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If the modern supermarket, with its aisles of abundance symbolizes the profligacy of America's post WWII era - which met an abrupt end with the recent financial crisis - Chris Musser's Lost Arts Kitchen may come to personify the austerity of the new century
HEATHER HILL
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| Before every class Musser, left, finds out her students expectations and explains what they can expect from the session. This classes lesson was on lactic-acid fermentation, the simplest type of fermentation used for production of yogurt, kimchi and, for this class, sauerkraut. Lactic acid fermentation is used in places around the world to produce specialty foods that cannot be produced through other methods. MEMO PHOTOS TIM CURRAN |
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| Chris Musser, right, stages Lost Arts Kitchen cooking classes out of her small Russell neighborhood kitchen. Held last month, her students for this class on the ancient art of lactic acid fermentation were, from left, Elizabeth Vecchiarelli, Peter Cowan, Stacie and Jesse Gordon. Musser maintains her budget and food quality by keeping chickens and rabbits, tending a garden, canning and buying in bulk. |
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| Sustainable = Affordable? Show me the Money! Cost of Lost Arts Class: $40-$50 Clean-up Discount: 50% A breakdown of what it costs Musser to feed her family of four on an average monthly budget of $520. Note: In her classes Musser teaches how to purchase many items in bulk. Meat/Poultry/Fish: $120 Grocery from Azure Standard: $218 Fresh produce: $65 Preserved bulk produce: $33 Dairy: $46.50 Coffee: $6 Honey, dried fruit, oils, and other bulk goods from Hummingbird Wholesale: $35 Bob's Red Mill grains: $10 Lost Arts Kitchen is at 13228 N.E. Eugene St., 503-253-7331. |
Musser's talents for home stewardship evolved naturally. She learned to mimic her mother's hand at canning, but the real revelation came when she beheld a refrigerator shelf full of purchased salad dressings, none of which she actually liked. “I already knew how to make a really good Caesar salad dressing,” she remembered “and I thought, 'I can do this, I have the Internet, I can figure it out.' ” She never purchased pre-made salad dressing again.
That was seven years ago. “Then I started baking bread and then I started making cheese and it took years of learning new skills. One day I was rolling through the grocery store and there was not a whole lot in my cart.” Musser had reverted to cooking the way people had for centuries.
Once she mastered the art of what some call 'whole foods cooking,' - not a reference to the supermarket chain but the concept of cooking with real ingredients - others soon sought her advice, but when Musser and her friends all read, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” the Barbara Kingsolver book about local eating, she found her skills suddenly in high demand. “I was already doing a lot of local eating at that point, and my friends were asking how to can or make bread, so I was teaching my friends at home just informally for a while, and people said I should teach classes.”
Musser started the Lost Arts Kitchen out of her Russell neighborhood home two years ago. She holds three to four hour classes on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, charging $40-$50 depending on the class. For example, canning classes take a little more time and participants leave with plenty of preserved goodies for their pantries. Musser provides everything from aprons to implements to food, though she asks participants to bring their own take-home containers. Due to the size of her kitchen, she limits class size from six to eight people. “I like people to see you can do this in a regular kitchen,” she said, “that it doesn't need to be a professional kitchen. We didn't even have a dishwasher until two months ago.” Musser also offers discounts for those who stay and help clean up after classes.
Her most popular class, “So Long Supermarket, Hello Pantry” introduces basic skills needed to eat seasonably, techniques she adapted into her own diet. “It sometimes takes years to figure out what foods we like that are grown locally, and then the annual cycle of when they are grown,” she explained, “and then learning the skills of cooking from scratch and buying farm direct, plugging into those things. That is part of what I teach in the classes is helping people accelerate that learning curve a little bit.”
Musser's students bring a variety of skill levels and motivations to the table, from those interested in the health benefits of a whole food diet to those more concerned with the social and environmental impacts of industrial farming, to an interesting sub-population of post-vegetarians seeking resources for humanely raised meat.
Whatever the impetus, all Musser's students find succor in time honored techniques, and seek Lost Arts Kitchen as a place to rediscover them. “There is a whole progression from just buying your summer vegetables at the farmers market to asking what you do at this time of year…the dark days,” Musser said, which led to canning and lacto-fermentation classes to help attendees bulk up for winter. “Lacto-fermentation is a great class, very different from what most people have ever experienced. It is how people used to make pickled foods, like Kim-chee and sauerkraut.”
