Ari's Top 5: The Benefits of Moving Slowly

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发布日期: 2025年3月6日

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Slow down, you move too fast … —Simon and Garfunkel

“Nothin’ Good Ever Happens in a Hurry”

Slowly and sustainably making healthy organizations happen

Meetings often get a bad rap, but in my experience, the quality of any meeting depends mostly on how well it is run and how effectively the participants engage with the material and each other. Bad meetings, as we all know, can be boring. At worst, they are destructive and distracting. The best ones, however, are remarkable—works of inspiring organizational art that all too often go unnoticed. Last week at Zingerman’s, I was lucky enough to be a part of a leadership meeting that was exactly that.

In the middle of the 20th century, when Soviet autocracy under Stalin was becoming ever more brutal, Russian dissident poet Anna Akhmatova wrote, “We met in an unbelievable year, when the world's strength was at an ebb.” Given the news of the past week, Akhmatova’s words felt oddly fitting on the day we gathered. And yet, an hour and a half after coming to order, I left feeling uplifted and inspired. The challenges we’re all facing in one form or another remained fully intact, but I felt more grounded—ready to face the world.

About a third of the 90-minute meeting was spent sharing thoughts and insights from the dignity work that I wrote about last week. Everyone who was at the table has been steadily implementing the Six Elements of Dignity that I detail in the pamphlet “A Revolution of Dignity in the Twenty-First Century Workplace,” and all had read (or reread) it beforehand. Listening to their thoughtful, grounded observations—what they’ve learned about making dignity a daily reality over the past few years and what they were freely committing to do to get better at it in the coming months—was one of the most inspiring things I’ve experienced of late. Just as one example, here’s a reflection from current Zingerman’s Staff Partner Zach Milner:

Dignity starts with slowing down and listening to each and every staff member you work with. Listening can be tough, especially in a busy restaurant. [With] so many moving, chaotic pieces, it’s challenging to slow down when needed. The urge—or anxiety—to keep moving forward and just say you’re “busy” is like a magnet drawing you in. But if you do slow down, and if you do have those conversations, people appreciate being heard. It’s what creates buy-in that not only are you authentic, but you care.

For context, although the discussion about dignity that day took only about half an hour, it was essentially three long years of quiet, imperfect work for it to become what it was. And, to be clear, the conversation was not a culmination—the work on dignity is far from complete. As everyone in the conversation concurred, the work has come a long way in recent years, but there’s still a long way to go. No one in the group is getting World Series of Dignity rings, no sparkling wine bottles were popped, no headlines were made.

The meeting would almost certainly have gone by unnoticed outside the circle of the participants if I hadn’t chosen to write about it here. And yet, this quiet work is how revolutions are made real. As Canadian-born Ukrainian educator and author Mychailo Wynnyckyj writes, “History books often present revolutions as abrupt events. In fact, revolutionary socio-political change … takes time.”

I’ve found a great deal of wisdom in Wynnyckyj’s writing—the kind of insight we could use more of right now. As Maria Popova of The Marginalian recently wrote, “We live in a world awash with information, but we seem to face a growing scarcity of wisdom.” That scarcity makes the kind of wisdom I heard nearly 30 years ago all the more meaningful. Back in the early ’90s, I traveled to Graham, North Carolina, with my friend Lex Alexander to visit Lindley Mills, an artisan business he was especially excited about. Today, the mill is a 10th-generation family operation. Best I can recall, Joe Lindley, who showed us around that day, was the ninth generation.

Much as we’ve been milling grain for ourselves here at the Bakehouse (though without the 300 years of history behind us), Joe taught himself the craft, reclaiming the knowledge that had once been central to his family’s story. His ancestor, Thomas Lindley, established the mill in 1755, 20 years before the American Revolution. After remaining in the family for generations, the mill was eventually sold outside the family. In 1975, Joe’s parents bought it, returning the mill to the family. Joe brought the milling back at a meaningful commercial scale. In an interview with journalist Debbie Moose, Joe expressed his deeply held belief that the mill holds a much greater significance in the world because of its rich history:

If I go down and look at the marker, you think this was something that happened 200-some years ago, but in the big picture, it’s just the wink of an eye. It makes you think that human nature doesn’t really change. What turmoil there must have been in the people’s day-to-day lives, with the battle and being in a war situation and even after that. It gives you pause to think.

