Blessing the Hands that Feed Us (11 page)

Clearly I'd be challenged in many ways this month. I'd eat things I rarely—if ever—ate, cook in ways I'd never cooked, miss my food rituals and flavors and habits. Food would not be a backdrop in a busy life. I wouldn't be able to “grab a bite” and get back to work. For a month, food would be the main event. I'd spend time washing and peeling and slicing and chopping and boiling and sautéing and blendering food. I'd be grateful as never before that I actually had food to eat.

By August 31 I had it all lined up. Eight pounds of beef in the freezer. A big jar of honey on the counter. A milk pickup scheduled for the next evening. Limes from Van's Produce. Plenty of Tetley British blend tea (produced by Tata, the Indian multinational corporation from tea grown on more than one hundred plantations in India and Sri Lanka). And a box of veggies from Tricia in the fridge (more on that in a bit). I gave away to friends everything perishable that was outside my perimeter. Finally, as my last act as a woman free to eat where I could, I took myself out to dinner at the only restaurant within twenty-five miles that served pad Thai. Nice, greasy, noodle-y, peanut-y, chicken-from-a-factory-farm-y pad Thai—my last meal before walking the plank off the ship of food from anywhere and into the murky waters of 10-mile eating.

I got immediate validation from the September 2 Transition Whidbey Potlucks with a Purpose, focused on preparing for their second annual September Eat Local Challenge. Pieces of butcher paper lined the walls of the Fellowship Hall at the Methodist Church labeled meat, cheese, grains, beans, vegetables, fruits, etc. Fifty of us bustled from page to page writing down the island suppliers we'd found for each category. I added some I'd discovered myself, but I was pleased to see that I'd left almost no stone unturned. I'd found just about everything others had found . . . and then some.

One category on the wall that night I hadn't factored in, though, was gleaning. A group called the Gleeful Gleaners had formed at a Potluck with a Purpose the year before. Their goal: to identify fruit trees that went unpicked so the fruit could be harvested and donated to the Good Cheer Food Bank. It was a good reminder that if I couldn't find what I needed from producers in my ten miles, I might find it for free in the forests and abandoned in fields. A group in Bellingham, Small Potatoes had been gleaning for years, bringing in six tons—yes, tons—of produce from local farms and delivering the fruits and vegetables to area food banks, soup kitchens, and feeding programs. They have agreements with more than a dozen local farmers who don't want the food they've grown to go to waste.

Okay, I thought, ready to roll. Bring it on. I'm in. I'm up for it.

Now It's Your Turn

Practice 1: Establish Your Home Base

Whenever you engage in change, you need to know your starting point. What do you eat now?

Start by making a list of the twenty-five (or more) foods you eat most frequently. Not the calories! Not the prices! Not the brands—like McDonald's burgers or Clif Bars! Just the foods. If you can't think of any, just open your fridge and cupboards and see what you have. If you want to be systematic, list foods under the following headings:

Fruits

Vegetables

Meats

Dairy

Nuts

Sweets

Grains

Prepared foods (sauces, mixes, soups)

Practice 2: Your Motivations

In making this personal top twenty-five list, you may become more curious about why you eat what you eat. Why these foods? Why not others? You've seen my hodgepodge list of habits, preferences, ethics, willful denial, addiction, and more. To review:

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Simple: not complex

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Cheap: a bargain

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Healthy: good for me

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Ethical: good for others

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Low-calorie: ain't gonna make me fat

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Desire: I just want it

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Convenience: it's handy

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Comfort: it soothes me

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Nostalgia: what I ate as a kid or at special events

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Because it's there: unconsciousness

Make a list of your own. Ask: Who taught me to like these? Do I eat them from habit or conscious choice? How far do they travel from real food in a field to prepared food on my plate? Who grows and packages and distributes them?

Practice 3: Your Where

You can add a column to your list called “Where?” For each food, write down where it is grown and processed. If you come up blank, treat your industrial food outlet—better known as the grocery store—like a treasure hunt. Bring your list and clipboard and pen and check each food out. If the label doesn't say, ask the produce manager or the store manager. They may not love you for this . . . yet. Later they'll make you the star of their own story of going local.

Food, perhaps more than any other consumer product, is a mirror. Our obsession with diets—health and weight loss—obscures our natural capacity to know what our bodies need. A useful attitude for such inquiry is “no shame, no blame.” This is not a new right way. This is you actually beginning to transform your relationship with food—and the hands that feed you.

Practice 4: Begin to Grow Your Own

Growing food used to be a shared endeavor on the part of the whole tribe. To be part of the shift to relational eating—to be part of the tribe—you need to grow at least one crop for home consumption. Fortunately, that's as easy as buying some sprouting seeds and growing them on a windowsill. Sprouting is how you enter relational eating. It's simple, it's inexpensive, and it's a great way to have green food every day—even in winter. Here's how you do it (reading this may take more time than doing it):

Buy some sprouting seeds. You can get them in the bulk section of your store or online. I like the mix with alfalfa, radish, lentil, and others.

Put one to two tablespoons in a wide-mouth jar. There are sets of sprouting lids for mason jars that make rinsing easier, but you can use cheesecloth or muslin and a rubber band to keep it in place.

Fill the jar halfway with water. Put it out of the sun for a day.

Pour off the water through the sieve lid (or remove the muslin), rinse the seeds, pour off that water (replace the muslin if you are using that system), and tilt the jar in a bowl so the water drains.

