dsmWeekly - July 3, 2024

Whippoorwill Creek Farm co-owner John Hogeland, center, coaches Mark Weyer of Johnston and Aaron Boyd of West Des Moines on the finer points of stuffing sausage during a class in June. (Photo: Michael Morain)

FOOD & DINING

Go ahead: Watch the sausage being made
By Michael Morain

Now that Joey Chestnut has been barred from Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island, let us now turn our attention to more local sausage news.

At Whippoorwill Creek Farm in Lovilia, south of Knoxville, you can defy that old warning about watching sausage being made and actually do it yourself. For a mere $65, you can take a (very) hands-on workshop, enjoy a good meal and return home with a bag full of fresh bratwurst, chorizo, goat sausage with lemon and rosemary — and a story to impress your carnivorous friends.

The place belongs to John Hogeland, who grew up down the road on a farm his family has tended for five generations, and Beth Hoffman, a New Jersey native he met in California. He went to culinary school and worked for years as a butcher and a chef. She studied and taught journalism at Berkeley, where one of her professors was Michael Pollan.

They moved to his old stomping grounds a few years ago to run a 540-acre sustainable farm, an ongoing adventure she has chronicled in her memoir “Bet the Farm” and in eloquent “In the Dirt” dispatches with the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Together they teach all kinds of food-focused classes and events for locals and city slickers alike.

At the class my mom and I attended a few weeks ago, in the old converted barn that has a roomy kitchen, we joined eight other students in various tasks: measuring spices, grinding meat, mixing it by hand and stuffing it into surprisingly durable natural casings with help from a hand-cranked machine made by a German company with a funny name. John discourages spouses from operating the stuffer together because they often bicker about the pace and pressure. “We’ve had fights,” he deadpanned.

The final (and most fun) step involves twisting the long rope of meat into individual links, twirling it almost like a jump rope.

And then: the meal. Beth and John had pre-prepared a salad with fresh greens from their garden and a delicious risotto studded with chunks of homemade sausage.

“You can feed 10 people with two sausages and some sauce,” John said. Eating less meat “is a great way to take pressure off the world around us.”

We all lingered around the table, enjoying each other’s company and conversation. When it was time to go, we bagged up our paper bundles of sausages and headed out to the cars, trailed by two hopeful dogs named Ruti and Snooks.

Artist Ashley Guzman painted a portrait of her parents chatting after a long day of work at their family restaurant. See this painting and others Friday at Mainframe Studios. (Photo: Ashley Guzman)

BEST BET

Celebrate Latino art and culture at Mainframe

It’s the first Friday of a new month so Mainframe Studios is opening its doors to the public again, this time for a celebration of Latino art and culture hosted by local artists Seso Marentes and Siriaco “Siricasso” Garcia.

Marentes, who was featured in dsm’s 2023 Inclusion issue, plans to make this month’s event more immersive, starting with eight souped-up lowrider cars to welcome visitors outside. “When I grew up, I used to watch lowrider art and read Lowrider Magazine. It was always a spectacle,” he said. “I’m trying to capture that moment again.”

Inside, the open house will feel like a party, with piñatas and live music from Son Peruchos, a Des Moines-based Latin band that will roam the halls.

Marentes plans to open his own studio and take over two others in the building; he needs the extra space to exhibit his large-scale murals and intricate carvings. “I don’t usually go small,” he said. “I really want to emphasize the time it takes to create such big carvings.”

Marentes’ mentor, Miriam Alarcon Avila, will showcase her photo portraits of luchadores, the masked wrestlers rich in cultural symbolism. Local photographer Anthony Arroyo will share work exploring his environments and passion for the medium. Minnesota-based painter Ashley Guzman will exhibit still lifes and collages, and Mainframe tenant Linda Eclatt, owner of Lunita’s Planners, will highlight Latino entrepreneurship.

Finally, Business Record Forty Under 40 honoree Siricasso plans to debut his exhibit “smile now, cry later,” which explores his family’s experiences with addiction and deportation.

“The Latino community has been here a long time,” Marentes said. “Don’t let the language barrier stop you. Let the artwork do the talking.”

The Week Ahead

Yankee Doodle Pops (6:30 tonight): Join 100,000 of your closest friends on the west terrace of the State Capitol. The program starts with student musicians and the Turner Jazz Orchestra before the Des Moines Symphony takes the stage at 8:30 p.m. (Good luck to the piccolo soloist in "The Stars and Stripes Forever." We're rooting for you!)

