Colgate Alum Tom Dempsey

I first got connected with Tom Dempsey a few weeks ago via email by another Colgate alum. Tom played football for Colgate many years ago and is now an active alum on the Board of Trustees. After Colgate, he worked for the snack food company, Utz, for several years and eventually became the President. Because of his extensive experience running such a large and successful food company, I was eager to speak with him and get his advice on some of the decisions I am making now.

During our first phone conversation, he was very interested to learn more about the product as well as the strategic business plan. He told me about the network of Colgate football alumni who have started their own food businesses. One notable company is Sunniva Caffe, which makes a 'super coffee.' (https://www.sunnivacaffe.com) Another company started by a Colgate football alum is called Squeaky Pops, which makes natural popsicles for kids (http://www.squeakypops.com). It was interesting to hear about other food entrepreneurs who also graduated from Colgate. I also learned that Chuck, the trainer for the football team, has a homemade ice cream business on the side that he sells at markets.

After the phone call, Tom invited me to his house in Hamilton to meet up in person since he and his wife would be in town for the football game. I went to their home behind the golf course on Friday with samples and we continued our conversation about how to choose the right contract manufacturer. Tom gave me lots of valuable input and also shared his experiences working at Utz. He said that although Utz has their own production facility for chips, they use a co-packer for the other snack food items that they sell such as cookies and pork rinds. He helped me outline several specific and targeted questions that I would need to ask the co-packer. The questions addressed everything from volume capabilities to ingredient sourcing to shipping access.

Overall, I found it extremely helpful to speak with an expert in the industry and learn more to better prepare myself when talking with co-packers.

Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture

This past weekend, myself and seven other Colgate students visited the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. The center is basically an agricultural research nonprofit facility that focuses on a food movement that emphasizes land-based permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and sourcing local. To break it down even further, Stone Barns uses the land a foundation for farming. They look at soil fertility and composition, regional climate, terrain, and flora and fauna ecological diversity, to determine sort of vegetables to grow on the land, how often they should be grown, and what sort of farming practices will give back to the land, both in soil nutrients and in the physical landscape.

This may seem pretty straight forward, but because of the path that agricultural has taken across the American landscape over the past two hundred years, these methods are actually pretty revolutionary and innovative. And the forethought that goes into a single growing/farming season is incredible. In the field they are planning seven years down the road, and in the greenhouse they plan for 10 years in the future! This type of mindset contributes to the overall productivity and efficiency of the farm.

 

Despite, some pretty rainy and cold weather, we were able to tour the farm, hear a little bit about their food education programs, participate in workshop classes, and observe their partnership with Blue Hill, the restaurant and hospitality program that operates on site.

On the farm tour we learned that they use three main organic practices for their vegetable farming, which increase longevity of the land, soil, and produce the best, pest resistant vegetables: crop rotation, cover crop, and sequential grazing. They grow seven families of vegetable, which is why they plan for seven years in advance. Because every family has a different effect on soil nutrient, rotating what family of crops is planted allows certain locations of soil to not be depleted in certain nutrients. Rotating families of crops also starves out any pests that might be plant family specific. Bugs will lay their eggs where they eat. So if you plant the same crop in the same location, then the bugs will hatch and not have any challenge in trying to find their food! If you are constantly changing the location of a plant family, ideally you are making it so the pests can't keep up. However, plants aren't growing in ground year round. During periods of time when land isn't being occupies with plants, cover crops will be planted. They all have different specific purposes, however, their main purpose to protect the land against erosion. Basically, they are planted in place of vegetables so there isn't bare ground exposed to rain and wind. Some cover crop plants actually return certain nutrient to the soil. Cover crops also have different life cycles, so depending on when you are going to plant in that area next, 1 month/3 months/6 months, there are different cover crops that will have an ideal growth period to match it. This is where planning seven years in advance is really helpful.

They also had cows, sheep, and chickens on the farm, rotated on different pastures. The sequence begins with sheep, who graze off the top of grass. The chickens come through next eating deeper, as well as scratching their feet in the ground, which helps to spread the manure evenly. They have 500-600 chickens, currently. They used to have more, but learned that the land couldn't support that many chickens. In the same grazing space, having too many chickens resulted in very lumpy and uneven terrain, which makes vegetable growing more difficult and nutrients don't spread out as evenly. After the chickens, the land is used for vegetable growing. However, to keep up with organic practices, a certain amount of time must pass before vegetables can be grown for health reasons. This can take anywhere from half and year to a full year depending on the crop.

 

We also learned how to test soil fertility and pH and about the heritage sheep varieties they were breeding, which are better for meat and for mating. They also showed us the polenta corn variety they have been growing recently called Oto Fellis (spelling uncertain). This variety is apparently something that came from this part of the country and was grown by Native Americans. Over time, mainstream corn varities out-competed it and so it dissapeared from the landscape. An ear of corn was mailed to Stone Barns by an Italian chef who, claimed it was the most flavorful variety out there and the best for making polenta. Somehow the variety had made its way to Italy and they have been growing ever since.

