On Monday, September 29, UVA’s Architecture School will be hosting a visit from Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty and former director the Hartford Food System, one of the nation’s oldest organizations dedicated to fighting hunger and improving nutrition on a grassroots level.

In his book, Winne’s exploration starts in the 1960s and shows how communities since that time have responded to malnutrition with a large number of strategies and methods, including farmers’ markets and community gardens.

“Perhaps one of the most frustrating and perplexing features of the food gap is a certain relativistic quality that has wormed its way into our food system over the past ten years,” Winne writes. “Just as lower-income groups make some small gains in closing the food gap by, say, having access to new food stores in city neighborhoods or benefiting from a marginal improvement in the Food Stamp Program, higher-income groups leap ahead with an increase in their purchase of organic and locally produced food….The gap never decreases and indeed…often increases.”

Winne’s 5pm lecture, in room 153 of the Architecture School at the University of Virginia, is free and open to the public. It will be followed by a reception and book signing. Parking is available in the Culbreth Road Garage.

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Cheers to the Hook for the new Dish blog.  I think I know how these things work…

We’ve known that Oakencroft Vineyard and Winery is closing its doors on December 31, but on a recent wine tasting afternoon on a sunnier day than this, I learned that cases are selling at a 30% discount.  Cheers to owner Felicia Rogan for doing more than her part to put Virginia on the map as a wine producing state.

Case in point: the Monticello region welcomed a new winery to the trail this summer.  Pollak Vineyards (pictured left) is located off 250 West, near Route 151 to Wintergreen.  They’ve already received a number of inquiries about weddings, and it is not surprising when you arrive at the tasting room, easily mistakable for a country home with its huge windows and wrap-around patio, set against our idyllic Blue Ridge backdrop.  I did a full tasting, and despite how young their vines are (relatively), the wines they’re producing are really nicely rounded.  It’s rare to have the pleasure of tasting two wines of the same vines–Chardonnay grapes, in this case–one fermented in steel and aged in oak, the other vice versa, both fantastic.  And the finishing touch?  A bowl of ripe merlot grapes to try, fresh off the vine.

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Kate Malay reviews TEN in our September 25 issue.
PHOTO COURTESY KATE MALAY

The Hook will welcome Kate Malay, a.k.a.. “lilith,” who found that not having a byline with your real name wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, as our newest food reviewer next week.

“My experience was similar to former Gawker editor Emily Gould’s,” says Malay about writing anonymously for local gossip website cVillian, which she co-founded, referring to a column Gould wrote in the New York Times Magazine, “though on a much smaller scale.”

Toward the end, Malay says it got bad. In addition to having her IP address tracked, and having nightmares about being humiliated in her legitimate job or getting confronted by the people she was writing about, “There was this uncomfortable dichotomy between the perception of my identity I wanted to convey and the perception of my identity that people actually found appealing,” she says.

Recently, Malay says a tech-savvy friend asked her what she saw for the future of “new media.”

“I honest-to-God think there will be some kind of authentication process to account for all of the identity play that takes place,” she says, ” so there’s not so much disparity between real and online personas.”

Writing as herself for The Hook, we hope she’ll be able to straighten some of that out. In fact, writing for us may have been in the stars for Malay. Back in May, she sent in a letter-to-the-editor, as herself, saying how much she loved reviewer Ned Oldham’s contribution to our “The Eater” restaurant review column (note: Ned’s reviews will continue). Of course, we had no idea she was “lilith” at the time, though we should have guessed by the way she ended her email: “You may have read some of my work…” She also asked to be considered as a reviewer if the opportunity ever arose.

Look for Malay’s upcoming review of TEN, online and in print next week.

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Let chef Ashley Clarke teach you how to make a quick and healthy meal on your stove top. You will make:Sautéed shrimp and Scallop Cakes with a chili lime aioli sauce, Mixed Grain
Salad, Sautéed Fall Vegetables, Berries in Buttermilk.

Wednesday, September 24 from 6 to 10pm at the Charlottesville Cooking School. $65 for 1 session.

The Charlottesville Cooking School
2041 Barracks road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Tel#: 434-963-COOK
Fax#: 434-293-4340
Email: [email protected]
Website

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Michael McConkey of Edible Landscaping.
PHOTO COURTESY MICHAEL MCCONKEY

Enjoy a day out in Afton learning how to eat your yard! This event includes tours, lectures, music, children’s workshops, food and more. On Saturday, September 20. Call 434-361-9134 or visit the Edible Landscaping website for more information.

What is edible landscaping and how can you do it? Let Michael McConkey of Edible Landscaping explain: (more)

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