EATSFlorida

IF YOU EAT FOOD, you are being lied to every day.

The food supply chain is so vast and so complicated. It has yielded extra-virgin olive oil that is actually colored sunflower oil, Parmesan cheese bulked up with wood pulp, and a horsemeat scandal that, for a while, rendered Ikea outings Swedish meatball-free.

Everywhere you look, you see the claims: “sustainable,” “naturally raised,” “organic,” “non-GMO,” “fair trade,” “responsibly grown.” Restaurants have reached new levels of hyperbole.

What makes buying food different from other forms of commerce is this: It’s a trust-based system. How do you know the Dover sole on your plate is Dover sole? Only that the restaurateur said so.

And how can you be sure the strawberries your toddler is gobbling are free of pesticides? Only because the vendor at the farmers market said so.

Your purchases are unverifiable unless you drive to that farm or track back through a restaurant’s distributors and ask for invoices.

I did.

For several months, I sifted through menus from every restaurant I’ve reviewed since the farm-to-table trend started. Of 239 restaurants still in business, 54 were making claims about the provenance of their ingredients.

For fish claims that seemed suspicious, I kept zip-top baggies in my purse and tucked away samples. The Times had them DNA tested by scientists at the University of South Florida. I called producers and vendors. I visited farms.

My conclusion? Just about everyone tells tales. Sometimes they are whoppers, sometimes they are fibs borne of negligence or ignorance, and sometimes they are nearly harmless omissions or “greenwashing.”

Like many people who visit or live in Pinellas County, I love the Gulf Beaches, Tampa Bay side parks, and wide range of places to eat and enjoy life. Florida's densest, smallest and only peninsular county is also one of its most historic. People have been hunting, gathering, transporting, processing, preparing and eating a wide range of foods, native and imported, for thousands of years. Pinellas was Florida's most agriculturally productive area for decades. Follow my trail from Pinellas Point to Pass-A-Grille north to Tarpon Springs and back south to St. Petersburg. In a 1885 speech before the American Medical Association, Baltimore physician “W. Chew Van Bibber, praised Pinellas Peninsula as “the healthiest spot on earth.” This helped spur the phenomenal growth that continues well into the 21st century. Curiously of the many generations of residents and visitors who have been drawn to this healthy spot and well nourished in Pinellas include several men who made their fortunes in sweets elsewhere before moving to St. Petersburg. They include a salt water taffy king, a chewing gum millionaire, the inventor of the Clark Bar and the creator of the Fig Newton. Pinellas has also been home to two women associated with the important issues of over eating. Terri Schivo put the spotlight on living wills as a result of falling into a coma after taking severe measures to lose weight. Sara Blakey, founder of the Spanx foundation garment business, is the first self-made female billionaire. Others encountered on this Pinellas County food heritage trail are: a Spaniard who may have inspired the Pocohontas legend; the “last of the pirates;” notorious explorers Panfilo de Narvaez and De Soto; a man famous for his smoked fish; a band of brothers who rode with the Confederate “cow cavalry;” citrus industry innovators who created the first orange crate, packing assembly lines, tangerine and grapefruit varieties and frozen concentrates. Alan Lomax, who selected Earth’s music that was sent out into the Universe, lived his later years in Pinellas. So did Milan Hodza, the agrarian reformer and former prime minister of Czechoslovakia. Automotive pioneer Ransome Olds spent much of his Oldsmobile fortune creating a model farming community. Greek immigrant and former cook in General Pershing’s army, Louis Pappas made it big in the restaurant business. Cereal King W.K. Kellogg wintered here. So did other millionaires, William Webster (industrial heating systems), John Wanamaker (department stores), medical textbook publisher F. A. Davis to name just a few. Others include Scientologists (Clearwater is their spiritual headquarters), the Doors’ Jim Morrison, stuntman Evel Knievel and pro wrestler Hulk Hogan. The Rolling Stones in 1965, composed their hit song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" while staying at Clearwater’s Fort Harrison Hotel. Many of the nearly 100 places mentioned in this tour are long gone. A few have been saved and moved to several heritage parks. The tour is a journey through time that chronicles the development of the county. Join me in exploring the history and food heritage sites of Pinellas County, Florida.

Florida Fertilizer History: Bird Racks

Novel Method of Obtaining Guano (1911) This article appeared in a 1911 Port Richey Co. brochure.

A most interesting thing is the manner in which some of the farmers of this section get their supply of fertilizer at little or no cost. Port Richey proper is a mile or so inland from the Gulf, but in time will extend its border to its very shores; so, then, we will say that out from Port Richey the waters of the Gulf, except in the boat channels, is of comparatively shallow depth and at some points from four to five miles from shore the water is only four to six feet deep with clean sandy bottom and clear as crystal. The farmer who desires a supply of guano first finds a good well-located shallow spot off shore. He then builds a sort of scaffold, supported above the water by suitable poles or braces. He then covers it over with rough flooring and leaves it to the seagulls, water turkeys and other sea birds as a roosting place. At the end of a few months the farmer goes out to the roost and brings in from 7 to 10 tons of sea fowl guano, the best on earth and worth $60.00 per ton. These roosts are the resorts, day and night, of thousands upon thousands of sea birds. The usual dimensions of the roosts are 20 x 100 feet and cost but little as the entire structure is made of poles supporting a floor of slab lumber which may be had almost for the hauling away from the mill.

Florida Food Heritage: Hermann Trappman, artist extraordinaire of bygone Florida Indians' Foodways

Calusa men working on two new dugout canoes. In the foreground, a family canoe. In the background, a larger trade canoe. Trade canoes could be a lot bigger than this. The man sitting on the canoe is describing an adventure in which the canoe he was on was plaining through the surf along the Yucatan Peninsula during a recent visit.

In the foreground a child is using a quahog shell like a file to smooth the edges of the canoe. His uncle across from him is using a blow pipe to direct the heat, burning out the appropriate amount of wood. He is holding an adz made out of the edge of a large whelk in his right hand. Resting on the bow of the nearest canoe is a whelk axe.

Sitting on the deck on the left is a fish trap. The woman in the background is weaving on a back-strap loom.

Florida Food Traditions: Alligator Butchering & Public Gator Hunt

"Alligators taken during the public hunt go from the swamp marshes to various markets — leather goods, preserved heads and feet to be sold at gift shops, and as different meat products. All the work that goes into the process, and the number of people involved, make the meat and leather expensive. Cutlet and ribs go for about $18 a pound online and at specialty meat markets and delis."