt violence of the massacres at Rosewood or something like subtle but very serious
stuff laid out in The Southern Cookbook, it kept going long after
the Civil War. Clearly, its the same sort of horrible dehumanization thats happened too many times in history and that clearly is
still happening now around in the world today. In a way Im afraid
to really think about it. Less well known, is the dehumanization
that took place around literacy. The Slave Code of 1740 prohibited
South Carolinians from teaching slaves how to write; by 1814 they
werent allowed to teach reading either. Books back then might
have been telling tales but South Carolina blacks were banned
from learning them. This was no small thingpeople went to jail
for breaking the code.

Turning the Tide

But the point of this piece is to get past the fear and make connections, to stop allowing the dark parts of our past to stay in
the closet, culinary or otherwise. Our focus on the food here at
Zingermans almost always starts in the pastlearning about and
preparing traditional foods. But our organizational work is, more
often than not, fixed on the future, working to agree upon, and
then build, the future that we want and believe in. With that in
mind, I should share that one of the things I love about my work at
Zingermans is that its given me the chance to move beyond study
and actually apply history. Making, cooking, selling and serving
the food helps to get it out into a format in which people of all
persuasions can eat it, taste it and, in the process, learn about
it and where it comes from. And blending the ideas and insights
from the books with the opportunity to put traditional foodsand
their storiesin front of our customers, I fixed on the idea that
the antidote to dehumanization has to be rehumanizationthat
is, to take things out of stereotypes, out of generalizations, out
of black and white (no pun intended) into the grayness that is the
reality of life, filled with feelings and stories and real people with
real pleasures and lifes everyday problems.
Although it wasnt in my stack when I started this piece, The
Historical Cookbook of the American Negro is a work of great import
in the study of African American foodways. Put out together by
the National Council of Negro Women, and first published in 1958,
it strikes me as being all about rehumanization. I dont have an
original copy, but fortunately a very nice reprint came out in the
year 2000. Like the Southern Cookbook of Fine Old Dixie Recipes, the
cover is rather unremarkable; a pleasant, soft yellow with dark
red script and a drawing of a classically frosted cake on a platter.
The two books are about the same height and width, and if I were
organizing them by size they could logically be shelved side by
side. Given the strange workings of my brain I start wondering
if thats good or bad. Is integration of cookbooks a good thing?
Would the spirit of The Historical Cookbook be held back by having
to sit in such close proximity to the racist recipe writing in The
Southern Cookbook? Or would it be appropriate "punishment" to
inflict on the writers of the Southern Cookbook to put their work
on an integrated shelf, sitting day after day right up against one of
the first cookbooks fueled by an overt statement of pride in the
black culinary heritage? Regardless of where I store it, the book
is fascinating. Sue Bailey Thurman, chairman of the NCNW, wrote
in the introduction to the original that the book is, what we consider a new, unique and palatable approach to history. While
The Southern Cook Book contributes mightily if subtly in its original setting to radical racism, The Historical Cookbook is all about
rehumanization.
Although the sizes and covers seem somewhat similar, the subtitle
of The Historical Cookbook makes clear right off that theyre two
very different volumes: The classic year-round celebration of
black heritage, from Emancipation Proclamation Breakfast Cake to
Wandering Pilgrims Stew." Flipping through the book, its actually
not all that dissimilar in structure to The Southern Cookbook. It has
recipes of course, but also bits of background, illustrations, some
photos. But where the latter features Confederate Coffeecake,
the first recipe in The Historical Cookbook is Emancipation
Proclamation Breakfast Cake. As with the Confederate version I
dont really know what in the cake makes it so well suited to the
historical even to which its tied but that really doesnt matter. In
this case the recipe sits to the right of a photo of Abraham Lincoln
and Sojourner Truth (who, like Malinda Russell, lived in Michigan,
in this case in the town of Harmonia, and then in nearby Battle
Creek). Like The Southern Cook Book this one has poems too. But in
this case, theyre by people like W.C. Handy, who wrote, I want to
point out to Gods Children, it pays off to be good, to help remold
nations into one big neighborhood. In the context of personalizing the food, take note that Handys poementitled, Before the
Evening Sun Goes Downsits next to the Chicken and Dumplings
recipe that was his favorite meal.
As with Malinda Russells book, much of whats in the book are
simple foods that Americans of any origin might have eatenRed,
White and Blue Fruit Cocktail (honeydew melon, frozen raspberries, blueberries and sugar) cracks me up. There are recipes from
Howard University sororities for cookies and punch. There are
also foods of old and new African American roots woven into the
booka South Carolina Pilau from the Lowcountry origins that
Adrian Miller mentioned; Hopping (interestingly not Hoppin)
John; peanut dishes that date to Booker T. Washingtons time.
In the introduction to the reprint, Anne L. Bower (Associate
Professor of English at Ohio State University in Marion) writes
that, History resides in many places. It is in our memories of family and the stories passed down to us. It in our hometowns and
home countries, even in the customs we have maintained. But,
she points out further down in the piece, in the past, history, as
understood by the mainstream culture of the Unites States, was
almost entirely the recorded accomplishments of white men.
Given that theres never a singular history or cooking, what we
really have are a series of millions of peoples personal experiences that develop from, or often into, some common themes and
some shared stories, and, in the food world, shared ingredients as
well. To think about the food in all its formsbeing loaded onto

and then cooked on 16th century slave ships soon to sail west from
Africa; the fear that would likely have accompanied meals cooked in
slave camps in Africa and then on board the boats; the first food that
newly arrived Africans might have experienced in North America;
the experience of West African slaves brought here to teach white
slaveholders how to build systems for growing rice in 17th century
South Carolina; cookbooks in South Carolina kitchens that slave
cooks couldnt be taught read; the blending of all those native, new
and African ingredients in plantation kitchens; people like Malinda
Russell taking their cooking out into the world; people I know here
in Ann Arbor and people Ive met around the country whove shared
family stories and recipes. Out of all of all of those we form a reality of, in this case, African American cooking, a cooking thats about
very real people, hard times and good times, shared learnings, and
very real, very flavorful food.
One recipe in The Historical Cookbook, called Cornbread Harriet
Tubman; Our Aunt Harriet's Favorite Dish, sort of pulls the whole
thing together in my mind. The actual recipe isnt particularly noteworthy in itselfits cornbread made with salt pork, soured milk
and a bit of brown sugar. But the head notes, written by Vivian
Carter Mason who grew up knowing Harriet Tubman, are fascinating. Theyre all about fear, and food. We shivered, as we heard the
sound of horses hoofs, fearing the men searching the woods and
highways for black Harriet and her runaways." she wrote. "That they
never caught up with her was always the triumphant ending of a
fearful and frightening recital of days full of danger and suffering.
Then mother would call us to dinner, and as the lamps cast a bright
light on the huge kitchen, with the teaming bowls of rich soup and
the crisp cornbread piled high, it was not hard to imagine that in
the darkness outside someone was still searching for Harriet and
would take us too. Fear, food, race, art and the future, all there in
one paragraph about people and a plate of cornbread from the past.
What I hope is that by writing and teaching, by cooking and caring,
we will successfully bring more light, more openness to the African
American experience of cooking and foodways. That well be able
to both teach history, but also to personalize, humanize and rehumanize in ways that are meaningful to most everyone whos interested. And, in the process, that well be able to break down the
fears that inhibit connection; and through all of that help to make
the understanding of, respect for and knowing consumption of
African American foodways so normal in this area that no one will
ever remember a time it wasnt that way. With that in mind, I invite
everyone to zoom in on the personal culinary and cultural details in
the way that one of the countrys great writers, Zora Neal Hurston.,
did early in the 20th century, (as described in Zora Neale Hurston; A
History of Southern Life): "(Zora) was an expert witness to her time,
author Tiffany Ruby Patterson wrote. She imagined, as every great
artist does; but she also made it her business to see, hear, and write
as an ethnographer doesin detail, in depth, and by bringing to bear
a deep understanding of human complexity.
Finally, in the context of creating vision of a better tomorrow, that
imagination of the possible, that Bayles and Orland wrote about in
Art and Fear, I come back to a few sentences that Sue Bailey Thurman
put down in her introduction to the Historical Cookbook of American
Negro. Referring to the book and the people mentioned itboth
those who were famous and those were known to barely anyone
other than their families and friendsThose included were
selected as symbols of the past who sought only to preserve
the life of the future, knowing that the future must be
guaranteed in the present. We are their future.

