Dinner with our good friends, Chefs Walt and Jean Scheib

Friday night was a lot of fun having dinner on our back porch with our great friends, the Scheibs. Walt Scheib has non stop funny stories and Jean accompanies those stories with her dry wit, which always has me laughing. They are both graduates of the Culinary Institute and both started out as chefs, but Jean just embarked on a real estate career and Walt is always on speaking tours as “the American Chef.”

Most people know that Walter Scheib was the President’s chef for 11 years, with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In 2005, he gave up cooking for another passion, public speaking. Walt is now a world class speaker with engagements to speak to business groups on what it was like to be the White House chef all those years, while they enjoy a lunch or dinner. He does not prepare the lunches or dinners, but he does prepare the menu for the engagement. After his retirement he also published a cookbook titled White House Chef with recipes, stories, and great pictures of Presidential events. It reads like a novel and the recipes are truly worth cooking. It is also a testament to his healthful cooking that both Walt and his wife, Jean, are thin and fit and it is the big reason the Clinton’s wanted him.

Friends comment, “What do you cook for dinner? I would be nervous." But the Scheibs are totally casual. So, I planned a casual dinner. First, we started with a lime cilantro shrimp cocktail made by Jean. It was so delicious my son Steve, who joined us for a bit, commented that he would like to eat the whole platter. For dinner we had fresh mahi mahi on the grill, which Walt ended up cooking. He watched me open up a new digital thermometer, and said “you don’t need that” and proceeded to show me how to test for doneness by testing the flesh on my hand. Well, even Jean said she couldn’t check the fish that way, so Walt helped out. Back to dinner, tomatoes from our organic garden topped with blue cheese and olive oil and boiled red potatoes. For dessert, an organic lemon tart from Trader Joe’s with some raspberry and lemon sorbet.

I really wanted to get their perspective on organic foods. According to both Walt and Jean, they buy organic food if they find the taste is better. Walt said, “while non-organic food may be a health issue, it is a long term issue that doesn’t become a problem for many years. The biggest health concern of a chef is food safety and preventing food borne illnesses like salmonella and e-coli. The way meat is slaughtered, handled, and processed is the biggest problem that we have to deal with in the short term.”

Walt suggested I give his close friend, Alice Waters (the owner of Chez Panisse, who is a huge supporter of organic and local foods) a call, to tell her about my blog and get her perspective. He also suggested I call Cris Comerford, the current While House Executive Chef, for her comments.

Walt recently visited the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture for one of his clients and suggested I go visit. Their website is www.stonebarnscenter.org. They have an incredible learning site and functioning organic farm for anyone to visit just outside of New York City in Tarrytown. I plan to visit next week.

Preserving Small Local Farms

What is contributing to the loss of family farms are the ever present land development pressures. Put simply: no affordable farmland, no small farms. In many areas of the country close to urban and suburban communities, profit per acre from expanded real estate development is far higher than from small-scale local farming.

Click here to read a White Paper on the economics of keeping small farms viable.

Local and fresh?

There have been a lot of articles lately about buying local and fresh. Unless it is also organic, it is no better for you than going to the grocery store. What about the neighbors of those farmers, with all that chemical spraying? The local aspect is a huge savings on transportation costs, reducing the trucking of vegetables and fruits across country, but we need to have more farmers offering good chemical-free food as well.

We went to a local farm market in Northern Virgina last summer that had fresh vegetables, but there was not a single vendor out of 30 that grew anything organically. We were disappointed and didn't buy anything. One important point about organic farms, if the farmer says it is raised organically but is not certified because of the expense, I certainly believe them.

The good news is there is a very slow movement towards organic foods in Virginia, and in my small way I hope to speed it up.

Let's try and stop polluting our waters

This video is very interesting because we are all contributing to the quality of our water supply. The chemicals neighbors use to keep the weeds away and the lawns perfect jeopardize the health of every neighbor, their children, and certainly our pets. We have never used chemicals on our two acre lawn and it is perfectly green. Weeds are an issue, but you have to pull them out and possibly use newspaper under mulch to keep them down. We find it a bit difficult in Virgina to keep the weeds down, but using chemicals is not an option. I don't feel we should poison everyone around to have a beautiful lawn. Please consider organic options. I would rather visit someone with an imperfect lawn knowing they don't use chemicals and care about everyone's health.