Sunday, September 30, 2007
THE BOX
I can't wait for my box to arrive. Tomorrow is the day. For the 3rd time, we will receive a medium organic box with 10 items, mostly vegetables, from the Shropshire Organic Farm in, well, I guess Shropshire. I don't know why it took me so long to go down this obvious garden path. I guess I was waiting for the right time. I mooned over organic box programs in SF on more than one occasion, but found myself unwilling to commit to a weekly cooking regimen that might include vegetables I have no idea how to prepare. I pictured grim weekends full of frantic aubergine and cauliflower consumption in order to make space for the next box. But here's the beauty of this box scheme (in England everything is a "scheme" rather than a "plan" or a "program", which always makes me feel like I'm doing something slightly illicit,) it comes from the supermarket. This means that we control when the box arrives, rather than being committed to a set schedule. Thus, if we haven't chewed our way through one box, we can dely the arrival of the next simply by not going grocery shopping (okay, actually the groceries are delivered, but the same principle applies.) I also have more time on my hands these days, and so I can afford to spend some of it investigating how to prepare runner beans on the internet and then trying out different approaches until we find one we like.
When our first box arrived, I left it sitting open on Gabriel's little table in our kitchen for him to discover. He came home from school, wandered into the kitchen, and exclaimed "Mama! What's this?" He then spent about 45 minutes taking each item out of the box, naming it, putting it back into the box and then repeating the cycle. At one point he was walking around the kitchen triumphantly with an apple in one hand, a red pepper in another and a carrot (with fluffy green top still on) stuffed in his pocket, casually alternating bites between each item. He actually uttered the words "I want to try that" when he spotted the head of lettuce - words I have never heard my too-busy-for-food offspring emit. Upon learning that the head of green leaves was called "lettuce", he sagely recalled "goats eat lettuce." To which I replied "people do too." And without so much as a by your leave, he tore off a great big leaf and started to munch on it.
Getting the box has changed my life overnight in a couple of important ways. First, for the last 2 weeks I have been making my weekly menus based on what comes in the box, rather than what I arbitrarily imagine in my head or what a recipe book says I should cook. This is probably an obvious point to a lot of people, but it's a big new thought for me. "Oh, I could cook based on what's in season and what's available locally, rather than based on a set of recipes or principles that have no relationship to the place and season I am living in." Next, it occurs to me that maybe my son has never shown much interest in vegetables, or fruits for that matter, because mostly what I have offered him has been divorced from it's natural environment - ie. baby carrots lathed, scrubbed and packaged in plastic. I taught him how to eat red, green and yellow peppers awhile back by showing him the whole pepper, exploring the smell and texture with him and then cutting it open to reveal the seeds and the hollow interior. We sliced off rings and wore them as bracelets around our wrists. We tried biting straight into the peppers without bothering to cut out the seeds first. We've investigated peppers from top to bottom, and now when he finds them cut up in his stirfry, he doesn't flinch like he used to, I think mainly because he has some intimacy with the food in its whole state. He likes to eat his grapes off the stem too, rather than carefully destemmed and piled in a bowl. Intuitively, he seems to be interested in food that is as close to its natural state as possible. And of course, the vegetables that have come in our boxes thus far taste fantastic. The peppers were super sweet, the courgettes juicy, the lettuce buttery and crisp.
The other thing I like about the box is that it has made me think more about how far the rest of my food travels. This has already been on my mind, because "food miles" are a big deal in England. Not only is there a heavy "Buy British" marketing campaign going on at the moment, but "how the common citizen can contribute to global reduction of carbon emissions" is a constant topic in the daily news. I've been interested in buying local food for years, but somehow the intense schism here between the growing public awareness of the value of local food and the fact that British supermarkets still import a ton of food from places like South America (which is over 8,000 miles away!), has really highlighted the issue in my mind. My discomfort with having my food flown into my kitchen was highlighted recently - in the same supermarket order that yielded my first box, I also received a package of organic beef (Baby Pickle has been asking for iron.) I felt comfortable ordering organic beef from the supermarket because I assumed it would be British beef, since Britain produces so much of it. But when I unpacked my groceries, I discovered that my steak had originated in Argentina, and I totally freaked out. I wasn't concerned about the quality (Argentina is famous for its beef), but I absolutely could not get over the fact that this pound and a half of steak had flown 1/2 way around the world to be in my kitchen. It seemed the functional equivalent of drinking gasoline. As it turned out, the steak actually wasn't very good - too tough - but I felt desperate to finish every morsel of it. My suddenly awakened food morality was overwhelmed by the idea that I would toss even an ounce of this extraordinarily expensive (in environmental terms) beef into the bin. And so, I have decided that from now on we are only going to buy meat from the local butcher. And I think the same is going to be true of fruit and vegetables as well - no more grapes from Chile, apples from New Zealand, or asparagus from Guatemala. I'm still on the fence about bananas (which only grow in tropical climates), but I working my way toward a "no tropicals" policy.
It's funny how you can stare a thing in the face for years and then something small can change your perspective just enough that you can really see it. Watching my son dance around the kitchen with a smile on his face and vegetables tumbling out of his arms was the last push I needed to fully embrace a "Slow Food" mentality for our family. If you have children, you know that there is almost no greater pleasure than knowing their bellies are full of vegetables. The feeling is a solid "this-is-all-I-need-to-be-happy" kind of contentment that transcends almost everything else. If my child is well-nourished, I have done my job as a parent and I can relax knowing that he will grow according to his own and nature's plan. There is almost nothing else I need to do.
