I wrote this yesterday, but no wi-fi at the Vegas Airport…I’m home safe and glad to be back.
On the Way Home….
As I write this I’m airborne from Phoenix to Sacramento via Las Vegas. Today is definitely a day off from eating local, at least once I left my mom’s. I did well on this trip though, all things considered. Last night we had left over chicken enchiladas. The chicken, peppers, and tortillas were local, the Campbell’s chicken soup and Kraft cheddar cheese, not so much.
My main goal for the last week was actually not to eat local, but to make sure my mom had a good time with her grandsons, whom she sees only when I bring them on the journey to her. (She’s almost 90 and doesn’t like to take the long trip to see me anymore.) When I told her over the phone I was participating in the Eat Local Challenge, I could hear the worry in her voice. It was hostess-worry. She already worries if she’ll have food the boys and I like, if we’ll sleep well, etc. Now she also had to worry if the food was local, too. I told her right away not to worry, that I’d just do the best I could, but I still had to be careful to be flexible rather than strident, and to choose my battles. She’s remarkably health conscious and, at 88, still goes regularly to aerobics and walks and swims. When she hears me harp on eating local she also worries about herself and what she’s eating, even though she eats a fairly healthy, although nonlocal, nearly vegetarian diet. I remind her of her age, and of how she is still living autonomously. “Just keep doing whatever you’re doing, Mom. It’s working.” As for me, I’m just grateful to have 50% of her genes. Most of her food comes from the commissary at Fort Huachuca, and is shipped there from all over the world.
My second goal for the week was to explore the local food terrain in SE Arizona, and I met that goal with fascination and pleasure. From Tucson to Sierra Vista, from Benson to Bisbee, a local food culture exists where a year ago it was, at best, invisible. At the beginning of Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara and her family give up on Arizona and head for Appalachia so that they can truly be self-sufficient. They are probably right; it’s not possible to grow everything you need in a desert. But it’s amazing what is being grown there now, and how much of it is grown sustainably. What’s more, the people growing it are having a blast and forming community at the same time they increase their awareness of local food and their ability to grow everything from grass fed lamb to pinto beans to chili peppers.
One of the central themes unfolding for me in the last 11 days is the Convenience Factor. I was raised in a food climate where virtually everything was available to me. Seasonality was not a primary factor so much as expense, and on a special occasion I could afford to buy anything I wanted to eat. Limiting the scope of my decisions rankles me at times. I was talking to my mom about the her food choices as a young mother in the late 40s and early 50s. In those days, buying fresh vegetables was considered less optimal than buying frozen or cans. Marketing companies told housewives that they no longer needed be “slaves” to their kitchens when convenience lined the grocery store shelves. With memories of the depression fresh in their minds, they skipped the produce department whenever possible, heading for frozen and canned convenient alternatives that were billed as equally nutritious. I was raised on those foods, and didn’t know that garlic originated in a clove until I went to college. “What’s this?” I asked my roommates, holding up a clove. Silence and amazement filled the kitchen. “I thought it came in a bottle, with or without salt added,” I shrugged defensively. In those days, I hated all vegetables. They were a soggy penance of childhood I’d finally left behind. It took me thirty years to get from there to here.
I planned my trip to Mom’s this time of year so I’d be back before our tomatoes and beans were ready for harvest. I can’t wait to get out into the garden and assess how soon until I’m freezing and canning. (I’ll also be scouting around to different farms for other fruits and vegetables to put up. If you have a surplus, please be sure to let me know.) I can’t wait to get home, to see Jack, to weed the garden, to see the animals, to settle in to my routine.
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