Interview with the 2026 Stewards -- Part 3!

Supermarket Obsolescence

The first American supermarket officially opened in 1946. That's a mere 80 years ago. Compared to human history, that's a short time. It replaced the corner or village grocery that had always carried staples like butter, eggs, flour, and meat. People prepared food in home kitchens. What made a supermarket a supermarket was that you didn't have to do any preparation for the lion's share of the food there. TV dinners, heat-n-eat, frozen and canned produce. Eventually pharmacies joined and other items like toys, videos, and delis added options and floor space. As people left their home kitchens and purchased convenience, yesteryear's diversity, with many small venues, gave way to umbrella businesses owning multiple brands. Consolidation, concentration, and centralization dominated the food and farm platform. Here are beef brands currently owned by Tyson: AdvancePierre Foods Aidells Ball Park Barber Foods Big Az Bascos Bryan Chairman's Reserve Fast Fixin' Galler Hillshire Farm Hillshire ibp Jimmy Dean Lady Aster Landshire Like Mom's Mexican Original Open Prairie Original Phiffy Pierre Reuben Russer Savoro Sara Lee Star Ranch Angus State Fair Steak EZE Wright Brand Wunderbar Okay, you can take a breath now. The point is that all these brands are coming out of the same tube. You can hear the floor manager shouting: "now switch to the blue brand; now switch to the green labels; now switch to the red labels . . . " The result of all this is that Americans have lost trust in industrial chemical foods and are tired of dehumanization in the retail experience. Cashiers are fast becoming a thing of the past. More people don't even go to the supermarket. Workers don't smile and you can't trust anything. At Polyface, we know the two things people want is trust and connection. In fact, the difference in shopping experience is profound. A hidden cultural development is the cost of physical retail interfaces. Insurance for liability (slip and falls), cost of stocking shelves attractively, and waste streams from spoiled or out-of-date inventory have made the modern supermarket pricey and inefficient. As a result, a plethora of alternatives is now chipping away at supermarket viability. From home cooking to UPS door-to-door delivery, the retail food space is in flux and moving away from the supermarket, which epitomizes the concentrated industrial food paradigm. Who would have thought, a mere 15 years ago, that from our dirt road in rural Swoope, Virginia our farm could ship 4 dozen eggs to any city in America cheaper than folks could by them at farmers' market? As distribution logistics cheapened and physical retail costs increased, supermarket advantages vanished. The last edge claimed by supermarkets is price, and that has now collapsed with cheap distribution options. Amazon revolutionized the retail space. Door-to-door delivery revolutionized acquisition. Polyface has no desire to be in supermarkets. We'd like to see a time when supermarkets no longer exist. Over many decades, every attempt to get Polyface products into supermarkets has either been a disaster or fraught with insurmountable difficulties. The truth is that supermarkets are not conducive to non-industrial fare. Today I honor and salute each of you who has chosen an opt-out strategy toward supermarkets. In general, they represent everything that's wrong in our food and farming systems. They beat up suppliers on price, drag out payments, demand product babysitting, and offer the least information or connection with their products. If we're going to defund something, how about we defund supermarkets? Thank you for being part of the quiet revolution to replace the obsolete supermarket with trustworthy, human-connection sustenance. You are part of the solution; together let's create a new universe that honors earthworms, nutrition, and water.

Homemade Pizza!

Have you ever had a gourmet sourdough pizza crust with pastured pork sausage as a topping? To be honest, my days are too full at this particular season of my life to bake all of the sourdough goods. When I step into my kitchen at the end of the day to an accumulation of coffee cups, cutting boards, plates, and silverware waiting for me in the sink and across the counters, making dough from scratch -- in time for dinner -- and also cleaning the kitchen is not always a possibility. The days have thier limits. However I do LOVE the taste of a sourdough pizza crust. And knowing that my family is eating clean, whole, foods -- and fermented grains. The pre-made Sourdough Pizza Dough from Season's Yield (our neighbor's bakery) checks all those boxes. The convenience AND the flavor is unbeatable. I pull it out of the freezer and set it on the counter around midday. By supper time, it has risen, and it is ready for a splash of pizza sauce, a handful of toppings, and a quick 20 minutes in the oven. And Presto! While the topping varieties are endless, my family's favorite is a crumbled Hot Italian Sausage and Pineapple. The spicy meat and sweet tangy pineapple is a flavorful paring we can't get enough of. I think I may have raved about the Hot Italian Sausage elsewhere on this blog, but it is my personal favorite of all of the Polyface sausages. It's so intensely flavorful and spicy. I eat it plain as sausage patties (amazing with grits!), in quiches, on pizza, with scrambled eggs, over noodles with a white sauce, and the list goes on. If you haven't tried it yet, you should add a pack to your next order! But enough about sausage for now. Let's get back to the pizza. Here's my family's favorite: Hot Italian Sausage - 1lb BulkGrated Mozzarella15oz Tomato Sauce1 Pineapple, cut into chunks (you'll have leftovers!)Dried BasilDried OreganoSalt4 Pizza Doughs (one package) Brown sausage over medium heat. Mix dried basil, oregano, and salt -- to taste -- into tomato sauce. Stretch and work dough out into pizza crusts (this video from Season's Yeild is a great how-to resource!). Spread a thin layer of the tomato sauce on each crust. Sprinkle with mozzarella. Sprinkle with sausage crumbles and pineapple. Bake on a cookie sheet, dusted with cornmeal. We like ours at 420 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Absolutely delicious consumed hot, while the cheese is still melty and soft. Pro Tip: Top this sourdough crust lightly. It rises best if you don't smother it, as I did in the above photos. ☺️ Before the autumn frost crept through the garden in the dark of night and finished off the tomatoes and basil; our other favorite pizza flavor was thinly sliced tomatoes and fresh chopped basil leaves scattered loosely over mozzarella. Crushed red pepper flakes added a nice finishing touch. There are as many opinions on how to dress a pizza as there are folks. So, take your own family's favorite topping ingredients, and enjoy the convenience of a nutritious prepared sourdough crust. The last of the garden's frost-bitten bell peppers. And there you have it! On those hectic weekday nights when things have piled up on my counters, it bakes just long enough for me to get my kitchen cleaned up while it's in the oven. A real win-win situation. Bon appétit!

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Interview with the 2026 Stewards -- Part 3!

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Supermarket Obsolescence

Homemade Pizza!

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