12th Annual African American Foodways Special Dinner

"Biscuits for Your Outside Man"

#20

A Fundraiser Dinner for the Music Maker Relief Foundation

By Marcy Harris
Blues have a narrative, and food tells a story. There is a rich history of both in the South, and so it is no coincidence
that the blues often uses food and cooking as metaphors. Elements of both nurture and elaborate on survival. American
foodways weave an element of creating sustenance out of sourcing out what is available, making something nutritiously
meaningful out of what can be grown or acquired by region. According to Zingermans Roadhouse Executive Chef Alex
Young, The flavor of the food mirrors the souls of the people who produce it and the soil they tend. The more these
regional artisans work to create the ingredients, the more they endeavor, the more the elements develop character. This
character is what makes our food taste so good. Just as food develops more flavor from the struggle put into it, the depth
of the music of the South reflects the endeavors of the artists.
The path of American song can be navigated back through the decades with the ongoing persecution of a working class
system. What few, precious leisurely hours that were available to many farmers, factory workers, or domestic servants
of this nation were devoted to artistic expression, a way to relate the injustice of the working condition. The blues generated from talented individuals who plucked their chords out of the oppression and the poverty they were confined
to, but couldnt move beyond these restraints to thrive on what they produced. In the late 1980s, Music Maker Relief
Foundations founder Timothy Duffy, traveled around Winston-Salem, NC to interview traditional artists, and discovered
the truth of the limitations they were striving against. Many couldnt even afford to pay their utilities, let alone play in a
respectable venue with decent instruments. Some barely scraped by on Social Security. It gave them meat and potatoes
for their music, but didnt put food on the table.
The Music Maker Relief Foundation is a dream makers, having created a reality for blues artists to focus on their music
that they havent known otherwise. In 1994, Tim and his wife Denise Duffy started the foundation to make it possible for
elderly Southern musicians to continue singin, strummin, and marking their place in an indelible lineage of folk, blues,
gospel, Native American and string music. Limited by education, income, and age, many of these musicians have almost
given up hope when instead they should be recorded as true historians. They are bards passing on the cultural notes
and stories of an era as rich as soil in musical talent, namely the 19th and 20th centuries when the reverberant hum of
blues and folk music brought inspiration to a transitory nation. When asked how they could be helped, the artists asked
only to be able to develop their musical careers, not for a hand out. Music Makers has provided resources such as career
development guides, agency booking and tour management, grants for musical equipment, and cultivation of public relations so that the artists can produce music and sustain living incomes. As a result, the soulful roots of these artists have
been unearthed.
Denise Duffy asserts that America tells its stories through song. Just like the Music Makers have brought back musicways
that are embedded in American heritage, Zingermans Roadhouse has strived to connect with foodways that are planted
in American culture and steeped in tradition. The African American Foodways Special Dinner #204 will be a celebration
of how people can create fulfillment with food and music given the elements they need to do so. Chef Alex Young has
collaborated with our special guest, Music Makers member Dom Flemons from The Carolina Chocolate Drops, to create
a dinner that reflects the music of the very artists the foundation has helped promote. Come by and taste the BBQ that
Drink Small sings about in his song, Living in a BBQ World," and the buttery biscuits that Algia Mae Hinton sings about
in Cook Cornbread for Your Husband." Each ticket purchased for this soulful event will provide a donation to the Music
Maker Foundation. The African American Dinner on Tuesday, January 17th will be an opportunity to taste the metaphors
that we hear in the songs of the South, to taste the flavors and hear the music that resulted from the inspiration behind
the struggle.

To learn more about the Music Maker Relief Foundation and the stories of their musicians, visit
www.musicmaker.org.
Please visit www.events.zingermanscommunity.com to purchase tickets for the African American Foodways Special
Dinner, #204, at Zingermans Roadhouse on Tuesday, January 17th.

Why I Love the Music Maker Relief Foundation

My name is Dom Flemons and I am The American Songster." I was born in Phoenix, Arizona where I spent many hours of my youth studying the different styles
of American Folk Music. I studied at Northern Arizona University where I got my BA in English literature. All the while I studied, practiced and played music
for the different communities around me. I played on street corners, in coffeehouses, bars and club houses learning my craft. It wasnt until 2005 that I got my
chance to pursue music full-time. Over the past ten years, I have performed for more than a million people, spreading the word about traditional American
music. Through my travels, I have found that there needs to be a reclaiming of the American identity through inclusion and not exclusion. The culture that
revolves around music has always been about inclusion. In the South, music creates a strong sense of community because it serves as a way to celebrate to
the past and welcome the future.
North Carolina has been a long-time hub for traditional folk and blues performers. For many musicians living in the South, music is a way of life. It
goes hand in hand with work, religion, school and life at home. Music Maker Relief Foundation is a non-profit organization based out of Hillsborough,
North Carolina. When Tim & Denise Duffy, the founders, moved to North Carolina over 20 years ago, they discovered a rich community of roots music.
Their passion led them to develop a non-profit that helps traditional Southern musicians who have fallen on hard times. They have successfully created partnerships with each artist by working with them to get their music out to the bigger world.

Dom Flemons plays at The Ark

on Monday, January 16th
www.theark.org

I have served on the Music Maker advisory board since 2009. The Executive Director, Tim Duffy, is a man who I can also personally thank for my own career after having released several albums
on Music Maker label. The artists that have worked with Music Maker are incredible and thanks to Tim and Denise they have been documented in the history books for future generations to
discover. Music Maker Relief Foundation is filled with many wonderful and talented personalities. Each of them had their own ways of talking about food. John Dee Holeman would take a drink
of moonshine and say, Dear God, this stuff here could knock the soda out of a biscuit without breaking the crust.
Music and the Blues go hand in hand because they are both meant for the celebration of life! We as a community and a diverse culture cannot help but incorporate the sounds and the flavors
of good cooking. Thats why its called Soul Food, down home cookin, and comfort food. You dont just cook the food. You have to throw down in the kitchen make a toe jump in its boot,
you dip your toenail in it! These are the ways you feel when youve made a meal that everyone can enjoy! Its a memorable experience!
My mother used to tell me growing up at the breakfast table, Fill up because thats all you get 'til dinner, meant getting that little extra slice of bacon so that you could do your chores with
all the fuel you needed to get through the day. Dinner is for putting you to bed so you can wake and do all over again. Thats why you have to put a little extra butter, that little bit of crackin
goodness that may not be good for you, but it feels so good when you lay your head down. Thats groanin goodness!
The Music Maker Relief Foundation Fundraiser dinner will be a special night because it will be celebrating the food and music flavors of Southern culture. As the food must reflect the culture,
the music must demonstrate the many ways that we talk about the food. The meal has been curated by the folks at Zingermans Roadhouse and will be incorporating the musical delicacies of
Music Makers most recent compilation, Biscuits for Your Outside Man. From Algia Mae Hintons sly title track to George Higgs Greasy Greens, Music Maker is serving a whole lot of great
music as Zingermans throws down in the kitchen for a night to remember!