We ate lunch at the Blue Hill Cafe. And at the end of the day we circled back to the Cafe to try their fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies. Someone said it was easily the best cookie they had ever consumed.  

http://www.stonebarnscenter.org

Cookie Monster

I know I have written a lot about the holidays, but get ready. This is yet another entry about the holidays. Although Christmas is over two months away, maybe I’m starting to get into the holiday spirit due to the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorations I see in adjacent sections every time I take a trip to Big Lots. Each year, in the days leading up to Christmas, my mom’s side of the family gathers to exchange gifts. My mom has three sisters so it is quite a large gathering with everyone. Just to give a little background, my mom’s oldest sister has two sons—both over the age of 29. One of her sons even has a daughter who is now nine. Then my mom’s slightly younger sister, yet still a middle child, has three children—two sons and a daughter. Finally, my mom’s youngest sister  has three children—one son and two daughters. Then there’s me and my older brother. Therefore, with all of the cousins and family members, there is always a lot of presents to buy, even if it be a nice pair of socks. My mom and aunts always claim that they’ll begin gift shopping right after Thanksgiving, especially since Black Friday is the day after. However, only one of the sisters seems to uphold this commitment each year.

Two years ago, since there were so many gifts to buy and in order to save money, the four sisters decided to buy gifts for their own children, but also do a cookie exchange instead of a gift exchange. Naturally, I am enlisted to assist my mom in this baking process. It’s a very fun activity and nice to spend some quality time with my mom, especially after being away at school for a bit. Unfortunately, I am terrible at both cooking and baking. I used to make snickerdoodle cookies, and even though they tasted good, I’m pretty sure they were raw every time I made them. Additionally, although I believe my mom to be a wonderful cook, she surely is not very good at baking cookies. I really don’t know where we go wrong each year, but the end result is usually a few dozen burnt sugar cookies that are not in the shapes of snowflakes as we anticipated, but rather thin and flat ovals. Moreover, some of our family members are gluten-free and or vegan so this adds another challenging aspect to our task. Each year I ask my mom, “Why are we trying to make vegan and gluten free cookies if we can barely make regular cookies?” Nonetheless, each year, we still try time and time again. After a few failed attempts, we end up with edible cookies that we are able to bring. Of course my brother and father, who both contribute little to the overall process, are the taste-testers, which eventually leads to us having a shortage of the number of cookies we need.

No need to panic. One of my best friends from home used to be in Girl Scouts and is very good at making a variety of cookies. Her mom and her will usually bake a ton of extra cookies to give to friends around the holidays—including chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodle, sugar, butter, white chocolate macadamia, shortbread, and jam-filled cookies. With the approval of my friend and her mom of course, we usually bring a few of their cookies for the cookie exchange if it is our last resort. Therefore, so many cookies are baked and eaten, just in time to leave some out for Santa ;)

I hope this inspires you to bake some cookies or eat some cookies. Included below are two links (that I do not own):

*one for different cookie recipes (this should be my study guide for the next two months)

* and a link for snickerdoodle cookies (which I hope you keep in the oven longer than I do)

General Cookies: http://allrecipes.com/recipes/362/desserts/cookies/

Snickerdoodle: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/10687/mrs-siggs-snickerdoodles/?internalSource=hub%20recipe&referringId=362&referringContentType=recipe%20hub&clickId=cardslot%2019  

Brunch in Asia House

I currently live in Asia House (118 Broad) with six other housemates this semester. During one of the weekends, our Resident Assistant (RA) hosted a big brunch that was sponsored by Colgate Residential Life. The seven of us all gathered together at 9 AM and started helping our RA with preparing the food. One was in charge of the bacon, another person was working on the scrambled eggs, and few other people were helping with the table set up. When we were short on something (such as milk), we would ask around and all the residents were more than willing to take out their milk and share among others.

It is interesting to see how food can act as a social cohesion or bond among a group of people with little commonality (other than living in Asia House). Before this event, the kitchen was quiet and spacious during weekends. However, because of the communal brunch, the kitchen was never so packed and lively before. The once isolated and fragmented group of people were gathered in a single space and forced(?) to interact with one another. In addition, it is also fascinating to see how this social bond was shown through the sharing of, for example, milk with each other. Because each one of us felt that we were part of this project called “the communal brunch in Asia House,” we were willing to share and sacrifice our food for others in this project.

In many ways, food has the capacity to create a space of social inanimateness. Imagine if residents in Asia House were meeting together at the same time but without the brunch. I would imagine a formal, stale and rigid atmosphere and I would think ‘oh, another meeting.’ But, with those steamy scrambled eggs and bacons, it turned from a ‘meeting’ to a lively, social gathering.

