1/22/25 -- Fostering Free Thinking with Frameworks
A well-constructed framework encourages freedom; it doesn’t constrain it. — Aaron Dworkin
Using Frameworks to Foster Free Thinking
Helping everyone we hire learn how to think for themselves
Last week, in the New York Times, Kim Lane Scheppele and Norman Eisen authored an op-ed entitled, “Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?”
Having spent decades studying the damage that dictatorship, autocracy, and “command and control” leadership can cause—in countries and companies both—I’ll say here with certainty that I hope the answer to their question will be a very clear, “No.”
That said, I also know that none of us can significantly change the world on our own. We do, though, hold a meaningful degree of influence. As insightful writer Seth Godin reminded anyone who read his daily post this past weekend, “The future unfolds, with or without us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t bend it in a useful direction.”
Seth’s statement applies at every level of our lives: personally, in our families, our communities, our countries, and also the organizations of which we are a part. Regardless of how things play out on a national level right now, in many companies, it remains far too common for front-line people to fall into a pattern of waiting passively for bosses to dictate their every action. It is exactly the sort of sleepwalking that Scheppele and Eisen are warning us to steer clear of.
The opposite of this sort of sleepwalking would be for each person in an organization to learn to think critically and act with care and intention, particularly within our own spheres of influence. People who reclaim the capacity to reflect and think for themselves rarely sleepwalk into anything. As business writer Carol Sanford says, in hard times those people become “the source of our will, vitality, energy, hope, and capacity for awe. … They know that sleepwalking through day-to-day existence kills spirit, they admonish us, ‘Wake Up!’”
The subheading of Sanford’s book No More Gold Stars sort of says it all—it is, I will suggest, our collective call to effective action at every level of our organizational lives: Regenerating Capacity to Think for Ourselves.
Sanford—who often referred to herself as a “creative disruptor” and a “paradigm seeker”—regularly called on anyone who would listen to stop searching for some singular “magic answer” or “perfect piece of advice.” Instead, she would say, we should focus our work on creating frameworks that help anyone who uses them well to learn to come to their own conclusions. Frameworks, Sanford says, “provide structure for thinking but require participants to supply the content and do the thinking.”
Used well, frameworks are a systemic way to help us “wake up.” Here in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB), we often refer to this kind of construct as “organizational recipes.” It’s not the moniker that matters though, it’s what they help us do. They guide us but don’t give us automatic, unthinking answers. More likely than not, in a well-designed framework many good conclusions can be arrived at by thinking and working within the broad but helpful guidelines they offer. While they may seem inefficient to autocratically inclined leaders, frameworks like this are actually anything but. As Sanford insightfully insisted, “learning to think for ourselves, become self-determining and self-directed, is key to learning to live on and contribute to Earth.”
Frameworks are like mental alarm clocks that wake us if we start to sleepwalk. As Sanford puts it,
Instead of programming us, [frameworks] break our programming. They encourage consciousness, systemic thought, and careful consideration of what is appropriate in a specific situation. … the framework doesn’t tell me what to think but it gives me a potent method for understanding and upgrading the way that I’m thinking.
A framework helps everyone who uses it to start engaging their intellectual and emotional abilities at ever more effective levels. Instead of memorizing, it makes us pause, reflect, consider, and converse to come up with a good answer. As Sanford says,
The capacity to think for ourselves cannot be cultivated by asking others to tell us how to think, no matter how benign or enlightened these others may be. … We must learn to discern and … develop the capacity to think for ourselves.
In situations where leaders insist on giving orders and having everything “their way,” group members often learn to simply shut up and go along with what they’re told to do. Rather than thinking for themselves, they choose to wait it out and sleepwalk through their work. Sadly, it’s all too common, for the most part in situations that do not show up on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. As local author Mitch Albom writes, “Most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.” People who live their lives like that fall into line, follow orders, and wait for direction from higher-ups. In the Russian army, soldiers afraid to take initiative or speak up for what they believe have been dying in large numbers fighting in Ukraine. Similarly, in organizations, employees who are afraid to think for themselves or speak up for what they believe would improve things die spiritually.
