Margaret Hanson: Teach to Taste
Few names are as synonymous with local food as Margaret Hanson. She teaches K-8 Food Education at Copper Island Academy, and her free time is consumed with gardening, preserving the harvest, and cooking with her own family. She overflows with food knowledge, memories, and enthusiasm that can hardly be contained by a single interview. Margaret, thank you for sitting down with me for this interview and the work you do for our community. Your joy and appreciation of food is always inspiring.
You can follow along Margaret’s endeavors @teachtotaste.
When did you start cooking and who taught you how to cook?
I have been pulled into the kitchen since I was a little kid. I have memories of both my grandmothers’ kitchens. I have an Italian grandmother by proxy – she's actually Irish – but my grandfather was Italian and if you're married to an Italian, I think you just become Italian. She learned all the Italian recipes and was a wonderful cook – she was very creative.
I remember, as a young kid, watching Julia Childs with her and spending some time with her in the summertime. She cooked as a way of entertaining us as little kids. Cooking to her was very intuitive and tactile so everything was about touch, taste, and smell. I go through her recipes now and I'm like “where is the salt?” “isn’t there yeast in this recipe?”.
Then I had a Finnish grandmother who had a very functional, depression era style of cooking. Everything was written down. It was not creative. It was functional, depression era kind of cooking. She would can beets because they needed beets. She pickled things because they needed them in the winter. You’d go down into her basement and see shelves of canned goods. Her kitchen wasn't fancy, and it always smelled like white vinegar. In her kitchen I always had things to do – she’d give me a little job for the day.
It was of cool to have both those sides of grandparents and to pull from those good memories.
Do you have any special early memories of being in the kitchen?
I think all my kitchen experiences involve larger family meals. You're always prepping for something for a large meal. Instead of seeing it as having to have kids in the kitchen, I see it differently: you get to get to be in the kitchen.
It was very special to experience both sides of my family: both would bless their food before they ate it. My Italian grandmother would bless her rising dough and my Finnish grandmother would punch it down, saying some Finnish words over and over.
There are little pieces that get pulled into my own customs and my own family with my own kids. Now my kids are a little bit older they're 7, 9, and 11 and everything is so hustled. The most expensive ingredient I use in my kitchen right now is time.
What are your favorite items to cook?
Oh you're asking me that during soup season! I do love soup, but I also love when you get up in the morning – or right before dinner – you get to tour your garden and see what is there. Cooking becomes very a la carte: maybe there's baby zucchinis and a little scallion tops or a few fresh tomatoes and you make a very quick sauce over pasta.
Everybody eats it everybody enjoys it and then you're out of the door. It's those little things that you just can't buy.
What is an underrated ingredient you're often reaching for?
I use Italian flat leaf parsley I feel like every day.
I'm really into growing my own spices and herbs. Today we harvested caraway and nigella and anise and cumin and huacatay which is this South American herb called black mint.
In the middle of winter, they're little experiences that I get to have. They're exceptionally delicious and so far beyond what you can buy at the store.
What is your most used kitchen gadget?
I personally hate kitchen gadgets. I’m in the school of Alton brown from “Good Eats”. He hates unit taskers and I agree. I went through college with limited space in my apartment and then was a young wife with my husband who was very thrifty.
One thing I do like is a garlic press. A chef's knife is a wonderful tool – I use my chef knives for so many different things. I do have a wonderful relationship with my dehydrator. I've been gifted some beautiful wooden utensils that were hand carved – those carry so much weight in my kitchen. I use wooden utensils all the time but those feel like extra special.
Do you have any heirloom tools in your kitchen?
I have been collecting heirloom rolling pins. There was a rolling pin manufacturer in Munising. I have this beautiful hand carved rolling pin with tiny triangles – you roll it out and it gives the pinpricks to the dough. I have found a few of them and they are just so beautifully hand carved and the patience that must have gone into them…
My Swedish grandfather, married to my Finnish grandmother, was a wood carver. In fact, his wood carvings are still in Michigan Tech. One says “through its doors passed some of the finest mining and engineering talent in the world”. He has relief carvings all over my parents’ house. I can recognize this beautiful workmanship that has gone into something like a rolling pin.
