Houston's Pat Greer is Cooking up a Sustainable World
Pat Greer’s big steps on the local food scene leave nothing but tiny footprints
The torn fabric on the canopy tent in Pat Greer’s edible and flowering front yard flaps fitfully in the wind. Holding on to a piece to shield us from the morning sun, she can’t wait to give her old, worn canopy a total makeover. The stacks of old aprons that she has will do the trick. She’ll sew them together and reuse as canopy cover.
Reuse and upcycle: That is Pat Greer. Her eclectic collection of cutlery and dinnerware is a testimony to that, as are the handbags, purses and garments she makes using discarded T-shirts, jeans and other fabrics.
It’s how she grew up: Nothing was ever wasted and Greer has always lived by that. “My mind is constantly busy trying to figure out what to do with things. The travels that has taken has really set things in motion for my children and grandchildren.”
Pat Greer, a striking woman with snow-white hair and twinkling blue eyes in an always friendly face, is a household name in the local food community. She’s the cool cat who strolls around the farmers market in a carrot costume at Halloween, ever promoting her vegetable-forward lifestyle.
The raw vegan food from her Montrose-based kitchen—prepared from organic fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds—finds customers locally and nationwide.
She is an environmentalist, local food activist, former radio host, cooking class teacher and established raw vegan chef.
And it all started with a spinach cracker.
Actually, no. The seeds for that cracker were planted on her paternal grandparents’ farm in east Texas, canning okra and tomatoes, eating figs straight from the tree and making grape jelly every year. But like many kids growing up in the ’50s, TV dinners took the place of home-cooked meals and she forgot what “real food” tasted like for the longest time. At the same time, as a latchkey kid, she was always throwing together whatever she could find to “cook” her own meal.
Greer’s is a story of circumstance, of listening to the little voice, of finding community among neighbors, family and friends.
Houston became home for the Dallas native in the late ’70s when her then-husband, a seismic exploration professional, transplanted his young family. “I was keeping myself busy with craft shows, painting containers and making fudge and things out of my house,” she says. One thing led to another, and before she knew it, she opened Peppermint Patty’s, a candy store that offered homemade candy popcorn, all different kinds of fudge, cookies, ice cream and fresh-ground coffee. “It was way ahead of its time. We had a liquor license and had wines and stuff.”
But when the bottom fell out in the mid ‘80s, a candy store was the last thing on people’s mind to go to, and she had to close.
The mid ’90s brought a pivotal moment in her life. She had a health challenge, a wakeup call that impacted her profoundly and made her overhaul her lifestyle. Organic vegetables and daily exercise became standard for her, and meat, dairy and processed foods were left out of the equation altogether. She wasn’t there yet, she felt. “A little voice kept telling me ‘There is more,’” Greer says about her discovery road to raw veganism. By the late ’90s, she had adopted a new approach to food prep that was all about trying things out and using what you have—and all of it raw and completely plant-based.
“Amelia Bedelia says ‘A little of this, a little of that and it all works out,’” Greer says, referring to the quirky housekeeper in the children’s books by Peggy Parish. “My granddaughter and I read all of the books. She loved them! She used to help me teach at Whole Foods on Kirby when she was about 4, 5 years old, climbing up on a chair to assist. My brilliant granddaughter recognized the connection to how I prepare food and how Amelia did everything.”
And that’s how Greer entered the next millennium: On the cutting edge of clean, healthy eating, pioneering raw plant-based food in Houston.
Her oldest daughter Jennifer shared her interest in organic vegetables and sustainability. She had been taking permaculture classes at Gita Verwoerden’s Animal Farm in Cat Springs and was on a quest for more organic produce in Houston. Greer listened to her entrepreneurial voice, followed up with Country Fresh Produce, the name she found on the label of a bunch of parsley, started calling around and, just like that, Central City Co-Op began on Jennifer’s front porch in the early 2000s. Gundermann Acres was (then and now) the main farm share supplier.
It was a simple operation: farmers would bring in boxes of produce, friends and a growing number of “word-of-mouth” clients came to the porch to buy a share of it. “We grew off that porch in five, six months,” recalls Greer. As the co-op grew, it changed locations often and was ultimately sold to another visionary in 2016 (See: Honey, Let's Buy The Co-Op).
By then, Greer had long since left the co-op, which brings us back to those spinach crackers.
As the co-op traded farmers’ produce, sometimes they were left with excess. Never-waste-anything Greer would always find a good home for it. Until, one day, she couldn’t place several boxes of unsold greens. So, instead, Greer experimented with a mixture of seeds, spices, nuts and spinach—and a dehydrator. Out came delicious crackers. So delicious, in fact, that they found their way into shopping bags, first in Houston and, as a growing success, across the country.
Things evolved and it was time to take the crackers to the next level. Together with friend and realtor Charlotte White, she looked for and found the right place in Montrose. It was a mess, though, after years of use as a crack house, and it took them eight months to get it clean—in every sense of the word—and close to a year before she was in full operation from her new kitchen. That was when she moved out of the coop and into what jokingly became the Kracker House (Pat Greer's Kitchen).
Her repertoire grew with fresh food and kombucha. She continued her cooking classes and did catering. She expanded to farmers markets, grew her team and added activities to sustain the business. And she kept growing her community, like she did way back when she opened Peppermint Patty’s.
It is one of the things that fills her with pride and contentment: “I have a cache of people that can help people.” And that is how she’s always envisioned her small business: being part of a whole network of small businesses, helping each other, feeding offeach other.
Greer’s voice gets heard—literally, until March 2019, as the radio host of “Eco-Logy,” a weekly hour-long show in which she discussed the state of our ecological health with a host of different guests, touching upon a range of related topics. But more loudly, she gets heard for what she does, and has been doing.
“It is ALL education. And it is tough because while we need more people involved, we need people that help make it affordable for everyone.”
For more than two decades, Greer has been on the forefront of organic, sustainable and responsible eating. As we begin yet another decade, Greer is brimming with energy to continue that journey.
And she does it in her very own “Amelia Bedelia a little of this and a little of that” way.