Alarmingly, there are leaders who prefer this way of working. As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes, such leaders “want to… make us feel powerless and hopeless in the process." This is not a recent development. Carol Sanford makes clear that this pattern of people being told what to do and following orders from others is in fact part of the worldview of the Industrial Revolution and 20th-century focus on mass markets and efficiency:
Higher mental activity was consistently discounted and underdeveloped. Thus we have lost the ability to think for ourselves because the systems and processes that make up much of modern life have been, perhaps unintentionally, designed in ways that undermine our mental processes. These systems and processes condition us to accept without question the statements that are put in front of us by influencers and leaders, diminishing our confidence in our thinking capabilities and discouraging challenges to expert opinion.
In the spirit of which, most 21st-century organizations are still striving for greater “efficiency” by attempting to “eliminate” what they perceive as the need for employees to think for themselves.
Frameworks, however, do the opposite—when used effectively, they invite inquiry, embrace uncertainty, value diversity, and encourage thoughtful conversation. The bad news for autocratic bosses is that people no longer simply stay quiet and do what they’re told. The good news for folks who share our perspective is the same: People no longer just keep quiet and do what they’re told.
Frameworks wake people up. They push people to think critically, caringly, and creatively in all of their work. They are very much what creative free-thinking 20th-century glass designer Freda Diamond once said of her friend, anarchist author and activist Emma Goldman: “She opened your mind and made you think about things you never thought about before. That was her outstanding characteristic. She made people think!”
While, certainly, there are days when I quietly just wish everyone would do things the way I want them to, the reality is that I know that approach is highly ineffective. We’ve worked hard here for over 40 years to create an organizational ecosystem in which people will effectively and constructively voice their views. In fact, Freda Diamond’s sentiment about Goldman would be a lovely legacy for any free-thinking leader to leave. If we turn away from “command and control” leadership at every level, we can, instead, create, care, and connect at infinitely more effective levels—even when we don’t agree. The health of our organizational ecosystems—internal or external, small or large, local or national—may well depend on it.
In a sense, I can say with a smile, we might start to judge our success in part on how many times the people we employ are willing to constructively disagree with us. Not on the back dock, but face-to-face, in philosophically grounded, values-engaged ways. Learning to think with frameworks rather than following orders is, as Carol Sanford says, a far more productive approach.
Carol Sanford’s life work was all about this kind of campaign for the use of constructive frameworks. Through her writing and speaking, she was constantly pushing people—often quite cantankerously and humorously—to stop trying to look to her for the answers and rather, to lean into learning to think for themselves. She would often declare, “I am a discoverer, not an expert.” Over and over again, she steered people away from seeking advice from those “in charge,” and sent them, instead, to reflect and develop their own capabilities—to find their own effective, values-focused, ecosystem-specific answers:
I have long understood that my words and teachings are often misinterpreted because people try to understand them as direct instruction. They want a template, something they can apply directly, something they can do. But what I’m saying has to be approached from the vantage of an indirect mindset. Otherwise, everything that I’m describing is downgraded to tactics rather than experienced as an invitation to examine the source of one’s beliefs about reality. … I hope … to evoke a shift in perspective that will enable readers to perceive the world in a new way.
Well-designed frameworks, she makes clear, can do just that.
In doing this work, Sanford emphasizes the importance of our “ability to remember and analyze the past and to project consequences into the future.” Looking back into linguistic history, I learned that the root source of the word “frame” aligns perfectly with Sanford’s sense of frameworks in the 21st century. The Oxford English Dictionary offers that “to frame” means “to do good to, benefit, or profit (a person or thing),” as well as “to supply the needs of, to feed or tend.” Similarly, the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the Old English framian means “to profit, be helpful, avail, benefit.” When we teach people how to think creatively with frameworks, we are, indeed, helping them to benefit and lead better lives. Over time, they also help to make us more profitable in the process.?
The idea of working to establish frameworks to encourage constructive free thinking rather than a reliance on following orders could itself be framed as one of those pithy sayings that my beloved business partner of 43 years, Paul Saginaw, is so good at sharing. Perhaps something along the lines of, “Frame, don’t force.” Or you could also consider adapting the mantra created many years ago by Sanford’s client, Colgate South Africa: “To remain conscious, always begin, continue, and end with a framework.”
In fact, I’m realizing now that Paul’s helpful little witticisms are, in essence, frameworks that he has successfully encapsulated into a single sentence. To wit, his much-loved reminder, “When furious, get curious.” Same goes for his lovely little statement, “Learn to disagree without being disagreeable.” They don’t give us easy answers, but they do guide us in more desirable directions.
