Looking Back to Move Forward

If I was living in the time of my great great grandfather, I probably would have starved this week. Someone would have found my husband and I dead on the kitchen floor, laid out in front of the refrigerator. I guess I have the system to thank for my continued life.

The people who know me well wouldn’t be surprised, but I forgot about my farm pick-up Monday. Thinking it was Tuesday, I wasn’t as frustrated to be held up at work. I came home and saw the empty basket on my table and it dawned on me that last week the pick up was Tuesday only because Monday was a holiday.

After fighting the self-defeating feelings of being a failure, and an airhead, and other thoughts that would be inappropriate for me to put in black and white, I came to terms with my reality and thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about a different time.

My Great Great Grandfather Elijah was a farmer, just like his daddy was, and his daddy before him. He truly grew from the dirt of Alabama. I was told the only things he bought at the market was sugar, flour and fabric. He had a wood-working shed that he rented out for money, but he grew everything his family ate. He didn’t have a job that he went to everyday that exhausted him and left him drained of time, energy and heart. I imagine him getting up every morning with the sun and working in his fields. He did the kind of work that feeds the soul in a way that nothing else can. Elijah was a simple man, who lived and raised his family in a simple way, but he was self-reliant.

As I think about Elijah, I contemplate how far we have come as a society. We have become more sophisticated, more efficient, more educated, and more lost every day. There is a longing that we think we can fill with material things. Phones that can think for you, cars that can parallel park without any effort from the driver, computers that help us connect with the world, but these things take us farther away from what really moves us from the inside. We spend our time staring at screens, instead of watching the sunset, or squirrels fighting over bird seed, or the world that’s alive around us.

The time we live in now is filled with fear, with unemployment figures sky-rocketing, and the financial markets crashing. So many people are lost in their lives. But maybe, we are actually being rescued from the boxes we have built around us. Just maybe this an opportunity to strip down the infrastructure that is no longer serving us, and get our hands a little dirty. If people can’t afford to eat, they will learn to grown their own food. It’s the basics for the drive of survival that we were all born with. It’s about people in the community supporting one another by buying their produce from a local farmer, who may not be big enough to sell to grocery stores, but can feed his family and neighbors. It’s about scaling back and seeing what’s at your disposal around you.
Mother nature can support us all, and has since the beginning of time. Change is always hard, but maybe this is the change we need to learn to live again. Our ancestors have a lot they can teach us, all we have to do is be still and listen for their whispers in the breeze.


Recipe of the week:

Kale Chips

1 head of kale, chopped in bite-size pieces, spread out over cookie sheets
drizzle olive oil over the kale and season with salt and . . . (be creative)
cook at 350 until you see the kale starting to crisp (maybe 10 min? depending on your oven)
then pull them out and turn the kale over to cook the bottom side (you may want to add some salt)

A New Beginning

The first thing I noticed as I was getting out of the car for my first CSA pick up was the smell. The energizing scent of green onion and spearmint filled my nose. People were everywhere clinging to their baskets and steering their little children through the maze of tables filled with baskets of greens and vegetables. After I signed in, I filled my basket with radishes, potatoes, beat greens, spearmint, and green onions. Someone from Panera bread was setting up a table to hand out free loaves of day old bread and people were lining up around him ready to take their share.

Jaime and I allowed ourselves to walk around and just take it all in. Our senses stimulated by the smells and the colors of the farm brought to the city. There was a woman selling home made cheeses and farm fresh eggs. I was looking over what she had brought to sell, regretting my recent grocery store run, and I looked to the side to find Jaime talking with a man who called himself The Flameless Chef. He was a thin, older man with sun kissed skin. The subtle lines on his face and grit under his nails gave away the years he spent working outside.
“The idea is to eat food less than eight hours old. That way, your body is getting the maximum benefit from the vitamins and nutrients.” The excitement of converting these two new faces showed in his glistening blue eyes.
He had what he called “Rummus” which was a paste made from raw crushed sesame seed and herbs he pulled from his garden that morning. He was selling them with a sandwich bag of sprouted seed crackers seasoned from onion, garlic and Rye. It was tasty and before I knew it, Jaime was buying a hand full of things from him.

The experience was invigorating for both of us. Similar to giving to charity, our basket wasn’t very full, but knowing we were supporting a farm so they could provide a healthy alternative was worth every dollar.

That night, we grilled a couple of tuna steaks and sliced them to lay over a bed of baby greens with chopped radishes from our basket. We made a wasabi vinaigrette and drizzled it over the top. We enjoyed our salad with locally grown sweet corn I had cooked on the stove. The dinner left us feeling full and satisfied as we sat back and watched the sun set from our deck.

