Reclaiming The Kitchen
I have been quite preoccupied with the notion of food and how it relates to us as individuals living in a collective society as of late. I must admit - my relationship with food and the preparation of meals leave a lot to be desired and I intend on fixing that relationship for the good of my health/family/sanity as soon as possible.
I was reminded of this poor relationship yesterday as my monthly back-to-the-land portal arrived on my doorstep. Mother Earth News comes to me every month and, predictably, has the same effect on me - makes me want to retreat to a rural lifestyle and raise my own food and live an off-the-grid, sustainable lifestyle and pass that knowledge off to my kids. It happens like clockwork and Junes issue proved no different.
The article that sparked this column is entitled “Reclaiming The Kitchen“ by Barbara Kingsolver. In it, she recounts her own relationship with the preparation of food, relating it to her role as working mother and the toll that relying too much on pre-processed, factory farmed foodstuffs had on her family and waistline. She also shares her belief that the feminist movement she was a part of was taken advantage of by the large food corporations;
I belong to the generation of women who took as our youthful rallying cry: Allow us a good education so we won’t have to slave in the kitchen. Somehow, though, history came around and bit us in the backside: now most women have jobs and still find themselves largely in charge of the housework. Cooking at the end of a long day is a burden we could live without.
It’s a reasonable position. But it got twisted into a pathological food culture. When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen, we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. “Hey ladies,” it said to us, “go ahead, get liberated. We’ll take care of dinner.” They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply
This was a an eye-opener for me, as I had never thought of that angle before yesterday. But I digress. I never lived through those bra-burning days, and I will never be called a radical-feminist by anyone. Yet, my role as a single, child-rearing father of two is no doubt being taken advantage of by the corporations promising no muss, no fuss food preparation.
In Defense of Cooking
Now what? Moms and Dads are running on overdrive, smashing the caretaking duties into small spaces between job and carpool and bedtime. Eating pre-processed food can look like salvation in the short run, until we start losing what real mealtimes give to a family: civility, economy and health. A lot of us are wishing for a way back home, to the place where care-and-feeding is happier and more creative. We’ve earned the right to forget about stupefying household busywork. But kitchens where food is cooked and eaten, those were really a good idea. We threw that baby out with the bath water. It may be advisable to grab her by her slippery foot and haul her back in here before it’s too late.
That’s me. I’m looking for “a way back home” and a new respect for the art of culinary family time. It’s something that I’ve never had, yet long for the effects it will bring. That is my current focus, and it will solve more problems than anything else I can think of.
I plan on divulging more of the “Hippy Chris” in the foreseeable future, so be warned. Not only my relationship with food will be examined, but also my relationship with community and cooperative living.
In the meantime, be sure to tune into next weeks ScaleDown Radio (Tuesdays from noon ’till 1:00, FM 91.5 and archived here as well), as we are having Pina and Adriano from WindsorEats.com in the studio to discuss the the notion that food means more to us than just nourishment. We plan on allotting the entire hour over to this topic, and it will prove to be a fantastic dedication of time - so tune in!
Have a great weekend, and say hi if our paths cross at the Red Bull Air Race on the waterfront, OK?
Tags: community building, community garden, Food
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Hopefully you guys and Pina talk about grocery stores in the core and central parts of the city and how they offer little in variety and quality while the better markets continue to move to the suburbs.
It is now on the list of topics, ME. See how accomodating we are?
…And smaller footprints too! Make it an even playing feild, once again, for locals to operate a grocery store and market local foods. No more 60,000 s.f. warehouses!
Ooo, I wish that my subscription to Mother Earth News had kicked in already
A word of caution though. The relationship between food and frugality is often forgotten when manufacturing conglomerates see a way to make a quick buck. The art of creating good food is often driven to complex and expensive levels by mass marketing of the environment surrounding food. Do you really need Shitake mushrooms grown in California, and leafy greens imported from China to make that gourmet dish? IMO, the real art of food preparation is creating a wholesome meal that eases good times with good friends (or family, or both) without straining the relationship with your pocketbook and the environment. Eating local and organic is the Shangri La of this ‘back-to-basics” movement.
Josh
PS: We have ditched the processes bread in our house. Our first step towards ditching the whole processed food idea. There is nothing better than a sweet slice of warm bread with real butter. Mmmm! I remember thinking my parents were crazy in the 70s for making their own bread and remember even pleading for them to please buy bread to make my sandwiches for school. Now my kids, having been raised on store-bought bread, get us for the real stuff. My youngest even brags about being able to help making bread! Oh, how times have changed!
Looking ahead to leaner times
End of Food author says North Americans need to rethink their relationship with eating or risk becoming victims in a global crisis
“What can people do in terms of changing their habits to help the situation?
