seasonal pizza from the Pizza Institute in Eugene
Its been an interesting couple of months.
I learned that I can be kind of controlling? possessive? Not sure what, but living collectively and trying to eat intentionally was not working for me anymore. I'd come home form work and want to make dinner, only to find the food that I had procured was already eaten by someone else. It shouldn't be a big deal. I work in a natural foods store, and if I had known that what I wanted to eat, had already been eaten, I would have gotten more. So I decided to move.
The final 4 to 6 weeks of living in the collective house, I pretty much ate out all the time. I have never, in my current memory, felt so sluggish and gross. Its an odd feeling for me. The first meal I made in my new location was so dang good!
So I am back!
And I am thinking about food again, and being vegan, and wanting to eat good food. Local food. Hand made food. Not super fancy food, but well crafted and cared for food. What the hell does any of this mean?
There are two main concerns I have going on in my mind about where I want to go in my food search. One, for me being vegan is not a diet, but a way of life. It defines some of my ethics for how I want to live, not just eat. Not all vegans have a healthy plant based diet. Here in Portland we have at least 3 different donut shops to get vegan donuts. Packaged junk food at your convenience.
The second concern in the way food is moving around, is the never ending search for the latest and greatest super-food from some far flung place. Most already know my rant against the coconut fad, but it is really just the target for my frustration every time I see another new food from Peru or the Himalayas. We don't live at those extreme areas of the earth, and we don't need those properties, but the people who live there do. So I want to find the super-foods of North America. You know, the things that the people who lived here long before for the Europeans showed up and then destroyed.
The first foods that come to mind are nutritionally dense plants: nettles, burdock, blueberries, oats (rolled, straw, fresh tops), hemp (we really need to legalize this plant again for food, fuel, cloth, paper, etc).... what are yours? I look forward to adding to this list and doing more research to the foods that were of deep importance to a people that were nearly completely exterminated, but still hold a great deal of information.
I understand the draw to the super-foods, especially in Peru. When I went there a few years ago, I drank some Coca leaf tea. It was just served casually at the hostel we were meeting a friend at. It was super tasty so I drank more. Then my friends started getting altitude sickness, and I had never felt better. Later I learned that it was great for helping adjust to the altitude. I drank that tea the whole time I was there, and had so much energy! But I don't live at 11,200'. I live between 20' (the waterfront) and 550' (Mt. Tabor). It would be crazy for me to drink that tea here.
whatever the food, it should include a good fire with good friends!
So this is where peasant food comes in for me. In reading Born To Run, there is mention of eating like "poor people". Well that's not right. Eating beans and rice and greens is not about eating like poor people, its eating healthy. Its eating what is available and near. Its about peasant foods, and the foods of "the people" is what I want to explore even more. I want to explore what this actually means, especially since it is a term being tossed around a great deal lately. I want to know the cultural diversity of peasants of the Americas vs. Europe. Knowing that many of these culture did eat some animals, what was the context for it? How was there relationship with animals and nature? Did they separate themselves the way western culture does, or was it an interrelated relationship with no difference between the two-legged and the four-legged or the winged ones, or finned?
I'm not looking to noblize (did I just make up a word) a class of people, but I am looking to learn from them while there is still some knowledge available. Lest we forget that we are in a class war right now! More and more people are falling between the cracks of access to not just health care, but food and shelter as well. More people are having to cut corners, and maybe by learning more ways from the old ways we all might be able to eat and live a little better.
So this is where I am headed next. Please let me know if you have a favorite "peasant" food... also, perhaps known as a traditional food?