This week, as I watched the national news and reflected on how to lead effectively amidst the rapid-fire cuts and layoffs impacting the country—and now very much beginning to affect our own community directly—I was reminded of something Joe shared during that visit. It took him only a matter of seconds to say it, but the wisdom in his words has stayed with me ever since. In the middle of touring around the mill, Joe turned to us and said, “Well. One thing I’ve learned. Ain’t nothin’ good ever happens in a hurry.”

The inverse, I’ve learned, is generally also true: Big things that happen in a hurry are almost always bad. Hurricanes. Fires. Floods. Coups. Unexpected crises of all sorts. For me, and I know not for everyone, the last five weeks of national news fill the bill. Certainly, the approach of hurriedly implementing massive changes while moving at breakneck speed, without taking time to consider others’ perspectives, reflect on the consequences with empathy, or think about long-term implications, is not unique to recent events. Similar approaches to organizational change have been attempted in countries and companies many times. There are, at an extreme level, a lot of historical examples we can learn from, both in business and the great world around us. The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management’s Gregory Shea says:

Lessons abound in past lives, to be sure, and no more than in those who led. … anyone ignoring history ignores [its] lessons, often hard won … Failure to look back not only deprives us of an opportunity to learn, it also increases the chance of repeating previous mistakes.

Historian Timothy Snyder writes, “History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” Studying history shows far too many painful stories that illustrate the truth of Joe Lindley’s bit of wisdom. The cost of the more extreme examples has been enormous, almost beyond our everyday ability to comprehend.

Reading Snyder’s book Bloodlands right now, I’m reminded about two of human history’s most horrible events—both of which happened in the last 100 years. Both illustrate, painfully, the wisdom in Joe Lindley’s words. Both are examples of egotistical, power-hungry autocrats forcing rapid change—Stalin in the Soviet Union and Hitler in Germany—caring little for the millions of lives they were impacting. In both cases, speed, it seems, was seen as being of the essence. Snyder says, “Stalin’s utopia was to collectivize the Soviet Union in nine to twelve weeks; Hitler’s was to conquer the Soviet Union in the same span of time.” Both projects, Snyder writes, in practice, came to be “implemented as mass murder.” In both cases, Snyder says, the autocratic leaders would never take accountability: “It was more convenient, for them and their comrades to shift responsibility for the associated catastrophe elsewhere.” In both historical examples, the leaders bullied their way in the direction they had decided to go, even though it was clear to most everyone that it wasn’t going to work and that millions of people would suffer in the process. As Snyder says,

Hitler and Stalin thus shared a certain politics of tyranny: they brought about catastrophes, blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable. … Each of these [historical examples], seems, in retrospect, to be horrendously impractical. Yet each of them was implemented under the cover of a big lie, even after failure was obvious.

Those two terrible examples, I know, may seem extreme, but the reality is that similar stories, on a much smaller scale, without the direct loss of human life, can be found in the history of any number of workplaces in which leaders took much the same sort of approach. Move super quickly, cut out everything that might be undesirable or perceived as unneeded, destroy anyone that stood in the way.

These historical lessons in bad leadership are there for the taking, but most modern-day business leaders don’t look at them as the corollaries to current events—in companies and countries both—that I believe they are. As philosopher Georg Hegel wrote, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”

I would like to avoid the error that Hegel pointed out. The two examples above are, I know, beyond the scope of what any business person would do, but I often find it’s helpful to study the extremes to see what we’re really dealing with every day, albeit on a smaller scale. When Stalin and Hitler came to power, everyday folks like you and me were there, watching, trying to decide what to do, whether to speak up or stay silent, while what history later sees clearly to have been?massive tragedies were unfolding. Their stories are, I believe, like contextual alarm clocks—what could easily be passed over in the present day, as things move forward in painful ways, becomes far more alarming when we are clearer on the scale of the consequences that can later come from them.

