Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life Read online

  What else does a family need? Honey would do instead of sugar, in a county where beekeepers are as thick as thieves. Eggs, too, were an easy local catch. Highly processed convenience foods we try to avoid, so those would not be a problem categorically. The other food groups we use in quantity are grains, dairy, and olive oil. We knew of some good dairies in our state, but olives don't grow in this climate. No reasonable substitute exists, and no other oil is produced here. Likewise, we knew of a local mill that ground corn, wheat, and other flours, but its wheat was outsourced from other states. If we purchased only these two foods from partly or wholly nonlocal sources--grains and olive oil--we would be making a sea change in our household economy, keeping an overwhelming majority of our food transactions local. We would try to buy our grains in the least processed, easiest-to-transport form available (bulk flour and some North American rice) so those food dollars would go mostly to farmers.

  I put down the list, tried not to chew my pencil, and consciously shut out the image of my children going hungry...Lily begging leftovers from somebody's lunchbox at school.

  Let me be clear about one thing: I have no interest in playing poor. I've logged some years in frugal material circumstances, first because I was born into a fairly modest rural social order, and later due to years of lousy paychecks. I understand Spam as a reasonable protein source. Both Steven and I have done our time on student stipends, government cheese, and the young-professional years of beans and rice. A huge turning point for me was a day in my mid-thirties when I walked into the supermarket and realized I could buy any ten things there I wanted. Not the lobsters in the aquarium, okay, but not just dented cans in the bargain bin, either. I appreciate the privilege of food choices.

  So why give them back voluntarily? It is both extraordinary and un-sympathetic in our culture to refrain from having everything one can afford. Yet people do, mostly because they are allergic, or religious. We looked around the table at one another, knowing we had our reasons too. Strange, though, how much it felt like stepping into a spaceship and slamming shut the hatch.

  "It won't be that bad," I said. "We're coming into spring."

  It wasn't spring yet, however. We were in for some lean months before the midsummer bounty started flooding us with the real rewards of local flavor and color. But April is a forward-looking time on the farm, full of work and promise. It seemed best to jump in now. Sink or swim.

  Hedging, we decided to allow ourselves one luxury item each in limited quantities, on the condition we'd learn how to purchase it through a channel most beneficial to the grower and the land where it grows. Steven's choice was a no-brainer: coffee. If he had to choose between coffee and our family, it might be a tough call. Camille's indulgence of choice was dried fruit; Lily's was hot chocolate. We could get all those from fair trade organizations that work with growers in Africa, Asia, and South America. I would rely on the same sources for spices that don't grow locally; a person can live without turmeric, cinnamon, and cloves, I've heard, but I am not convinced. Furthermore, dry goods like these, used by most households in relatively tiny quantities, don't register for much on the world's gas-guzzling meter.

  With that, our hopeful agreement in place with its bylaws and backstops, we went back one last time to our grocery list. Almost everything left fell into the grains category: bread flour and rolled oats are big-ticket items, since Steven makes most of our bread, and oatmeal is our cool-weather breakfast of choice. We usually buy almonds and raisins to put in our oatmeal, but I crossed those off, hoping to find local substitutes. Then we came back around to the sticky one. FRESH FRUIT, PLEASE???

  At the moment, fruits were only getting ripe in places where people were wearing bikinis. Correlation does not imply causation: putting on our swimsuits would not make it happen here. "Strawberries will be coming in soon," I said, recognizing this as possibly the first in a long line of pep talks to come.

  The question remained, What about now?

  "Look," I said, "the farmers' market opens this Saturday. We'll go see what's there." Around the table went the Oh sure, Mom face that mothers everywhere know and do not love.

  Saturday dawned dark, windy, and fiercely cold. The day's forecast was for snow. Spring had been slapped down by what they call around here "dogwood winter," a hard freeze that catches the dogwoods in bloom--and you thinking you were about to throw your sweaters into the cedar chest. April fool.

  The cold snap was worrisome for our local orchards, since apple and peach trees had broken dormancy and blossomed out during the last two sunny weeks. They could lose the year's productivity to this one cold spell. If anybody was going to be selling fruit down at the farmers' market today, in the middle of blasted dogwood winter, I'd be a monkey's uncle. Nevertheless, we bundled up and headed on down. We have friends who sell at the market, some of whom we hadn't seen in a while. On a day like this they'd need our moral support.

  It was a grim sight that met us in the parking lot. Some of the vendors huddled under awnings that snapped and flapped like the sails of sinking ships in a storm. Others had folded up their tents and stood over their boxes with arms crossed and their backs to the mean wind. Only eight vendors had turned out today, surely the bravest agricultural souls in the county, and not another customer in sight. What would they have this early, anyway--the last of last year's shriveled potatoes?

  Hounded by the dogs of Oh sure, Mom, I made up my mind to buy something from everyone here, just to encourage them to come back next week. My farm advocacy work for the day.

