Bee Well

About a decade ago, Yeshwant Chitalkar lived by a community garden in Hell's Kitchen with a beehive of honey bees. It's challenging for me not to think of honey as a commodity and product to be labeled and shelved, but Yeshwant didn't see employees at a factory that produces sweeteners - even one free of belching smokestacks and toxic waste.  

Today, Yeshwant lives in Red Hook by a mixed neighborhood of Italian and Carniolan bees on his roof. He made this arrangement because, despite living in a large urban city, the bees teach by example how to live harmoniously with nature. Living in the obscurity of urban dwellings are plants and trees; the nectar and pollen of goldenrod, dandelions and linden trees are foraged by the bees and stored away as food in the form of honey. In fact, there's more biodiversity in a big city like Brooklyn than in many rural areas due to the preponderance of monocultures on industrial farms. 

Yeshwant yearns for the tangible; for something tactile to do with his hands. Although he doesn't consume the honey belonging to his upstairs neighbors, he does extract it - this year about two hundred pounds in three large containers. It's a practice in mindfulness. One can meditate simply by watching the bees fly into and out of their hives. 

The hive is not a single organism, but a composition of individual creatures. Commercial beekeepers drive semitrailers of hives around the country to pollinate crops. This exposes the bees to harmful pesticides and diseases. Yeshwant's neighbors wander around Red Hook and, I suppose, other parts of Brooklyn of their own free will and are healthier for it. 

Try to view bees like tiny people rather than bugs. Disturb their home and they'll nudge you away with head butts. Bees have the capacity to learn and can be taught where to go for water. By extracting honey one is actually stealing their food. Honey tastes differently from year to year depending on what nectar and pollen is available and I can imagine marketing it like wine. Yeshwant brought me back to reality as I left with a jar of honey. Wagging his finger, he sternly reminded me that, after all, I was robbing the bees. I was stealing sunlight in a jar. 

They Said "Homemade"

One day I was riding my bike in Gravesend when a handwritten sign on the door of a storefront caught my eye. It said that they still made mozzarella. This I had to see. I entered and asked for the owner. Carmela Casamento took over Eagle Cheese (est. 1942), when she arrived from Palermo in her early twenties. She's over 70 now and Eagle Cheese will soon transform into a pasticerria.

I was too late to appreciate what the place looked like when the shelves were stocked with Italian specialties and imported provolone hung from the ceiling. There used to be lines out the door during the holidays to order baskets of cheese. Carmela took orders - sometimes for hundreds of dollars - like a cheese florist and her beaming customers left looking like they just won first prize in a lottery.

Eagle Cheese makes what we would certainly call today artisanal cheese; varieties of fresh and smoked mozzarella and ricotta. Carmela sold her mozzarella wholesale to pizzerias throughout New York City and delivered personally. I can't imagine how competitive the pizza business is and here's this sweet lady who uses adjectives like "beautiful" to describe her cheese delivering to pizzerias in the Brooklyn of the '60s, '70s - up until today?! That's got to be a tough racket - but she is Sicilian after all. 

Brooklyn has a robust manufacturing heritage born of the Industrial Age and small family run businesses coexisted with large manufacturers to serve the ethnic communities forming here. While manufacturers introduced innovations in packaging and distribution, mom-and-pops cross-pollinated to produce Brooklyn's own creations and style distinct from what may be found back in China, Mexico, Italy, Russia, etc. Today's artisanal food movement takes as inspiration businesses that came before like Eagle Cheese. 

We say "artisanal." They said "homemade."

I am grateful that Carmela specially arranged a private demonstration of the art of making mozzarella. Alfonso (an employee for over 35 years) and Javier (and employee for over 10 years) gracefully molded the curd into balls of mozzarella like balloon twisters. To me it was a miraculous, though labor intensive process.

They made me feel right at home.