The Foodie File: Philosophical Food
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a lecture at The Gardiner Museum. The topic was sustainable food and featured three speakers, Jamie Kennedy from the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Michael Stadtlander from Eigensinn Farms, and Sinclair Philip from Sooke Harbour House in Vancouver.
I heard many things that night that I found interesting, and I will be sure to expound at a later date, but one thing in particular struck a chord with me and I thought I would share it with you.
Kennedy made a statement, saying that embracing a lifestyle that values a sustainable food supply requires that we adjust our expectations and accept what is available.
This is one of my own personal life philosophies, but I had not considered it in light of food. I do believe that when we demand that all of our expectations be fulfilled, we do ourselves a disservice by eliminating options that we may not know exist. And conversely, when we openly accept what we are given, we are rewarded beyond what our limited imaginations can envision for ourselves.
I bought local tomatoes a few weeks back, and they have been sitting on my counter for two weeks now; they are still as hard as softballs. Maybe if we didn’t require that tomatoes be available year-round, we would be privileged to have varieties in the summer that ripen away into sweet, succulent, perishable specimens instead of “marketable†varieties that farmers feel compelled to produce. If we stopped demanding asparagus in the dead of winter, perhaps there would be room for local varieties of produce on our supermarket shelves that have all but gone by the wayside. Or maybe we would appreciate the abundance in the summer and discover a passion for preserves and pickles.
Always having exactly what we want has not served our Western society well. It has kept those of us who care from the discovery of culinary gems that have been pushed aside in favour of the limited scope of uncompromising expectations.
Till next time,
Christine
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Christine, thanks for bringing this one up. I bet this problem impacts the obesity epidemic. I’m sure we would all eat more fruits and veggies if they tasted as they should, rather than like carboard.
I grow my own strawberries and share them with my friends every summer at our annual strawberry picking party. You cannot buy them in stores when they are at their perfect, luscious, sweet ripeness because they are so fragile. But they freeze well and we eat them all winter. My advice is to grow your own – you’ll be glad you did! And I hope some heirloom producers across the country will tell us about their products, and where and when the best time is to buy.
Cath,
I agree with you on the obesity front – our bodies were not designed to been consuming everything we want all of the time without any effort. The effects of the abundace of our marketplace are only beginning to be apparant in the population.
I am hopefule that we are at a time when we will see some leaders with some real solutions to these problems.