ISSUE # 257

JAN-FEB 2017

Available at Zingermans
Bakehouse, Roadhouse
& Delicatessen

We have made some great specialty breads and

pastries over the years that developed their own
followings. we bring them back for a weekend
here and there just for fun! If youre looking for a
little adventure, check out this calendar.

January
ROSEMARY BAGUETTES 12/30-1/1
Our popular French baguettes with addition of aromatic fresh rosemary. A perfect
pairing with olive oil or Zingerman's Creamery Fresh Goat Cheese.

CHERRY SCONES 12/30 -1/1

We have missed you, cherry scones! They have just enough flour to hold the sweet
butter and Guernsey Dairy cream together. Then, in this case, we add Michigan
dried cherries.

CRAQUELIN 1/6-1/8
The national bread of Belgiumthis beautiful, golden pan loaf of buttery brioche bread rolled up with fresh orange zest and sugar cubes soaked in Grand
Marnier. A thick slice lightly toasted with a cup of tea would be pure delight any
time of day.

CINN-OH-MAN 1/6-1/8
Making two appearances this month to satisfy fans! This breakfast pastry has
intense cinnamon flavor throughout its flaky layers of buttery croissant dough,
then it's covered with cinnamon butter and glazed in cinnamon and vanilla.

PUMPERNICKEL RAISIN 1/13-1/14

Chewy, traditional pumpernickel bread with juicy red flame raisins and a
sprinkle of sesame seeds. Great toasted with a schmear of
Zingermans Creamery award-winning cream cheese.

BACON CHEDDAR SCONES 1/13-1/15

The savory scones are straight from the recipe
found in the Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon,
using Nueske's applewood smoked bacon and
aged cheddar cheese. They are also part of
a balanced breakfast at Zingerman's annual
Camp Bacon.

SWEET BUTTER TEA CAKE 1/19-1/22

Back just for the weekend! This little coffeecake gets its rich
and moist texture and flavor from the Wisconsin sweet cream butter and real
sour cream from Guernsey family dairy in Northville, MI. Enjoy a slice with your
favorite coffee from Zingerman's Coffee Company.

GREEN OLIVE PAESANO 1/20-1/21

LEMON POPPYSEED COFFEECAKE 2/2-2/5

Made with real lemon oil from Boyajian, loads of real butter, real vanilla and a pile
of poppy seeds. It tastes like biting into a perfect morning: sunny, rich, delicious.

SOMODI KLACS (SHO-MO-DEE-KO-LOCH) 2/3-2/4

A traditional Hungarian Easter bread we learned to bake in a village in Transylvania.
This soft golden pan loaf is made with fresh eggs and a sweet buttery cinnamon
sugar swirl. The smell is amazing. The taste is even better.

PATTIS GIMME SMORE TARTS 2/10-2/12

A Bakehouse graham cracker shell filled with soft dark chocolate ganache and
topped with toasted meringue. Created by long time baker Patti Weaks. Warm it up
a bit for the full experience.

CHOCOLATE CHALLAH BREAD 2/10-2/11

A golden pan loaf of our glorious challah bread with chunks of Belgian semi-sweet
dark chocolate. It makes positively sinful french toast or bread pudding.

CHOCOLATE CHERRY BREAD 2/13-2/14

An unexpected Valentine gift or dessert! A chocolate lover's fantasy come true: the
best Belgian and French chocolates and dozens of Michigan dried cherries. Set a
scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of a warm slice, and you'll be sitting in front of
the most decadent dessert you've had in years.

CHOCOLATE DIPPED PALMIERS 2/13

Our crispy palmiers are made from our own hand-layered butter puff pastry. Here,
they take a little dip in intense dark chocolate. A special treat for Valentine's Day
weekend.

PEPPERED BACON FARM 2/17-2/18

Nothing says romance like bacon. Check out applewood smoked bacon and black
pepper lovin' it up in a crusty loaf of our signature farm bread. Nearly a pound loaf.
A meal in itself! Our most popular special bake.

ALMOND POUND CAKE 2/16-2/19

Rich, moist and packed with pure almond paste. It's so flavorful it's a real treat all
by itself. Or, try it with a little raspberry sauce, a dusting of powdered sugar or a
scoop of coffee gelato.

MARGARETS SWEET WHEAT 2/24-2/25

CINN-OH-MAN 1/27-1/29

100% organic whole wheat flour, local buttermilk, Michigan honey and lots of
toasted sunflower seeds. This bread is so special that Frank, managing parter of
Zingerman's Bakehouse, named it after his daughter. Makes great toast or a peanut
butter banana sandwich.

CHERNUSHKA RYE 1/27-1/28

KING CAKE 2/24-2/28

A chewy round of our Paesano bread with savory green olives. Makes an instant
appetizer.

Chewy traditional Jewish rye with peppery chernushka seeds. This one definitely
has a following.

reserve your special bakes today!

calL 734.761.2095

Was $6.29/ea now $4.50/ea

January

february

RUSTIC ITALIAN ROUND

One of our best selling breads for its
versatility. It has a beautiful white
crumb and a golden brown crust. This
is that great, simple, white European
loaf. All it needs is some sweet butter.

10

February

ISSUE # 258

BETTER THAN SAN FRANCISCO

SOURDOUGH ROUND
Good enough to ship back to
California. Crisp, crackly crust, moist
honeycombed interior and the trademark sour tang that will tickle your
tongue.

JAN-FEB 2017

No food coloring or plastic dolls, just buttery layers of puff pastry filled with our
own almond frangipane. Each cake is baked with one whole almond inside-get the
lucky slice and youre crowned king (or queen) of your Mardi Gras party!

PACZKI 2/28
This year we're offering these five flavorful filling choices: raspberry jam, lemon
cream, sweet ricotta, chocolate pudding, and rose hip jam.

January

february

WHITE CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY CHIFFON

CHESTNUT CREAM RIG JANCSI TORTA

It looks a little like a winter snowfalllight, creamy,

and tastes heavenly. Layers of vanilla chiffon cake
sandwiched with vanilla bean pastry cream and
seedless raspberry preserves, all covered in vanilla
butter cream and white chocolate shavings.

Only Zingerman's Bakehouse is making this special dessert! Named after Rig Jancsi [ree-go yanCHEE] (1858-1927), a famous Hungarian violinist,
this regal torte is made with two light layers of
chocolate chestnut sponge cake, filled with rumspiked, chestnut whipped cream, iced with a thin
layer of apricot glaze and finished with rich dark
chocolate ganache.

winter flavors
are here!
One of our very favorite things about this
time of year is the cobblers, pies, crisps,
and various other piping hot desserts that help to take our minds
off the shortness of the days
and the coldness of the outdoors. Theyre also perfect
with our winter-only gelato
flavors! Over the years weve
honed a list of flavors we
think offer the very best of
this season, and were super
excited to introduce a new
one to the lineup: GRAPEFRUIT
SORBET!