What ingredient would you like to see fresh locally – it could be impossible or possible?
I think we already have the abundance that we're looking for here. We used to not have the farmer’s market. It is a visual display of the most beautiful giant tomatoes you've ever seen in your life! When I was little, we’d do some traveling to farmers markets in different cities. I remember going to California and seeing the tomato sellers – all the varieties and colors of tomatoes I did not know those existed!
Now, to see them in our climate in Michigan… How lucky are we to see that?! And then some farmers are pulling them off in July!? Those are miracle tomatoes, and they taste like the real thing. Me, being up here, I’m living my Italian grandmother's life of abundance with her multitudes of cookbooks and being able to get what she wanted.
What are your favorite holidays to cook for and do you have any specialty dishes?
Thanksgiving – it’s like the Super bowl of food, but the flavors are not my favorite flavors. My favorite flavors are springtime mint and new potatoes and tiny radishes with fresh cream and butter… so Easter.
Or Midsummer – Midsummer is right around my birthday in June – sometimes my brothers will bring me fresh fish and there will be fresh greens in the garden and rhubarb and garlic scapes.
What have your students at Copper Island Academy taught you about food?
All my students – even the ones that I taught at Michigan Tech, Finlandia, and even adults –everybody brings their own food story. There is nothing I can tell them if they are not willing to come to the party to begin with. Everybody comes with their own food baggage. The older they get, the more baggage they have. It is so delightful working with kindergarteners who think everything is a party.
We did spooky taste tests this week with foods that look scary on the outside but are delicious on the inside. They were using their opposite observational powers. It was just delightful.
If I did that with adults, I don't think they would find the joy in it that those kindergarteners did. There’s so much baggage of what they should and shouldn't be eating – is it healthy, is it not healthy? We don't see the “healthy” weirdness this health class ever. This is the biggest baggage because it's so liquid and can be defined so many ways. At the farmer's market and having my own garden, nothing is healthy out there and everything is healthy out there. Everything is just real and fresh. They were surprised that local potatoes were so expensive. I explain they took 100 days to grow – 100 days of your life to grow this potato.
What makes you excited to cook?
If I can get a student or my kids to have an excellent food memory with whatever they're eating. We'll have Indian food, and they'll do the naan bread with me cooking at the stove. We'll turn on some great music and we’ll have the whole experience. I remember my grandmother doing that for me, and it made me want to recreate it.
For college students, one of the hardest things is teaching the value of food memory. One Michigan Tech student told me “Why am I learning this? I will just pay somebody to do this…”
I am a person that delights in the celebration of food, but the celebration of food doesn't mean that you have to do it with others. I love having a cup of coffee alone and being very intentional about that. I've cooked with a lot of elders. One didn't believe that they're worthy of something beautiful to eat after their spouse, the cook, passed.
The Swedes have a fika: a coffee at 9 or 10:00am and little bun with a friend, or just with themselves, they have a reflection place. It's okay just to celebrate food by yourself or just to celebrate the little things by yourself.
What kind of coffee?
A light roast coffee with whipping cream. Instead of going out for a cup of coffee, I would rather stay home in my house with a pot of coffee and whipping cream.
I’ve heard that teachers have to be on all the time. Is this true?
Yes, it's like edutainment. My students have asked “are you always like this?” No, I'm not always a multicolored crazy person with apple earrings. Quietness is very important.
Being a classroom teacher has taught me so much. To see each student as an individual and as a whole person and to remove labels – food puts a lot of labels on things – to remove any labels from that child is such a gift.
They give me so much energy. They are innocent and ask, “what is the word?” They're so original with what they say and do. They fill me up all day long with so much energy that, by the end of the day, I drive home usually in silence.
What is one of the loveliest compliments you've received on your cooking?
I had a student over for dinner – they became very good family friends with us. They did some things around our farm. After trying my dish, they figured out what's in it – they entered my crazy world! It's neat to see my students – and also my children – modeling like things that.
