Day 87: Takeaway (Food)

It's mid-afternoon and I haven't done my workout yet -- not feeling great today. Allergies have risen up and my head is full of goo. Bluurrrrrrgh. Also sweating a couple of deadlines and nervous about the next few days in terms of work. It'll all be okay but I think I'm internalizing the anxiety and that's contributing to the headache. I had lunch, 20 minutes with my eyes closed, now a cup of tea while waiting for my husband to come home. He's going to take our daughter out for the afternoon, and then it's workout time for me.

I wanted to write a little bit about how my thoughts and actions regarding food have changed over the course of this 3 months, and what I plan to do going forward.

In the past couple of years, I've gotten more and more interested in the "where our food comes from" questions that are becoming so prevalent, at least here in the US. Reading The Omnivore's Dilemma really made me start to think differently. I also co-produced a series of radio essays written by an organic farmer outside of New York City, and talking with her about her life and work was really formative, too. New York is lucky to have so many great farms right outside the city, and a local food culture that values those farms, in the form of abundant farmers' markets and lots of restaurants that feature seasonal and local food. I've really started to see that eating locally is not only the most responsible thing to do for the planet, but it's a great way to invest in your own community and the other people who live there. And the food is way better than anything at the supermarket.

But when it came to my own daily meals, I've had trouble putting all of this knowledge into practice. I've always enjoyed cooking, but I'm definitely more of a cookbook & recipe person. I've always been amazed by people who can just put some things together and make a meal. I took a French cooking class a couple of years ago, which was incredibly helpful in terms of basic techniques. But I would still be stymied when I went to the farmers' market. I would buy beautiful things and then let them languish in my fridge for lack of ideas. (Which felt almost sacrilegeous, given how much hard work I knew went into producing them.) We joined a CSA one year (anyone who doesn't know -- you "subscribe" to a farm before the growing season, then get a weekly distribution of whatever is ready to harvest) and it was not a good experience. The whole pick-up was badly organized, nobody helped out like they said they would, and we got mountains of greens and turnips that we didn't know how to prepare.

Now that we're in Kentucky, I'm happy to see a vibrant local food culture here as well. There's a farmers' market within walking distance of my house, and I have a list in my kitchen of all the markets in town, organized by day of the week. So if it's Thursday and I need tomatoes, I can check the list to see what market is going on that day. There are a number of restaurants here that focus on local food -- in fact, there's a new one opening in the fall that will get 80% of its ingredients locally year round, which I think is rather daring. I even wrote a magazine article earlier this year about one of the leaders in the local food community.

When I started eating PCP meals, I knew that my regular meals wouldn't work anymore -- too hard to measure each category separately, and I couldn't figure out in advance how much was 100 grams of protein or whatever. So I started cooking reallllly simply -- meat, veg, pasta, rice, whatever. Just cooking. Whatever was in my fridge, I cooked it. I don't know why this was a "aha" moment for me, but it was. I hadn't figured out that you can just cook your food (or in some cases, like perfect cherry tomatoes, not even that) and it doesn't have to be a "recipe" or a "dish," it's just food. And all of a sudden, the local, seasonal, farmers' market way of eating finally made sense to me.

So yesterday I signed up for another CSA, this time through Grasshoppers Distribution, a very cool company here in town that aggregates products of local farmers and helps them find a market, whether direct-to-consumers through a CSA or to restaurants and institutions. For the next 12 weeks, we'll get 4-5 produce items, a dozen eggs, a half gallon of milk, and one rotating item like honey, maple syrup, gourmet mushrooms, salsa, and drinkable yogurt. (There are also options to add things like cheese, meat, and bread, but we're going to start with the basics first.) I had wanted to do this before, but frankly, we didn't eat that many eggs or drink that much milk, and I hated the idea of more beautiful produce going to waste because I didn't know what to do with it. We now easily go through a dozen eggs and half a gallon of milk a week (actually, we probably consume more), and I feel ready to cook up whatever produce I get. My whole family's eating habits have changed along with mine and I'm so excited about getting our first CSA distribution next week.

I just started reading another interesting book about eating locally, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. She's a novelist who also has a strong interest in the natural world, and she writes about the YEAR that her family spent only eating things that could be sourced locally, preferably from people they knew. Pretty challenging! Her daughter is craving fresh fruit in April, but there's no such thing in southern Virginia at that time of year -- until they find some early rhubarb at the farmers' market, then cook it up with some frozen apples from the year before. It really makes the most sense to eat this way -- the raspberries you get in February are produced at tremendous cost, and they aren't necessarily that good either. Plus, it's kind of nice to remember that we have seasons and certain things are only available at certain times of the year. Makes them more special.

Anyway, this turned into a longer post than I intended. Maybe I'm avoiding the creeps and floorjumps ahead for me today! (Really? Both on the same day? Damn, Patrick.) But I've been thinking about how my food habits have changed (are still changing) and how glad I am that what is good for my health is ALSO what my values support. And also the most delicious.