The comparable business world case study that comes to mind could well be a guy who came to be called Chainsaw Al Dunlap. He was, to my biased eye, an example of how bad things can happen in business when people are rushing to make huge organizational changes with incredible speed without caring about the implications for the lives of those involved. Stalin and Hitler are far more famous for the horrors they made happen, but bosses like Chainsaw Al are, I believe, behaving in much the same way without anywhere near as much historical attention being paid to the lessons they leave behind. Like the two infamous 20th-century leaders, Dunlap?was determined to force his approach onto the organizations he was leading, regardless of the terrible costs to the health of the human beings involved and the long-term implications of this work.

Dunlap got his first CEO job back in the early ’80s, right around the same time we opened the Deli. He quickly became known as the expert at rapid downsizing. He would go into a company and, with basically no holds barred, cut costs drastically in a matter of three months. Dunlap built his image around the ruthlessness of his work—even posing with an ammunition belt strapped across his chest. His first role was as the head of a paper mill in Niagara Falls. While Joe Lindley’s parents were working hard to make an honest dollar by sustainably milling locally grown organic grain in a community-minded way, Dunlap did the opposite at the mill he was managing. Dunlap directed his team to fudge costs, sales, and savings, making what was in fact a $5.5 million loss look like a $5,000,000 profit.

The full truth of the “turnaround” story wasn’t widely known for many years (even though the company sued Dunlap), and so, based on his “big success,” Chainsaw Al was hired with great fanfare to get comparably quick results in other businesses as well. His patterns were repeated each time he took a new job as CEO. Initial outcomes would look great, and Dunlap made millions for himself and some big shareholders. Later, after he left, all sorts of irregularities and unethical behavior became clear. Sunbeam was his last and biggest “conquest”—Dunlap was hired in 1996 and was sued by the company in 2001. Money Week wrote, “The main mistake that investors and board members seem to have made was being blinded by Dunlap's celebrity status and bluster.” Journalist Adrian Farrell wrote a piece about the story last spring:

How Al Dunlap’s failure in leadership destroyed Sunbeam Corp

The morning after Al Dunlap was announced as the new CEO of Sunbeam Corporation the share price rose 50%. Such was the reputation of “Chainsaw Al” as a master in building shareholder wealth, it meant that investors flocked to be part of what was meant to be the resurgence of Sunbeam. These same investors who expected a long-term growth prospect would come to regret their decision. While it first appeared Dunlap’s “slash and burn” approach was working, it was in fact a disaster in the making. Within two years he was out the door as Sunbeam was investigated for accounting fraud and heading into bankruptcy.

Farrell relates the story of how Dunlap later agreed to be tested for corporate psychopathy and “passed”—he had, it turned out, many of the characteristics. Farrell writes,

Corporate psychopaths, or workplace psychopaths, are those people in management positions with an “uncaring, callous and an unemotional attitude towards others” while engaging in “pathological lying, extreme manipulation and actions often associated with criminality.”

How could something like this play out in corporate America? Farrell sums it up succinctly: “Why did his Wall Street patrons and the Sunbeam board support Dunlap for so long? It simply came down to greed and self-interest.”

Trying to figure out how to lead effectively over the last few weeks, I’ve been relying regularly on the quote from theologian Richard Rohr: “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” I share the story of Chainsaw Al as a reminder for any of us not to be deluded by “celebrity status and bluster” and instead to stick to the kind of steady, seemingly slow, generally unglamorous work that it takes to get to long-term organizational health. It’s a reminder that the practice of the better is to be patient, steady, persistent, and compassionate—always with an eye clearly focused on the long-term implications of whatever we’re doing. As author Rebecca Solnit says, “True revolution is slow.”

While Chainsaw Al and his ilk are all about slashing and burning to get big results they can show shareholders, the work that underlies our dignity discussions here is what author and business educator Carol Sanford calls “indirect work.” Since seeing Sanford’s writing on the subject for the first time last summer, it’s becoming ever clearer to me just how important it is to create the kind of caring, thoughtful, healthy organizational ecosystem to which we have long been so committed.

