This weekend I finally made it to the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine. I’ve heard about it for years, but I didn’t quite know what to expect, although the one thing everyone assured me was that it would have lots of good food. And it did, but what struck me more than that was the beauty of the food.
I didn’t pay as much attention to the prepared foods, but I will say that the lamb shish kabobs, alternating pieces of perfectly cooked meat with tender apple, roasted onion, and sweet peppers was enough to convince me that’s what I wanted for lunch (well, that and the smell). I also loved looking at the different hues of the honey, from clover to wildflower to blueberry to raspberry, ranging from very pale to a deep amber. And of course the creaminess of ice cream (a little too evident in the hot, melting sun).
More than that, I was struck by the gorgeous beds of rainbow Swiss chard, the tiny hot red peppers that looked like Christmas ornaments against the shiny green leaves, the tables full of produce that had won prizes. I loved seeing not only the “perfect” ones but those that we don’t normally see in the supermarket, such as the braided carrots, or the butternut squash in the shape of a horseshoe. Those differences remind me that the food is real, that it comes from the ground and is grown by people, not just mechanically produced.
And I thought how wonderful it was to reward people for growing the best produce, or raising the best animals, or producing the tastiest jam. Too often we forget (or simply don’t know) the effort that goes into the food we eat, making it easy to not fully appreciate the end result.
Today, therefore, I have been enjoying not just the taste and smell of my food, but its physical beauty. My breakfast of a frittata, golden-yellow, lightened here and there by sprinkles of goat cheese, dotted with the brightness of red peppers, and the soft, light green of my perfectly-shaped pear. At lunch, the darker crust on my grilled cheese sandwich with the lighter brown of the toasted part, the brilliance of my just-tender green beans, and the variegated red and green of my Macintosh apple. For dinner, I eagerly anticipate the yellow of my heirloom tomato (I forget the variety), contrasted sharply with a fresh basil leaf and mozzarella cheese, and the darker green of spinach peeking out from my white bean and fennel soup.
More than that, as I appreciate and savor the beauty, as well as the taste, I am grateful to all those who spend their lives in service to food. I will enjoy it all the more as a result.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Mindful Eating
One of the things the “Am I Hungry?” program encourages is for people to eat mindfully, to avoid distractions of TV, work, reading, driving, etc. and instead focus on and fully appreciate the food. To do this, it’s recommended that we eat slowly, with small bites, putting the fork down between mouthfuls, and pausing to fully appreciate the sight, smell, texture, and aftertaste of the food.
In some places this is the norm, but in America, this is not something most of us are good at. We’re all about the fast food, literally and figuratively. Part of it is that we’re often pressured to multi-task and to be as efficient as possible. But I think it’s also a question of expectation and abundance.
If we always expect to have the food, it’s easy to take it for granted, to not give it full attention. But what about those who don’t have much food, who can’t assume that they can always have more, or that it will always be there?
One of my favorite examples of this is Charlie Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Charlie savors each small morsel of his annual birthday chocolate bar, making it last as long as he possibly could. But a more recent and real-life example is in the book I Remember Warm Rain. In the story “Ponce de Leon Walk”, Kahiye Hassan talks about adjusting to life in Portland, Maine, after coming from Kenya.
In it, he talks about going to a little grocery store on Congress Street, which was very different than stores from his home. “I had assumed that mangoes and coconuts would always be part of my life, but this store didn’t even have mango juice.” (p. 97) What the store did have was a treat from Kahiye’s youth that he never expected to find – strawberry jelly. He said, “The long-lost odor alone made me feel full.” Using his finger as a spoon, he scooped out some jelly, put it in his mouth, and let it linger. “The taste softened my tongue; the seeds did not interfere with the essence of the flavor or diminish the taste. They were the taste, providing flexibility to the tongue. For days I munched the strawberry jelly from my hidden stash… and came up with many ways to eat it.” (p. 98)
And so as I try to shut out the distractions of my daily life and focus on my food, I will remember this – to be grateful for what I have, because even in this land of abundance, I don’t know how long I will have it. Considering it that way, it becomes precious, not something I will simply stuff in my mouth while sitting at my desk or in front of the TV, or hurriedly eat on the way to something else.
That reminds me of people who disdain diets by saying things like, “Do you really want your last meal to be a salad?” But in my mind, whether it’s a salad or a four-course elegant meal, it doesn’t matter what the last meal is if it’s not something that we savor and make worth remembering.
In some places this is the norm, but in America, this is not something most of us are good at. We’re all about the fast food, literally and figuratively. Part of it is that we’re often pressured to multi-task and to be as efficient as possible. But I think it’s also a question of expectation and abundance.
If we always expect to have the food, it’s easy to take it for granted, to not give it full attention. But what about those who don’t have much food, who can’t assume that they can always have more, or that it will always be there?
