- This week on Wisconsin Life :
A ski club that needs snow, skis and trust
to hit the slopes,
a woman whose life became pretty sweet after a big change
and a woodworker
who crafts this unique instrument.
Plus, an animated tale
that celebrates family, friends, and food.
All ahead on Wisconsin Life !
*
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hello and welcome to Wisconsin Life .
I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald.
We're here at FEED Kitchens today in Madison
celebrating Wisconsin foods and the entrepreneurs who make them.
The Food Enterprise and Economic Development Kitchens,
also known as FEED Kitchens,
are located on the north side of Madison.
It's a commercial kitchen space
for entrepreneurs and food enthusiasts to rent.
FEED provides access
to the sort of high-volume, industrial equipment
that many local food businesses need to operate.
And it's open 24 hours a day.
I can't wait to see what's cooking,
but first, let me apply my hairnet
while you check out our first story this week.
We meet a group in Kewaskum
who really enjoy a sport
that includes something called
"The Ultimate Trust Exercise."
- At Sunburst Ski Area in Washington County,
it's a crisp winter night.
The ski runs
are packed with snow and ready to go.
It's a good night to strap up and hit the slopes.
It's also the place to witness Dan Lococo's definition...
- On the right here.
- ...of a trust exercise.
- I've got an eye disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa
or commonly called "tunnel vision."
- Here's your poles.
- My visual field is very, very limited.
- Dan participates in Wisconsin BOLD,
or Blind Outdoor Leisure and Development.
It's a non-profit program that gives people who are
visually-impaired the opportunity to experience
outdoor sports.
- Keep going forward.
- And yes, that includes downhill skiing.
- They had a ski program and I thought, "You know,
if they're crazy enough to teach somebody how to ski.
I should be just as wild and do it."
- Heel toward you. There.
- Ok, got it.
- Skiers are accompanied by sighted guides, like P.J. Smith.
- Ok, we're going to slide down to the lift.
- ...who helps steer Dan up and down Sunburst's biggest hill.
- So when he's skiing, he's paying very close attention
to my voice and when I call his turn change.
- And left and turn.
- Left and turn.
Right and turn.
Left and turn.
And I follow those voice commands.
- Make 'em easier.
Right and turn.
- If it takes bravery to barrel down a slope on a pair of skis,
it takes trust to do it while blind.
- They know that my life is in their hands
when they're doing this.
And so that trust goes both ways.
I have to trust them,
but they trust me to do what I'm supposed to do.
There are times I hear people talk about trust exercises
and someone tells me,
"Oh yeah, we did this trust exercise.
"We made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
And we were blindfolded and someone told us how to do it."
Well, I went down a hill.
- Keep going left. Keep going left.
- Who knows how fast we were going--
and I trusted the person behind me
to tell me when to turn.
- Wisconsin BOLD has given Dan
the chance to become a talented skier.
It's given P.J.
the chance to meet people like Dan.
- He has an outlook on the world that I wish everyone had.
- It's that connection that P.J. and I have
as guide and skier
that really makes it an electric experience
out on the hill.
- Here we go, and sit.
- And that's given both of them a big lift.
- I've been doing this for 35 years at least
and teaching skiing for longer than that
so it becomes part of who you are.
I wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't doing this.
- It builds confidence,
but it also builds bragging rights
because that opportunity to say, "Yeah, I ski.
And I ski downhill."
- FEED Kitchens is a project
of the Madison Northside Planning Council.
A group that works to create economic opportunities
in the community.
They identified a need for space where entrepreneurs
could safely and efficiently prepare food products.
After several years of fundraising,
they were able to build this space,
which now features five commercial kitchens.
The building now serves local food companies
and community nonprofits like "Healthy Food for All"
hard at work here.
The group takes large quantities of donated food
and repackages it for distribution
throughout the community.
We'll catch up with some of the local entrepreneurs
working hard here including
the Fort Atkinson woman
in this next story.
She made a major change in life;
one that would ultimately lead
to a connection with FEED Kitchens.
[Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly"]
[rhythm and blues music]
- A lot of ingredients go into making a good memory,
but for Monica O'Connell,
it usually includes butter and sugar.
- Lots of butter.
[rhythm and blues music]
[mixer whirring]
- Baking a rum cake takes Monica back
to when she was a little girl
living in the south.
- The memory is really literally one of me being a young kid
getting to stay up later than I usually do
because my parents were throwing
one of their famous house parties.
Eating my mom's famous rum cake on the stairs
and watching the grown folks dance.