We have, I can see now, been doing “indirect work” of this sort almost since we opened in 1982. Carol Sanford writes,

Indirect means we are working ongoingly on developing capability with ritual sessions, that have improving critical thinking skills and personal self-managing as the foreground, not learning as side effects of shortfalls and accidental discovery. This principle is why we build communities, not networks. It means building new infrastructure that changes all the rituals in the organization so a different culture emerges and becomes fluid based on changes in the context we live in. We work on ensuring the capacity for greater and greater consciousness at multiple levels or worlds.

…

This capacity allows us to become instruments for the regeneration and evolution of the living systems within which we are nested—to become effective change agents.

The dignity work we are doing here, it was very clear from people’s comments in that leadership meeting I detailed above, is an example of building the “capacity for greater and great consciousness” of all involved. Dignity, to be clear, is only one example of the ways we do this kind of indirect work—the same goes for what we work hard to do with visioning, servant leadership, stewardship, beliefs, classes on self-management, and more. None will likely have much meaningful impact on next month’s profit and loss statement, none are singular answers, and none of them will produce quick and radical results in a couple weeks. Neither, I'm pretty sure, would any of those sorts of practices have been found anywhere in Chainsaw Al’s “leadership toolbox.”

In fact, Al Dunlap’s approach was the opposite of what Carol Sanford is encouraging. Dunlap’s massive quick cuts were ultimately very destructive. Of his sort of leadership, Carol Sanford says:

Unfortunately, because [that] kind of program is imposed on people, it destroys motivation, innovation, and personal agency. It is not good for helping people self-manage their existing responsibilities, let alone participate in a change effort.

Rapid fire, “rip the Band-Aid off” big change efforts like the ones Dunlap was so devoted to leave staff members super anxious. Fear goes up, hope goes down. Anger and uncertainty are increased. Communities—whose members worked in the organization—begin to come apart. Shareholders might get short-term gains, but long-term suffering, as in the extreme historical stories of Stalin and Hitler, always follows. And because “nothin’ good ever happens in a hurry,” it takes years, more likely decades, to rebuild the damage. If, that is, the organization at hand ever recovers from the shock and awe that goes with it. As poet and writer John Trudell said many years ago, “It’s a war against our human dignity and rights to self-respect,” a war for which far too many participants who chose not to speak up at the time later paid the price.

To be clear, it’s not hard for me to understand why people stay silent—fear is a powerful force, and I live with it daily. I can’t say what I would have done had I been a participant in any of those historical examples above, but I am thinking hard about situations I’m currently a part of. As Wharton’s Gregory Shea says, “Time does not begin with us. However, the future does.”

One of the paradoxes of this work is that in the many moments when leaders are stressed, we seek quick results that will “fix” the situation in a matter of days or weeks. When we’re deeply stressed, it’s not surprising that many of us will want big results, and we will want them quickly. Chainsaw Al and the historical examples I shared above are extreme, I know, but aren’t actually that far off from what could be considered pretty common business practices done at far less a dramatic level. I stand by the belief that the extreme can be used to effectively illuminate the impact of the everyday. And, as Carol Sanford says, meaningful long-term health will be created not by cutting as quickly as possible, but rather by introducing and nurturing new ways to think and work. While there might, she suggests, have been a time when those ideas would have come from elsewhere, in the 21st century, we as organizations now have the responsibility to be one of the primary sources for this sort of positive work:

One aspect of this infrastructure is regular exposure to new ideas and ways of thinking. A college provides structure and progressive learning opportunities, an environment rich with other learners and mentors, and a culture that supports the development of whole, mature and well-educated individuals who are able to become fully contributing members of society. There is no reason a business organization can’t provide the same resources.

…

The word development comes from Latin: to remove the veil. When an organization dedicates itself to developmental means, it seeks to remove the external conditions and internal mental habits that prevent people from expressing who they are truly capable of becoming. … This takes root in a company once it recognizes that people’s potential is only realized when they are working to make something actual. In other words, learning something new doesn’t happen in isolation from their actual work. Their work is that they are learning to do it in a different way.