One of my favorite examples of this is Charlie Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Charlie savors each small morsel of his annual birthday chocolate bar, making it last as long as he possibly could. But a more recent and real-life example is in the book I Remember Warm Rain. In the story “Ponce de Leon Walk”, Kahiye Hassan talks about adjusting to life in Portland, Maine, after coming from Kenya.
In it, he talks about going to a little grocery store on Congress Street, which was very different than stores from his home. “I had assumed that mangoes and coconuts would always be part of my life, but this store didn’t even have mango juice.” (p. 97) What the store did have was a treat from Kahiye’s youth that he never expected to find – strawberry jelly. He said, “The long-lost odor alone made me feel full.” Using his finger as a spoon, he scooped out some jelly, put it in his mouth, and let it linger. “The taste softened my tongue; the seeds did not interfere with the essence of the flavor or diminish the taste. They were the taste, providing flexibility to the tongue. For days I munched the strawberry jelly from my hidden stash… and came up with many ways to eat it.” (p. 98)
And so as I try to shut out the distractions of my daily life and focus on my food, I will remember this – to be grateful for what I have, because even in this land of abundance, I don’t know how long I will have it. Considering it that way, it becomes precious, not something I will simply stuff in my mouth while sitting at my desk or in front of the TV, or hurriedly eat on the way to something else.
That reminds me of people who disdain diets by saying things like, “Do you really want your last meal to be a salad?” But in my mind, whether it’s a salad or a four-course elegant meal, it doesn’t matter what the last meal is if it’s not something that we savor and make worth remembering.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Food in the Office Part 2 - Why?
In my last “Am I Hungry?” class, we were talking about different triggers for eating. Some are physical (thirst, fatigue, etc.), some are emotional (I think most people can guess what those are!), and some are environmental (holidays, associations with activities like popcorn with movies, etc.).
When we got to the environmental triggers, I raised my hand and talked about the ridiculous amounts of food in the office. Then the facilitator asked me a very interesting question. “Why is it that you think they provide all this food?”
I’d thought a little about that in the back of my mind over the years, but this really made me sit down and consider. What, in fact, is the point of all of this? I don’t think they really want us to have heart conditions, or develop diabetes, because then our insurance premiums would go up. So there must be something else to it, but what?
After a moment I realized what it was. “It’s their way of trying to keep morale up. If they give us all this tasty food at the office, maybe we won’t feel so badly about being there.”
This isn’t just my opinion, either; I know it for a simple fact. Our office manager (slash benefits coordinator slash receptionist slash travel manager) will occasionally make cookies in the little toaster oven, and the last time she did it, I talked to her a little about it. “I wanted to do something to give people a little pick-me-up,” she said. “I know things are really hard right now, and this seemed to help.”
Of course it helped – how can your mood not improve if you want down the hallway and smell fresh-baked cookies? But it’s terribly sad at the same time. If things are bad enough that we have to give ourselves sugar highs to get through the day, that doesn’t speak very well for the company in general.
And as with all food remedies, this one is, in the words of the Muppet Beeker, “Sadly temporary.” Eventually the cookies are eaten, and the smell fades, and we’re left back where we started, except with a sugar crash to cope with as well. So while I appreciate that our office manager genuinely cares about wanting the people in the office to feel better, there might be better ways of doing it.
When we got to the environmental triggers, I raised my hand and talked about the ridiculous amounts of food in the office. Then the facilitator asked me a very interesting question. “Why is it that you think they provide all this food?”
I’d thought a little about that in the back of my mind over the years, but this really made me sit down and consider. What, in fact, is the point of all of this? I don’t think they really want us to have heart conditions, or develop diabetes, because then our insurance premiums would go up. So there must be something else to it, but what?
After a moment I realized what it was. “It’s their way of trying to keep morale up. If they give us all this tasty food at the office, maybe we won’t feel so badly about being there.”
This isn’t just my opinion, either; I know it for a simple fact. Our office manager (slash benefits coordinator slash receptionist slash travel manager) will occasionally make cookies in the little toaster oven, and the last time she did it, I talked to her a little about it. “I wanted to do something to give people a little pick-me-up,” she said. “I know things are really hard right now, and this seemed to help.”
Of course it helped – how can your mood not improve if you want down the hallway and smell fresh-baked cookies? But it’s terribly sad at the same time. If things are bad enough that we have to give ourselves sugar highs to get through the day, that doesn’t speak very well for the company in general.
And as with all food remedies, this one is, in the words of the Muppet Beeker, “Sadly temporary.” Eventually the cookies are eaten, and the smell fades, and we’re left back where we started, except with a sugar crash to cope with as well. So while I appreciate that our office manager genuinely cares about wanting the people in the office to feel better, there might be better ways of doing it.
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