Repeat whenever you think of it—a couple of times a day.

When the seeds begin to sprout, put the jar in a sunnier spot so the sprouts will eventually green up.

When the jar is full of sprouts and the leaves are green (after four to seven days), you're done.

Rinse them in a big bowl to float off the hulls, then store them in a jar in the fridge. I like to put a paper towel in the jar to absorb extra moisture.

Voilà. You've planted seeds, watered them, and eaten them. Now you're a food producer as well as consumer! That's as local as you can get outside of the bacteria nursery called your intestinal tract.

Ready now to take on more? Anyone who knows me would suggest you look elsewhere for gardening advice, but I know that the best way to learn is on your hands and knees next to a real gardener. Then put a few seeds in the dirt yourself. You can plant in tubs on your balcony or on a patch of yard that you dig up and enrich with compost. Find out from a librarian or farm-and-garden store what grows well in your area so you have success! If you can get a plot in a community garden/pea patch, grab it. Gardening alongside other gardeners is a great way to learn.

Practice 5: Your Food Ethic

Once you have an honest list of what you buy and why, start to think about what conscious criteria you want to put in place. Unfortunately some people who are ethically rigid give “ethics” a bad name. I think of them as steering me toward what I love rather than away from what I fear. I think of them as a beautiful collage I can contemplate to orient me rather than a plaque in the office to say what I have achieved.

Here's a checklist of considerations different people have about the foods they buy and eat. If you believe them all, you might find it hard to shop! If you just buy what you want without any consideration of the effect of the food on your body or other people, you might wonder what the fuss is about. If the list gets you thinking, do some research and make considered choices.

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Price

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How much packaging?

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None!

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Nothing you can't recycle

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BYOB: do you bring your own bag?

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Don't consider packaging

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Brand

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Known ethical companies

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Store brands for price

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How is it produced?

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Organic

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All-natural

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Wild-caught

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No antibiotics

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Shade-grown

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Free range

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No GMOs (genetically modified organisms)

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Where is it produced?

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Local

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Shipped from where?

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Factory farms?

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Factory-processed—versus homemade

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Fair trade?

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What stores—and why

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Farmers' market

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Food co-op

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Locally owned grocery store

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Chain grocery store

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Costco/Sam's/Walmart—volume discount stores

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Online

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Trader Joe's

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Specialty stores

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No stores: gleaning, foraging, freegan (food that is or would be thrown away)

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Where in the store?

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Produce

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Bulk bins

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Only perimeter

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Which aisles: Frozen? Canned? Boxed? Cereals? Paper/cleaning products?

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Health

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Raw

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Cold-pressed

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No salt

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No sugar

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No gluten

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No nuts

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No chemicals

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No meat

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No dairy

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Religious

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No pork

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Kosher

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No animals

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Ingredients

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Five or fewer (the Michael Pollan suggestion)

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No high fructose corn syrup

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Salt

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Sugar

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Colors, flavors, preservatives

Practice Six: Treasure Hunt

Your local farmers and markets are your treasure troves. Use all the tools of the research trade—library, newspapers, Internet, networks, bulletin boards, local food organizations—to find as many of these as you can:

Local farmers' markets

CSAs that serve your area

Good farm stands

Your neighbors' eggs

Food co-ops

Food hubs (resale and distribution points for regional growers)

U-pick berries and vegetables

Pasture-raised beef, chickens, goats, and sheep

Wild-caught fish

Practice Seven: Host a Potluck with a Purpose

Potlucks with a Purpose started right on the front lawn of Island Coffee House in my hometown of Langley, Washington. Our year-old Transition Whidbey group wanted to host enlivening and community-building events that would educate, inspire, inform, and motivate our community. The formula we developed has stood the test of time and traveled to many other Transition groups. Here's the recipe:

A heaping potluck table:
best if people incorporate some local foods into their dishes and write the ingredients on a card.

Eating together and socializing.

Celebrations:
a moment at the mike for as many as want to for sharing some accomplishment since the last potluck.

Offers and asks:
a moment at the mike for as many as possible to offer something they have that they're willing to share or to ask for something they need. Firewood, livestock, furniture, surplus of all sorts, have traded hands through these “offers and asks.” One requisite of community is vulnerability, living the truth that we really do need one another. Being able to offer without strings and ask without shame allows resources to flow.

Announcements:
a moment at the mike for as many as feasible to announce resilience events. This “town crier” time lets us see how much is afoot.

A connections table:
a place where people with offers, asks, and announcements can put their information for others to find it. If a community organization wants to put out information, a member should be sent to make an announcement.

A free box:
where people can bring surplus for others to take if they need it—clothes, books, food, toys, whatever.

A meaty, provocative talk or program:
a speaker or panel that keeps challenging and informing the community, hopefully to the point of action being taken.

Action groups:
existing and newly forming groups meet at the end to plan actions.

Generally, the eating and socializing is a quarter of the evening, the networking is a quarter of the evening, and the program with all the Q&A and action groups is half.

Potlucks with a Purpose promote community without complacency and action without coercion. They are fun events, family-friendly, inclusive. They knit us together by sharing from our surplus and displaying our generous sides. They keep the heartbeat going, feed oxygen to projects, give us courage. They are also like the “welcome wagon” for your community's relocalization efforts. Newcomers can find where to engage or find people to engage with them.