Category Archives: Food

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Activism

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I am building a vocabulary of A-words: awareness, appreciation, action, attitude and activism.  I just got back from Madison where my family walked in a fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association.  Yesterday, we saw the film “Think Global Act Rural” (“Solutions Locales Pour un Desordres Global”) in a showing by the Milwaukee Film Festival.  Go to the website at http://www.thinkglobalactrural.com to see more about it.  I recommend it for its intense presentation of the failure of the Green Revolution and its depiction of organic farming solutions.  I can’t recommend its artistry, though.  The jumpy, out-of-focus camera handling is distracting to me, and the sequence of segments is a bit disjointed as well.  But the information is astonishing.  Of course, these two events are interconnected.  As a species, we have been poisoning ourselves and starving ourselves and getting further and further from being able to maintain a healthy relationship with food and food production.  Statistics can be eye-opening and misleading at the same time.  Rather than throw some shocking numbers up, I’d like to challenge you to look deeply into a few questions:

1) Do you think that spending time and effort in obtaining food is something basic to life?  Is that a right, a responsibility, a duty, or a privilege?  How would you describe it?  Is it something too “base” for beings as intelligent as we are?  Or is it ennobling to use our intelligence to do it well and graciously?  What do you think of farmers and their work?

2) How would you feel if you discovered that multinational corporations were purposely studying global food production to figure out ways to create monopolies on all aspects of it?  How would you feel if you realized that because of that control, a change or break-down in their system would mean that access to food would be cut off entirely for the populations that had become dependent on them?  And that, very likely, would include you.

3) How much do you know about the food web, how plants make food, how soil and sun deliver the necessary building blocks for plant life, etc?  If you had only yourself and nature to depend on, how would you eat?

4) How much does the quality of a person’s health depend on their diet, do you think?  Do you think that the medical industry creates a dependency on costly health care and de-emphasizes the importance of a naturally healthy lifestyle?  Do you think about “the bottom line” and who may be making money on your lifestyle choices?

5) Are you satisfied with the way that you live?  Do you think your neighbors are?  Your nation?  How about the people in other countries?  How about the planet?  Are you satisfied with the way that life on this planet is going?  (Yeah, this is broad, but whatever you’re thinking, try to follow it out to that end.  And do be serious.  It’s far too easy to be clever.)

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Spontaneity

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Okay, so we didn’t set off on our camping trip today.  Steve’s feeling a bit…odd.  Low energy.  So, instead, we’re going to see a foodie film that’s part of the Milwaukee Film Festival (“El Bulli – Cooking in Progress”), and we’ll set out tomorrow.  We also picked out a new novel to read aloud.  This is a tradition that we started the first year we were dating.  We began with Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, and now we’ve begun The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence.  Also, check out my new blog bling, Brighter Planet’s 350 Challenge Patch.  It’s at the end of my posts.  One week from yesterday is the Diabetes Step Out Walk.  There’s a link to that down there, too.

My personal gold star for the day was letting Steve sleep in until 11am without getting anxious about a change in our plans.  I am becoming a more spontaneous person.  My kids will applaud.

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Slowing Down

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The morning after a splendid dinner party looks like this:

A kitchen full of dirty dishes

Four people, five beverages, three courses = dishes to wash.  Oh, but it went quickly and painlessly.  Then I took naps.  Three so far.  We’re both feeling a bit out of it today, not sure why.  Not hungover or anything, just slow and wobbly.  Plus, it’s been raining steadily.  Seasonal changes and changes in habit seem more noticeable as I grow older.  That’s good, though.  I want to be more aware; I want to slow down and notice life.

Tomorrow, we plan to head north into the upper peninsula of Michigan and camp in the Porcupine Mountains.  I’ve never been there.  I want to take lots of pictures and write blog entries in a journal to post when I return.  I want to keep my eyes open and learn.  I also want to figure out how to recycle the empty propane canisters for the Coleman stove.  We’ve collected 5 now, and the best information I can gather from the Coleman website is that perhaps a steel recycling place will take them, perhaps not.  I remember finding one in a fire pit once and digging out fibrous pieces that looked like asbestos or something.  With any luck, we’ll find enough dry wood that we won’t need to use another one.

Today’s reading material was from the book of Job and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.  Radical affirmations of the mystery, sanctity and loveliness of life.  “Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?  Declare, if you know all this.”  I cannot comprehend, but I can love.

