Listen to the Old Chefs

Our Chef Emeritus here in my department is Hubert Schmieder. Chef Schmieder is one of the last remaining old world chefs who has seen it all; and cannot believe much of what he sees today in the culinary world.

The one thing Chef sees that he cannot believe these days is the amount of food that is wasted in production whether it be underutilizing the product used to prepare meals, or the quantity of food prepared that well exceeded demand (meaning too much food was used in the first place), and the food that finds its way into the garbage. I loved it when he told me that he turned off the garbage disposal when he first came to Purdue because he wanted to know everthing that was being wasted so that he could adjust the production process to eliminate it.

The other recent comment he made is the current trend in cooking competitions and restaurants is the miniscule portion that is being served up. To his way of thinking, that is a tremendous amount of waste of labor and enegry to create something that nobody can identify what was used to prepare it in the first place. That is why he was delighted that cooking competitions are being won more often than not these days by chefs that are plating items that look like the food when presented to consumers or judges. In other words, when something is made from pork the customer can tell it right away instead of playing a guessing game of, "Is it..?"

I guess the message of today's post is that the culinary and hospitality world and those who are affiliated with it need to return to the roots established by the old world chefs and hoteliers. These are the people who epitomize what has become a throwaway line to many today, "Waste not, want not!" To them, being sustainable or "Green" is not something that should be in vogue, it should have been something that was the way of doing business all along. So tap into the memory bank of these "old chefs" who are "past their prime" and get them in touch with your program as much as possible because they know what it would take to use food to be more Green, end world hunger, and so much more.