We don’t have much control over our food. Many of us don’t cook any more. Or actual interaction with food, our engagement with food, is pretty small. If you cooked a few times a week, you would have to sort of start thinking about food in a really practical way and in a way I don’t think people are thinking … right now. I’m not going to suggest that people stop eating meat, because they won’t. … [But]
I think people could make the argument to themselves. Meat is expensive and food prices are high and [you're] looking to economize, so what if [you] had a meatless day one day a week? You’d save money, it wouldn’t kill you. In fact, nutritiously, your body would probably thank you for it. I think people are going to start coming to these ideas by themselves without politicians or authors lecturing them….”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080530.LEND30/TPStory/?query=paul+roberts
For the last two years or so I have been decluttering my life of things, stuff, furniture etc., etc., and now includes food. I no longer do the weekly shopping cart thing which in a lot of cases because of the size of the shopping cart, I had the tendency to buy food and stuff that I thought that I might eat or need or think that I just might whip up that latest recipe I saw in some mag somewhere.
As it is now, I food shop about two to three times a week depending and buy only what I will eat and can carry in my backpack. My food bill and food waste has dropped considerably. I am not necessarilly a slow food person but cooking something that isn’t frozen, eating the fruits and vegetables when they are the ripest and in only the quantity that I need, it has turned out okay.
Local aspargus…finally!
A long time ago and not to far away, I can remember when the most of Essex county where small truck farms, not the mega acreages they are now, that supported families for generations and produced a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables for the local markets. Every farm had a road side stand with produce harvested that morning and sometimes they were unattended, relying on the honesty of the traveller to deposit the money in a jar. Or if you were like my grandmother who got up a five on market day to head over to the downtown market, to get the fresh of the fresh, plus her eggs, chicken and meat and still be home by seven. She didn’t have a refrigerator or freezer, just the modern ice box! So all food was consumed within days of purchase. There was no such thing as strawberries in January, everything was seasonal and each was celebrated in their time of the season!
I agree with Chris about reclaiming the kitchen, slow food, local food and for everything there is a season. What if we reduced the size of our refrigerators and freezers, shopping carts, would that reduce the purchase of unnecessary food that we may or may not eat because the fridge or freezer will keep longer than our intention of eating it?
The article below from today’s Globe starts to explore that idea and I wondering if the truck farm can come back in vogue and sustainability, maybe even urban gardeners can get in on it.
ONTARIO: LOCAVORE TOURISM: THE FIRST IN A FOUR-PART SERIES
Welcome to your own backyard
Forget Provence. Culinary tourists with a conscience are demanding goodies closer to home. Say, just down the road. Margaret Webb reports on the boom in gourmet travel in Southern Ontario and explores the hinterland’s next foodie frontier.
“Now urbanites who have never set foot on a farm are also going straight to the source. Chefs at the recent Terroir conference in Toronto regaled audiences with their adventures tracking down rare heritage pork and heirloom tomato seeds. And they used words such as “intimate” and “personal” to describe their connection with the countryside.
It comes as no surprise, then, that all this interest has sparked both an agricultural renaissance in Ontario (which possesses 52 per cent of the class-one farmland in Canada) and a boom in hinterland culinary travel. As anyone who has ventured beyond the sprawl of the Golden Horseshoe well knows, there are now countless taste trails, wine routes and farmers markets catering to locavores on weekend pilgrimages.
But Southern Ontario is also going further, carving itself up into bite-sized regions that hint deliciously at the food and wine appellations of France. The new challenges for intrepid gourmets: classifying the flavours of standbys such as Niagara and Prince Edward County - and keeping up with new foodie destinations….”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080531.LOCAVORE31/TPStory/TPTravel/Ontario/
Ahh, the gentrification of edibles! Ain’t it grand?!? So, instead of having farmers producing good food to feed good people, farmers (through years of price controls and poor market conditions) are now pandering to suburbanites and yuppies with more money than commonsense. These same yuppies will drive 100 kms round-trip to say that they bought their new organic, heirloom tomatoes right from the farmer while they server them up to their friends in the half-million dollar McMansions. Sorry UrbanRat, but I don’t find any comfort in the idea of making food a luxury commodity.
In an effort to off-set the rising food costs we have taken some rather drastic, by modern standards, steps towards food sustainability. I’m about half done planting my 1000 sq ft garden (we’re a couple of weeks behind the growing season of South Western Ontario) and I’ve placed an order for more durable goods with a food wholesaler for long term storage in my basement. Goods such as wheat, flour, sugar, etc. will become part of our regular diet rotation but, instead of running out to Sobey’s when we need one of those items, we’ll dip into our long-term, rotating storage.
Idealistic you say? Sure is, but drawing the prodution of food into your own home (as Chris’s adventure with cheese is doing) is essential to understanding and respecting food. I spent 7 hours crawling around my garden yesterday to plant tomatoes, carrots, peppers, lettuce (lots of lettuce!) and beans. Seven hours of manual labour just to plant! That was not including the time spent rototilling the lawn (as there wasn’t a garden plot when we moved in) or preparing the soil. I now have a new respect for pioneer farmers who produced nearly everything they ate!