So I sit here tonight, on my cozy red couch, replete with the anticipation of another such moment of fullness tomorrow. When the box comes, Gabriel will paw through it, possibly trying some new foods or reacquainting himself with the texture and taste of his old favorites. And I will crack open the cookbooks and start developing the specific manifestations of my new strategy for weekly menus - eat the delicate things and the strange things first! - and share a small prayer with the universe that we should be blessed with so much bounty.
Be well.
When our first box arrived, I left it sitting open on Gabriel's little table in our kitchen for him to discover. He came home from school, wandered into the kitchen, and exclaimed "Mama! What's this?" He then spent about 45 minutes taking each item out of the box, naming it, putting it back into the box and then repeating the cycle. At one point he was walking around the kitchen triumphantly with an apple in one hand, a red pepper in another and a carrot (with fluffy green top still on) stuffed in his pocket, casually alternating bites between each item. He actually uttered the words "I want to try that" when he spotted the head of lettuce - words I have never heard my too-busy-for-food offspring emit. Upon learning that the head of green leaves was called "lettuce", he sagely recalled "goats eat lettuce." To which I replied "people do too." And without so much as a by your leave, he tore off a great big leaf and started to munch on it.
Getting the box has changed my life overnight in a couple of important ways. First, for the last 2 weeks I have been making my weekly menus based on what comes in the box, rather than what I arbitrarily imagine in my head or what a recipe book says I should cook. This is probably an obvious point to a lot of people, but it's a big new thought for me. "Oh, I could cook based on what's in season and what's available locally, rather than based on a set of recipes or principles that have no relationship to the place and season I am living in." Next, it occurs to me that maybe my son has never shown much interest in vegetables, or fruits for that matter, because mostly what I have offered him has been divorced from it's natural environment - ie. baby carrots lathed, scrubbed and packaged in plastic. I taught him how to eat red, green and yellow peppers awhile back by showing him the whole pepper, exploring the smell and texture with him and then cutting it open to reveal the seeds and the hollow interior. We sliced off rings and wore them as bracelets around our wrists. We tried biting straight into the peppers without bothering to cut out the seeds first. We've investigated peppers from top to bottom, and now when he finds them cut up in his stirfry, he doesn't flinch like he used to, I think mainly because he has some intimacy with the food in its whole state. He likes to eat his grapes off the stem too, rather than carefully destemmed and piled in a bowl. Intuitively, he seems to be interested in food that is as close to its natural state as possible. And of course, the vegetables that have come in our boxes thus far taste fantastic. The peppers were super sweet, the courgettes juicy, the lettuce buttery and crisp.
The other thing I like about the box is that it has made me think more about how far the rest of my food travels. This has already been on my mind, because "food miles" are a big deal in England. Not only is there a heavy "Buy British" marketing campaign going on at the moment, but "how the common citizen can contribute to global reduction of carbon emissions" is a constant topic in the daily news. I've been interested in buying local food for years, but somehow the intense schism here between the growing public awareness of the value of local food and the fact that British supermarkets still import a ton of food from places like South America (which is over 8,000 miles away!), has really highlighted the issue in my mind. My discomfort with having my food flown into my kitchen was highlighted recently - in the same supermarket order that yielded my first box, I also received a package of organic beef (Baby Pickle has been asking for iron.) I felt comfortable ordering organic beef from the supermarket because I assumed it would be British beef, since Britain produces so much of it. But when I unpacked my groceries, I discovered that my steak had originated in Argentina, and I totally freaked out. I wasn't concerned about the quality (Argentina is famous for its beef), but I absolutely could not get over the fact that this pound and a half of steak had flown 1/2 way around the world to be in my kitchen. It seemed the functional equivalent of drinking gasoline. As it turned out, the steak actually wasn't very good - too tough - but I felt desperate to finish every morsel of it. My suddenly awakened food morality was overwhelmed by the idea that I would toss even an ounce of this extraordinarily expensive (in environmental terms) beef into the bin. And so, I have decided that from now on we are only going to buy meat from the local butcher. And I think the same is going to be true of fruit and vegetables as well - no more grapes from Chile, apples from New Zealand, or asparagus from Guatemala. I'm still on the fence about bananas (which only grow in tropical climates), but I working my way toward a "no tropicals" policy.
It's funny how you can stare a thing in the face for years and then something small can change your perspective just enough that you can really see it. Watching my son dance around the kitchen with a smile on his face and vegetables tumbling out of his arms was the last push I needed to fully embrace a "Slow Food" mentality for our family. If you have children, you know that there is almost no greater pleasure than knowing their bellies are full of vegetables. The feeling is a solid "this-is-all-I-need-to-be-happy" kind of contentment that transcends almost everything else. If my child is well-nourished, I have done my job as a parent and I can relax knowing that he will grow according to his own and nature's plan. There is almost nothing else I need to do.
So I sit here tonight, on my cozy red couch, replete with the anticipation of another such moment of fullness tomorrow. When the box comes, Gabriel will paw through it, possibly trying some new foods or reacquainting himself with the texture and taste of his old favorites. And I will crack open the cookbooks and start developing the specific manifestations of my new strategy for weekly menus - eat the delicate things and the strange things first! - and share a small prayer with the universe that we should be blessed with so much bounty.
Be well.
Labels: Family Life, Mamahood
