My father was sent to wait in the breadlines for his family during the Great Depression. He explained once that waiting for food, even by choice, cafeteria-style, always brought back his shame at being visible in that line of hungry people. He was a life-long Democrat because of FDR's New Deal, which he believed kept him from starving. He taught me that food access could, and should, be facilitated by government programs.
I went to a relatively poor grade school in a mainly Hispanic section of Santa Fe, NM. I was one of the few students who brought a bag lunch to school every day of the year- most of the students were given their lunch card every day to use the cafeteria lines. One day my mother had to drop me off early at school. I walked into the cafeteria at 7am (school started at 8), only to find the majority of my classmates eating a institutional breakfast I had no idea even existed.
I remember talking to my mother about this later. She explained that most of the student's parents didn't have enough money to buy them good food. The state had started a program to feed poverty level children breakfast through the public schools.
I felt embarrassed and confused, as if I had seen something I shouldn't have.
Why is the term "food desert" offensive? I don't understand the politics of why it's offensive. I know what it means, that people who live in a certain neighborhood don't have access to fresh food. But why is it called a desert? And why is that term bad?
Growing up, I never really thought much about meat. It was a reality. Meals in my family were planned around what type of meat we were eating.
We got most of our beef straight from my cousin's pastures, just a mile down the road. We'd buy a whole cow at a time, usually in exchange for labor that my dad had done. We also hunted, which meant that there was always a steady supply of meat in our deep freezer.
Once I had dinner at a friend's house in junior high school. She cooked dinner for me and her siblings, since her mom was working. My plate had a small cut of meat and some mashed potatoes on it, a far cry from the heaping portions that my parents normally had to offer. The meal left me feeling hungry, but I knew that my friend had already shared what she had to offer. So I said nothing, knowing hunger for the first time in memory.
At that moment, I began to realize, among other things, that most people buy meat at a store, which is for some in and of itself a privilege. A privilege that I had never thought about. Access to meat means so much more than I had ever realized. Not everyone has an entire freezer devoted to storing their meat.
But since moving to St. Paul, I often revisit what my own access to meat means. When I purchase meat, I don't know its origin, which makes me feel a little funny, not to mention the fact that it's expensive. I've tried to rethink my relationship to meat in the past years, as well. I try not to eat it unthinkingly. I consider the environmental impact and real economic impact of that steak, not to mention the life of that animal. But I find myself returning to a diet which is planned around meat consumption. I often feel torn between my inner carnivore and my own questions about the ethics of meat eating-then I realize that being able to ask myself that question is alone a privilege.
When you're hungry, you think about food continuously. And you think about money continuously, too. When you open the cupboards above the small efficiency kitchen counters and again there is only a small plastic cylinder of salt and a little tin box of pepper, and you open the refrigerator and there is only a thing of ketchup, you know you're sleeping hungry again. You look in old bookbags for loose change. You check pockets. You can't quite bring yourself to poke your finger in the newspaper box slot on the street, but you understand the guy who does. You calculate how much of Friday's paycheck is already spoken for. Knowing there'll be some you figure you can make it a few days on $2 lunch and $3 dinner. After a few days of this -- cheese sticks and an egg for lunch, protein -- you get reckless and buy a pastry for lunch instead. It is delicate, like you feel, and rich, like you aren't. That night for dinner you punish yourself for your indulgence, and get however many potatoes $3 will buy and boil them. You are glad for the salt and pepper then. You feel virtuous about the relative nutrition in potatoes over pastry. That night you dream of butter, and grass, and shoes, and walking for miles with a purpose.
Hey bloggers: I have a question for you; I recently heard about several foraging groups that offer tours/courses in local foraging possibilities (eels, mushrooms, snails, herbs). Anybody tried any? This conversation included seemingly impossible tales, of a beach where the ocean literally hurls fresh live crabs out onto the shore; but surely there are others, and inland ones?
The French language has a word, a quality that is impossible to translate directly into English: la gourmandise. The internet translates it as gluttony, but this is wrong. Gourmandise is not quite a vice – it is the pleasure of eating, the delight in good food, the ecstasy of taste. Indulgence yes, but as much (if not more) about quality as it is about quantity. It is a cultural notion as much as it is a linguistic one – to be gourmande is almost a delicate thing, the relish of taking one extra bite of home wrought cake, one extra spoonful of soup, one extra piece of cheese, not out of hunger but out of pleasure. To be able to indulge in gourmandise is a luxury and a privilege, but not always or necessarily a fancy or expensive one. I am just as gourmande spreading my grandmothers homemade jam on an extra piece of bread as I would be spreading the world’s finest caviar on the world’s most delicate bread. The luxury of meals, of the pleasure of food can only exist if one has the luxury of time. This is something that the French traditionally know something about, although that is changing. Increasingly – in the US already, in France increasingly – meal times are seen as a waste, food is fuel, and the space for gourmandise to thrive in is cut smaller and smaller. That said: to be able to indulge in gourmandise is a luxury and a privilege. In order to know the pleasure of food, you have to have access to good food and to time. Just some thoughts...
