Saturday, October 9, 2010

Day 18 - Why are we doing this again?

It's been over two weeks since this project officially began.

Some days, this seems like nothing. On other days, I worry about doing this a whole year. Sometimes I get into a groove, and the simplicity of my patterns make me wonder why more people don't do this. And other days, ohhh... the other days.

Sunday I was in the kitchen all day preparing for the week ahead. This included baking bread (2 loaves), as well as whipping up a quick zucchini bread for fast breakfasts (1 loaf). Let's not forget about making hummus from scratch, for sandwiches throughout the week.

Some wise people, at this point, might say to themselves "stop while you are ahead". Wise I am not, and after all of that, I decided it would be a good idea to make pasta from scratch. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, perhaps it was too little flour. Still, the pasta ended up a sticky mess, which, after a long day in the kitchen, made me crumble into a pile on the couch, defeated.

Curled up on the couch, frustrated, my mind began to wonder why I started doing this in the first place. Who cares if we eat locally for a year? Why are we doing this? 

The question remained on my mind all week, especially since we found ourselves extremely busy.

After a lengthy meeting on Tuesday night, a large event on Wednesday night, and fighting a cold all the while, left me on Thursday thinking that all I wanted was to order in.

No dishes, no pots and pans, just a quick phone call and steamy piles of Thai food delivered to our doorstep.

Living locally, and our commitment to this project, meant that this wasn't really an option. Noodles filled with things from who knows where is pretty much the opposite of what we are trying to do. Again, I asked myself "why we were doing this?", then pushed the question aside. Despite my sore throat and body aches, my husband and I threw on our aprons and got to work.

I began by making tortillas from scratch, while Dan worked on making Pico de Gallo from a giant yellow Heirloom tomato. For the filling, I used the beans and emmer I had pre-cooked earlier in the week, along with some diced bell pepper and a can of our beloved tomatoes.

We topped our burritos with grated cheddar cheese from Golden Glen Creamery and a salad mixture from one of our favorite stands at the market.

Once we started the process, something shifted. Instead of feeling resentful that we had to get to work, it wasn't long before we were both laughing, chatting about our days, and having a pretty nice time preparing everything. And the remarkable part?

We put everything on the table in less than a half hour. It was faster than ordering food, after all.


Why are we doing this? Well, the technical answer is that we are acting as guinea pigs to see it's logical and inexpensive to eat as locally as possible for a year. But there is a deeper undertone I'm picking up on. We want to feel connected not only to our food, but to each other. And the moments I share with my husband in the kitchen definitely outweigh any that we share in front of the television, and the flavors are far more delicious than dialing a phone number.

3 comments:

  1. Congratulations on getting through a tough patch! Every time you do this, you will be reinforced about the "Rightness" of what you are doing. I have been inspired to care a bit more about where things I eat come from by your journey! Keep up the good work!

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  2. Loquat is for cough and lung in Chinese medicine. Sometimes i would take the Ninjiom Pei Pa Koa which is an extract of loquat when got scratchy throat.

    You can access info online @
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nin_Jiom_Pei_Pa_Koa
    ninjiom.50webs.com

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