"Or So The Story Goes" (7 p.m. Saturday): Marisa Cravero shares personal milestones with her own arrangements of jazz standards, funk and soul, modern compositions and more at Noce.

"Pelleas et Melisande" (7:30 p.m. Saturday): The opera follows a prince who falls in love with a mysterious young woman, who in turn falls for the prince’s half-brother. Debussy’s 1902 score shimmers with impressionistic melodies and harmonies that are rarely heard in opera. The production was featured this week in the Wall Street Journal and continues through July 21.

Music Under the Stars (7 p.m. Sunday): Trumpet soloist Andy Classen and jazz singer Napoleon Douglas, who’s featured in the current issue of dsm, drop in for the final free concert in the summer series, this time at Water Works Park.

Jazz in July (5:15 p.m. Tuesday): This year’s free series at Hoyt Sherman Place starts outside with the Valley Jazz Combo (5:15) and Big Fun (6:30) before Max Wellman and the Nate Sparks Big Band (8 p.m.) perform inside. The rest of the indoor-outdoor series continues on July 16, 23 and 30.

"All You Need is Love & Music" (7:30 p.m. Tuesday): The Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus teams up with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus for a free concert to support Iowa Safe Schools, before both choirs join 7,000 other singers next week at a festival in Minneapolis.

ARTS & CULTURE
The next opera season: The Des Moines Metro Opera just kicked off its summer festival with the “The Barber of Seville” and “Salome,” but it’s already announced the lineup for 2025. Next summer’s season will include the return of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman,” a new production and company premiere of Janáček’s “The Cunning Little Vixen,” and a new production of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress.” Early reservations are available now, before individual ticket sales open Nov. 20.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR
LGBTQ legacies: Registration is now open to celebrate dsm magazine’s 2024 LGBTQ Legacy Leaders on Sept. 12 downtown at the River Center. This year’s Legacies are: Shea Daniels, the inaugural Emerging LGBTQ Legacy Leader and engineering manager at Dwolla; MD Isley, vice president for academic affairs at Des Moines Area Community College; Dan Jansen, founding partner for the Iowa LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce; Erin Sheriff, senior actuary for Principal Financial Group; Daniel Zinnel, CEO of Proteus; and this year’s honored ally, Natali Justiniano Pahl, a longtime advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion with experience at EMC Insurance Cos., Principal Financial Group and Wells Fargo.

Paula Bell (Photo: Duane Tinkey)

PEOPLE

Meet Paula Bell, a martial artist

As told to Emily Barske Wood for the Business Record Photo Issue. Read all five profiles about how local business leaders spend their free time online.

Tell us a little about your hobby.
I wouldn’t necessarily call this a hobby, but rather a lifestyle. I study and train in Okinawan Japanese karate called Ryukyu Kempo. Karate has a long and storied history. It originated as an indigenous art developed on the Ryukyu Islands known as Te. It further developed with influences from China. Ryukyu Kempo is a style of martial arts that focuses on traditional instruction. It is a well-rounded style that encompasses different studies that many of the modern styles practiced today consider both old-fashioned and irrelevant. However, these practices are extremely relevant, because they are what elevates Ryukyu Kempo to an art and a way of life, and make it an effective style of self-defense. Ryukyu Kempo is the only martial art to teach grappling art known as Tuite and the nerve-point techniques that are called Kyusho Jitsu.

When did this hobby start for you?
I started studying martial arts with my twins in 2011. It started as a time to spend with my boy-girl twins and elevated into more than that when I started training more.

What’s something this hobby provides you that applies to your job?
Karate is part of my company’s brand. I learned early on that karate is more about mindset than physical abilities. Meaning, it’s important to be in the right mindset before you start training. In karate, we have the term “structural integrity” and what that means is that your body is always in the right position to defend yourself because, if it is off by a little bit, you can lose your balance or not defend yourself optimally. I realized that structural integrity can be leveraged as a concept in everything we do, and once the foundation is stable, you build upon it with techniques, skills and then ultimately a transformation. I use martial arts in my coaching, consulting and speaking model to help clients reach their personal and professional goals.

Tell us a tip or fun fact about your hobby.
You can be ANY age to start martial arts. You just need to have the right mindset and know that your only competition is you.