Another note, culturally: For my (French) grandmother, vegetarians are still people who eat fish....
I have always loved to eat. But when my OCD hit me, seemingly out of nowhere, food became my enemy. All I could think about was where it had come from and how many people had touched it and left their germs on it for me to consume. Restaurants became the scariest place on Earth because I couldn't see my food being prepared, so I couldn't trust it. I would still go out to eat and try to convince myself that I could eat what was placed in front of me only to have a few bites and refuse a doggie bag. I even feared my own kitchen. I have a vivid memory of chopping a green pepper for a stir-fry. I started thinking about that pepper's life on the shelves of the grocery store. I thought about how many people had touched it and contaminated it while in a thoughtless pursuit of other vegetables. I couldn't breathe. I threw the pepper into the trash, and after a few seconds my whole stir-fry followed it.
For me, this story is a combination of food memory, justice and access. Growing up in an upper-middle class family that did 90% of it's grocery shopping at farmer's markets and co-ops, I was always surrounded by good, healthy food. I never gave this a lot of thought until i started rejecting it, until I started wasting all of this food I was fortunate enough to have. Sometimes I ask myself, is my OCD a manifestation of my privilege?
This is a quote from a book by Michael Pollan entitled "The Botany of Desire." I think this quote speaks to both the ideas of food access as well as assemblages.
"We give ourselves all together too much credit in our dealings with other species. Even the power over nature that domestication supposedly represents is overrated. It takes two to perform that particular dance, after all, and plenty of plants and animals have elected to sit it out. Try as they might, people have never been able to domesticate the oak tree, whose highly nutritious acorns remain too bitter for humans to eat. Evidently, the oak has such a satisfactory arrangement with the squirrel... that the tree has never needed to enter into any kind of formal arrangement with us."
My father was sent to wait in the breadlines for his family during the Great Depression. He explained once that waiting for food, even by choice, cafeteria-style, always brought back his shame at being visible in that line of hungry people. He was a life-long Democrat because of FDR's New Deal, which he believed kept him from starving. He taught me that food access could, and should, be facilitated by government programs.
ReplyDeleteI went to a relatively poor grade school in a mainly Hispanic section of Santa Fe, NM. I was one of the few students who brought a bag lunch to school every day of the year- most of the students were given their lunch card every day to use the cafeteria lines. One day my mother had to drop me off early at school. I walked into the cafeteria at 7am (school started at 8), only to find the majority of my classmates eating a institutional breakfast I had no idea even existed.
ReplyDeleteI remember talking to my mother about this later. She explained that most of the student's parents didn't have enough money to buy them good food. The state had started a program to feed poverty level children breakfast through the public schools.
I felt embarrassed and confused, as if I had seen something I shouldn't have.
Why is the term "food desert" offensive? I don't understand the politics of why it's offensive. I know what it means, that people who live in a certain neighborhood don't have access to fresh food. But why is it called a desert? And why is that term bad?
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, I never really thought much about meat. It was a reality. Meals in my family were planned around what type of meat we were eating.
ReplyDeleteWe got most of our beef straight from my cousin's pastures, just a mile down the road. We'd buy a whole cow at a time, usually in exchange for labor that my dad had done. We also hunted, which meant that there was always a steady supply of meat in our deep freezer.
Once I had dinner at a friend's house in junior high school. She cooked dinner for me and her siblings, since her mom was working. My plate had a small cut of meat and some mashed potatoes on it, a far cry from the heaping portions that my parents normally had to offer. The meal left me feeling hungry, but I knew that my friend had already shared what she had to offer. So I said nothing, knowing hunger for the first time in memory.
At that moment, I began to realize, among other things, that most people buy meat at a store, which is for some in and of itself a privilege. A privilege that I had never thought about. Access to meat means so much more than I had ever realized. Not everyone has an entire freezer devoted to storing their meat.
But since moving to St. Paul, I often revisit what my own access to meat means. When I purchase meat, I don't know its origin, which makes me feel a little funny, not to mention the fact that it's expensive. I've tried to rethink my relationship to meat in the past years, as well. I try not to eat it unthinkingly. I consider the environmental impact and real economic impact of that steak, not to mention the life of that animal. But I find myself returning to a diet which is planned around meat consumption. I often feel torn between my inner carnivore and my own questions about the ethics of meat eating-then I realize that being able to ask myself that question is alone a privilege.