This winter, Musser is introducing a citrus canning class and a “Nose to Tail Cooking” class for those buying their meat farm direct, which often involves purchasing animals by sides or quarters, not the individual cut.
In case you're wondering how anybody would go about doing that, Musser also helps organize a buying club, which works with farmers to purchase in bulk. They receive grocery items delivered twice a month from Azure Standard, a natural food supplier located in Dufur, OR and other goods such as produce, meats, eggs and dairy, from local farmers.
While buying clubs enable singles or those who live in small spaces to go in on a portion of beef without buying the whole cow, those who do invest in a large lot of meat can benefit from pointers featured in Musser's new class where she teaches how to make stock and render animal fat. “For people who want to eat locally, the local oil here would be animal fat,” she informed.
While Musser entertains requests for private classes on any subject, she individually tailors one class for expectant mothers. “The 'Homemade in Hibernation' class is what I did when I was pregnant with my second,” she said, “I made stews and freezer marinades so I didn't have to cook once my son was born. I didn't cook for three months. I just took the food out of the freezer.”
Other class subjects include cheese making, bread baking, and now condiment making and gluten free cooking. Lost Arts Kitchen also offers gift certificates.
Though she has lived 'somewhere north or south of Halsey' since she moved to Portland, Musser pointed out that the area does lack some resources enjoyed by other neighborhoods. “One of the unfortunate things about living out here is that we don't have a good New Seasons, and we don't have a lot of options,” Musser lamented, “we buy a lot at Growers Outlet at 162nd and Glisan; they do have high quality produce.” For other supplies, she usually finds herself at Bi-Mart or WinCo. In addition to Grower's Outlet, she also recommends Giusto Farms on Northeast 162nd Avenue and The Barn on Northeast 148th Avenue for local produce as well as the Montavilla Farmers Market where she sometimes conducts cooking demos.
Musser recently hosted a CSA drop from Dancing Roots Farms at her home. The farm has staged their drops in the Russell neighborhood for the past number of years. CSAs, which stand for Community Supported Agriculture, where groups help support a farm who then deliver their patrons the produce, present another local option.
Many would argue that Musser's style of eating still loses out on the convenience level, a point she doesn't refute. “I went to the grocery store right before Thanksgiving and I said, 'wow, this is very convenient,' I forgot.” To compensate, Musser's classes emphasize infrastructure, building a pantry and having a plan. “I don't spend every single day cooking an hour for dinner. I just cook once and make 2-3 things out of it. I do a lot of what I call leftovers by design.” She orders from Azure online, so whenever she realizes a need for something she can go to the computer and add it to her list for her next delivery. “I don't need to make a to-do list and then remember the to-do list and then leave it in my car, I find this easier in terms of organization, but it is a process to get to that point and thinking ahead.” She leaves it to the individual to adapt those concepts into their own lifestyles. “I don't think we all have to do it all ourselves,” Musser said, “I enjoy it, but I don't think we all do.”
For all those who embraced the local food movement at the start of the recession, and then found farmer's markets too expensive and quickly reverted back to supermarket shopping, Musser has tips to regain your confidence. “I'm convinced this doesn't take any more money than people spend on groceries once you get into it,” she said. “It takes a little while to get there.” She recalled the first time she bought a quarter of a cow and a side of pork, essentially her meat stock for a year, she thought, “Oh my god I just spent $1,000 on meat!” Yet, “that $1000 that you spent on meat for a year you might have otherwise spent $1500 or more, but you are buying all that beef for $5.50 a pound.”
Musser also keeps chickens and rabbits and grows some of her own produce in her backyard garden. Making her breads, cheeses, dressings and condiments from scratch not only saves money, but also improves the quality and taste of her food.
In the new economy, assuming responsibility for our own consumption has taken center stage, and food naturally presents itself as the one manageable factor for change. We have been quick to embrace technology but equally rash to forget traditional tips that have sustained us throughout the ages. Everything old cycles new again, and when you're ready to revive the cost and labor saving measures proven effective for centuries, Lost Arts Kitchen will be there to show you how.
If you want to learn more about Lost Arts Kitchen, visit Musser's Web site at www.lostartskitchen.com or e-mail her, chris@lostartskitchen.com.
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