Over the course of eight weeks, Ben Towill, the co-owner of the Fat Radish, and the photographer Patrick Dougherty are biking 4,500 miles across the U.S. to talk to strangers about food. Each week, they'll file a dispatch for T about their discoveries.
Like many kids growing up in the U.K., I was fascinated with the United States. Ten years after I moved here to work as a chef, my fascination remains. Some of the world's greatest chefs, restaurants, produce and vineyards exist within the country's vast borders. This is also, however, a nation with an ever-growing waistline and an insatiable appetite for junk food. One reason for this trip is to better understand this apparent contradiction.
Our first week took us through the beautiful state of Virginia. After a rainy third day, we pulled into a firehouse in Mineral, Va., to camp in the backyard. As we prepared our dinner, a fennel and tomato pasta, a firefighter named Dana Racette walked over to introduce herself. As I told her about the purpose of our ride, it became apparent that she was exactly the sort of person we were looking to meet. We chatted about how making healthy food choices was a huge priority for her, her husband Marc and their five children. They led a "crunchy" lifestyle, she joked. She acknowledged the many barriers to eating better — access to fresh produce, the cost of fresh produce, knowing how to cook fresh ingredients and having the time to do so. But she made it clear that she saw these obstacles as opportunities to teach her children lessons about food.
She told us about the Louisa County Community Cupboard, a local food bank that collects its stock from the nearby Walmart distribution center. When Walmart decides it can't sell food that is nearing its expiration date, the store donates it to the Community Cupboard. Dana and her husband take this food that would have otherwise gone to waste and pickle, jar and freeze it. Their frozen grapes and blueberries, mango salsas and pickling experiments sounded so delicious that we wanted to try them for ourselves.
Dana invited us for breakfast the next day at Floozie's Pie Shop, a few miles down the road in the town of Louisa. Dana, Marc, the kids and Dana's dad, Garland Knuckols, the Mayor Elect of Louisa, all greeted us. After omelettes, we headed to the Racette residence. Entering their kitchen was like stepping back in time. Everywhere you looked were signs of a family engaged with food. Marc showed us worn folders full of recipes for pickled beans and okra, apple sauce, kiwi jelly and even a recipe for a corncob jelly that his grandmother invented during the Great Depression. The tastiest dish of all was a corn and venison chili made with a deer that a friend of Marc's wanted only as a trophy. Brilliant. And delicious.
Our next stop was the Community Cupboard to meet Donna Isom, a woman so full of energy and compassion I had to give her a hug halfway through her description of her duties. She has created programs that fill the schoolchildren's backpacks full of food, stock the local churches and feed the elderly. She told me she "does not want to be part of a community that perpetuates dependency," so she educates local residents in the on-site community garden that she created. "Honey, take 10 boxes of free food today," she said, "as long as you take nine next year and you have learned how to grow the tenth."
I did not expect to leave Mineral and Louisa feeling as inspired as I do by these people who are doing everything they can to get great food onto the tables of their families and community. I am truly excited for what awaits us as we ride on into Kentucky.
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T Magazine: A Ride Across America | An Unlikely Hotbed of Food Activism in Small-Town Virginia
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