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Gracious Living

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So today is about the ancient grace of hospitality.  We are finally having Steve’s sister and brother-in-law over for dinner.  I am excited to host them here for the first time.  I’m making a Dijon-rosemary pork tenderloin with red potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and butternut squash.  We’ll sip martinis and nibble on Stilton cheese and Kalamata olives to begin with, and Cheryl’s bringing the wine and dessert.  It brings back memories of the anticipation in the air when my mother would have one of her gourmet dinner parties.  Of course, hers were on a much grander scale.  There is housecleaning to do first.  The meat’s been marinating since last night.  The squash goes in the crock pot 4 hours in advance.  I think of Middle Eastern feasts that take days to prepare and days to consume, and I figure I’m striking a balance.  Not too fussy, but some fussing.  I want to communicate that they definitely merit some special effort, but I want to be able to enjoy their company when they get here and not be rushing off to the kitchen to babysit the food.

No shortage of "conversation pieces" in our home!

I have an endless fascination with family.  I came from a family of 7.  Steve just has one sister and neither of them have children.  The dynamics in his family are completely unique, of course.  I suppose I am looking for clues about why he is the way he is and why that is different from the way I am.   I am building appreciation and understanding with every opportunity I have to interact with them.  I want to be open to whatever the evening will bring.  I want to be fully present and aware.  And around the edges of my consciousness, I know that I want to make a good impression so that they like me.  That’s my people-pleasing habit, my achievement-oriented perfectionism.  I always want to earn gold stars so that I can pat myself on the back and feel affirmed.  So, yeah, that’s duly noted and released, like those wandering thoughts I have in meditation.

Building community is essential to the unity I was writing about yesterday.  I suppose that we start practicing that in families.  I will be keeping that in mind and will write more of about that as the next step in our Saving the Planet dialogue.

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The Ultimate Simplicity of Unity

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Health comes from wholeness.  This is true for every individual body on the face of the planet right up to the Earth itself.  If the spherical (3-dimensional) network of interconnections is intact and working in harmony, we enjoy good health.  Damaging those connections and setting up division between body and soul, body and earth, ourselves and others, creates a loneliness that we compensate using violence and competition.  Violence to part is violence to the whole.  We undo the fabric of life this way.  Whenever we insist on the “rights of the individual”, we chip away at those connections.  (see Jessa’s comment on the last post)  How do we practice unity and health?  How do we take up a posture of balance in our relationship to Creation or the Universe?  Do we have the maturity and courage to desire this responsibility on our own so that it isn’t an “obligation”?

This morning, I have been reading an essay by Wendell Berry called “The Body and The Earth” from The Unsettling of America published in 1977.  It is an extremely articulate and broad analysis of that “spherical network” that moves fluidly from agriculture, to Shakespeare and suicide, to sexual differences and divisions, and more.  Here is an excerpt from the beginning which describes the mythic human dilemma:

“Until modern times, we focused a great deal of the best of our thought upon such rituals of return to the human condition.   Seeking enlightenment or the Promised Land or the way home, a man would go or be forced to go into the wilderness, measure himself against the Creation, recognize finally his true place within it, and thus be saved both from pride and from despair.  Seeing himself as a tiny member of a world he cannot comprehend or master or in any final sense possess, he cannot possibly think of himself as a god.  And by the same token, since he shares in, depends upon, and is graced by all of which he is a part, neither can he become a fiend; he cannot descend into the final despair of destructiveness.  Returning from the wilderness, he becomes a restorer of order, a preserver.  He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forebears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors.  He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy.”

Last night, Steve handed me his own definition of living holistically: establishing (or re-establishing) a personal responsibility towards all aspects of the universe.  He defines responsibility here as love, that is “presence with or an acknowledged relationship with” and the desire to improve that relationship.  He noted that this responsibility comes from free will, not as an obligation.  This is the posture of openness, the basic attitude to begin any discussion about living sustainably or in unity and harmony.  Think of it as the beginning of a tai chi exercise or a yoga session.  You take a balanced position: heels together and toes out for tai chi; heels together, toes together, palms together in front of your heart for yoga.  Breathe deeply, opening connections to the respiratory system, the digestive system, the circulatory system.

Steve assumes the position

This is only the beginning, but as Mary Poppins would say, “Well begun is half done.”  This part takes practice, just like meditation.  Return to your breath.  Return to a position of openness as you try to save the planet.  We are not gods and we are not fiends.  We are humans who love the universe, who desire to improve our relationship with every aspect of it.