We have many organizational recipes in the ZCoB that we rely on regularly. Applied in the same setting by six different people, you’ll likely find half a dozen different answers—all of which will, more likely than not, be pretty good. An effective framework brings to the fore what Maria Popova, creator of the Marginalian, posits: “The wonderful thing about minds, about the dazzling variousness of them, is what different things can bloom in them from the same seed.”
Here are some of the many frameworks we use every day that come quickly to mind:
All, I believe, fill Carol Sanford’s bill. They point us effectively in a positive direction but don’t dictate the exact action steps we will take. All of them, it’s clear to me now, invite us to think for ourselves.
Having a clear philosophy for anything you do in your life serves as a constructive framework as well. “A Taste of Zingerman’s Food Philosophy” details our approach to food and how it has served us well in this context. To wit, while we are known nationally for our determination to stay true to our culinary values of full flavor and traditional food, there is no “Zingerman’s Taste Tsar” who autocratically picks all our products. In fact, with our food philosophy to guide us, probably half a hundred different people are involved in choosing the foods that show up on our shelves, menus, and websites!
While the details of each philosophy may differ, any well-thought-out philosophy provides this kind of framing. This is certainly true of anarchism, the philosophy for which Emma Goldman was such a passionate advocate and which has profoundly shaped my own thinking over the years. Anarchism is not a program for seizing political power; quite the opposite—it’s a belief system designed (at least as I’ve experienced it) to help people lead free-thinking and more rewarding lives. Through the philosophy and frameworks in Emma Goldman’s essays, feminist, artist, and author Peggy Kornegger came across anarchist ideas many years ago. They successfully started shifting her thinking and her sense of the world significantly in the process:
Only recently did I discover that many of my disconnected political impulses and inclinations shared a common framework—that is, the anarchist or libertarian tradition of thought. I was like suddenly seeing red after years of colourblind grays.
Philosopher David Thoreau Weick says much the same: Anarchism “offers a framework of explanation.” You, of course, will have your own philosophical frameworks to work with. The point here is not for you to believe what I or Carol Sanford or anyone else does—it’s only to emphasize the importance of creating effective and constructive frameworks that can make for far better decision-making and radically healthier, more inclusive, and involved organizations.
One important asterisk to add to this conversation is that, in a healthy framework-focused organization, you’ll want to have a framework that allows the people within it to effectively lead change—including the ability to alter a framework. After all, if we’re committed to helping people think for themselves and find ways to enhance what already exists, it’s inevitable that, sooner or later, they’ll discover ways to improve some of the very frameworks we work with. As my friends at Kokonda Dub in Uganda sing in their amazing song “Anarchist Africa,”
sometimes it's necessary to question. the paradigms that have been implanted in our minds so we ask you to be pensive as opposed to defensive
Here at Zingerman’s, for well over 20 years now, the framework for thinking about and working on change is what we call Bottom-Line Change (aka, BLC). The old model would just be for the boss to autocratically tell everyone what change to make. Here, anyone can initiate a change, and we are all, me included, committed to working within the framing that BLC brings. Author of Scaling Up, globally recognized creative thinker Verne Harnish , just wrote about BLC in his enews a few weeks ago: “[Zingerman’s has] a process to each lead the change to guarantee it’s doable, the right thing to do, and implemented without all of it rolling up to the anarchist founder … to deal with. They have a beautiful little pamphlet entitled Bottom-Line Change.” The same can be said of the way Lean work can be applied so effectively—staff members all learn what to do to improve an already existing standard operating procedure, and everyone is authorized to “stop the line” when quality is in question.
Learning to think for oneself, I know, can often be awkward. I struggle sometimes, too. There is a certainty, some level of mind-dulling comfort, in waiting for someone else to just tell us what to do, then proceed as planned without really questioning anything. By contrast, learning to think more independently—to arrive at one’s own considered conclusions, and then talk through differences until you arrive at a good understanding—is often uncomfortable. Our work as leaders is, in great part, to facilitate the use of frameworks that help people get past that awkwardness. As Seth Godin wrote a few days ago, “Learning is a journey of incompetence. … The job of the teacher is to create the conditions for the student to explore their incompetence long enough to learn something useful.”
Still, it's time, Sanford says—and I agree—to reclaim what we allowed to erode. It may not?happen quickly, but the impact can be inspiring. As Sanford suggests,
To regain the ability to think for ourselves will require an equally dedicated effort to dismantle our collective sense of dependency and inadequacy, and then to develop the system thinking capacity needed to exercise meaningful agency in our lives and the world.
