I am the brand new owner of a brand new cookbook

Written by Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet

Over the years I have collected hundreds of cookbooks, many filled with very personal tastes from all over the world.

And now I have TENDER: farmers, cooks, eaters.  I love it for its directness, for its declaration of the need for simplicity and its dedication to deep, bold earthy taste. It’s about as direct a connection between earth and plate that I have ever read and it restores my faith that change is possible.

Authors Tamara Murphy and Graham Kerr enthusiastically share their books with one another at Focus On Farming 2011

I have always admired Tamara’s commitment to this style of cuisine. She has gently leant into the concept with admirable consistency, the kind of reliability that eventually pays off because it pays no attention to the kind of gimmicks that attend the passing trends for which our nation is often famous.

I am now trying to do the same, in my own way, to achieve some kind of long term benefit for those of us who enjoy good things…within reason!

My intention is to try to “delight and do less harm to each other, the soil, the water and the air we breathe”.  To this end I have set myself a goal. To work only in the State of Washington to increase vegetable and fruit consumption by at least 100% by the year 2020.  This translates to about 2.3lbs of unprepared produce per day.

This will not be achieved overnight, hence the 8 year plan!  It will also not happen until we recover a general understanding of the relay race connection between farmers, cooks and consumers, as TENDER so wisely announces.

We shall also rely upon creative chefs like Tamara to lead us toward this goal because the role of the chef has always been to be a style leader.  We need to see and taste and savor these ”DELIGHTS” in order to establish this as a solid movement and not a passing trend.

I am deeply committed to this idea because of my lifelong love affair with my wife Treena, whom I met at school when she was 10; I was the older man…at 11!  Treena suffered a stroke and a heart attack back in 1987.  Since then my primary focus has been to delight her and do her less harm. I know what it takes to make a decided U-turn and yet remain connected with food.

In 2009 I added a radical (for me!) step by growing my very first kitchen garden.  Since that first year I have been amazed at how much my ability to cook well has improved.  These plants are almost my children and I treat them with much greater care.

And this fact brings me back full circle to my appreciation for TENDER and Tamara’s observation that many vegetables develop a better, more complex taste when almost overcooked. The crisp, colorful approach may appear to be the logical way to retain the maximum nutrition however, in the longer term; our future increased consumption will be much more dependent upon the undeniable taste satisfaction that can come from the slow ‘roasting’ and caramelizing that adds so much to a plant’s enjoyment.

I am looking forward to working with all you TENDER people to see what we can do together to help bring about such a welcome and needed change in such a special part of the food world.

The common good is the good we can do in common.

Benedicere! (means…”to announce good things and to affirm one another”)

Graham Kerr