Done well, this sort of indirect work helps to create long-term health for all involved. Staff feel better, quality can be raised, and financials can be improved in sustainable, or even better still, regenerative ways. As Carol Sanford says, “A regenerative approach invites everyone to their creative intelligence.” All of which was reinforced for me the other day when one of the attendees at the Welcome to the ZCoB new staff orientation class I teach shared, “It’s so great to work somewhere that I feel like is aligned with my values. A few months after I started working here, my partner at home told me how much more engaged and positive my energy was.”

In 1902, the same year that Rocco and Katherine Disderide built what we now know so well as the Deli’s building, the Russian-Ukrainian writer Anton Chekhov wrote that if people would take more time to reflect thoughtfully on the current state of society rather than rush forward towards what will turn out to be ineffective, short term solutions, they would be moved to “create another and better life for themselves.” In his own way, Chekhov practiced what he preached. Throughout his adult life, he actively opposed autocracy and stood up for the cause of everyday Russian people. In his novel Life and Fate, author Vasily Grossman writes,

Chekhov is the bearer of the greatest banner that has been raised in the thousand years of Russian history—the banner of a true, humane, Russian democracy, of Russian freedom, of the dignity of the Russian man.

In a statement that foreshadowed Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous spring of 1968 speech (“I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land”), Chekhov wrote of the positive future he believed possible: “I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life.” In memory of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Anton Chekhov, I am more determined than ever to slowly, gently make dignity a daily reality.

In the face of the news right now, it would be both easy and understandable to get discouraged and simply tune out. This is exactly what autocratic bosses like Hitler, Stalin, and Chainsaw Al Dunlap desire. I am determined not to let that happen. Our collective long-term well-being depends on us all working even harder to make healthy, reflective, art-filled, dignity-centered lives. While Ukrainians are fighting for their?freedom 5,000 miles to the east of us, we are working here in our workplaces, on a much smaller, less dramatic scale, for ours as well. The results, to Joe Lindley’s well-made point, are unlikely to be quick, but they will most definitely make a long-term difference. Carol Sanford says,

I believe that businesses, beyond their drive to succeed and to improve life for their customers, play a pivotal role in determining the health of democracies. Yes, I want to see individual businesses and employees flourish. But I’m equally concerned by what I see as an erosion of democratic institutions in the world. … the very same activities that make a business a transformative leader in its industry will also build an engaged citizenry. … [and] a democracy lives or dies on the full engagement of its members. … This is why I believe so deeply that the renewal of democratic institutions depends on growing the innovative capacity of businesses.

We all, as always, have our work cut out for us. We can work ever more diligently, always with dignity, on the development and growth of those we work with, to enrich the lives of those we wait on and serve, to support our suppliers as best we can, and to share widely and generously, to act, as per our mission here in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, “with love and care in all we do.” When it works, it’s a wonderful thing to behold and to be part of. At that same “Welcome to ZCoB” class the other morning, another new staff member shared this: “Everywhere I’ve ever worked, it seems like every day I had another bad surprise. Here, all I get are good surprises.”

None of this is to imply that we have it all down here at Zingerman’s or that we don’t make mistakes every day. Without question, our good intentions go awry regularly. But we’re working at it. Our efforts are, I hope and believe, a living example of the best criticism of the “bad” being shown in the imperfect but heartfelt practice of the slow, steady, and far more sustainable “better.” As University of Alabama professor of law Joyce Vance said in her notes this past Sunday night, “We fight back with knowledge, information, and civil discourse with our fellow Americans.” Like, for instance, that conversation about dignity I was so fortunate to be a part of the other day.

Perhaps, in the spirit of the great event Michael Dickman taught here last week about a poetic approach to leadership (here’s my take on that), I’ll leave you with these lines from the Ukrainian physician and poet Anastisia Afanasieva, She wrote it three years ago this week, 10 days after the brutal Russian invasion had begun, at time at which Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity seemed to hang by a historical thread:

I ask Half-awake Is poetry possible At the moment history stirs Once its steps Reverberate through every heart?

My answer, of course, is “Yes!” Three years later, as you know well, Ukrainians continue to hold their own.