To be clear, thinking effectively for oneself does not mean reactively embracing leaders who tell you to reject ideas outright. That approach is simply another version—dressed in rebellious garb—of blindly following along without thinking for oneself. From painful personal experience, I’ve learned that reactivity is not the same as reflection. While a big “FU” to those in charge may charge you up in the moment, it is not a framework for thoughtful or constructive work.
Frameworks, by contrast, call for questioning. They push people to pay attention, to think things through in a caring and critical way, and to examine their impact on the entirety of the ecosystems of which they are part. Insightful historian Timothy Snyder’s 8th lesson in On Tyranny is,
Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
Everyone will surely have heard some version of the saying, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” This story is pretty much the same: Tell staff members exactly what to do all day, and they’ll probably be able to take the “right” action for the specific situation they’ve been shown. Beyond that, they will almost certainly struggle. By contrast, if we help people learn how to think for themselves, they’ll be infinitely more able to self-manage, make wiser decisions, stay centered through stressful times, learn to ask for help, and be happier to help others as well.
Used well, effective frameworks increase the odds that everyone in the organization will:
Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren’s model for The Seventh Story (which I wrote a good bit about recently) is also, I will suggest, a wonderful framework to work with. The Seventh Story, as you may recall, is the one in which “love is the protagonist.” Last week, I wrote about the love that flows—in all directions—in the story of service at Zingerman’s. Much to my delight, I found myself the direct beneficiary of one of those stories, courtesy of my friend Jay Melton. A longtime customer, Jay and his wife Madeline Melton have helped to co-create Washtenaw County’s annual Juneteenth celebration (mark your calendar—this year’s will be on Saturday, June 21). Before he retired and moved back to Michigan a few years ago, Jay had worked his way up to become the first Black Vice President at Doubleday. Like me, he loves books. After he read last week’s piece and my extensive references to the words of Patti Smith, Jay generously decided to gift me his own signed copy of the prerelease promo brochure for the 1998 book Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the Future. One of a kind, inscribed to him by Patti Smith, and yet, he acted touchingly, generously, and lovingly to bring it my way. In it, Smith shares,
Rock & roll was a saving grace. It soothed, it rescued, it stayed in step. … As I evolved, music was evolving with me. And as I continued to grow, the music and the language articulated our growth, our dissatisfaction, our exploration.
What Smith writes, I want to suggest is, in a wonderfully poetic way, what good frameworks are wont to do. They soothe, they save, they help us to stay in step. As we grow, they seem to evolve with us because they are almost timeless. Frameworks, like rock and roll, take the power away from autocrats and give it out to anyone who is willing to take it. As Smith says, “It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars. … Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.” In that sense, frameworks are just as helpful for a new staff member on their second week at work as they are for a managing partner who’s making their way through their second decade of doing what they do.
If I had written down my hopes and dreams last summer for the third week of January 2025, my list would have looked very different from what we will be dealing with in the coming days. But the difference in the details, while it may be a pain point, isn’t really the point. Rather, right now, it’s about digging determinedly into doing better work even if things aren’t always going the way we might want. As Anne Applebaum, a historian of authoritarianism, said in an interview this past weekend, “Nothing is ever pre-ordained. Nothing is ever inevitable. Everything that happens tomorrow depends on what we do today.” Which means that the better we design and use frameworks to encourage collaborative free thinking, the better things are going to go.
In her “Letters to an American” newsletter on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote, “People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left. Just as they have always been, [heroes] are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.” The better the frameworks we can create together, the more everyone around can become a healthy hero in their own right. Regular practice with positive frameworks creates a plethora of that sort of person.
Zsofia Towne, who you’ll read more about in the next piece, might be one of those people. She shared an unrequested, but also immeasurably inspiring, set of insights about what it’s been like for her to be working in the ZCoB for the last few years. It is a testament to what an ecosystem in which framework-focused approaches have so long been encouraged can make possible—free-thinking, poetic, Patti Smith-like, personal reflection:
In today’s world, unfortunately, we are surrounded by so much negativity, hatred, and disrespect. But then I walk into any Zingerman’s Business and all that disappears—like all of the sudden it doesn’t exist. All my worries, fears, and anxiety are gone for those moments, hours. Zingerman’s Community of Businesses is like a separate island of Ann Arbor and the world where love, kindness, compassion, respect, humility, and dignity lives. Where unity and diversity lives. Where meaningful connections/conversations and positive, loving differences happen every day.