- * But if you lose, don't ask no questions why *
[rhythm and blues music]
The story makes the cake taste better.
- * Ah-ha-ha
- Rum was a crucial ingredient in the cake and the party.
- There's a little bit of rum that goes into the batter,
but there's a lot of rum that just soaks into the cake itself.
-Part of the atmosphere was the music
at her parent's parties:
1970s R&B.
- The food ways
and the musical traditions.
The fact that they do often,
they share the same space, they influence one another.
- Food and music have influenced Monica all her life.
- All right, let's get this bad boy in the oven.
Now of course when we eat this,
we're going to have to play the music.
[Bill Withers' "Lovely Day"] * "When I wake up in the morning, love"
- At first, Monica thought she would be a concert musician.
- While I was working on my masters
in French horn performance,
I started hanging out with musicologists.
- Musicologists don't perform music.
They study it as an academic field.
Monica went on to get a Ph.D.
in ethnomusicology and the study of black music.
- The ethnomusicology thing helped me think
about my own folks and my own music,
my own culture in some different ways.
- Eventually Monica became Executive Director
of the Center for Black Music Research
at Columbia College in Chicago.
- But I also want to talk about what, to me, is
the inherent nature of diversity in the performing arts.
- So the baking fell off a little bit
until the job started getting stressful.
And then the baking found its way back in
because I needed an outlet.
In a minute, the whole kitchen is just going to explode
with butter-rum smell.
And it's going to be pretty awesome.
Baking was just this other space that I could be in.
It really does smell like home to me.
- While her love of baking remained a constant,
during the next few years,
Monica's life underwent some big changes.
She left her job, married a man from Wisconsin
and moved to Fort Atkinson.
- Fort doesn't have a bakery.
And here I am in this position,
I'm free!
- So she decided to start her own business
as a baker and wanted to connect it
to the feeling she got from those childhood parties.
- What I want to recreate is just that feeling of
deliciousness and welcomeness.
- It made sense to Monica
to name her business after music and food
so it became "Curtis & Cake."
- But I like the name.
I like Curtis Mayfield.
- The most important word in the title might be the "and"
because it represents how the union of music and food
can create a good experience.
- So these ideas of culture and of hospitality
and of the "and," right?
So Curtis & Cake,
bring the music in,
bring the family in, all of that.
[Curtis Mayfield's "So In Love"]
[rhythm and blues horns]
- There's definitely been
an adjustment period.
- Curtis & Cake required a commercial kitchen,
which led Monica to rent space in Madison.
- This is a dark chocolate stout
with salted caramel filling.
- Monica enjoys the relationships formed
with new customers.
- I like getting to be a part of these peoples' celebrations.
Even though I'm not there physically,
a little bit of me [laughs] I guess is there.
And that's pretty cool.
- Even though it's not the same as baking for fun.
- It gets a little stressful
'cause then you didn't mess up a cake.
Then you've messed up
the beginning of someone's life together.
- But in the end, Monica knows what she's selling.
- There she is. Yay.
I kinda want to be in the experience business,
to be honest.
- If her mother's rum cake
can bring Monica back to her childhood...
[Curtis Mayfield sings "So In Love"]
* I try to do the best that a man can do *
- It's a grown-up cake.
And that's probably part of why it felt so special
to have it when I was a kid.
- She hopes her cake can help create some new memories
for her customers.
- * The key to our success to see each other through *
* So in love
- Mm-hmm.
[giggles] - Yep.
That's just fine!
Now we really need some Curtis Mayfield playing.
[laughs]
- * So in love
* So in love [fork clinks on plate]
- I'm in the FEED Kitchens in Madison today
exploring the local food culture and community.
One of the things I discovered was that a group
that uses this resource is local food cart vendors.
Earlier, when they arrived in the kitchens
to prep for their day, I took the opportunity
to speak with some of them and try their specialties.
Hello, how are you? - I'm good.
How are you? - Wonderful.
Can you tell us your name and the name of your business?
- Absolutely.
My name is Cyndi and I'm with Buzzy's Lake House.
I'm the owner and main cook and bottle washer.
- Wow! What kind of foods do you make?
- Well my food is kind of a home-style food.
Everything is made from scratch.
And it's pretty much based on the family recipes
that we cooked when we went up north to our family cottages.
Starting with my grandparents and then my dad
and now my brother, who has taken over the family cottage.
It's just kind of the things that you'd eat in the summer.
And then in the winter, we change up the menu a bit
and have more of a hearty fare.
