My trusty thermos that I bought last year at IKEA is showing a bit of wear and tear. It has quite a few scraps and the top has a couple of dents where it had feel off my kitchen counter or off my kitchen table. I have used it almost daily to transport the coffee I make at home to bring to work. I have also left it at work for use when I have made hot tea.
While I have enjoyed using the IKEA thermos, I have been thinking of buying one that is slightly bigger as I would like one with more volume, but not too big. I like the slender design of the IKEA product as it fits easily into my handbag with room for other items. It might be nice to have two, one to carry tea and the other for coffee.
A co-worker of mine said that America's Test Kitchens gave a high rating to the OXO thermos for its ability to keep liquids hot for two hours. OXO, the maker of comfortable and well-designed kitchen tools and other products, is one of my favorite kitchen brands. I own a number of their products, which are my favorites, including OXO's salad spinner, serated peeler, strainer, and mandoline.
Today, I finished the book Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brillant Making of a Food Revolution. The book is a biography of the iconic woman behind the venerable Bay Area restaurant and the sustainable food movement.
Written by Thomas McNamee, he leads us on a chronological history of both Waters and Chez Panisse, from the inspiration and inception for the restaurant in August 1972 up through the 2006 where she has become a worldwide activist for sustainable agriculture and advocate to improve the diets of school children. Behind her demure appearance, it is her will of steel, her pursuit of perfection, and her devote passion for food and sustainability that has brought her where she is today as global icon.
McNamee attempts to illustrate the many cast and characters who have contributed to the success of both Waters and Chez Panisse. The writer emphasizes how Water's circle of friends and colleagues not only formed the Chez Panisse family, but almost a keiretsu of sorts. For example, there's Kermit Lynch of Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant who has provided the wine to the restaurant. Or Steve Sullivan, whom Waters had loaned the money, to found Acme Bread, which today is a multi-million dollar business and a purveyor of artisanal bread.
But McNamee had devoted whole chapters to the more dramatic characters who have passed through the Chez Panisse doors, many of whom have come back to the restaurant more then once. One of the most notable being Jeremiah Tower, founder of Stars restaurant in San Francisco, who provided high drama at the restaurant as well as haute French cuisine during the mid-1970's. Then there's Jean-Pierre Moulle, who followed Tower's departure and has returned to the restaurant a number of times.
Another character in the Chez Panisse keiretsu is Bob Cannard, who one of the Chez Panisse foragers discovered as the farmer who could grow the fruits and vegetables that Alice Waters and company not only desired, but to Waters' extremely high standards. Cannard, according to McNamee, produces fruits and vegetables of very high quality after years of trial and error. Cannard says he refrained from tried and true agricultural practices so he could learn what worked and what didn't. While he has a sizable farm, only a small portion is cultivated.
It's Waters' pursuit to find the best vegetables, the best fruits or the best chickens that has formed the basis of her sustainability ideology, that is, to find farmers who share the same passion for food or ranchers who treat and feed their animals well before sending them to market.
After giving birth to her daughter Fanny, Waters began to move her ideology for sustainable food beyond the confines of Chez Panisse to ever larger audiences. The first of which, according to McNamee, is Waters Edible Schoolyard project that she began at the Martin Luther King school in Oakland, but shortly thereafter, became a nationwide cause in which she would lobby former President Clinton during his first and second administrations.
During this time, Waters moved from restaurateur to worldwide activist as she accepted speaking engagements across the country and internationally. It would be fate that Waters would meet Carlo Petrini, the Italian activist and founder of the Slow Food Movement. Petrini and Waters are kindred spirits in their activism for sustainable food and vehemence against big agribusiness.
I enjoyed McNamee's wonderful prose and learning about one of the Bay Area's culinary icons and activists, as well as the high drama of the restaurant's employees, many of whom have become successful in their own right.
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