Our approach to food production and food service is not value neutral. Through the creation of food, from raw ingredients to finished products, and through the giving or serving of food, we express a myriad of mores, social and cultural norms, anxieties, and personal neurosis. Though these webs of interrelated processes may be socially and personally challenging, their examination fosters community awareness and the opportunity to live, produce and consume with greater care and understanding, both socially and personally.

09 August 2010

Swordfish

Last night I steamed aritchokes from the farmer's market and served them with a little butter, alongside broiled swordfish with a caper and tomato dressing (also care of the farmer's market) and lemon rice.  We drank a local Sauvignon Blanc.  For dessert, apple crisp made with apples from the yard.

A few weeks ago I was asked what my relationship to the 'locovore movement' entailed.  This, of course, got me thinking.  I have been witness to and made several defenses of the 'movement' predicated on it's relationship to the environment, equity of resources, health benefits, marketing strategy, etc.  But each time I encounter these defenses and explanations, they seem, to my heart, to miss the mark.

Rather my relationship to this 'movement' developed very early and for no other reason than I was (and still am) a romantic.  When I was about eight-years-old, I developed a fascination with the Laura Ingles Wilder books.  I read about these young girls making butter from the skimmings off of milk fresh from their cows, syrup from the sap of maples during the big winter, baked beans in the fire all night and I wanted to be like them.  So, I poured over my Shepard's Seeds catalogue, picked my varietals and went to work.  For several years I kept a kitchen garden, made apple cider vinegar from the remains of pie apples, learned to sew, knit and crochet, and yes, twice I made my own butter.

What I discovered is that food from one's own garden tastes better.  I did not use pesticides simply because I did not know about them.  But my tomatoes were sweeter than any I had tasted before, my potatoes more buttery.  My puny corn had a freshness that I did not know corn could have.  My haricot verts were a crispy dream.

I understand and can appreciate the various defenses of and justifications for the 'locovore movement' and I am certainly on board with most of them.  But for me, long before politics and marketing strategies, there was Laura and my little garden and the discovery that fresh food was a magical world unto itself.  More than politics, more than prestige, being a 'locovore' is a privilege.