Student Monica Martin fuels her dual passion for food and sustainability
Monica Martin already has a Bachelor of Applied Arts & Sciences degree from the University of North Texas. She’s worked at numerous jobs in the hospitality industry, ranging from server, bartender, banquets assistant manager, restaurant bookkeeper and reservations manager. For a time, she also held the “shortest-lived career ever as a tourist horse wrangler and professional hay-bail-chucker.”
But it wasn’t until she entered Colorado Mountain College’s Culinary Institute that the second-year Culinary Arts Apprentice felt she “finally found a home.” And, expands the Eagle-based chef apprentice and mother, “It’s been a long time coming for me. It has been challenging, to say the least. But I am so happy with my decision.”
Martin has been passionate about food from an early age. She laughingly recounts the first time she prepped a meal, at age three. Her mother was sick, and asked the young Martin to make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “She cautioned me to put the peanut butter on both ‘sides’ of the bread,” recalls Martin, “but she still got a piece of bread covered with peanut butter on both sides!”
Martin’s early culinary adventures took place on a Midwest farm. The farming culture she grew up in left a deep impression about the environmental cost of food production. “Growing up on a farm in central Illinois taught me that what we get from the land may be reaped, but with a cost.”
Her father and his wife now run a 100% Grass Fed Longhorn Beef operation out of Wellington, Texas. “Those cows are talked to and loved,” explains Martin. “They are supplemented daily with a “dirt” from Canada that has natural anti-microbial, viral and parasitic properties that kill harmful intestinal parasites. No hormones are added to their diet, unlike domestic cattle. All of my father’s stock can be called by name and will come when called, and are quite gentle, even the bulls (as much as a bull can be gentle). When you eat a piece of 100% grass fed beef that is just as lean as chicken, the flavor is over the top without all that added fat. That is what beef is supposed to taste like.”
Martin believes that the growing trend towards healthier, sustainable food production creates food that is not only better-tasting, but also essential for our health and the health of the planet. “We have reached a point in our food production systems that is counter-productive to the health of the animals and the health of the consumers eating those commodities. It is becoming increasingly unsafe and detrimental to our well-being.”
“We have to make it (locally-sourced, organic foods) more affordable to be in competition with the big conglomerates.” she continues. “And we have to educate the general public on the plight of the food production systems in the world, so that demand grows for sustainable food. Progressive restaurants need to step away from the crowd and say publicly: ‘I am going to offer this food to you because it is better for you, the taste and quality is superb, I care about the environment and my local/regional community and economic health, and I want to educate you, the customer’. It really has to be a grass-roots movement.”
Martin does her own part in educating the public by teaching non-credit culinary classes at Colorado Mountain College in Edwards. Inspired by her own early cooking passion, she’s teaching a series of workshops this fall for children. Two upcoming weekend workshops in November teach the art of crafting gingerbread houses. And though sustainability is paramount for Martin- she also plans to pursue a certificate in CMC’s new Sustainable Cuisine degree program- all cooking still boils down to an act of pure joy. “For me, as well as most culinary professionals I believe, food is love. We put everything we know and are and have experienced into what we create for you. We want to excite you, intrigue you, humbly please you, and make you think: ‘Wow! Can I have that recipe’?!”