Afanasieva was born in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in 1982, which, as I said above, is also the year we opened the Deli and Chainsaw Al Dunlap got his first job as a CEO. We all have choices to make, right now maybe more than ever. We can do what Ukrainians like Afanasieva are doing—fighting for their freedom and dignity, caring deeply for those around us, and taking a poetic approach to life. Or we can cut and tear down as quickly as possible to enhance our own power and portfolios at the expense of others. I opt to emulate Afanasieva and others like her. I choose a path of freedom and dignity, and the slow, steady work it takes to create the kind of organizational ecosystem that can provide a positive, healthy, and uplifting place for all involved to be a part of.

Invite inclusion

P.S. I recently recorded a podcast about dignity with the wonderful leadership teacher Amiel Handelsman.

Lablabi: The Culinary Star of the Tunisian Street Food Scene

Simple and scrumptious chickpea and harissa soup

I discovered lablabi about 20 years ago on my first trip to Tunisia. While it’s rare to find lablabi in the U.S., in Tunisia, you can’t walk a block without passing a shop selling it. It’s the country’s national dish, the soul food of Tunisia, enjoyed at any time of day. From truckers in t-shirts to top executives in Parisian suits, from teenagers to octogenarians, everyone crowds into lablabi shops, shoulder to shoulder, slurping delicious spoonfuls of this steaming soup.

Lablabi has everything: a bowl of garlic-scented chickpea broth with chunks of bread, preserved lemons, and harissa at its most basic—plus a long list of optional ingredients you can add. It’s good for you, easy to make, and endlessly adaptable. The spice level is up to you—I like a lot of harissa in mine, but you can keep it mild if you prefer. With just a few shelf-stable ingredients, you can throw it together in under 30 minutes. It’s also a great way to entertain: make a big pot of lablabi, set out the condiments, and let everyone serve themselves, eat well, get warm, and try something new.

The quality of the ingredients is, as always, important. As you might already know, I’m an avid fan of everything we get from the Mahjoub family in Tunisia. All of their products are hand-made according to traditional family recipes, most are organic, and all of them are outstandingly good. Take note though, the chickpeas, the harissa, and the preserved lemons are critical flavor components. As Majid Mahjoub, always poetic and philosophical about his food, reminds me:

Preserved Lemon and Harissa are the principal protagonists of the Tunisian cuisine! Both of them have their roots deeply in our heart & soul!

Harissa was basically the condiment that helped the cuisine of the poor peoples of North Africa come alive. There is without question something seductive in this sauce…notes that come out all over the place but create this hot, mellifluous, marvelous set of flavors.

Before they eat, many Tunisians take a couple of soup spoons and “toss” the stew in the bowl to mix all the ingredients together. I’ve seen a number of folks add a poached egg to their bowl. Definitely a nice addition. It’s also very good with tuna—which Tunisians, in general, eat in abundance. The Ortiz tuna from the Basque Country is wonderful. The Fishwife tuna is terrific too. And some folks use chopped cilantro as an additional topping. Christopher Kimball at Milk Street once called lablabi “the best soup in the world,” and right now, I’m inclined to agree! Brighten a later winter day with a nice, big, wonderfully warming bowl of it soon!

I’d be happy to send you the more detailed recipe—just drop me an email!

Shop for supplies

Hamantaschen from the Bakehouse

Celebrate Purim with a popular pastry product

Speaking of holidays, Erev Purim begins this year on the evening of Thursday, March 13 and continues on through Friday the 14th. The Bakehouse has a head start on hamantaschen season, though; we’ve already been making them all month. While the holiday only happens that evening and the next day, the truth is that hamantaschen absolutely taste?great at any time! They’ve certainly been hugely popular so far this month! They also happen to have been my business partner Paul Saginaw’s favorite pastry for as long as I can remember!

If you don’t know it, Purim is the Jewish holiday that celebrates the occasion of the Persian Jews outwitting the wicked minister Haman, who was out to annihilate them. (Parallels, I see now, with Putin and Ukraine and maybe more …) Haman was determined to have all the Jews of Persia put to death, but the queen’s uncle (Mordechai) found out about Haman’s evil intentions and passed word to his niece (Queen Esther), who in turn told the King, who then put Haman to death instead of the Jews. The triangular shape of modern-day hamantaschen was said, in some stories, to be derived from the three-cornered hat that Haman wore.