- What's your name and name of your food cart?
- My name is Solli and I run the Braisin' Hussies food cart.
The menu centers around braised and slow-cooked foods
hence the name.
- All beef products? - No.
In fact I build most of my dishes vegetable up
so I have several vegetarian variations on the menu
and including one vegan dish on the main menu.
So I have two pork items,
a shoulder pot roast
and a slow roast potato dish
which is sans meat.
- Hello, how are you? - Hello.
- What's your name and name of your food cart business?
- My name is John Pickle
and that's actually my actual real last name.
Me and my wife have a food cart called the Pickle Jar.
- That's adorable.
So what kind of food does the Pickle Jar serve?
- We're southern-inspired barbecue and family recipes.
What are some examples of foods that fit in that category?
- We primarily do barbecue sandwiches.
But we also do ribs from time to time.
We have some specials.
Today, we had an unusual special.
We were running what we call our "redneck nachos"
which are baked beans and barbecue sauce
and pickles and jalapenos
and cheddar cheese and sour cream and black olives.
It's amazing.
- Wisconsin has some pretty delicious food.
I'm going to explore more of the FEED Kitchens
while we share some food for the soul
with our next Wisconsin Life story.
Meet another entrepreneur;
an Eau Claire man who handcrafts
a rare traditional folk instrument.
[wood sanding friction]
- The most common question we get out in public
when we have these,
somebody walks up and says, "What's that?"
*
[wood sanding]
My name is Earl Holzman
and I am a luthier who builds nyckelharpas.
[scraping]
A nyckelharpa is a Swedish traditional folk instrument.
And in Swedish, nyckel means "key"
so it's a keyed harp
and it's played with a bow.
In the United States, we currently think
that there are between 400 and 500 of them.
Well, my wife and I met folk dancing in about 1981.
We later got married and we had a son
who we raised to be a fiddler.
And when he was about 11 years old,
we were at a Swedish music and dance weekend
and he gets an opportunity to play a nyckelharpa.
And in about ten minutes, he's ripping out tunes.
And he decides, "Dad, I want one."
[drilling sound]
So we ordered a kit.
And I helped my son build a nyckelharpa because
I'd been doing woodworking as a serious hobby for many years
so I had a full shop.
And he came out of it
with pretty much a playable instrument.
[upbeat string music]
The standard instrument is just over three feet long.
The keys hang down and you press them up with your left hand.
You play with a bow.
There are typically just four strings
that are played with the bow.
The standard Swedish instrument,
three of those strings have rows of keys.
Then there are 12 sympathetic resonation strings.
So as you play a tune, those resonation strings start to hum.
And it fills out the sound.
So you have this acoustic instrument with built-in reverb
and it's all natural.
[folk string music]
It's an instrument that basically can play
just about any type of music you can play on a violin.
[solemn string music]
Extremely versatile.
[final note lingers]
[sanding sound]
A couple of years after helping my son build the instrument,
I was in a car accident, which really messed up my lower back.
[sanding sound]
So anytime I would do something,
my back would start to hurt
and I was using that as an indication of what I can't do.
So I've got this extensive list of things I can never do again.
And I've got a full cabinet shop in the basement.
And I'm going crazy because
I need something to do to keep busy.
So I remembered I had this set of plans for a nyckelharpa.
So in 2011,
we made arrangements
to spend two weeks with Esbjorn Hogmark in Sweden.
And Esbjorn Hogmark is a master nyckelharpa builder
who teaches people how to build nyckelharpas.
I spent two weeks in Sweden
and I'm on the airplane coming back and thinking about it.
And I think, "You know, I can do this."
[scraping]
I, at this time, appear to be
the only full-time nyckelharpa builder in the country.
Not deep enough yet.
I'm aware right now
of, I think, four other people
who are actively building a couple a year.
[sanding]
Currently, I'm building
between six and eight instruments in a year.
[sanding sound]
[upbeat folk string music]
What gives me the most enjoyment is when I hand the instrument
to somebody who's actually a really good player.
Who can put the instrument through the paces
and kind of prove to me
that everything works and it sounds good.
That's what gives me the biggest charge.
People ask me, "How did you get into this?"
"Well, the short answer is
this is back therapy that got out of hand."
I guess perhaps this was meant to be.
I've had a couple people tell me,
"Oh, this is what I was supposed to end up doing."
I can't argue with it,
but I'm having fun.
[sanding, upbeat string music]
- I'm here at the FEED Kitchens
where anyone get "hands on" and take a class.