January

Bridgewater is one of the Creamerys most robust

cheeses. Made from fresh cows milk, this luscious creamy,
soft-ripened ball is spiked with cracked and whole black
Tellicherry peppercorns. With a full-flavored peppery
zing that perfectly complements the slight citrus and
gentle mushroom notes of the paste. Perfect with blueberry jam, and a nice, crisp Michigan hard cider.

We hand-squeeze fresh grapefruit

to make this ridiculously refreshing
sorbet that captures all of the tart goodness of a grapefruit without any of the overly
bitter flavors, youll get from commercially processed
grapefruit juice. As an intermezzo in a truly incredible
winter dinner, or just a citrusy jolt to a dreary day,
we simply love this sorbet this time of year. Look for
it at Zingermans Deli, Zingerman's Coffee Co., and in
our very own Creamery Retail shop after we re-open!

february
Pere Marquette is an homage to the classic French St. Felicien. We start with the
Winter Flavors:
Grapefruit Sorbet
Rocky Ride Gelato
Chocolate Heat Gelato
Cherry Chocolate
Chip Sorbet

January

February

Hot pepper loves chocolate. Chocolate

loves coffee. Coffee loves you. Pop in for
our mouth warming January signature
drink, a Spicy Hot Mocha!

Love is in the air, and if you're not careful, you might be struck by Cupid's Bow!
Or you could preemptively drink one at
the Coffee Company. Vanilla and rose
water mix in this amazing latte that will
stay close to your heart all February long!

Cupids Bow

Spicy Mocha

best cows milk we can source. Conditioning this cheese inside a terracotta crock develops a
luscious texture that continues to develop over time, eventually becoming almost completely
liquid and ridiculously rich. There are plenty of things you can do with this cheese, but our
favorite is to put in on a table with some baguette, dust its top with a little bit of table sugar,
hit it with a brulee torch, and then just let nature take its course.

January

February

Uganda

Brazil Full Bloom

Rwenzori Mountains
The Bakonzo tribe grows their coffee under
the shade of banana trees along side cassava, maize, beans, and groundnuts to
diversify income. The average smallholder
farmer works about two acres of land and
processing/quality control is tightly regulated. Ripe cherries are hand picked and
the beans are washed using hand pulpers.
We liked this coffee for its smooth, cocoalike body and lovely balance.

Daterra Estate

Full Bloom is a 100% natural or dry

processed coee, meaning that the
fruit esh of the coee cherry was
left attached to the bean as it dried.
We loved this lot for its wonderful balance of chocolate and fruit
notes, and for the panorama of
avors it oers sip after sip.

ESPRESSO YO' LOVE WITH GREAT VALENTINE'S DAY GIFTS

FROM ZINGERMAN'S COFFEE COMPANY!
Our Valentines Day gift sets, featuring an exclusive
Valentines Day Coffee Blend are available
to gift to all the people you like a latt!
Coffee, brewing equipment, and chocolate
all packaged and ready to bring
to your sweetheart!
Zingerman's Coffee Company 3723 Plaza Drive #5, Ann Arbor, MI 48108

ISSUE # 257

JAN-FEB 2017

11

Cold Weather
Recipes from
Cornman
Farms

We are sharing some delicious ways to keep warm this winter with two
of our signature recipes, perfect for enjoying by a nice, cozy fire.

Cornman Farms Spiced Cider

This traditional hot spiced cider is a quick and simple recipe ideal for entertaining, and one that we
frequently serve at the Farm. Its fun, festive and easy! Our recipe uses spices from one of our favorite
purveyors, pices de Cru one of the worlds top spice makers. You can purchase directly from Spice
Trekkers or you can always substitute with the spices you have in your kitchen. This is a classic that
the whole family can enjoy, just make sure to prepare a kid-friendly batch!

Ingredients:

Directions:

1 gallon Michigan Cider

90 cloves (80 for garnish)

Fill a medium sized pot with the cider and

spices.

20 juniper berries

Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck is a popular

variety of winter squash, which belongs to
the Cucurbita genus (Cucurbita moschata
'Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck'). This
variety is a vegetable that typically grows
as an annual (a plant that matures and
completes its lifecycle over the course of a
single year). Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck
is known for growing to quite a large height
and has a sweet earthy taste to it.

Cream of Pennsylvania Dutch

Crookneck Squash Soup
This is a staple here at Cornman Farms and the perfect way to start off a hearty winter
meal. It is relatively simple to make at home and to source locally here in Michigan. If
you cant find Crookneck Squash at the farmers market or the store, you can substitute
it with traditional butternut squash. This recipe makes 1 quart.

Ingredients:

Directions:

Bring to a boil then turn down to simmer.

250 g squash:
(Pennsylvania Dutch
Crookneck)

1 pod star anise

Let cider simmer for 1 hour.

50 g shallots

Place all ingredients in a

medium
pan sized so the liquids cover
the ingredients.

If serving immediately, filter out the spices

and put into a thermal serving dispenser
to keep it warm.

15 g garlic

Cover with a lid.

2 cinnamon sticks

300 g cream

Place on medium heat for 50

minutes or until the squash is
tender.

Zest of 1 lemon
Diplomatico Reserva Rum
(or any other aged rum)

50 g milk

If you have the time, our bartenders suggest leaving the spices in the cider and
refrigerating overnight. Then, strain and
heat before serving the next day.

50 g butter

For the garnish, slice an apple and poke 4

cloves through the slice then add to mug.

1 g Tellicherry Pepper

Serve in teacups and saucers or

in bowls.

1.5 g fresh thyme

Add 1.5oz of the aged rum to a mug and

top with spiced cider.

Serves about 6-8 people.

0.5 g bayleaf

Blitz with a stick blender or a

high speed blender.

25 g honey

Pass thru a fine sieve into a

serving bowl.

50 g apple
4 g salt

Serves 20-25

chocolate covered

O: The Oprah Magazine raved about our peanut brittle saying:

This light, airy, crunchy confection, handmade in small batches,
features all the deep butterscotch flavor of traditional brittle but
none of the teeth-cracking stickiness.
So, Charlie Frank at Zingermans Candy Manufactory just had to go one step beyond and
smother it all in dark chocolate. It just made
us all ask, Why didnt someone think of this
sooner? Chocolate and nuts, smooth and
crispy, sweet and salty. All are proven yins
and yangs in the dessert world, yet to our
knowledge, no one has put them together in
a single snack. Until now.

We start with Jumbo Runner peanuts toasted

right in the sugar with butter, sea salt, and
real vanilla. The sugars cooked long enough
to have complex caramel avors and to shatter and crunch when you munch it. Its handpulled for maximum brittleness and crispiness. Then the peanut brittle is coated in
our own blend of fabulous, luscious 62% dark
chocolate.
This special offer ends soon! Pick up a bag at
any Zingermans location. Come to think of
it, grab a couple. Youre not going to want to
stop after one.

$2/2 OZ. BAG

JANUARY ONLY
Available at Zingerman's Deli, Bakehouse,
Roadhouse, and Coffee Company!