Homemade Mac Recipe

Okay so I think we can all agree that there are few foods less beautiful than mac & cheese. Here's my great grandmother's recipe & some live action photos (fun fact: I inherited my weird middle name, Esther, from her):

Grocery list:
-1 block of Cabot extra sharp cheddar (black packaging)
-1 can (the larger size, I think it's 28 oz) of Redpack tomatoes (so the actual REAL recipe style has been discontinued, it was plum shaped with the Italian seasoning, so just get as close as you can...maybe whole peeled)
-bread crumbs
-parmesan
-a little milk
-a pound of cooked pasta
(-an oven and a covered casserole dish)

Basically, what you want to do is grate the block of cheese (which can also be replaced with dairy free/vegan cheese, I bet!). Take a fork and knife and cut up the tomatoes really small in a casserole dish, leaving the juice etc. in, and mix in cheese. The milk is to make it more of a sauce, so add as much or little as you like...I think I usually do around 1/4-1/2 of a cup. Mix in cooked pasta and top the whole thing with a bunch of bread crumbs and parmesan (so it gets nice and crusty). Bake at 350 for about 20-25 minutes (basically as long as you can wait/enough to melt everything) with the cover, then remove cover for the last 5-10 to brown.

It's a cheap meal that feeds a solid 4 people, pretty easy to make (cheese grating is a good TV-watching activity). Comes out different every time!...at least if you're me and never buy the same tomatoes/add the same amount of milk/etc. It's not too cheesy, either, so you don't feel gross after.

Here's me making a variation of this recipe in Brazil!

Some different ingredients, based on food I could get my hands on there. (I think there's an onion in there?)

I wouldn't recommend spaghetti-version because spaghetti's a pain to get on your fork, bowties usually work best with the sauce consistency (they sort of scoop it up, with all that surface area)

They don't eat a ton of pasta in Brazil/don't know what to do with it, so I got some super rave reviews.

Eating Out in the Woods

This fall break, I had the chance to go on a backpacking adventure with outdoor education. It wasn't simply a regular backpacking trip, but a lightweight backpacking adventure! According to my outdoor education leader, that meant packing our bags efficiently in terms of food, clothes, and sleeping materials. We would carry less clothes, less food related materials (such as spoons, pots, etc.), and use a tarp instead of a tent. Because of this, lightweight backpacking decreased the amount of weight we had to carry significantly than the usual backpacking trips.

Food consisted significant amount of weight for all of us. To limit as much weight as possible, lightweight backpackers prefer carrying dehydrated food rather than hydrated food. With the food dehydrated, it is easier to pack and lighter to pack. So, this meant dehydrated chicken, hummus, peanut butter, potato etc. If I wanted to hydrate my food for a meal, I would have to get water from a nearby lake, boil it using our alcohol fuel, and then dump my food into the bowl. For pastes such as hummus and peanut butter, they were given to us as powders in the beginning of the trip. We would then put lake water that was "iodinized" and then spread it on our wheat tortillas.

When I asked my leader how these food were dehydrated, he noted that there is no change in the way people dehydrate food now and the past. The food would be placed in an open(?) container that has a fan (or some sort of cooling device) installed underneath. The fan then would then rotate for hours to allow the water to evaporate from the food. It was fascinating to hear how people have creatively dehydrated various foods (such as chicken!) but the method of dehydration have stayed the same.

Overall, it was quite amazing to see how food was changed and modified in a way that I have never seen before. Usually when I go hiking or camping, I would take hydrated food (e.g. potato that is hydrated and mashed) and canned food. I always thought that hydrated food in small quantities and canned food were the lightest and most efficient way of packing and carrying food. However, lightweight backpacking has taught me that we are capable of changing and modifying food even further for various purposes.

A Day with the Founder of Dippin’ Dots

Last spring, I met Curt Jones at St. Louis University’s Pitch and Catch Competition. Several decades ago Curt founded Dippin’ Dots and built the company up to a multi-million dollar business. However, due to a series of unfortunate events involving the 2008 recession and a lengthy and expensive patent lawsuit, he ended up selling the company. Now, he still owns a number of Dippin’ Dots franchises and is currently working on a new frozen coffee company involving similar scientific methods. When I met him in the spring, he expressed interest in potentially doing contract manufacturing work for The Waffle Cookie. Over the past half a year, we have kept in close contact through biweekly calls and frequent emails.

On Wednesday, he picked me up from the airport in St. Louis and we drove three hours south to Mounds, Illinois where we toured a contract manufacturing facility where we could produce waffle cookies. After seeing the facility, we drove an hour to Carbondale to meet with a group of graduate students in the business school at Southern IL University who are helping on the marketing side of things with Curt’s coffee business. After this meeting, we drove another two and half hours back up to St. Louis where he dropped me off at my hotel. In the car, I learned all about the successes and hardships that Dippin’ Dots faced over the years. Curt had a unique approach when building up the company. He chose to specifically implement the Dippin’ Dots kiosks into theme parks and zoos because he wanted to create a Dippin’ Dots experience that the customer would find memorable. He also talked about his appearance on Oprah’s show! Overall, I learned a lot just from spending so much time with such a successful food entrepreneur and food innovator.