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.