Now, since I am not a pioneer farmer, I have to supplement my food consumption with outside resources. We are eagerly anticipating the opening a new store a few blocks away (PEI blocks though, not Windsor blocks — so about 2 kms!) The Best of PEI, which was historically an arts and crafts store featuring local artisans, is opening a grocery store that will carry only PEI produced foods. From fresh foods to prepared meals, this little store will become a frequent stop for our family.
Why, you ask, do we grow our own food, store wheat in our basement and shop locally? It’s a matter of economics, social responsibility and environmental stewardship in an effort to get ahead of the curve that is going to force food production back to a local scale. I guess even international food production is going to Scale Down!
Neither do Josh, in making food a luxury item, what I hope by submitting such articles is that maybe, just maybe a farmer(s) in the county or here in the city and region, will pick up on the idea and just maybe start bringing that locally grown food into the city. I think what you are doing is great but not all of us can do that, I live in a condo in the core of this city and on the north side of the building..fresh grown ice cubes, mushrooms anyone!
Urban farming has been an idea that I have had for over thirty years and personally I really hate the large expanse of useless grass that we have in our city and parks, which if you watch over time nobody is using, other than growing grass! Maybe we should start grazing sheep and Canada Geese on them for harvesting.
Considering our climate and some of the best farm land in the country, I think it is time to go back to the future and become a locavore and locaproducer, although living on a penninsula, a hundred kilometre circle is a bit out of the question for being a locavore.
This is what I would like to see in Windsor: From The Independent On Sunday
The urban farmer: One man’s crusade to plough up the inner city
“…Last April, in a discussion about the global food crisis, Gordon Brown announced: “We need to make great changes in the way we organise food production in the next few years.” High on the list of viable changes is the idea of inner-city agriculture. Which is the theory behind Haeg’s concept, detailed in his new book Edible Estates: it proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn in cities with “an edible landscape”. Last year, to illustrate this point, Haeg was commissioned by the Tate to create a permanent “edible estate” on a triangle of communal grass in front of a housing estate near Elephant and Castle, bordered on two sides by a main road along which London buses thunder every few minutes.
The aim was to engage and involve the local residents – and together they miraculously transformed a patch of grass previously favoured by dogs and drunks into a luscious agri-plot housing apple and plum trees, a “forest” of tomato plants, aubergines, squashes, Brussels sprouts, runner beans, sweet peas, a “salad wing”, herbs, edible flowers and 6ft artichoke plants. It is also quite beautiful: “The design was inspired by the ornate, curvy raised flowerbeds you find in front of Buckingham Palace,” explains Haeg. Interestingly, although this space is still accessible by passers-by – unlike the traditional allotment, which Haeg feels is outdated – there has been no theft or vandalism. The London project was mirrored in several locations around the US.
“All the projects I do are rooted in the way that an architect thinks and works,” says Haeg. “How we live and the spaces we make for ourselves.” And right now, he believes, we need to re-evaluate exactly that, and urgently so – particularly in our overcrowded cities….”
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-urban-farmer-one-mans-crusade-to-plough-up-the-inner-city-836358.html
I to would be an urban farmer if I had the land. Good luck on your endeavors and a great idea and effort.
Front lawn gardeners, this is what I would like to see!
The city-dwellers who are becoming front garden farmers
From windswept balconies to the tiniest of backyards, a new generation of city-dwellers are growing their own vegetables wherever they can. Meg Carter digs in
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-citydwellers-who-are-becoming-front-garden-farmers-810294.html
I’ll see your front yard European gardners and raise you an urban garden with rentable plots!
Charlottetown has an area in the downtown core in which city residents can rent a plot and grow a garden. Coincidentally enough, here is the link to the article that was in Saturday’s paper.
http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=139436&sc=100
Alas, I am the lone commenter on the article. Unfortunately, most people don’t get too excited about food production out here as it is really everywhere. My dream, like UrbanRat, is to have my front yard an edible oasis. No front lawn to cut and lots of food to reap. I have to get better at gardening first and figure a way to make the presentation of my garden my palatable to my neighbours. Soon — the next couple of years for sure.
Josh, don’t worry, it will come here soon enough, just waiting for all the jet, truck and train fuel to rise and when they can’t afford to eat and can’t drive, might as well get off the porch and grow something!!!
Oh! Just got back from the Red Bull Air Races…fantastic show! Almost in my front yard but twenty stories up!
Funny thing, that idea that we will be compelled to produce more locally farmed food. I’ve heard rumours that some of the trucking firms out here on the East Coast are simply parking their trucks and/or going out of business. Reports included details like banks refusing lines of credit based on fuel price instability. How are we going to get food if our truck based economy can’t ship it to us?
(Hint: Grow it yourself!)