The beautiful little triangularly shaped, all-butter cookie dough crust pockets are stuffed with an array of fillings: cream cheese (from the Creamery) and vanilla bean, apricot, Hungarian prune preserves, and, Paul’s favorite, Dutch poppy seed. All are excellent. The two newest flavors—both introduced last year—are winning raves: Apple Pie and, yes, you read it right, Chocolate Birthday Cake.

It’s a Jewish tradition to bring gifts at Purim, so a box of hamantaschen dropped off at the office or your neighbor’s house would be a great way to do that. We happily ship hamantaschen all over the country, so log on and place your holiday orders soon to get them there before Purim!

Have a hamantaschen

P.S. If you want to make your own hamantaschen at home, the recipe is in the wonderful Zingerman's Bakehouse cookbook!

Incredibly Delicious Dates from California

Medjool dates from Rancho Meladuco in the Coachella Valley

As you may likely know, the Muslim holiday of Ramadan started on Sunday. The history of the holiday is, like all important holidays, worthy of deep study. Here’s one essay that shares some backstory. Aside from its very serious religious implications, Ramadan’s annual arrival reminds me about the import of dates in the celebration. The artists who compose the collective Bayt Al Fann say,

The popularity of dates reaches its peak in Ramadan where Muslims worldwide buy kilos worth of dates for their homes. It is the preferred food item of choice to break the fast. … Dates are also particularly beneficial during Ramadan because they are high in sugar and vitamins such as potassium and magnesium as well as an excellent source of fiber and carbohydrates.

In Feast: Food of the Islamic World, Lebanese-born, London-living author Anissa Helou writes extensively about the date, which she calls “the most important fruit in Islam.” She says dates are “the ?rst food people eat when they break the long day’s fast during the month of Ramadan.”

Fortunately, we have some amazing dates at the Deli—the delicious, hand-picked, carefully dried offerings from Joan Smith and the crew at Rancho Meladuco. I first met Joan Smith many years ago now at a Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Although I stopped at her booth to taste the dates, we actually bonded first over dogs—we both love them and we had both had a much-loved pup pass away in the not too distant past (you can see a drawing of her dog, Rocky, on the inside cover of the box; and the 10th annual Jelly Bean Jump Up fundraiser for SafeHouse Center is still going—any donation you’d like make makes a difference!). The dates, though, are what has kept us together.

If you’re not familiar with dates, here are a few facts from Joan:

Dates are a dry fruit, not a DRIED fruit. Dates gradually dehydrate on the tree, the sugars concentrate, the tannins dissipate, and the low moisture makes them self-preserving. Most commercial date processors don’t like handling the higher moisture dates the way we do at Rancho Meladuco. Most want the dates harvested when they are drier so they can clean and sort them by machine and pack high volumes. They are able to rehydrate the dry dates later with steam and heat. Moist dates like ours are very fragile—they tear and squash easily, and they can ferment or spoil if not stored properly. They have to be cleaned and processed carefully and slowly. But we want our dates harvested when they are perfectly ripe—which means still soft.

It takes over a hundred days at ambient temperatures of over 100°F to make dates this tender and delicious!

What are some ways to enjoy these dates? Pit them, then add to salads and sandwiches. Drop a few into a tagine. Stuffing them works beautifully for an appetizer. Just cut in half and take out the pit—in its place, put a walnut half or an almond. They are really superb stuffed with Koeze peanut butter from Grand Rapids or Georgia Grinders almond butter we have at the Deli. Great with goat cheese or cream cheese, especially the artisan offerings from the Creamery. Really fine with feta. Or stuff with some spicy Calabrian-style ’nduja (a soft, spreadable sausage), skewer with a toothpick, and then brown in a skillet in some good olive or bacon fat!

Whatever else one has going, sit down with one of these really amazing dates and a good cup of coffee in the morning. Sip, nibble a small bit of the date, savor, breathe deep, reflect, repeat. I don’t do this “morning date with coffee” every day, but when I do, it’s a good reminder—as per the first piece above—to slow down, savor the moment, and lean into making my day good while contributing positively to those around me at the same time. The date’s delicate deliciousness helps push the worry out of my mind for a few minutes as well. And it reminds me of what is wonderful in the world and brings beauty to the beginning of my day.

