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Not quite the soul
Jul. 24th, 2020 09:10 amI guess the more I eat food that I or someone I know has grown, the more eating becomes an act of spirituality or of embedding into community. I really enjoy that generally. With covid I've been eating more of my own food, which often means fewer veggies. I'm starting to switch out lard for butter in baking more (primarily biscuits). Some external staples remain - flour is a big one, and occasionally ramen or mac and cheese, and definitely spices - but it's very rare for a meal not to contain a fair bit of my own stuff.
This doesn't feel particularly unusual or connecting on a daily basis. My plan has been to replace bought foods with home foods when it's easy, and then to build habits around that new food, and then to replace another bought food with something that serves the same function when that becomes easy. So it has never been a huge shift. And I've nearly always eaten based on sales and seasonality anyhow, so my habits involve eating what's around to some extent.
When I think about traveling, though, the idea of being away from my own food for so long is nearly as disconnecting as the idea of being away from my animals or my land. I love restaurants and I love food made with skill and I love people making food for me. I enjoyed the stretch of time where Tucker and I were going to PG and doing nice restaurants there once in awhile. But PG is much closer than the city, or the coast. The thought of spending a week down there and eating food made by covid-nervous cooks who are disconnected from their supply chains is definitely alienating. Going to, for instance, Adrian and Ellen's place and eating food they'd raised: that's different, and that would be fine and would even enhance the experience of traveling.
So I guess food has become a spiritual/connecting dimension of existence for me. Part of entangling myself with things, with enmeshing and re-localizing and creating meaning, is that my options become more limited-- or maybe more weighted. A lot of the freedoms of my culture are freedoms from connection.
Anyhow, just some thoughts.
This doesn't feel particularly unusual or connecting on a daily basis. My plan has been to replace bought foods with home foods when it's easy, and then to build habits around that new food, and then to replace another bought food with something that serves the same function when that becomes easy. So it has never been a huge shift. And I've nearly always eaten based on sales and seasonality anyhow, so my habits involve eating what's around to some extent.
When I think about traveling, though, the idea of being away from my own food for so long is nearly as disconnecting as the idea of being away from my animals or my land. I love restaurants and I love food made with skill and I love people making food for me. I enjoyed the stretch of time where Tucker and I were going to PG and doing nice restaurants there once in awhile. But PG is much closer than the city, or the coast. The thought of spending a week down there and eating food made by covid-nervous cooks who are disconnected from their supply chains is definitely alienating. Going to, for instance, Adrian and Ellen's place and eating food they'd raised: that's different, and that would be fine and would even enhance the experience of traveling.
So I guess food has become a spiritual/connecting dimension of existence for me. Part of entangling myself with things, with enmeshing and re-localizing and creating meaning, is that my options become more limited-- or maybe more weighted. A lot of the freedoms of my culture are freedoms from connection.
Anyhow, just some thoughts.