12

ISSUE # 258

JAN-FEB 2017

2017 is your year!

Tackle that bucket list
If traveling the world is on your list, Zingerman's Food Tours can you help you make
that dream a reality with ease. Together we'll see international landmarks, world
renowned sights, experience other cultures first hand, and taste unforgettable local
food. You can relax and take it all in knowing your Zingerman's host and our local
tour guide have taken care of every detail.

2017 TOURS
MAY

MAY-JUN

SEPT-OCT

8-18

27-4

30-9

Budapest
& Tokaj,
Hungary

Catalonia
& Barcelona,
Spain

Tuscany,
Italy

Hungry for your next adventure?

Photos, itineraries and more at
zingermansfoodtours.com. Follow
us on Instagram and Facebook to
stay updated and see pictures of
our travels!

Id recommend this trip to anyone.

I had a great time, and between the
restaurants and the field trips, its
definitely something I could never
have experienced if I had just gone
on my own.
Kelly, past tour guest

BOOK A SPOT AT ANY ZINGERMANS EVENT AT EVENTS.ZINGERMANSCOMMUNITY.COM

2501 Jackson Road 734.663.3663 www.zingermansroadhouse.com
Zingermans Roadhouse hosts special dinners that highlight old favorites, new
finds, celebrated chefs and traditional American foodways. Our dinners are
family-style affairs that deliver really good food with a little history on the side.

12th Annual African American Foodways Dinner

Biscuits for Your Outside Man:
A Fundraiser Dinner for the
Music Maker Relief Foundation

#204

422 Detroit Street 734.663.3400

www.zingermansdeli.com
Zingermans Deli tastings are designed to give you an
insiders view of the foods that weve searched the
world for. Youll often meet the folks who make it
and leave with a new understanding and a mouthful
of flavor. All attendees receive a 20% off coupon

for future purchases!

Tuesday, January 17 6:30pm

See page 9 for all the details!

Olive Oil 101 Class

Visit www.events.zingermanscommunity.com to purchase tickets for the Special

Dinner starting at $55/person.
Tickets can also be purchased to hear Dom Flemons play at The Ark on Monday,
January 16th, by visiting www.theark.org.
To learn more about the Music Maker Relief Foundation and the stories of their
musicians, visit www.musicmaker.org.

3723 Plaza Dr. 734.929.6060 www.zingermanscoffee.com

Whether were pulling a shot for you in our caf on Plaza Drive or sending you off with a bag
of freshly roasted beans, our passion is to source, roast and brew great coffee. Our classes
are designed for the coffee novice and nerd alike and aim to help everyone learn about
everything it takes to turn a great bean into a great cup of coffee.

Comparative Cupping

Brewing Methods

Sunday, January 8, 1-3pm, $30

Sunday, February 5, 1-3pm, $30

Sunday, January 22, 1-3pm, $30

Sunday, February 19, 1-3pm, $30

Sample coffees from Africa, Central and South Americas, and the
Asian Pacific. We will taste and evaluate these coffees using the
techniques and tools used by professional tasters. This is an eyeopening introduction to the world of coffee.

Learn the keys to successful coffee brewing using a wide variety of

brewing methods from filter drip to syphon pot. This tasting session
will explore a single coffee brewed 6 to 8 different ways, each producing a unique taste. A demonstration of the proper proportions
and techniques for each method, and a discussion of the merits and
differences of each style, will take place.

Hands-on Baking Classes

BAKE! is our hands-on teaching bakery in Ann Arbor, tucked between
Zingermans Bakehouse and Creamery. At BAKE!, we share our knowledge and
love of baking with the home baker community, seeking to preserve baking
traditions and inspire new ones.

Visit www.bakewithzing.com for our Jan-July 2017 class schedule!

Hundreds of dates for more than 50 different classes.
Mambo Italiano:
Italian Breads
Sun., Jan. 28th, 8am-5pm, $250
Did you know you can travel from Puglia
to Genoa to Sicily without leaving Ann
Arbor? In Mambo Italiano, well take you
on a bread-baking tour across Italy and
youll return home with loads of Paesano,
Rustic Italian, focaccia, and sesame semolina breads and the skills to make them any
time you want to satisfy the craving for an
Italian holiday. This is a full day of Italian
baking from finding out what a poolish
is to brushing olive oil on your focaccia
dough and a nice Bakehouse lunch in
between. You'll get plenty of hands-on
practice at working with yeasted doughs,
including kneading, shaping and proofing
too. While our loaves are rising we'll sneak
into the Bakehouse to see it done on a
much larger scale.
You'll leave BAKE! with our recipes, the
knowledge to recreate them at home, two
loaves of Paesano, two rounds of foccacia, two loaves of Rustic Italian, two
loaves of sesame semolina, a poolish to
make more bread at home and great coupons. Not to mention a full tummy from a
great Bakehouse lunch and bread sampling
throughout the day.

Doughnuts 2.0

Sun., Jan. 29, 1-5pm, $125

Sat., Feb. 11, 8am-12pm, $125
A collection of dynamite recipes for doughnut lovers! Youll make classic apple fritters and heavenly Zingermans Bakehouse
ricotta cheese-filled doughnuts. Well also
demonstrate a devilish chocolate cake
doughnut. You'll leave BAKE! with our recipes, the knowledge to recreate them at
home, all the doughnuts you made in class,
and great coupons.

Dinner Series: Sicilian

Fri., Feb. 17, 1-5pm, $125
Let's make dinner together! Frank Carollo,
Bakehouse co-Managing Partner, takes you
back to his familys roots with some of his
favorite flavors of Sicily. In this hands-on
class youll make risotto with radicchio
and pistachios, pane nero rolls and amaretti morbidi almond cookies for dessert.
Go home with dinner for four!

Pot Pies

Coffeecake Craft

Sat., Feb. 25th, 1:30-5:30pm

Thurs., Feb. 9, 5:30-9:30pm, $125

Well lead you in making really great chicken pot pie from scratch, including the
making the flaky pie crust, cooking the
velout sauce, assembling the aromatic
filling and shaping the pies. Join in on the
hands-on fun and learn to make a classic
comfort food.

In this hands-on class you'll craft three

different coffeecakes so good youll be
baking them for years to come- including
our popular hot cocoa coffeecake, blueberry buckle and banana bread with salted
pecan praline. You'll have your household
jumping out of bed in the morning for your
fresh baked creation! You'll leave BAKE!
with our recipes, the knowledge to recreate them at home, the cakes you baked in
class, and great coupons.

You'll leave BAKE! with the recipes, the

knowledge to recreate them at home, 6 pot
individual pot pies you made in class and
great coupons.

January 11, 6-7:30pm, $10/person

Have you ever wanted to know more about olive oil, or
wondered how Zingerman's selects the distinctive olive
oils we carry? Then this is the class for you! Well taste
some oils from across the globe and focus heavily on
learning. Youll walk away with a wealth of knowledge
and a new appreciation for what we call liquid gold.

La Vecchia Dispensa
Balsamic Tasting
January 18, 6-7:30pm, $35/person
Working just off the historic square in the center of the
old town of Castelvetro, southwest of Modena, Italy,
Roberta Pelloni and her husband Marino Tintori make a
range of fantastic vinegars. For the first time, their son
Simone from La Vecchia Dispensa, will join us for an evening to share the history and taste of his family's balsamics. In the words of Marino, the key to great Balsamico
is balance. So please come for this special evening of
beautifully balanced balsamic.