Dates at the Deli

Or ship some to someone special

Great-Tasting Collard Greens at the Roadhouse

This long-cooked side dish just might make your day!

In the spirit of Chekhov’s writing, great collards are a good reminder that what might, on the surface, seem mundane is actually remarkable. So much so that a simple plate of them can bring a sense of comfort and a reminder that even when things seem to be going awry, there is still great goodness to be appreciated and enjoyed in the world.

Food anthropologist Debra Freeman writes, “In the American South, many people have fond memories of a pot of collard greens simmering on the stove for hours, seasoned with a ham hock and stirred by a parent or grandparent.” The great poet Nikki Giovanni—who passed away three months ago and about whom I wrote extensively soon after—seemingly shared that experience. Growing up in a kosher kitchen in Chicago, I, most definitely, did not. Collards were something I read about in Southern novels, not a food I knew from childhood. They became a later-in-life discovery for me, but one I’ve come to love nonetheless!

Collard greens are a food with thousands of years of tradition behind them. They’re one of the oldest members in the large family of cabbages—in fact, some have called them “tree cabbage.” They likely have their roots in the Middle East, but the beginnings of their present-day popularity in the U.S. seems to have begun only with the arrival of enslaved African people in the 17th century. The generous and wise historian John Egerton, a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, writes in his book Southern Food, “from Africa with the people in bondage came new foods,” such as okra, black-eyed peas, yams, and collard greens.

From a strategic business standpoint, I really doubt that too many people over the years decided to go to the Roadhouse for the first time because we have collards on the menu. That said, in recent years, I’ve begun to realize that a good number of folks’ decision to come back so regularly is sort of subconsciously driven by the culinary comfort they get from the collard greens. Rarely a day goes by now when I don’t hear from someone who’s dining that the greens are awesome! Both folks who grew up on them and those to whom they are a new discovery seem to be drawn to the collards in ever greater numbers! Sprinkled with some of the really great “pepper vinegar” we have on hand, they are truly something really special!

At the Roadhouse, we simmer the greens with a lot of Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Bacon for hours—the long cooking helps make it possible for the fat to permeate the greens. Swing by, eat some greens, and maybe use it as a creative and constructive conversation starter about American history and what we can make possible going forward. Historian Cynthia Greenlee calls collards “the James Brown of vegetables, one of the hardest-working foods around.” Given how many people I see smiling and shaking their heads side-to-side, it seems like she’s got a good point. The collards can bring a little culinary music to any meal!

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Other Things on My Mind

Listening

Caitlin Canty recorded a beautiful song entitled “Odesa” shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All the proceeds go to the widely recommended non-profit Razom. I love all Canty’s music, as well as that of her husband Noam Pikelny, who has won a wealth of awards for his work with Punch Brothers (but whose claim to fame, in my mind, is that he had my mother for a grammar school teacher!).

Stranded Horse is the band name of French singer-songwriter Yann Tambour. From Normandy, Tambour has been recording for a number of years now. He’s spent a good bit of time in Africa—most specifically in Mali. His 2007 album, Churning Strides, was delicate and dark! He did a reinterpretation of some of the songs on it a year later, with Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko. Tambour also makes instruments, including a kora of his own design. His new album (to be released in full in April) is entitled The Warmth You Deserve, and incorporates the music of Senegalese composer and kora player Boubacar Cissokho. All six of the Stranded Horse albums are awesome! Truly beautiful playing with lots of attention getting high notes, delicate tunes, and a lot of lovely lyrics—some in French, others in English.

Reading

For more insight on collard greens and their culinary and cultural significance, check out Collards: A Southern Tradition from Seed to Table.

Watching

Similarly, this wonderful film made by Ava Lowrey for Southern Foodways Alliance, Ira Wallace: A Seed With A Story, showcases farmer, seed saver, anarchist, and insightful cultural storyteller Ira Wallace.

Photo credits: Foodiesfeed, Corynn Coscia/Zingerman's Bakehouse, Zingerman's Delicatessen, Zingerman's Roadhouse

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