Writer George Saunders says, “The scariest thought in the world is that someday I'll wake up and realize I've been sleepwalking through my life.” Stay awake! Find a framework! Think free! Make a difference!
P.S. I will be co-teaching a special two-day ZingTrain session with Gareth Higgins on Thursday, March 6, and Friday, March 7: “Reframing Your Leadership Stories and Beliefs.”
P.P.S. The previous evening, Wednesday, March 5, Gareth will be giving a talk at the Roadhouse about his new book, A Whole Life in Twelve Movies, and more. While Gareth will be speaking at both events, the content will be different, so I hope to see you at either or both!
A Taste of Hungary: A Budapest-Inspired Feast
领英推荐
Come to Cornman on February 12 for a magical meal
Here’s a rare chance to enjoy some superb Hungarian food and wine here in the middle of winter and the middle of the week in Southeast Michigan!
After the scrumptious, sold-out success of the Hungarian Jewish Special Dinner at the Roadhouse in December, we’re gonna do a second, equally awesome Hungarian dinner the second week of February! Like the first special evening, this one will feature the hard work, passion, and personal history of the above-mentioned Zsofie Towne ! Zsofie grew up in Hungary and now lives in Ann Arbor with her husband and daughter. She has been part of the Zingerman's team for over two years, starting at the Deli and transitioning to the Roadhouse about 18 months ago. Her deep passion for the food, cooking, and culture of her homeland, combined with a comparable passion for what we do here at Zingerman’s is turning these events into truly one-of-a-kind evenings!
Here’s a peek at the outline of the evening’s culinary offerings:
Of this special evening event, Zsofie says,
It is an absolute honor to have the opportunity to have another Hungarian Dinner, this time with Zingerman’s Cornman Farms alongside our wonderful managing partners Tabitha, Kieron, and Kristie at such a beautiful and world-famous place like Cornman Farms. The menu, which has been put together by Tabitha, Kieron, and me, looks amazing and very delicious. I am very excited about the liver paté, which is one of my favorites, and of course the chicken paprikas with the buttered spaetzle. And, let’s not forget February is Hungarian month in the ZCoB, and so having the Bakehouse’s dessert, with the help of co-managing partner Amy Emberling, will be so special, too.
I am really looking forward to this dinner, to share stories, and make meaningful connections and memories with the guests who will be there.
If you’re looking for a great just-before-Valentine’s date, a remarkable meal that you won’t likely get the likes of unless you fly to Budapest, or just something intriguing to do next month, grab one of the limited seats for this special Hungarian dinner at Cornman Farms ASAP!
P.S. You may well be inspired by the evening to take a trip with Zingerman’s Food Tours to Hungary this spring—May 5th through 12th—to explore Budapest & the Tokaj wine region. There are still some seats left! Score one or two soon!
Liptauer Cheese from the Creamery
5 Tasty Things to Do with “Hungarian Pimento Cheese”
If we were living in Hungary, something like this spicy, creamy, delicious cheese spread would be pretty much ubiquitous! Like pimento cheese in the American South, liptauer (pronounced “LIP-tower”) is a long-standing tradition throughout the part of Europe that made up the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. In fact, I’ve come to realize, it’s essentially a Hungarian version of pimento cheese—a great cheese spread, spiced with chile peppers, and super delicious and much-loved by nearly everyone who tries it!
When I first went to Hungary with Frank and Amy Emberling about fifteen years ago, I learned that liptauer is more frequently known there by the name of k?r?z?tt (pronounced "KUR-uh-zut" with a rolled "r" and a short "uh" sound), but we'd already been calling it liptauer here for so long we decided to leave the label as it had been. The name liptauer comes from Liptó in north-central Slovakia, but almost every region in the area makes some version of it. As with pimento cheese, if you go to its home region, most folks will have their own heirloom recipe. Each family’s recipe is, of course, “the best.” What we make at the Creamery is our version. We start with our very fresh Farm Cheese, spice it up with fresh garlic, a good bit of farmstead Hungarian paprika, capers, toasted caraway, and just a touch of anchovy. It’s moderately spicy and exceptionally flavorful—there's a big burst of flavor in every bite!
Like pimento cheese, the Creamery’s Liptauer is good on most any savory dish you can imagine! It’s easy to serve at any party, and it’s good morning, noon, and night! Here are half a dozen of my favorite things to do with liptauer:
You can get the Liptauer at the Cream Top Shop and the Deli or at zingermans.com Mail Order.