Honey 101 Class

February 1, 6-7:30pm, $10/person
Did you know that not all honey is equal? Some are super
sweet, some are chewy and some are even spicy. Join us
as we dive into the world of single varietal honeys and
what makes them different and special.

Vinegar 101 Class

February 15, 6-7:30pm, $10/person
Do you only think about vinegar when it comes to cleaning and salads? No matter how you answer that question,
this class will be a great peek into the world of vinegar
and all its complexity and beauty. Seats are limited so
sign up early.

Farm Tours,
Special Dinners
and Classes
Several times a month, we
open our doors to welcome 8540 Island Lake Road,
Dexter
you to the Cornman Farms
734.619.8100
Experience. We offer farmcornmanfarms.com
to-fork dinners, cocktail and
cooking classes, and farm tours.

A Taste of Italy
at Cornman Farms
January 12, 2017, $125

Cornman Farms welcomes special guest chef

Gioacchino Passalacqua, all the way from Sicily, for a
special dinner. The evening will include a multi-course
meal featuring special foods imported from Italy, as
well as wine pairings for a truly authentic taste of Italy
right here in Michigan.
For more information and to purchase tickets,
please visit www.cornmanfarms.com/events.

**Classes thru July 2017 can be found at

www.bakewithzing.com , including summer BAKE!-cations and Kids Camps**

ISSUE # 257

JAN-FEB 2017

13

44

BUILDING A H

The piece below is excerpted from my most recent book, Zingermans Guide to Good
Leading, Part 4: A Lapsed Anarchists Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business.
While the main focus of the book is, as per its title, beliefs, there are also two essays in
it on the subject of hope,and how important it is to creating a healthy organization.
As we were putting together the outline of this January-February issue of Zingermans News, the election happened. Without getting into the details of how you feel about it or who you voted for, I dont think its a stretch to say that this is an important time
to find some ways to build hope for everyone. If hope matters as much as it does in our individual lives, and in our organizations,
it only follows that it matters just as much in our communities and our countries. Its kind of straightforward. If half of the people
at Zingermans had low hope for the future, we would NOT do well as a business. If half the people in our community or in the
country have low hope, then the community and the country wont do well either. While one half of a sinking ship may be raised
higher out of the water for a short period of time as the other half goes under, its only a matter of time before the whole thing is
under water.
With that in mind, it seemed like an important and appropriate time to run one of the hope essays from the book in the newsletter. Regardless of what were personally feeling, its clear that we will all do best only when weve successfully helped build hope
for as broad a group of peopleof all ages, classes, races, genders, musical genres and cooking stylesas we can. Its only a generally hopeful setting, one in which we each help show each other a more positive future, talk about how everyone can get to that
future; show how everyones efforts matter, and how each of them matter as a human being regardless of what they do or dont
do every day; and how they all fit together into something greater than any of us can be on our own only when thats happening
are we all likely to go up and grow together.
The longer version of this essaySecret #44, Building a Hopeful Business is in Part 4 of the book. (The essay that follows it in the
book, Secret #45, A Six-Pointed Hope Star continues the conversation.) Im happy to dialogue with anyone interested, and to
learn more from your experiences and insights. My email is ari@zingermans.com.
People reflect regularly about what they hope will, or wont, happen. At
times, they talk about being hopeful, holding out hope, or hoping
against hope. But discussion about the impact that havingor not
havinghope has in business doesnt seem to come up a lot. I believe
thats a mistakewithout a hopeful attitude, very little positive, proactive work will happen. The more Ive studied the subject, the more
Ive talked about it with others, and the more Ive paid attention, the
more I see how much hope impacts everything we do.
Hope, in my metaphysical metaphor, is the sun. Hopefulness is a consistent characteristic of successful people and organizations. It helps
the plants that grow from the roots of our beliefs to reach upward.
Low hope, on the other hand, is a characteristic of struggling (or often
outright failing) businesses. Their organizational sun is blacked
outenergy is exhausted, and work quality suffers significantly when
employees are without hope.
I hope that sharing the thoughts that follow will be of value. I know
that working on this essay has already helped me. Im far more mindful of hope, and how I handle it, than I have ever been before. As
anarchist Peter Kropotkin once said, It is always hope... which makes
revolutions.

THE TRAGEDY OF FRAGILE HOPE-CRUSHED

The story of how hope came to have a much bigger part in my
consciousness isnt one that I feel super great about sharing. It
grew out of a set of organizational screw-ups that I wish had
never happened. (Ill explain more of the details shortly.) But
trying to be positive about the whole thing, Im working to see
our goof-ups as a gift, not as the god-awful gaffes they felt like
when the situations occurred. While in the moment my stress
shot way up, I realize in hindsight that I was actually fortunate
that they happenedits really only because of our failures that
my consciousness was appropriately raised. Hope, as Im now
painfully aware, isnt just a passing moment of excitement for little
kids looking forward to Christmas morning; its an important and
strategically sound part of building a successful business.
The incidents in question took place a while back, and Im not here
to point fingers or place blame. Truth is, it could just as well have
been me that messed upIm sure Ive done much the same thing,
unwittingly, more times than Id like to either know or admit. I
apologize to those Ive let down. The more I learn about the power
of hope, the more I realize how seriously I might have unintentionally detracted from the quality of peoples work experience by
unknowingly squashing their hope.
Where does our relationship to hope come from? Psychologist Rick
Snyder, one of the first people to do deep research on the subject,
reports that your childhood shaped the level of hope you have
as an adult. Leading with the positive, Ive chosen to believe that
human beings are naturally hopeful. As anarchist anthropologist
David Graeber says, Hopelessness isnt natural. It needs to be
produced. When we damage peoples sense of hope, we dont just
cause momentary hurt. When hope is crushed over and over again,
we can seriously undermine our employees entire existenceand,
through them, our own. Without hope, author Francis Moore
Lapp warns, we human beings die, if not physically, certainly
spiritually.
Each of the unpleasant incidents that triggered this conversation
occurred independently of the othersdifferent people, different
situations, on totally different days. The only connection between
them was that they all served to damageor even destroyfragile

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ISSUE # 258

JAN-FEB 2017

hopes, and that each took place in our organization. To be clear, I

was frustrated, saddened, and almost angry when I realized what
wed done. Thankfully, Id long ago memorized my partner Pauls
maxim: When furious, get curious.
As a touchstone, Pauls saying has consistently helped me to catch
myself and turn back from the criticism of others (or my own selfcriticism) towards productive reflection. In this case, I began to
examine what had taken place, to try to figure out how something
Id thought was so glaringly not good could have happened in our
organization more than once in a matter of weeks. Clearly, we
had some serious work to do here around the subject of hope
management.
While the particulars were different in each case, the problem was
basically the same. A staff member had come forward to pursue
somethinga promotion, a project, an idea, a new position, it
really doesnt matter; it could well have been a poem or a new and
improved version of Mr. Potato Head. The issue is that instead of
responding with appreciation for the staff member who had the
gumption to go after something bigger and better than the status
quo, we basically shut them down. Our response in each case was
essentially something along the lines of, thats not going to happen
because of a, b, and c. Or, Theres no way Im going to let you do
that, because you arent even doing x, y, and z.
I dont want to get into the details of what happenedits not my
intent to embarrass anyone, and I dont believe that any of those
involved had bad intentions. The first incident occurred on shift;
I just happened to be walking past and overheard a conversation
between a long-time staff
member and his manager.
The staffer was saying how
much he wanted to take on
a project that he was excited
about. I actually think it was a
good idea for improvement,
but that almost doesnt matter. The problem wasnt the
employees proposal; it was
the managers response. As
soon as the staff member had
made his suggestion, the manager immediately launched into a
recitation of all the reasons the idea wasnt going to happen.

