This is a guest article from Tyler Sycamore Hess, the Ceremonial Chef.
“We really did have everything, didn’t we?” says Leonardo DiCaprio’s character during the final scene of “Don’t Look Up.” There is a small group engaging in an elegant last supper, while the extinction-causing comet hurtles toward Earth. The table is beautifully set. The wine is poured. They feel gratitude and camaraderie, at the end of the world.
But what if we could feel such emotions at dinners that create new worlds, not just lament the passing of the old?
My mission as a chef and educator is to craft dinner experiences that begin from that premise, that we can create a better future through intimate relationship with our local ecology and food system. We don’t only ask each other to “look up” at graphs and headlines about growing threats to our way of life. We invite people to look down: at the soil under our feet, the water moving through our watershed, and the hands that plant, harvest, mill, and butcher in our local communities.
Continue reading “Let’s Look Down: Dining for the Chance of Resilient Communities”