Kitchen Middens

(This is our new lady chicken. She has floppy feathered feet.)

I've been reading some M.F.K. Fisher and thinking a little about how, as it has been said before, Fisher used food as a cultural metaphor. With all of this attention being paid to folks like Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan for writing books about food and the consequences of our food choices, I've started thinking about how it's important for us not to fall prey to the trendiness of their ideas just because they're trendy (okay, duh, don't stop eating bread because one guy writes a book about how you should stop eating bread) but think about them in the context of how thinking about food more could, in addition to making people and the earth healthier, bring people together and create a space where people might stop and exist in the present.

I suck at existing in the present.

There are still all of these dicey issues about whether taking pleasure in food is something reserved for the upper classes, that folks who have to work all day to feed their kids anything (whether it be vegetable soup or hamburger helper) don't have the energy or time to follow this foodie path. Or, in a larger sense, the number of hungry people in the world who don't have anything resembling the choices we have when we walk down the aisle at New Seasons. There are issues related to farm workers rights, natural resource distribution, industrial agriculture and meat production. None of it is simple. I guess I just need to keep working on where I draw the line.

I think about this a lot, particularly if I'm out to eat somewhere fancy (this week, Toro Bravo, presently my favorite Portland restaurant). It is a privilege, and I think about the fact that I am wasting resources and time that could be used to make a less advantaged persons (or animals) life just a little bit better. But I take care of chickens so I know where my eggs are coming from, I canned the hell out of my farm discount this summer, I try to grow as much food as I can, we have two full rain barrels I can use to water my plants.

But sometimes, it all feels a little shady.

I suppose, if I were try to reconcile this for myself, choosing to invest time in thinking about food and taking pleasure in something sensual like eating, leads to more connections (family/community/nature) that are difficult to create in a "Bowling Alone" American public. This doesn't make it entirely reasonable, but it takes a little of the sting out. When Ruth Reichl talks about interviewing Fisher in one of her memoirs (Comfort Me With Apples), I remember thinking about how renegade Fisher was in her thinking about food. Reichl was sent there to write an article for Ms. (I think) only to realize that Fisher didn't effectively fit the feminist profile. Fisher wasn't trying to create social change, provide prescriptions for how we should reconnect with environment, or bring back some past survival knowledge we've lost while we were watching Survivor. Instead she used food to ignite some passion, some connection that lots of us are losing track of as time moves forward. Food, especially food choice, is a privilege, and in no way do I think it's reasonable or fair to partake in unaware extravagance. But we can learn a little from Ms. Fisher's approach.

Enough ranting. Read some Mary Francis (Consider the Oyster, How to Cook a Wolf).

In other news, did you hear about that romance novel that plagiarized an article about black-footed ferrets? (and I know it's Newsweek. I'm sorry. Here's the New York Times version if that will make you feel better.).

Also, I made this tonight. It was very nice.