NY Executive Mansion runs on local, sustainable, organic agriculture

By Paul Grondahl, Times Union

Eating at the Executive Mansion in Albany is a locavore's dream.

Those who seek out, often obsessively, the fruit of local farmers' labors and are willing to pay a premium to eat locally grown food would be right at home sampling what executive chef Noah Sheetz and executive director Audra Herman have cooked up at the historic governor's mansion on Eagle Street.

The professional kitchen has become a lean and green operation. They emphasize local products and sustainable, organic agriculture, an initiative begun a year ago by Silda Wall Spitzer and taken up last month by her successor, first lady Michelle Paige Paterson.

"It's so important to have natural, organic food and healthy eating choices," said Paterson, who runs healthy living and wellness programs for children at HIP Health Plans, a New York City HMO.

Paterson, who grew up in Manhattan and Staten Island, recalled fond childhood memories of summer visits to relatives who were farmers in the South.

"We have a childhood obesity epidemic in this country in part because of all the fast food and processed food," she said.

She spoke at the mansion following a May Day press conference on the installation of solar panels and other energy-reducing initiatives in an ongoing greening of the mansion effort.

These days, locally grown ingredients fill the mansion's refrigerator, walk-in cooler and pantry.

Sheetz grows wheat grass, mustard greens, buckwheat and sunflower sprouts in a greenhouse. They keep a compost pile and use it to fertilize a backyard herb garden and vegetable patch. They canned tomatoes, zucchini and pickled peppers from last summer's bounty.

Herman and Sheetz make regular road trips across the Capital Region to visit farms and local producers and to sample products. They also buy in season from the Troy Farmers Market and others in the area.

"It's a chef's dream to get the chance to visit local farms and go to farmers markets to select the finest local ingredients," said Sheetz, a 2002 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. He has worked at the mansion for the past four years.

"There are so many great farms in this region and we keep finding new ones, particularly in Washington County," he said.

The El Paso, Texas, native previously cooked at Cafe Tamayo in Saugerties and a vegetarian restaurant in Memphis. He also sold bread he made at a bakery he ran in Red Hook, where Sheetz and his wife, Tara, live.

On this day, Sheetz made a half-dozen loaves of his signature sourdough bread.

"Noah has been a great fit for the mansion," Herman said. "He's young, fit, healthy and really understands what going local's all about."

Sheetz also brought technology to the enterprise, tracking dozens of local suppliers and farms with a BlackBerry on his hip and a laptop computer in the kitchen.

Excerpted from the Times Union, 29 May 2008. Read the full article here

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