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Cold Snap

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In my tree-house bedroom, I sleep with an open window 3 feet from my head.  The moon shines on my pillow, the air rushes in off the waving branches.  It got down to 37 degrees Farenheit last night.  We wondered if we’d find many insects on this morning’s nature walk with a home school group.  We found a few live ones, a bunch of dead ones, and some merely sluggish ones.   One spider was keeping warm by wrapping a big leaf around itself  and its egg case.  I found a wooly bear caterpillar that didn’t even make it to the beginning of winter.  Change and impermanence.  And beauty.  Here are some shots from the Nature Center.

Follow the goldenrod path

Or go down the silver tunnel

Riches all around.  Seize the day, bottle the sunshine, put up some vegetables, ’cause change is in the air.   I have a ham bone in the freezer from Aunt Rosie.  Anybody have a good pea soup recipe?

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Home

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My son and daughter are moving back to Illinois from Oregon.  Today, they’re staying at my mother’s house.  My daughter is probably sleeping in my old room.  They are probably going to church with my mother and then to the Farmer’s Market.  I close my eyes and see them perfectly.  I see my mother’s house in detail.  I can close my eyes and see each house I grew up in with the sharpest clarity…except maybe the one I lived in first and moved out of when I was 4.  I know the smells of “home”…my mother sauteing onions in butter and vermouth at suppertime, the rosemary in the front yard and the lemon tree out back, and star jasmine.   I remember the faint mildew smell of the basement of the old house, and the smell of the dirt in the crawl space beneath her California home.  “Home” has always been accessible to me through my senses and memories, even when I felt very far away.  I knew what I longed for and where it was.  Today, my youngest will escape her city apartment and come visit us.  She has had a rough few weeks and feels the need for “home”.    I wonder how to provide “home” now that I’ve sold the house they all grew up in.  I wonder how and where we will gather as an entire family.  I am so excited that we will be all in the Midwest soon!  I’m hoping for a Team Galasso outing on October 2 for the Step Out Walk for Diabetes.  (more about that later)  I’m hoping for a Christmas gathering.  It is up to us to redefine “home”.  What are the essentials?

I think of the elements of my home visits,  like looking at photographs.   The snapshots and albums I have are in storage.   The accessible photos I have are on a thumb drive I can plug into this laptop.  How about singing around the piano?  Marni’s piano, which is now Susan’s, is in the home of one of her college friends.   The big family bed?  That’s in Emily’s apartment.  Well, dang.  Ah, but here’s the very thing.  The dining room table.  My grandmother’s cherry table is here, waiting.  Being together at table is one of the most essential “home” activities.  The chance to nourish our bodies with food, our minds with conversation, and our souls with love and acceptance is what wanting to come home is about to me.  I was invited to Emily’s home for Mother’s Day this year.  She had just moved into her apartment and didn’t have a table yet.  You know what?  We don’t even need the table.  The meal, the talk, the physical connection, maybe that’s all “home” is.  The stuff in our lives keeps changing.  I have given up trying to keep that together.  I want always to provide the experience of being “home” nevertheless.  Maybe it’s just being present with each other.  Being as aware as we can of ourselves and the “thou” across from us, being honest and authentic and paying attention, and holding space for each other, respectfully and lovingly.

Dining sans table

So, what is “home” to you?  Is there meaning in that word?  Is it one of those “values” we made up so that we can find ways to be guilty or judgmental or isolated or needy or consumers?  Is planet Earth a “home”?  What would that mean?