I'm here with Josey of Madame Chu
and we're going to learn to make one of her signature dishes
using one of her sauces.
How are you doing today, Josey? - I'm great.
Thank you for having me over, Angela.
- Thank you for having us.
So tell us, what are we going to be making today?
So, today we're going to use one of Madame Chu's Sambal Nyonya
to make a peanut dish
that's just really super-duper simple.
- I like that.
- I have some onion that I diced over here.
Just about a cup or less of the onion.
So we will sauté the onion
and after we sauté the onion, to this translucent,
then we'll add about two teaspoons of Sambal Nyonya.
Angela, can I get you to add two teaspoons of that?
- You sure can.
So two teaspoons of the sauce.
- Two nice heaping teaspoons.
So we will just coat the sautéed onion
with the sambal that you just added.
And at this time, we just add the rest of the roasted peanut.
The roasted peanut into the pan.
- How many peanuts are we adding to the pan?
- You can add about a cup, a cup and a half.
- So the sauce itself does not need to be heated?
- Correct.
Likewise, all our product does not need to be heated.
And all of these product are made locally at FEED Kitchen.
So all our products are produced locally here.
And all our-- most of our ingredients,
as much as we can,
we try to get it from the local farmers
so they are as local as they can get.
There are no preservatives, no MSG,
and above all, they're my grandmother's recipe.
So my grandmother doesn't even put preservatives in it.
- That sounds delicious.
So can we try some of the dish that we just made?
- Yes, absolutely. And I have a fork here for you.
- Thank you. All right.
This tastes great. Thank you so much, Josey.
- Thank you. I hope you enjoy that.
- I plan to.
Our final story this week
celebrates the spirit of FEED Kitchens'
commitment to food and community.
It's our animated tale by Rodney Lambright, the second,
called "Something About A Flower."
[crickets chirping]
- There's always lots of people
at Papa and Grandma's house on Sundays.
I get to play with my cousins,
my uncles and aunties,
but my favorite part...
is always the food.
- Is it good, Rose? - Uh-huh.
Thank you Grandma,
but I think I ate too much.
- Okay, baby.
Let me just take that biscuit and pack it up.
- NO! I'm not done yet!
- Calm down.
You can always have more later.
Larry,
can you put this in the car for me, honey?
- Of course, baby. Greg!
Come help me with this stuff, boy.
- All right, Dad.
- Where are you going, Daddy?
Where's Papa taking the food?
- Don't worry, baby, you'll see.
You're coming, too.
- But I don't wanna go.
*
Where are we going, Tina?
Why are they taking all of the food away?
- Stop acting like a baby.
You'll see soon enough.
Besides you had plenty of food
and you didn't even share one bite with me.
- I'm not acting like a baby!
[car door opens]
- Are you ready, Rose?
It'll be fun, just you wait.
[popping sounds]
[car engine]
[door opens]
- This is where we're taking the food, Rose.
- So we're giving it away?
- To people who need it.
We're fortunate to have extra food.
So we're going to share, okay?
- But I don't wanna share!
[footsteps]
Tina!
[thud]
- It's you.
- He has Tina!
- Joe?
- Hey, Prim, Larry,
and look at you, Greg, all grown up.
- Rose, this is Joe, my old friend.
He used to run the old doll store
where I got Tina when I was a little girl.
- This must be your grandbaby?
She looks just like you, Prim.
Here you go.
- What do you say, Rose? - Thank you.
*
- He's such a nice man.
I wonder where his family is.
[popping sounds]
- All right now, enjoy.
- Can I get a few more sweet potatoes on my plate,
little one?
[plop]
- Thanks for picking up Tina for me.
- She must have been so excited to see me
that she jumped right out of your arms.
- Daddy, can we come back to see Joe?
I like it here.
- Of course we can, baby.
- The food this Sunday tasted so good,
but for some reason it tasted better than last Sunday.
Maybe it's because I got to share it with all of you.
*
- Wow!
That was really inspiring and super tasty.
It was great being around so many successful entrepreneurs
from right here in Wisconsin.
If you'd like to find out more
about the stories you've seen today
including our
"Something About a Flower" comic strip series,
plus more about the FEED Kitchens,
visit WisconsinLife.org.
And remember, we'd love to hear about your Wisconsin Life ,
so send us your ideas at WisconsinLife@wpt.org.
In the meantime, I hope to see you next time.
I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald
and this is our Wisconsin Life .
Bye!
*
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.