Folks who value a healthy planet are walking the walk through their actions: filling their water bottles or grabbing a shopping sack at the door and setting out on foot or on bicycle, for example, are becoming habits for more and more concerned citizens of the earth. For my family and me, practices like these have been a natural part of our lives in Brooklyn for four generations and counting.

I was born and raised in Park Slope on the apron strings of Brooklyn’s foods, easily absorbing the flavors, textures, smells, work and pleasure that comprise its food culture: from its pickle and herring barrels – wooden! – built and filled by immigrants, to its blue claw crabs scooped off the Tamaqua dock pilings – wooden, too.

The Haucks are all lifetimers in their sustainable ways, getting started just as soon as we arrived in New York early last century. We gardened, composted and kept bees on rooftops. We fished and foraged for mussels at Coney Island and built a pushcart and vended wholesome food downtown. We even raised farm animals – our brownstone backyard was our barnyard on one of Park Slope’s most beautiful blocks with ducks, rabbits, turkey, a rooster and a pig.

We recycled before it was local law, washing and reusing not just jars. Our clothesline dried the laundry along with plastic bags and tinfoil that we pressed into further service.
The food voice narrative in ‘Gastropolis: Food and New York City’ describes us lifetimers of these practices for near a century in Brooklyn. According to Eats.com, it is ‘striking in [this] family’s relentless passion for Brooklyn’s own resources, exemplifying a local sustainable existence long before the term was coined.’

Such a life may have nudged me towards becoming a registered dietitian, a Brooklyn College associate professor, creator of the ‘food voice’ concept, a co-editor of ‘Gastropolis: Food and New York City’, the president of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, and a Master Composter. Plus I’m a Mom – yay!

As we urgently, increasingly and thankfully move toward green, Hauck sustainable ways continue uninterrupted and sound our various voices, with food voices touched by our history, our straightforward efforts, our cultural experiences and our pleasure in funny and good times.

Brooklynites, old, native and new, enjoy a sense of heaven on earth.
Musings here touch on aspects of history and these days in the BK. Enjoy.

Annie Hauck-Lawson queen…@foodvoice.net