Go Green East Harlem

Drugs and guns are more readily available than fresh fruits and vegetables in some poor urban neighborhoods, and, if you think about it (which, sadly, most of us don’t), lack of access to healthy foods hurts a community just as substance abuse and violence do.

We enlightened—or, depending on your perspective, elitist--eaters in New York’s West Village clog up the aisles of Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s as we dither between the “minimally treated” local apples or the organically grown ones from the Pacific Northwest. But a few miles north of our Ethicurean enclave, folks are too burdened by the obesity epidemic and a diabetes rate that’s ten times higher than it is downtown to debate the merits of local versus organic. An apple a day of either kind might keep the doctor away, but it’s a moot point when you live in a “food desert.”

In neighborhoods from East Harlem to East LA, the statistics tell the same story; a shortage of shops and restaurants offering healthy food; a surplus of outlets selling cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrient convenience foods; and an alarmingly high rate of diabetes and obesity. Uber-capitalists crow about all our consumer choices, but where are the choices for these consumers, so ill-served that it’s literally making them ill?

Everyone from activists to nutritionists to farmers to politicians is trying to tackle this fundamental problem of how to provide people with more of those fresh fruits and vegetables the USDA keeps telling us to eat but doesn’t seem inclined to subsidize (unlike the corn that’s coming out our ears and every other orifice, now, and going into our gas tanks, at great environmental expense.)

But bringing these underserved communities more fresh, whole foods is a half-baked plan if you don’t follow through and show folks how to cook up all that gorgeous produce. That’s why I was so thrilled to find out about The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook, which Jones Books is publishing today. It’s a lovely little paperback packed with 68 recipes for wholesome comfort foods, it’s bilingual (English on one side, Spanish on the other) and it’s going to be given away for free to East Harlem residents at community events (the rest of us can buy it in bookstores or online for $17.95).

Wow, sounds like a real public service! And that’s because it is. The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook was produced by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in collaboration with the non-profit Community Fund for Manhattan, who spent $54,000 to print 8,000 copies of the cookbook.

The simple, tasty recipes were donated by East Harlem’s chefs, community leaders, and other residents who wanted to share their knowledge and love of good food with the rest of us, and the equally appealing photographs are the contribution of a group of graduates from the International Center of Photography. The recipes were vetted by Integrative Nutrition, a school whose declared mission is to “play a crucial role in improving the health and happiness of Americans.”

They’re off to a great start with this book, which, in addition to dozens of recipes for delicious soups, stews, salads and other dishes, features savvy advice from Scott Stringer on his own culinary specialty—take-out. The Manhattan Borough President is the first to admit that he himself doesn’t cook, but Stringer’s “Top Ten Takeout Tips” for how to ensure that the food you’re eating is healthy even when you have to outsource your meals could be the most valuable resource in the entire book for those who can’t, or won’t, take the time to cook.

Other helpful advice includes dietary guidelines from a doctor and how to get your kitchen set up so you’ll have what you need on hand to whip up a batch of Sweet Potatolicious or Soulful Stuffed Sole. But though The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook is intended to inspire culinary novices, its easy-to-make, ethnically diverse recipes will appeal to anyone looking to cook fast, healthy meals built around fresh foods. There are dishes that include fish, poultry, or meat, but the emphasis is where it should be—on the plant-based foods that ought to be front and center on our plates.

For far too long East Harlem (like so many other inner city communities) has been an “afterthought for urban planners,” as Scott Stringer notes in the book’s introduction, and a “dumping ground” for environmentally undesirable projects. Stringer’s out to change all that with his Go Green East Harlem initiative, which also includes the creation of The East Harlem Asthma Center of Excellence, set to open this spring with a goal of reducing asthma hospitalizations by 50 percent within 3 years; a tree planting program that brought hundreds of new trees to East Harlem and provided a tree care workshop to teach neighborhood kids how to care for the trees; and a green building conference last fall that promoted sustainable development and renovation for less affluent neighborhoods.

So to all you cynics who think that government can’t be a force for good in the ‘hood, I say, get your hands on a copy of The Go Green East Harlem Cookbook. You’ll have to eat your words.