When you're hungry, you think about food continuously. And you think about money continuously, too. When you open the cupboards above the small efficiency kitchen counters and again there is only a small plastic cylinder of salt and a little tin box of pepper, and you open the refrigerator and there is only a thing of ketchup, you know you're sleeping hungry again. You look in old bookbags for loose change. You check pockets. You can't quite bring yourself to poke your finger in the newspaper box slot on the street, but you understand the guy who does. You calculate how much of Friday's paycheck is already spoken for. Knowing there'll be some you figure you can make it a few days on $2 lunch and $3 dinner. After a few days of this -- cheese sticks and an egg for lunch, protein -- you get reckless and buy a pastry for lunch instead. It is delicate, like you feel, and rich, like you aren't. That night for dinner you punish yourself for your indulgence, and get however many potatoes $3 will buy and boil them. You are glad for the salt and pepper then. You feel virtuous about the relative nutrition in potatoes over pastry. That night you dream of butter, and grass, and shoes, and walking for miles with a purpose.
ReplyDeleteHey bloggers:
ReplyDeleteI have a question for you; I recently heard about several foraging groups that offer tours/courses in local foraging possibilities (eels, mushrooms, snails, herbs). Anybody tried any? This conversation included seemingly impossible tales, of a beach where the ocean literally hurls fresh live crabs out onto the shore; but surely there are others, and inland ones?
Thoughts on Indulgence
ReplyDeleteThe French language has a word, a quality that is impossible to translate directly into English: la gourmandise. The internet translates it as gluttony, but this is wrong. Gourmandise is not quite a vice – it is the pleasure of eating, the delight in good food, the ecstasy of taste. Indulgence yes, but as much (if not more) about quality as it is about quantity. It is a cultural notion as much as it is a linguistic one – to be gourmande is almost a delicate thing, the relish of taking one extra bite of home wrought cake, one extra spoonful of soup, one extra piece of cheese, not out of hunger but out of pleasure.
To be able to indulge in gourmandise is a luxury and a privilege, but not always or necessarily a fancy or expensive one. I am just as gourmande spreading my grandmothers homemade jam on an extra piece of bread as I would be spreading the world’s finest caviar on the world’s most delicate bread. The luxury of meals, of the pleasure of food can only exist if one has the luxury of time. This is something that the French traditionally know something about, although that is changing. Increasingly – in the US already, in France increasingly – meal times are seen as a waste, food is fuel, and the space for gourmandise to thrive in is cut smaller and smaller.
That said: to be able to indulge in gourmandise is a luxury and a privilege. In order to know the pleasure of food, you have to have access to good food and to time. Just some thoughts...
Another note, culturally: For my (French) grandmother, vegetarians are still people who eat fish....
I have always loved to eat. But when my OCD hit me, seemingly out of nowhere, food became my enemy. All I could think about was where it had come from and how many people had touched it and left their germs on it for me to consume. Restaurants became the scariest place on Earth because I couldn't see my food being prepared, so I couldn't trust it. I would still go out to eat and try to convince myself that I could eat what was placed in front of me only to have a few bites and refuse a doggie bag. I even feared my own kitchen. I have a vivid memory of chopping a green pepper for a stir-fry. I started thinking about that pepper's life on the shelves of the grocery store. I thought about how many people had touched it and contaminated it while in a thoughtless pursuit of other vegetables. I couldn't breathe. I threw the pepper into the trash, and after a few seconds my whole stir-fry followed it.
ReplyDeleteFor me, this story is a combination of food memory, justice and access. Growing up in an upper-middle class family that did 90% of it's grocery shopping at farmer's markets and co-ops, I was always surrounded by good, healthy food. I never gave this a lot of thought until i started rejecting it, until I started wasting all of this food I was fortunate enough to have. Sometimes I ask myself, is my OCD a manifestation of my privilege?
This is a quote from a book by Michael Pollan entitled "The Botany of Desire." I think this quote speaks to both the ideas of food access as well as assemblages.
ReplyDelete"We give ourselves all together too much credit in our dealings with other species. Even the power over nature that domestication supposedly represents is overrated. It takes two to perform that particular dance, after all, and plenty of plants and animals have elected to sit it out. Try as they might, people have never been able to domesticate the oak tree, whose highly nutritious acorns remain too bitter for humans to eat. Evidently, the oak has such a satisfactory arrangement with the squirrel... that the tree has never needed to enter into any kind of formal arrangement with us."