P.S. As I mentioned above, the Creamery’s Liptauer will be on the menu for the upcoming Hungarian dinner at Cornman Farms!
P.P.S. Let me know if you sign up for the Zingerman’s Food Tours to Hungary that’s happening this spring—your first order of liptauer (or k?r?z?tt) will be on me!
Chicken-Fried Mushrooms at the Roadhouse
Pepper-spiced deep-fried maitake make for some marvelous eating!
One of my favorite new foods in the ZCoB over the last few years, these chicken-fried mushrooms are more than worth making a trip across town to try!
To be clear, there’s no actual chicken involved here. The “chicken-fried” is a reference to the batter in which they’re dredged, and the way they’re deep fried! They are, to my taste, absolutely delicious! They start with buttery, meaty, moist maitake mushrooms grown in Michigan. The maitake—also known as hen-of-the-woods—are spiced with that totally terrific farm-to-table Tellicherry pepper from Kerala on the west coast of India. Like the Roadhouse’s more famous fried chicken, the heat from the pepper is prominently present upfront but not overpowering.
Maitake are used widely in Chinese medicine, are loaded with nutrients, and contribute to immune system health. So there are, it seems, possible health benefits to eating them, though for me, it’s all about how tasty they are. In the wild, maitake can grow to be huge, but the folks at Stony Creek manage the growth so the mushrooms are harvested at a more manageable size. Because they’re cultivating the maitake so effectively, Stony Creek is making it possible for us to get a year-round supply of these great mushrooms, which opens up the door to doing delicious dishes like this one for many months to come. Mycologist Paul Stamets says,
Maitake mushrooms are known in Japan as “the dancing mushroom.” According to a Japanese legend, a group of Buddhist nuns and woodcutters met on a mountain trail, where they discovered a fruiting of maitake mushrooms emerging from the forest floor. Rejoicing at their discovery of this delicious mushroom, they danced to celebrate.
When you taste these chicken-fried mushrooms—either on a Chicken-Fried Mushroom Sandwich or as an entrée of their own—I forecast that you will find yourself dancing as well! I know they sure get me going. The other evening a guest stopped me to say, almost glowing as she spoke, how darned good they are! I agree!
P.S. For the next few days, both the Roadhouse and Miss Kim are making the most of the Restaurant Week in Ann Arbor! Swing by—or better still, book a table in advance—and try some great food as part of the special Restaurant Week packages! At the Roadhouse that includes the chance to have a chicken-fried mushroom set atop a plate of steaming hot, sautéed potato pierogi!
Score Some Cornish-style Pasties from the Bakehouse
A 19th-century miner’s meal that can help you through the Michigan winter
Looking for a wonderful, easy way to serve a hearty winter meal? If you love the Deli’s Pot Pies and are curious about other amazing options, the Bakehouse’s Cornish Pasties could be just the ticket!
A classic in the English region of Cornwall for centuries, pasties became a staple in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula thanks to Cornish immigrants who arrived in the area in the 1830s—around the same time the house and barn at Cornman Farms were being built. Many of these Cornishmen found work in the mines, just as they had done in their home region. Food writer William Grimes says, “As a symbol, the pasty is to Cornwall what the shamrock is to Ireland, or the thistle is to Scotland. It is sold in every bakery. It features on countless postcards.”
Pasties also have loyal adherents anywhere that Cornish immigrants have settled around the world—they’re particularly prominent around the California town of Grass Valley, where Cornish immigrants started coming in the years before the Civil War. Gage McKinney, a California historian of Cornish ancestry says, “You bite into a pasty, it connects you with all this legacy, which is only vague in your mind, but becomes visceral in your mouth.” Pasties, it seems, are also quite popular in the Wisconsin town of Mineral Point—home to Hook’s 7-year cheddar, a staple at the Roadhouse—and in the region of Real del Monte, Mexico.
Pasties got their start, so the story goes, from a time when tin miners took them down into the mines—the pastry wrapped around meat and vegetables made them a very practical way to eat lunch when you were stuck down underground all day. Each pasty was pretty much the ultimate in convenience food—you could eat part of it in the morning and save the rest for later, you had meat and vegetables and “bread” all in one handheld meal.