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Food, Glorious Food

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Feeding ourselves is one of the most basic and ancient activities.  How do you feed yourself with grace?  How do you conduct your relationship to food with grace?  How do you live your values in the way that you eat?  Thich Nhat Hahn writes in his book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, ” Our anger, our frustration, our despair, have much to do with our body and the food we eat.  We must work out a strategy of eating, of consuming to protect ourselves from anger and violence.  Eating is an aspect of civilization.  The way we grow our food, the kind of food we eat, and the way we eat it has much to do with civilization because the choices we make can bring about peace and relieve suffering.”  Our minds and bodies are deeply connected, they do not act separately.  Attitudes, thoughts, emotions and actions surrounding food effect our total health in a profound way.  Examining how I’ve used and perceived food in my life has been very eye-opening.  My earliest notions about food came from my mother; my kids would probably say the same thing.  My mother took great care in how she fed the family.  She made sure to master recipes that were handed down from my father’s nanny, Agnes, in order to please my father.  She mastered French cooking techniques and experimented in cuisine from around the world.  We went out to eat at the finest restaurants in the area.  She bought her own yoghurt maker in the 70s, limited the sweets in the house, and never bought us the trendy cereals we saw advertised on TV.   She didn’t grow her own food that I remember, except rhubarb, but she did buy from local produce stands when she could, especially in Michigan while we were staying at the beach cottage and in California.  My mother never held a paying job after she married, although she was active in the community.  Her schedule was flexible, though, and she never had the hurried, 30-minute window from work to carpool to dinner.  At least, not that I remember.   On choir rehearsal nights, she made soup because that was easier for her to throw together, and she could leave it to us to serve ourselves and clean up afterwards if need be.  When my parents went out without us, the babysitter would make us TV dinners.  The foil compartments were fascinating to me.  I felt like an astronaut eating from them.  We lived about 3 miles from the original McDonald’s restaurant in DesPlaines.  When my mom was giving a fancy dinner party, she would have the house cleaners come in and then she’d take me to McDonald’s when I came home from school for lunch.  I was allowed to order the fish sandwich, fries, and a milkshake.  No soda.  No burger.  That’s another thing – we didn’t have a cafeteria in our elementary school.  Everyone went home for lunch.  No “Lunchables”, no greasy cafeteria food.  We went home and had Campbell’s soup and a sandwich or leftovers.

Of course, this way of treating food was not the average in the 70s.  In fact, mom would frequently comment, “I bet we’re the only family on the block having (fill in the blank, for example “steak and kidney pie”) for breakfast.”  I was astonished that my best friend, Gregory, had glass jars of candy sitting right out on the kitchen counter.   His mother would make a cake shaped like a lamb and decorated with jelly beans every Easter.  Gregory snacked on potato chips.  His house was just filled with forbidden food.  My mother gave out boxes of raisins or nuts (still in the shell!) at Halloween.  We were not normal.

When I married Jim, I went from college dormitory food, ready made and spread out for me to choose from, to my own neophyte cooking.  I had no idea how much time anything took.  I’d start a recipe when Jim came home from work, and we wouldn’t sit down to eat for 90 minutes.  Then, four months in to this new arrangement, I got pregnant.  Preparing food nauseated me, but I was always hungry.  We ended up eating at the 25-cent hamburger stand down the street more and more often.  By the time I had four kids under the age of 7, food was largely about what was cheap and convenient.  This is what most urban Americans experience each day.  This is why we have a childhood obesity problem.   When Jim’s diabetes and heart disease was diagnosed, I tried to add healthy to the criteria.  “Healthy, cheap, and convenient” is not easy to come by.  Then there’s “tasty”.  I felt like I failed all the time.  Try pleasing 6 different palates with “healthy, cheap and convenient”.  It’s not impossible, but it takes a lot of effort.  I gave up all too often and grew to resent this area of never-ending failure.   I felt like I was the only one trying to take on this responsibility, and I wasn’t getting much support.   I had a No Fat, No Salt, No Sugar recipe book from the American Diabetes Association.  Jim cringed whenever he saw it and called it the NO TASTE cookbook.  By then, I was working full time and eating $1 microwaveable meals at lunch.  Dinner was whatever you could scrounge between rehearsal/work schedules.  It was pretty nuts.  Jim was becoming increasingly ill, and two of my daughters became bulimic.  Food was not a graceful part of our lifestyle.

Saturday market selections

So much has changed.  I feel so relieved that even though I didn’t model a good food relationship as well as I wanted to, my kids did at least learn about healthy eating.  My oldest enjoys food as a creative outlet, and has an Iron Chef dinner group and a food blog.  My two younger daughters are vegetarians, and my son enjoys cooking healthy meals for himself.  My youngest has adopted healthy habits for herself since moving out, and has lost 70 pounds.   I have been enjoying cooking for Steve since our early dates.  I go to the Farmer’s Market every Saturday it operates in Wisconsin.  I’ve planted tomatoes, basil, rosemary, and oregano since moving here.  I want to be more aware of where my food comes from, and grow my own as much as possible.  Since my lifestyle is much slower than it was, I have time to spend and effort to give to this ancient and basic grace.  It’s not cheap or easy, it requires responsibility.   This is where I want to go deeper.

Recommended:  Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

http://www.urbanhomestead.org – “Surrounded by urban sprawl and just a short distance from a freeway, the Dervaes Family have steadily worked at transforming this ordinary city lot into an organic and sustainable micro-farm since 1986.”  Right there in Pasadena, California.  You’d be amazed at all they do.