Hope is like the

sun, which, as we
journey towards it,
casts the shadow
of our burden
behind us.

Im sure there was some merit to the managers concerns about the
employees performance that led him to respond so critically. The
problem isnt that his reasons for being critical were wrongits
just that hed presented things in such a way as to scare the staff
member off of ever sharing an inspirational idea again. While the
manager talked, the staffer started looking down to the floor,
shifting his feet back and forth, like a kid getting lectured by an
angry parent. I can imagine that he was feeling both frustrated, as
if hed failed, and angry that the wisdom in his words wasnt being
recognized. Hurt that his idea for improvement was being rejected.
I know how I feltI was embarrassed.
In her book Confidence, Rosabeth Moss Kanter remarks, A loss is
a crossroads, not a cliff. Winners make mistakes and encounter
troubles all the time without falling off the edge. How problems
are dealt with shapes whether they are just an interruption or
a sign of impending doom, whether winners are resilient or are
stuck in increasingly ineffective behavior. In this case, things sort
of worked out. The employee had the courage to come talk to me
about what had happened. I tried, per the principles of Servant

Leadership (see Secret #23, in Part 2), to handle it as I would a

customer complaint. I acknowledged what had happened and
apologized on behalf of all of us. And then I set about making
things right by working with him to try to accomplish what it was
that he had his heart set on, trying not to totally undercut the
manager in the process. Before we went our separate ways for the
day, I thanked him for having the courage to come forward despite
his frustration.
While I know empathy doesnt excuse what went down, I didnt
just slough it off by blaming his boss. Its not hard to imagine that
the manager was caught off-guard, busy, and maybe behind on his
own work. Knowing how life goes, he was probably legitimately
frustrated with the employee over five or six shortfalls the staffer
had in recent months. The manager ended up leaving Zingermans
before I had the chance to talk to him about the issuehe wasnt
a good fit for our organizational values. But most importantly, the
whole thing got me thinking about hope at a much deeper level
than I ever had before.
I know, of course, that were not the only organization to have
made this mistake. To the contrary, what caught my attention here
is that while the negative response we gave to the staff members
idea isnt (I hope) an everyday experience at Zingermans, in the
big-business world, from what I hear, its more often than not
the norm. Longtime Zingermans customer Keith Ewing spent
years struggling to stay positive in what sounds like a war-weary
corporate world. Going to work in the organizational killing
fields is how he describes it. Jobs arent always easy to come
by, and really good work is certainly the exception, not the rule.
But still, work doesnt have to be that way. I figure if I share our
shortfalls openly, it makes it easier for others to have hope. If
we can screw up and recover with grace, so too can anyone else
whos willing to own their errors and get to work on making
things right.
In fact, one thing that contributes to building hope is showing
people that others they relate to have made it through similar
obstacles and have achieved success. That very approachdealing with problems and finding creative and effective ways to
move forwardis one of the signs of a hopeful mind.
What kind of hope do I hope for? I hope that tomorrow can be
better than today; that our work will make a difference; that if
we work hard and go after greatness, good things will happen.
I hope that we can contribute positively to our emotional, intellectual, and financial improvement, and that of others around us.

HOPE HELPS
Not sure that this emphasis on hope actually makes a difference?
Ask around. I doubt that youll find a single person whos doing
great work, in any area of activity, whos not already hopeful about
the future. Even when difficult days cloud their horizon, hope soon
reappears. Effective leaders are almost always high-hope individuals who have the ability to cultivate hope in others around them,
with energy growing significantly in the process. Its clear to me
that one reason Emma Goldman inspired so many people from the
periphery of society a century ago is that she gave hope to those
whod had so little in their lives.
To paraphrase the old Coke commercial, Things go better with
hope. Snyder reports that:

OPEFUL BUSINESS
[C]hildren and adults who scored higher in hope have: (1) coped
better with injuries, diseases and physical pain; (2) scored higher
in satisfaction, self-esteem, optimism, meaning in life and happiness; (3) performed better in sports; and (4) excelled in academics (elementary to graduate school). What is especially compelling about these hope findings for sports and academics is that
they have occurred beyond the predictions that are caused by
natural abilities. That is to say, hope predicted sports performances even when the participants natural athletic talents were
statistically adjusted for. Similarly, when intelligence was corrected statistically, hope still predicted academic performances.

from believing in a more positive future. The extreme situations

are akin to total darkness. Viktor Frankl writes, The prisoner who
had lost faith in the futurehis futurewas doomed. With his loss
of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself
decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Most
folks, though, are all too accustomed to that hopeless feeling.
Its likely that theyll just keep on showing up, punching in, and
checking out. But as philosopher Paul Tillich tells us, Boredom is
rage spread thin. A placid surface can surprise later in the form of
sudden emotional eruptions. Being angry at the world around them
starts to seem like standard operating procedure.

Snyders former student Shane Lopez quotes his colleague Suzanne

Peterson: More hopeful employees are more likely to engage
in and accept organizational change efforts. Theres more, too.
Higher-hope people show less burnout on the job, are more
likely to exercise, and do not perceive that events in their lives
are as disruptive as do lower-hope people. Rather than beginning
to worry and ruminate about themselves, higher-hope people concentrate on the situation at hand to see what needs to be done.
High-hope folks are also more likely to be called on for leadership. Lopez concludes, a high IQ is not essential to a good life.
However, we cant live without hope. All this, of course, is why
actively investing time and energy into building hope in a business
is such a big deal.

Low-hope organizations are running in an emotionally inefficient

way, one that I cant imagine actually benefits anyone. [L]ow hope
can envelop a persons life, Snyder says, and it can also consume
an organizational culture. As anarchist professor Mohammed
Bamyeh writes, [H]umanity then only loses interest in itself as it
ponders, like an animal in a zoo, the [hopeless] impossibility of
moving beyond existing structures and confines. In that context,
hope has a limited scope; peoples hope at work is that things will
go smoothly enough, work wont be horribly hard, and Friday will
come quickly. The quality of their contribution, of course, suffers
significantly, which in turn leads to low energy and poor performance, both personally and organizationally.