By Saturday, there wasn’t much left in my basket so I packed some shopping bags and headed to the Nashville Farmer’s Market. I’ve been many times before, but this time I was armed with new intention. I filled my bags with peaches from South Carolina, newly picked summer squash, lettuce greens, and broccolini.

I spent some time speaking with a farmer from Walnut Hills Farm who naturally raises grass-fed cows. I was excited by his enthusiasm for providing healthy, natural meat. He explained the different breeds of cattle and how he came to find a breed that had been raised over 600 years in the pastures of France. They grow healthy and strong in a relatively short amount of time and provide wonderful lean meat without the use of compromising steroids and antibiotics. I walked away with some frozen hamburger patties and sirloin, excited about the idea of eating red meat again with a clear conscience.
Looking back over the week, it was a good start to my new way of life. My refrigerator is stocked with fresh, pesticide-free vegetables and I’m looking forward to the challenge of putting everything together in meals to feed my family for the next few days. But most of all, I am encouraged by the people I have met this week who share in my passion for eating in an environmentally sustainable way.

The markets were filled with young families who were teaching their children about where their food comes from. I saw a mother at the Farmer’s Market who encouraged her daughter to take the bag of squash to the farmer so he can weigh and price it for her. The little girl’s eyes were wide with wonder and excitement as the farmer took the bag to place on the scale. I saw a light come on in those curious eyes and it gave me hope for our future. Because it will be through our children that our fight for a healthier way of life has a chance to live on. They are the ones who have the burden of inheriting our dying Earth, the courage to demand something more, and ultimately, the will to save us from ourselves.


Recipe for the Week: (great over fresh radishes and baby greens!)

Wasabi Vinaigrette
1 part rice vinegar
1 part lite soy sauce
Wasabi from a tube and olive oil to taste


Weekly References:

Walnut Hills Farm
Bethpage, Tennessee
http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M23158

Embarking On An Adventure

You could say I was raised in a granola home. Thanks to my mother, I probably never digested high fructose corn syrup until i was in grade school. I didn’t appreciate what my Mom was doing at the time, but now looking back I’m grateful I was given the opportunity to develop a healthy body and eating habits.

After I left home, the habits my Mom implemented went out the window and I ate whatever I wanted without a single thought. I noticed I started craving fast food and processed foods. My allergies and asthma began to worsen and I was noticing weight gain for the first time in my life. That was the first time I started to think about what I ate on my own. I made small changes in my food choices and noticed a difference in my body. Heavily processed foods made me feel tired and ill, and slowly as I made the connections, I became less likely to eat them.

Now, as a young adult, food has become more important to me than ever before. On my 30th birthday, a hand full of my closest friends and I took a trip to Napa Valley. At the time, I was unaware of how this trip would change my life, and the way I looked at nourishing the body. My senses were awakened by the fresh food and carefully prepared meals, most of the ingredients coming from the gardens that grew just outside the restaurants. I was invigorated by their way of life in the Valley. Food was not something that came out of packages and boxes or something you grabbed on the way out the door. Food was honored and celebrated in a way I’ve never experienced first hand. I saw nourishing the body as a spiritual practice.

That winter, I watched the movie FOOD INC and it set things in motion for me. I was deeply touched by the movie’s plead to save a dying way of life. It clearly shows how far away our culture has gotten to where our food comes from. With farms disappearing all over the country and meat factories and food manufacturing plants popping up in their place, the closest we get to understanding what we eat is the aisle of a grocery store. The intimacy is lost, and in it’s place comes a longing for something more.

I come from a long line of farmers, on both my mother and father’s side and a passion is growing inside of me to honor and save the dying art of nourishing the community. I may not be a farmer myself but I have picked up the flag and want to champion this way of life. I’ve joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and will be supporting a local farm this summer. I look forward to my weekly pick up and learning about what is season and how to prepare and feed my family from what my local community can provide. I am passionate about learning the rhythm of the earth and how to nourish myself on the most basic level, the way our ancestors have done before us.

The challenge will come in learning how to prepare these vegetables that I wouldn’t normally buy from the grocery store, and how to can or freeze what I cannot use before they spoil. I plan to learn techniques from my grandmother who grew up on a farm during the depression and accessing her wealth of knowledge. But more than even that, how to eat with awareness as a working professional like so many of us are now. I hope you will join me in my journey of re-learning how to eat, nourish and live off what the land provides (as I can).

We have the power to change our lives and our bodies and the world around us by the choices we make. As someone said to me once, “You vote with your dollar”. Together we can choose healthier food, a healthier environment, and in doing that can effectively change the world.