  We got out of the car, pulled our hoods over our ears, and started our tour of duty. Every vendor had something better than shriveled potatoes. Charlie, a wiry old man who is the self-appointed comedian of our market, was short on cheer under the circumstances but did have green onions. We'd run out of our storage onions from last year's garden, and missed them. At least half our family's favorite dishes begin with a drizzle of oil in the skillet, a handful of chopped onions and garlic tossed in. We bought six fat bundles of Charlie's onions. This early in the season their white bulbs were only the size of my thumb, but when chopped with their green tops they would make spicy soups and salads.

  From Mike and Paul, at the next two booths, we bought turkey sausage and lamb. At the next, the piles of baby lettuce looked to me like money in the bank, and I bagged them. Fruitless though our lives might be, we would have great salads this week, with chunks of sausage, hardboiled eggs, and experimental vinaigrettes. Next down the line we found black walnuts, painstakingly shelled out by hand. Walnut is a common wild tree here, but almost nobody goes to the trouble to shell them--nowhere but at the farmers' market would you find local nuts like these. The vendor offered us a sample, and we were surprised by the resinous sweetness. They would be good in our oatmeal and a spectacular addition to Steven's whole-grain bread.

  How to Find a Farmer

  Whether you're a rural or urban consumer, it's easier than ever to find local or regionally grown food. Following the passage of the Farmer-to-Consumer Direct Marketing Act of 1976, active U.S. farmers' markets have grown from about 350 to well over 3,500 today, or an average of 75 per state. Most urban areas host farmers' markets from spring until fall; some are open all year. Market rules usually guarantee that the products are fresh and local.

  Farmers' markets are also a good place to ask about direct sales from farmer to consumer. Options include roadside stands, U-pick operations, artisanal products, buyers' clubs, and community-supported agriculture (CSA). In a typical CSA, subscribers pay a producer in early spring and then receive a weekly share of the produce all season long.

  Don't be afraid to ask producers what else they might have available. Someone selling eggs on Saturday morning probably has eggs the rest of the week. Farmers can also tell you which local stores may sell their eggs, meat, or produce. Many grocery and health-food stores now stock local foods, as more consumers ask. Locally owned stores are better bets, since chains rely on regional distribution. And don't
overlook small ethnic or specialty grocers.

  You can find your nearest farmers' markets and local producers on the USDA Web site: www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets. Also check: www.localharvest.org and www.csacenter.org.

  STEVEN L. HOPP

  Each of our purchases so far was in the one-to three-dollar range except the nuts, which were seven a pound--but a pound goes a long way. I frankly felt guilty getting so much good fresh stuff for so little money, from people who obviously took pains to bring it here. I pushed on to the end, where Lula sold assorted jams and honey. We were well fixed for these already, given to us by friends or made ourselves last fall. Lula's three children shivered on the ground, bundled in blankets. I scanned the table harder, unwilling to walk away from those kids without plunking down some bucks.

  That's where I spotted the rhubarb. Big crimson bundles of it, all full of itself there on the table, loaded with vitamin C and tarty sweetness and just about screaming, "Hey, look at me, I'm fruit!" I bought all she had, three bundles at three dollars apiece: my splurge of the day.

  Rhubarb isn't technically fruit, it's an overgrown leaf petiole, but it's a fine April standin. Later at home when we looked in Alice Waters's Chez Panisse Fruit for some good recipes, we found Alice agreed with us on this point. "Rhubarb," she writes, "is the vegetable bridge between the tree fruits of winter and summer." That poetic injunction sent us diving into the chest freezer, retrieving the last package of our frozen Yellow Transparent apple slices from last summer. For dinner guests we threw together an apple-rhubarb cobbler to ring out the old year and ring in the new. Rhubarb, the April fruit. I'm a monkey's uncle.

  If not for our family's local-food pledge to roust us out of our routine, I'm sure we would not have bothered going down to the market on that miserable morning. Most of us are creatures so comforted by habit, it can take something on the order of religion to invoke new, more conscious behaviors--however glad we may be afterward that we went to the trouble. Tradition, vows, something like religion was working for us now, in our search for a new way to eat. It had felt arbitrary when we sat around the table with our shopping list, making our rules. It felt almost silly to us, in fact, as it may now seem to you. Why impose restrictions on ourselves? Who cares?

  The fact is, though, millions of families have food pledges hanging over their kitchens--subtle rules about going to extra trouble, cutting the pasta by hand, rolling the sushi, making with care instead of buying on the cheap. Though they also may be busy with jobs and modern life, people the world over still take time to follow foodways that bring their families happiness and health. My family happens to live in a country where the main foodway has a yellow line painted down the middle. If we needed rules we'd have to make our own, going on faith that it might bring us something worthwhile.

  On Saturday morning at the market as we ducked into the wind and started back toward our car, I clutched my bags with a heady sense of accomplishment. We'd found a lot more than we'd hoped for. We chatted a little more with our farmer friends who were closing up shop behind us, ready to head home too. Back to warm kitchens, keeping our fingers crossed in dogwood winter for the fruits of the coming year.

  The Truth About Asparagus

  BY CAMILLE

  When I was little, asparagus season wasn't my favorite time of year. The scene was the same every spring: my parents would ceremoniously bring the first batch of asparagus to the table, delicately cooked and arranged on a platter, and I would pull up my nose.