Word has it that superstitions abound about pasties. Miners would throw part of the crust deep into the mines for the “imps” or “knockers” that lived there—little mystical creatures (the folkloric equivalent to fairies in Ireland) who could cause great havoc in the mines if they were not appeased with their favorite treat. And to this day, Cornish people consider it bad luck to bring a pasty aboard a boat!
Here at the Bakehouse, we make two versions.?The standard version is potatoes, rutabaga, and onion, with a little cheddar cheese to make it all the richer, packed into an all-butter pastry crust. For the beef version, all of the meat is from naturally raised animals that don’t receive added growth hormones. We hand-cut it into thin strips and the vegetables (onion and rutabaga) are all hand-chopped as well—consistency of size is critical to ensure even cooking in its lovely lard-pastry crust. All the ingredients are layered into the dough one at a time—it takes longer than the more ordinary method of mixing all the ingredients into one mass and then ladling it out—to ensure a more even distribution and a better eating experience. And just to be clear, all the ingredients always go into the pasty pastry uncooked—as one former Bakehouse staffer who spent time over in the UK shared upon her return, “It would equate to a ‘mortal sin’ to do otherwise.”
Take note that each Bakehouse pasty is marked with a hand-cut “C” (for the vegetarian cheese pasty) or “Z” (on the meat version). This isn’t just a modern-day marketing maneuver—the tradition in the mines had much the same sort of thing going. In the old days, the miners would place the pasties on top of one of the ovens in the mine so they would stay warm until lunchtime. The only problem was figuring out which pasty belonged to each miner, as they all looked similar. Each miner would form their initial out of the raw dough and put it atop their particular pasty.
Pick up a pile of pasties from the Bakehouse’s freezer case whenever you’re over that way, then pull one out and pop it in the oven for about 55 minutes to bake whenever you’re thinking about what to make for dinner this winter! Wonderful aromas will be wafting through your whole kitchen and a great meal will await! Or swing by on Sunday or Monday—we bake some off at 11 am so you can have one for lunch!
Other Things on My Mind
Listening
Bukka White is not widely known outside the blues world, but inside that magical musical ecosystem, he’s something of a superstar. Born Booker T. Washington White in the fall of 1906 (when Booker T. Washington would have been at the height of his academic, activist, and agricultural work) somewhere between the small Mississippi towns of Aberdeen and Houston. White's father, John White, was a railroad worker and a musician, primarily playing the fiddle. For his ninth birthday, Bukka received a guitar from his father, marking the beginning of his musical journey. He played with seemingly almost all the great blues musicians of that era and is regularly cited to this day as an inspiration by musicians like Charlie Parr. White’s 1959 song “Fixin’ to Die Blues” was covered by Bob Dylan on his first album which brought White back into the awareness of the American music world. His song “Shake ’em on Down,” is the musical inspiration for Led Zeppelin’s “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper” (the lyrics are for musician Roy Harper—more on him soon! I love his old stuff!). Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues is a double album of White’s great work—mostly him playing steel guitar and singing. The first album is a set of songs recorded by guitarist John Fahey in the summer of 1963. The second was recorded live around the same era in Bremen, Germany! Awesome, acoustic “country blues” of the highest order!
Reading
After the election, I wrote about the insight and inspiration I was taking from Soviet dissident Alexander Volpin. This week in The Forward, Emily Tamkin wrote a good piece, also about looking to Volpin’s lessons to work in the coming months and years.
If you want to read about Bukka White, the go-to book is The Life and Music of Booker “Bukka” White: Recalling the Blues by scholar David W. Johnson. Folklorist Bill Ferriss, of whom I wrote quite a bit last year, says that White’s “life and music are essential to understanding American blues and folk music through the eyes of a Black artist.”
Steven Carse, co-founder of the wonderful King of Pops in Atlanta, has a new book out. Entitled Work Is Fun: Seven Ways a Successful Ice Pop Company Makes Work Meaningful and How You Can Too. I had the honor of writing the foreword for it!
Rereading
In the spirit of the lead essay above, Seth Godin’s great book, Purple Cow, offers a practical and powerful framework for creating a remarkable business. As Seth explains, “A purple cow is not a gimmick. It’s not a stunt or a selfish grab for attention. It’s simple: if your fans think it’s worth talking about, it’s remarkable.”
Photo credits: Zingerman's Cornman Farms, Zingerman's Creamery, Zingerman's Roadhouse, Corynn Coscia/Zingerman's Bakehouse
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- Ari
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