From Chez Panisse to Thailand—and Back

Several months ago, I met Kyle Cornforth among the basil and bitter gourds growing on the grounds of an organic cooking school in northern Thailand, where she worked as director. She, her husband and young daughter had left their Berkeley home for an enlightening—and edible—year at the Prem Organic Cooking Academy and Farm (currently undergoing a name change). Cornforth had a background at the well-known Edible Schoolyard, a Chez Panisse Foundation garden and kitchen classroom for urban public school students in California. She jumped at the chance to do something similar half-way round the world, in a culture completely foreign to her.

But now she’s back in Berkeley with, er, shall we say, another little Cornforth in the oven. So I took the opportunity to ask all about her year in Thailand. Here’s Part 1 of that interview. Come back in a few weeks, and I’ll tell you what she says about Eating for Two in Thailand.

Q: What did you get out of the experience?

A. I don’t know if I am actually ready to answer this question. The last few weeks as we settle in to our lives in Berkeley again, Thailand…feels like a dream that went by in such a flash it is hard to believe it really happened!

Right now, the main thing that I am getting out of the experience is how great it was to take the leap from our comfortable, lovely life here and move to Asia for a year. I am proud of us as a family and also as individuals to see how we all coped with the changes and challenges we faced. It also is really freeing to know that we have control over our lives; and that just because we have jobs or a house or a car, it doesn’t mean that we are tied to that forever…. Even with children, there is still so much room for adventure and for taking flying leaps!

Q. What’s next?

A. I plan on going back to work with the Chez Panisse Foundation. What will really interest me in the next five years is learning about policy and how to actually effect the food policies for schools on a state and federal level. Michelle Obama is a great advocate for this, and never has it been such a hot topic with childhood obesity, diabetes and other serious health issues that our children have from poor nutrition and eating habits.

If we are feeding them all a healthy, sustainable meal every day, we can make such a huge difference in the landscape of farming and food production in America.

Q. What did you learn?

A. I think the two most interesting things I learned were a different way of thinking about food, and a different way of working. In my American kitchen I use very [few] herbs, spices or complicated sauces, preferring to select fresh, seasonal ingredients and prepare them with mostly olive oil, salt and pepper. I do a lot of roasting and steaming and cook very simply. I learned to love the theory of Thai food and its foundation in balancing salty, sweet, sour, bitter, buttery, and spicy—both within each dish and for the meal as a whole.

At first I was really challenged with the pace of work. I always wanted things to be moving faster than what they were. Part of that was cultural and another part was working for a very large organization with lots of moving parts. When I realized that my way of working was actually not working—especially for my staff—things got a lot easier. I also feel like I made the mistake of being afraid to be a strong boss because I didn’t want to come across as the over-powering, demanding farang (foreigner) boss. I am a pretty soft-spoken but clear communicator in my professional life in America, and some of my directness just did not work in the Thai professional environment.

While it challenged me greatly, I also came to admire that for most Thais, work is not as central to their identity as [it is for] Americans. [Thais] are much more able to strike a balance between their work and personal lives because they have very clear boundaries. I would be working through lunch, scarfing down a plate of pad thai or fried rice in 15 minutes, and looking around…at all the Thai staff close their offices from noon to 1 p.m. every day and take a proper break from work…. This is so reasonable!

Q. What are  your thoughts on the future of food/cooking/farming in Thailand? What do you think is the future of food for Asia’s younger generations?

A. I am really worried about the future of food/cooking/farming in Thailand (and all over the world for that matter!). In a very short time—really only one generation—Thais are losing their connection to the land and to cooking and to where their food comes from.

I was always very aware that for a country [that] prides itself on having never been colonized, they are allowing themselves to be Westernized, or embracing Westernization in such a way that they could lose their deep cultural roots before they even realize it is happening!

It is a very tricky situation because the life of a farmer in Thailand is hard, and I understand that young people want convenience, an easier way of life, more mobility (cars, motorbikes, money to travel), and to participate in the global community through computers and cell phones. We can look back at the changes that took place in the American food systems during the industrial revolution and then particularly after WWII….  Convenience usurped quality, credit became available, and people were just tired of going without—and they wanted things to be easier.

Now Americans are seeing how thoroughly this has disrupted our food systems, nature, the environment, etc. There is a huge sustainability movement—and really an Americana movement—of backyard gardens, animals, canning, preserving, making cheese at home and more. People are realizing that they lost something when they went for convenience. I wish that people in Thailand could skip the middle part before it is too late.

I talked with many young Thais who grew up cooking with their mother out of a small garden that provided most of the family’s food; mostly over fire and everything from scratch. [They] now live in a condo apartment and don’t even have a kitchen but eat every meal from the market! This is so startling to me! If they don’t practice the growing…and cooking that they learned from their parents, it could just be gone.

Another issue, particularly for the young people, is health. We are seeing a huge increase in nutrition-related illnesses: diabetes, obesity, nutritional deficiencies. This is a result of poorer ingredients, cheaper preparation, and lots and lots of junk food!

Q. Can you discuss what you learned about seed saving in Thailand?

A. I had a lot of very interesting discussions about farming techniques in general, and seed saving and crop rotation in particular. To me, it makes complete sense to let a bed of vegetables go to seed, and to put in the extra work and time it takes to save the seed so you don’t have to buy it year after year.

It took me quite a while to understand where the farmers I was working with were coming from in their reluctance to do this. One thing was time and convenience. A crop may have to stay longer in the ground while it goes to seed so you can save it—time that can be used pulling it out and planting a new crop round, which will produce a crop and therefore money in the pocket more quickly.

It is a lot easier to go and buy the seed you need. When you buy seeds, they have usually been carefully produced so that they have the most viability and therefore the most yield. If someone is not trained properly, or doesn’t have the proper drying and storing facility, chances are that the viability of the seed—and therefore the crop—will go way down. So to [the farmers], it just made way more sense to go and buy more seed each time.

When I tried to explain that it was better for the environment to save seeds, and much better financially in the long run (seeds are expensive!), they just thought I was a bit crazy.

I thought this was a bit of a cultural difference—a lot of Thais don’t think or worry about the future (I experienced this as Buddhism playing a role) so for me to make an argument that would save money or the soil 10 years down the line didn’t make sense to them. I think if I had more time with them and spoke the language, then I could have trained them how to do it properly…. But because they had no proper training, they were failing and decided it just wasn’t worth the effort.

The other thing was crop rotation. They planted round after round of corn in the same place the entire year I was there…. I could not communicate clearly enough to them that because corn is such a huge drain on the soil, particularly of nitrogen, they needed to rotate where it was planted and amend the soil with some kind of cover crop which fixes nitrogen back into the soil after each planting.

They thought I was insane! And they never changed their planting method. I will always wonder how long they can plant those beds before the soil is just ruined—an interesting experiment, actually!

Stay tuned for the pregnant farang who eats Thai….

Photo by Jerry Redfern