  "Just try one, Camille, you might like it this year," Mom would say, enthusiastically serving me a single green shoot.

  Yeah, right! I would think. Ever so gingerly, I would spear the menacing vegetable with my fork and bring the tip of it to my tongue. That's as far as I would get before dramatically wincing and flicking the asparagus down in disgust.

  "Okay, good," she would respond with a sparkle in her eye, "more for us then!"

  I decided that even if I grew up to love asparagus, I would always tell my Mom I hated it. I didn't want her to be right about my personal preferences. My stubborn plot fell by the wayside, however, several springs later when I bit into a tender asparagus shoot and realized how delicious it was. I decided a lifetime of lies and deception wouldn't be worth it.

  Little kids seem to choose arbitrarily which foods they absolutely won't eat (for me it was asparagus; for my sister it's peppers). Most of us eventually get eased or taunted out of thumb-sucking, but it's easy to carry childish food decisions into adulthood. I feel lucky that I was pushed out of that box. Not beaten with a stick, but exposed continuously by grown-ups who were obviously enjoying something I was too immature to like. Now my family laughs about my days of asparagus hatred, especially since I've become such a veggie hog, they have to move the dish out of my reach so there might be a chance of having some leftovers. I think my body won out over my brain, recognizing vegetables as being crucial to good health. Asparagus is one of the best natural sources of folic acid, vitamins A, C, and K,

  some B vitamins, potassium, phosphorus, and glutathione, which is a potent antioxidant and anticarcinogen. Nutritional benefits can motivate some to incorporate vegetables into their diets, but for most people taste is the key. I'm glad my parents did their eat-your-vegetables act in a household where fresh vegetables were the norm. If they had tried this with the flavorless, transported kind widely available in this country, I might still be the wincing asparagus drama queen.

  When asparagus is rolling in from the garden every day, the simplest way to prepare it is a quick saute over high heat. This technique caramelizes the sugars and brings out the very best of the asparagus flavor. Using butter in the skillet (alone or in combination with olive oil) provides just enough water to steam the spears as they're also being sauteed. Gently shake them in the pan, cooking just until they turn bright green with slightly blackened undersides. Grilling asparagus in a grill basket produces similar tasty results. Steaming is fine too, for a minimalist treatment. Freshly harvested asparagus is so tender, we never bother with peeling it.

  Naturally, in April we can't live on asparagus alone. In late winter and spring the local food enthusiast will have to rely on some foods stored from last year--we use our stored root vegetables, winter squash, dried tomatoes, and some frozen packages of last year's garden goods to round out the spring greens. Some herbs, like cilantro and oregano, may start coming in now along with baby greens, early broccoli, peas, and onions. A typical week's meal plan might look like the following. Always bear in mind, with this and other meal plans, that leftovers and creative recycling are options. Every chicken dinner at our house, for example, ends with the carcass going into the stock pot (basically a big kettle of water) to boil for several hours. When the stock is thick and gold-colored and the meat falls off the bones, they're both ready to freeze or just refrigerate for a couple of days for an easy chicken salad and/or soup.

  LATE WINTER MEAL PLAN

  Sunday~ Herbed roast chicken with potatoes, beets, and carrots

  Monday~ Chef salad with boiled eggs or sausage, green onions, and dried tomatoes, with bread

  Tuesday~ Chicken soup with carrots, kale, and rice (or fresh bread)

  Wednesday~ Twice-baked potatoes stuffed with sauteed spring onions, broccoli, and cheese

  Thursday~ Asparagus omelette or frittata and baby-greens salad

  Friday~ Pizza with dried tomatoes, olives, feta, and sauteed onions

  Saturday~ Lamb chops, mesclun salad, asparagus, and rhubarb-apple crisp

  3 * SPRINGING FORWARD

  April is the cruelest month, T. S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. I'm a soul on ice flung out on a rock in the sun, where the needles that pierced me begin to melt
all as one.

  On the new edge of springtime when I stand on the front porch shading my eyes from the weak morning light, sniffing out a tinge of green on the hill and the scent of yawning earthworms, oh, boy, then! I roll like a bear out of hibernation. The maple buds glow pink, the forsythia breaks into its bright yellow aria. These are the days when we can't keep ourselves indoors around here, any more than we believe what our eyes keep telling us about the surrounding land, i.e., that it is still a giant mud puddle, now lacking its protective covering of ice. So it comes to pass that one pair of boots after another run outdoors and come back mud-caked--more shoes than we even knew we had in the house, proliferating like wild portobellos in a composty heap by the front door. So what? Noah's kids would have felt like this when the flood had almost dried up: muddy boots be hanged. Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

  Our household was a week into high spring fever when Lily and I decided it was safe to carry out some of the seedlings we'd started indoors on homemade shelves under fluorescent bulbs. The idea of eating from our home ground for a year had moved us to start a grocery store from seed. We'd been tucking tomatoes into seed flats since January, proceeding on to the leafy greens and broccoli, the eggplants, peppers, okra, and some seed catalog mysteries we just had to try: rock melons, balloon flowers! By mid-March our seed-starting shelves were overwhelmed.