HOPELESSNESS HURTS
Low hope works in reverse. Its another one of those cycles were
unwittingly a part of. People with low hope perform poorly. And
people who perform poorly start to lose hope. Many of the people
who make up the altogether too large deprived segments of society have, understandably, lost hope. Its hard to have hope when
everything around you feels like its falling apart. Natural Law of
Business #4 says that people do their best work when theyre part
of a great organization. The inverse is equally accurateas Cesar
Chavez, farm worker, civil-rights leader, and founder of the United
Farm Workers, said, in a damaged human habitat, all problems
merge.
Its clear that lowor nolevels of hope in an organization lead
to low energy, subpar service, and little engagement. We can talk
all we want about needed change, but hopeless people are generally listening only to make sure that nothing even worse is about
to happen to them. They slowly start to shut down, to withdraw
from, rather than engage with, the worldthey pull back into their
hard emotional and intellectual shells where, not shockingly, they
feel safer. They may poke their heads out now and again, but
basically, they just cut themselves off from most of the world as
a method of self-protection. They feeland actlike their efforts
are essentially irrelevant. They may well toe our organizational
line in order to avoid problems, but theyll almost never push hard
enough to achieve greatness. Emma Goldman said a century ago,
No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery of their present existence, and give up.
Over the years, Ive come to explain it this way: Lets imagine that
we have an employee who aspires to do something big, but whose
current pace is not going to get them where they want to go. I look
down the hall at the doorway towards which theyre moving. The
low-hope manager shuts them downAt the rate youre going,
youll never make it. Im locking the door. Once the door is locked,
why would the employee keep busting their butt to do anything?
Theyre going to be hurt or angry, shut down, do as little as they
need to. I try to take a different approach: At the rate youre going,
youll never make it. I really want to help you. Are you ready to pick
up the pace? If you do, I think you can make it! They may still not
get there. But at least Im encouraging them to attain the vision of
the future that theyve described. And you know what? They just
might succeed!
When a staff member cant see a better tomorrow in our workplace, when the best they believe they can achieve is to just get
by, hope is hard to have. Writer Bren Brown says, Hopelessness
is dangerous because it leads to feelings of powerlessness. The
inverse is also accuratefeeling like an unempowered part of your
organization (or community or family) leads to feelings of hopelessness. Unfortunately, there are far too many jobs that fall into
that category. Its a vicious cycle. Good people, given little choice,
take bad jobs which over time just brings them down, which
then makes for bad business and, ultimately, a hard life for those
involved. Worse still, hopeless people generally get hired into
hopeless settings, which just reinforces their belief that theres no
hope. But as St. Thomas Aquinas put it, there can be no joy in living
without joy in work. Its an uninspired and ineffective place to be.
Surrounded by low hope, believing that they have no chance to
lead change, people generally get even more depressed and more
alienated with each passing day. Hopelessness becomes a way of
organizational life. People who are hired into a low-hope or hopeless workplace will either quickly resign or eventually lose hope
themselvesits hard to stay upbeat when youre surrounded by
cynicism, despair, and apathy. All of which just takes them further

Hopeless folks, by definition, will give up faster and fail more frequently. As Jos Joaqun Olmedo, both a poet and the president of
Ecuador in the mid-19th century, said, He who does not hope to
win has already lost. In the end, organizations without hope are
dying. No ecosystem can survive without sun.

WE THE PEOPLE
Melvin Parson worked on the night cleaning crew at the Deli a few
years ago. Id seen him once or twice, but we hadnt done any work
together. We connected over a book. Part 1 of this series, actually.
See, we have a standing offer out to everyone who works here at
Zingermans that they can get a copy of any of the volumes in this
series if theyre willing to read it and then make some donation
(however large or small) of time or money to Food Gatherers, the
local food-rescue program. My assistant, Jenny Tubbs, had been
chatting with Melvin one day and encouraged him to take us up
on the offer. A few days later I signed a copy of Part 1 for him. We
didnt talk, though, until one afternoon when I was out running. He
was driving by, saw me, and stopped to say hi out the window.
We chatted for a minute and he introduced me to his friend who
was in the passenger seat. Lora, he told me, was about to open her
own yoga studio.
Although Lora didnt work for us, I thought Id help Melvin help
her by getting her a copy of the book as well. It is, after all, about
enhancing the ecosystem. Showing respect for her also demonstrates respect for him. So, in my effort to live by my when in

doubt, give it out principle (see page 372), I got Lora a copy of the
book. Jenny, whos becoming a bit of a Santa Claus for readers,
delivered it. A bit later Melvin emailed to thank meI gotta tell
you that having your book delivered made her feel really special
and I believe she will take that experience with her in moving forward as it relates to making her yoga students feel special.
Eighteen months later I heard from Melvin again. He wanted to
meet. This time we were sitting at a table at the Deli, not standing by the side of the road. It was the first time Id listened to him
deeply and noticed the nuance of his energy: grounded, interesting, engaged, insightful. I liked being in his presence. I also liked
the project he came to tell me about. We the People Growers
Association in Ypsilanti. In a setting where many people dont have
access to fresh food, where most are three or four generations
removed from growing their own, Melvins small project is making
a difference. As he explains,
We the People is dedicated to using farming to empower people
who lack access to resources and opportunities. We build community through farming. I believe that growing food grows communities. I want to use [urban] farming as a vehicle to create a different
outlook for my community. Last year was my first-ever undertaking
in growing vegetables. I inherited a 3' x 20' raised vegetable garden
that had been tended to by a sweet woman named Verna. Sadly,
Verna passed away last year and somehow I was chosen to grow
vegetables in her stead; mind you I had no experience gardening.
However, I was a gamer, so off I went preparing the soil,
getting my hands dirty and loving every minute of it! I dedicated my first experience with growing food to Verna. This vision
has led me to form We the People Growers Association. I dont just
want to grow food. I want to create a sense of empowerment in
the community and educate its members about food sustainability, nutrition, and other essential skills, which promote a healthy
outlook upon self, and those about you. Our motto is Grow Food
and Get Strong.
I love it. Hope and hard work are making a difference. Melvin
started with one raised bed, not knowing a darned thing about
growing. Today its 14 vegetable and herb beds that are 20 feet long
and about 32 inches wide, tended to by dozens of volunteers, having fun and helping each other and the community. Melvins work
inspires me. Its inspired many others, too. We the People Growers
Association is effectively building hope and seeding positive beliefs
for those who havent had that many of late. Melvins generosity of
spirit brings some much-needed sunlight to a part of town that has
had more than its fair share of darkness over the last few decades.
Its helping people learn the basics of growing their own food, a
skill they can carry with them anywhere they go. Its helping to give
them the sense of satisfaction that comes from hard work you care
about, doing something good for yourself and those around you.
And its sending them home with healthy produce to boot.

HELP MAKE HOPE HAPPEN IN THE COMMUNITY!

&

Jelly BeaN Jump Up!

A Fundraiser for SafeHouse Center

Jelly Bean was a great dog who was SafeHouse Centers neighbor for nearly 17 years. Jelly
Bean,recognizable to regular Clark Road drivers and throughout the Zingermans Community,
passed away peacefully in May 2015. She was the beloved Corgi companion of Zingermans
co-founder Ari Weinzweig, and for most of their 17 years together they jogged and
walked past SafeHouse Center. Her loving personality modeled the kind of positive
belief, hope and spirit of generosity that SafeHouse Center is all about.
SafeHouse Center provides a hugely important service to our community, offering free
and confidential shelter and support to Washtenaw county residents or workers impacted
by domestic violence or sexual assault. Services include emergency shelter for those in danger of being hurt or killed, counseling, legal advocacy, support groups, and especially, hope.
Please help us honor Jelly Beans memory and help those whose lives and health are endangered by contributing whatever
you can. Donation boxes will be available throughout Zingerman's Businesses from January through February. Drop a few
coins, leave a few dollars, or write a check to SafeHouse Center/Jelly Bean Jump Up. Every little bit helps! Round up a few
cents at your next purchase, drop a couple coins at the counter, write a check to SafeHouse or go online!

ISSUE # 257

JAN-FEB 2017

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