Summer Food

We didn't post any life details last week, mostly because there weren't a ton of details to share. Drew finished up his classes and finals (Hooray for freedom! That's "frrrrreeeedom!" spoken like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, of course). While he was busy paper-writing and final-taking, I spent my days at school, working on the proposal for my field work this summer and my evenings in the kitchen, sometimes cooking something yummy. In the aftermath of a week consumed by articles on environmental values and dinner recipes, I have a few things to say about food. 

Food has been an interest of mine for quite a while. At times, I'm more interested in reading about it than actually eating it, (I highly recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and The Omnivore's Delimma by Michael Pollan) but at other times, especially during the summer when so many fresh fruits and vegetables appear, the cravings set in. Every year, I'm fascinated all over again by how well wired we are to live on and with this planet. Almost as soon as spring turns into summer, I want anything and everything containing strawberries or peaches or cherry tomatoes and absolutely nothing to do with a potato. It turns out that this is natural; it's incredibly natural, actually, because these cravings follow the patterns and seasons of plant growth in this corner of the world. Believe it or not (and many people don't, but many wise people do), living la vida local by tailoring our diets to those things that are currently in season in our own geographic regions is an answer to a number of problems from community disconnectedness to obesity. Barbara Kingsolver agrees with me, or maybe I agree with her; either way, here is an excerpt from an essay she wrote a few years ago, for your reading pleasure:

"Locally grown is a denomination whose meaning is incorruptible. Sparing the transportation fuel, packaging, and unhealthy additives is a compelling part of the story. But the plot goes beyond that. Local food is a handshake deal in a community gathering place. It involves farmers with first names, who show up at the market week after week. It involves consumers who remember that to be human is to belong to a food chain, wherever and whenever we find ourselves alive. It means remembering the truest of all truths: we are what we eat. Stepping slowly backward out of a fuel-driven industry of highly transported foods will alter more than a person’s grocery list. Such small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren’t trivial. Ultimately, they will add up to the story of who we were on this planet: what it took to keep us alive, what we left behind." -Barbara Kingsolver, Stalking the Vegetannual, Orion Magazine (You can read the whole essay here.)

The problem is that this little answer to a whole host of global problems isn't necessarily an easy one to implement. Unlike my mom who quickly went completely vegan after reading this book (and I admire her a lot for it), we have a harder time aligning our daily lives with all of the things that we know to be good, and I have a few excuses for it if you'd like to hear them. For starters, it's hard to live locally when, in many ways, we're just squatters in Provo, not integrated in any real way into the community of people who call this their permanent home. Second, we work all day and usually just want to play at night, so it's easy to relinquish our food values for an easy hunger fix in moments of tiredness. Third, we live in a 500-square-foot apartment with no yard for growing our own food and very little space for storing anything that we might grow anyway. And finally, to bring these excuses full-circle, although we do have a balcony, being squatters means that we're mobile, and anything that we could grow in square foot planters would surely die this summer with six weeks of neglect. 

Those are some pretty good excuses, but there is one retort that debunks them all and probably answers to many of the excuses that most people could think of for ignoring our human responsibility for caring for the planet that feeds us. It's pretty simple, but I think the answer is community supported agriculture (aka CSAs). Investing in the efforts of local farmers who are dedicated to facilitating biodiversity and natural cycling on their land helps us and them. Pretty recently, I stumbled upon this website detailing all of the CSAs in Utah and discovered, to my utter amazement and delight, that there are two participating farms within just a few miles of us. I have serious intentions to become a shareholder in this farm someday. Drew says we can do it when one of us has a real job (paying up front is the premise of a CSA--it allows farmers to sell their produce before it's planted, but on a student salary it's tough to shell out hundreds of dollars all at once and up front, even though it's pretty good pricing when the cost is divided over the year or season). I did get a dollar an hour raise this week; maybe it's time for renegotiation? 

All of that said, here are our food adventures lately (none of which were locally-grown or particularly interesting, but it's all we have to document last week).

Last weekend, we went to two different group dinners where we were responsible for bringing the salad. Tired of the same old tomato and cucumber toppings, and taking advantage of all of the berries on sale at the grocery store, we brought a spinach salad topped with blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, dried cranberries, and walnuts. With all of that goodness, dressing is hardly necessary, but some poppy-seed dressing did prove a tasty addition. Our dinner parties were for 7 and 14, big numbers for a girl that's used to cooking for two. That, combined with the fact that spinach expands greatly when let out of its bag, means I bought a bit too much of the green stuff. Unwilling to waste all of those antioxidants and vitamins, we've been incorporating spinach into our meals for two weeks. The first dinner party that involved spinach salad also involved these grilled pepper and onion shish kabobs; talk about a colorful meal. (Mrs. Scott taught me in Home Economics in 7th grade that the quality of a meal in terms of health and balance can be judged by the amount of color in it; I still believe her.)

This meal isn't a very good example of color differentiation, but earlier this week, we had chicken stuffed with spinach and ricotta, paired with corn on the cob and our favorite yeast rolls. Good thing Drew got his front tooth fixed; otherwise, corn on the cob wouldn't be an option, and it's one produce that's great in Utah.

We've also had Provolone cheeseburgers with spinach, tomatoes, and onions. Not too long ago, I never would have eaten an onion anything, but I've quickly discovered that onions are one of the best ways to flavor a lot of things. I even ate them right on top of this cheeseburger, the first product of our grill this summer. I've consumed a mountain of white peaches this summer, too. They're just soooo good. Most people say that we don't have Southern accents, but if our tastebuds are any indication, maybe we are Georgia peaches after all. 

On Sunday we revisited spinach and strawberry salad with French dip sandwiches. This was a first for us for French dip. I found the recipe here, but my inability to follow recipes exactly introduced a few minor alterations. Still, it was quite delicious.

This strawberry cake recipe is from the same blog as the French dip one above. It looked a lot better in her pictures than it did when I made it, but I'm blaming it on our lack of proper supplies (like two cake pans that are the same size or cake flour, which can't be obtained at our local Smith's, or a cake plate to hold it flat when it's all done so it doesn't bow in the center or a food processor to make strawberry puree). In spite of it's ugliness, it was yummy, contained tons of fresh strawberries, and was free of red dye (we won't talk about how much butter it contains between the cake and the frosting). Next time we'll probably try frozen strawberries instead of fresh ones; apparently they make the cake a prettier pink color. 

Still working on our spinach stash, last night (and again for lunch today) we had this tasty pasta dish. It's a vegan dish, so it includes edamame for protein, but we also added grilled chicken. I'll definitely be revisiting this website for more recipes.

So much good food makes us two healthy, happy people. 

 

And so much food talk makes me a hungry girl, so to dinner we go. :)