"Mindful Eating in the 21st Century" with chef Dan Barber and Krista Tippett
Congregation Beth-El Zedeck
Indianapolis, Indiana
As part of the Indianapolis Spirit & Place Festival, Krista Tippett interviews chef Dan Barber, a game-changing voice of the farm-to-table movement, who is using his New York restaurants to highlight the distinct quality of locally grown, seasonal and sustainable agriculture. Tippett and Barber speak about what mindful eating means and the values surrounding food in contemporary lives.
Chef Barber, of Blue Hill Farm fame, is a James Beard Award winner. His interviewer, Krista Tippett, is the author of Speaking of Faith and host of On Being, an American Public Media program "about the big questions at the center of human life, from the boldest new science of the human brain to the most ancient traditions of the human spirit."
This event was recorded on Nov. 5 and is available for playback.
Video: Chef Dan Barber Talks "Mindful Eating in the 21st Century" with Krista Tippett
Chef Dan Barber is a game-changing voice of the farm-to-table movement who is using his New York restaurants, Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, to highlight the distinct experience of locally grown, seasonal, and sustainable agriculture. And, on Friday, November 5th (7:30 pm EDT), we'll be streaming live video of my interview with him in Indianapolis. I'm very much looking forward to sitting down with this James Beard Award-winning chef, who brings together pleasure and thoughtfulness, beauty and good business, in his work and in his vision of a healthy food future.
Our conversation is the kick-off event to an annual, 10-day festival in Indianapolis called Spirit & Place, Indiana's largest civic festival, and we'll be speaking at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck. A number of years ago I interviewed Rabbi Sandy Sasso, who co-leads that congregation, for a show on the spirituality of parenting. I have tremendous respect for her wisdom and her gracious approach to living and wrestling with big questions. We've kept in touch since that time and, on more than one occasion, she's spoken about her involvement with Spirit & Place and the synergy it creates in Indianapolis between arts, faith-based, and civic institutions.
Dan Barber, who writes frequently in The New York Times in addition to running his farm and two restaurants, says that recovering our sense of the stories behind the food we eat is a key element of sustainability: "The sustainability stuff comes in through the stories. The thing that the industrial food chain will never have is the ability to tell stories."
While preparing for this interview, I can't help but hear echoes of my conversation with biblical scholar Ellen Davis, who is stretching religious imaginations about humanity's relationship to land, eating, and sustainability. Dan Barber stresses the importance, as she does, of getting to know where your food comes from. He adds from his farming experience that this means knowing "what you eat eats." He spent summers as a teenager "bailing hay and moving cows, pasturing them from field to field." His Know Thy Farmer effort reminds me of a fabulous film campaign out of Maine called Meet Your Farmer, which emphasizes the values in understanding the struggle of people producing food, the joy of working intimately with others, and celebrating a table of locally grown produce and meat and its flavors even more.
Please join us right here on The Huffington Post and watch the live stream of my public conversation with Dan Barber. For those of you who can't make it, not to worry. We're recording it and video will be immediately available for playback after the event.