Greening Thumbs

Up until about a year ago, maybe two, if you told me I would be sitting around with 6 of my closest friends eating dinner and group shopping an heirloom seed catalog, I probably would’ve just laughed.

It’s not that the idea of any of us gardening is preposterous, but up until now, most of us have not lived long enough in one place to even consider making an investment in a relatively immobile garden. I am admittedly still unwilling to fully invest in growing my own garden because I can’t seem to stay put, but I am progressing. Last summer was the first summer since I left home for college that I planted in something more permanent than a small, plastic pot. I grew heirloom brandywine tomatoes from seed. They started out in an egg carton and eventually grew up over my head (in a raised bed). I just pulled the dead plants out today, and from root ball to  uppermost branch they reached exactly to the top of my head (a mere 5’4″, but still. . .). I would say this is amazing, but after seeing tomato-farmer Dale Allred’s 18-ft tall tomato plants, I know that I have nothing to boast about. Nonetheless, I have never been more proud of anything, including my prize-winning 2nd grade Invent America invention. I gave away all but two of the plants, and they produced the most delicious beefsteak tomatoes I have ever had–nevermind that before I grew them, I didn’t know what beefsteak tomatoes were.

By and large, the most challenging aspect of starting a garden from scratch was finding dirt. I was shocked, actually, at the amount of effort it took for us to get dirt into our raised bed (roughly the dimensions of a full-size bed). I guess I’ve always just taken for granted the existence of dirt. No longer. Fortunately, we have large east and south-facing windows, so starting seeds inside is almost effortless. But after a few rounds of starts, we learned that the little peat seed starter pellets that expand in water were not very effective. The plants shot up, getting tall and spindly, while their roots were never very established, so transplanting didn’t go well. But after some trial and error, we got a decent garden going. My roommate Elena did most of the work. My role in the whole thing was something akin to your unemployed friend who periodically crashes at your house. In between my wanderings, I sat on the patio, drank mojitos, and made sure things didn’t get too out of hand out there.

Meanwhile, across town, our friends took a slightly different approach to their first garden. Whereas we more or less made a container garden on our patio, our friend Bill constructed what has come to be known as Jurassic Park, including two sizable raised beds, a chicken coop, and a fenced-in enclosure. Like us, Bill started his garden from seed. At one point, all of the starts were on the floor of his bedroom because it was the sunniest spot in the house, but disaster struck when a sock fell off his bed in the middle of the night, crushing his tiny corn stalks. Some never recovered. When Bill came home with six chicks and put them in a Rubbermaid bin in his kitchen, I feared what sort of accidental fate might befall them as well, but needlessly so. They are all thriving and have become quite the team of layers. Although a few were originally marked for the dinner table, they started to acquire not only first names, but also middle and last names, and since have been given pretty cushy positions as egg-suppliers with guaranteed retirement.

Although you don’t have to be an adult to grow anything, it helps to have some of the things we generally associate with “adulthood” to successfully grow a portion of your food. For instance, an income of some sort is helpful, as is a space which you can take the time to cultivate and aren’t likely to abandon for impulsive decisions to travel or seasonal jobs. As my friends and I are finding out, gardening is not an exact science (I suppose it could be, if you wanted, but it doesn’t have to be). Last summer we tried it just to see what would happen, with promising results. This year, we’ll have a little more to work with, but it’s still a crap shoot. Fortunately, if the squash gets an infestation or the melons aren’t in the right spot, there’s always the farmers’ markets to keep us in fresh food.

On a semi-related note: the spring issue of Edible Wasatch is out! Check it out here or look for a copy around town. I have an article in it highlighting local Salt Lake farmers and their take on local, organic, and conventionally grown food (p.32). There’s also a very helpful CSA listing if you want to invest in a season’s worth of local produce!

Gardening Goodness

Emergence                                                                                                                                                      

I can’t help but notice green things beginning to creep up from the ground. I don’t mean the grass that never quite turned brown and stubbornly pokes through the snow that never stays put. I mean the new shoots of tulips and daffodils. Perhaps this is normal for Salt Lake. I admittedly haven’t lived here long enough to know how and when the seasons change, but to my northern sensibilities, new growth emerging in February is unheard of except in the most unseasonably warm years, and even then it’s a stretch.

As exciting and strange as this is, I am less concerned with the brave little flowers as I am with how they make me feel. Seeing green spikes poking up through the soil inevitably makes me giddy to start gardening. Each and every spring I have a renewed enthusiasm for cultivating life that will nourish me, and I don’t think I’m the only one. There’s just something about the coming of spring that breathes energy and excitement into people. The sense of rejuvenation is palpable. And while not everyone gets excited to garden, I have a sneaking suspicion that there are a lot of people who would if they could.

Returning to the Earth

Although I don’t have proof at my fingertips, I have encountered time and again the idea that growing sustenance from seed to harvest is therapeutic, even rehabilitating. No doubt, I think, because it is a direct connection with the earth. When we plant and tend to something, be it brussel sprouts or daisies or an apple tree, we connect with something larger than ourselves. Not to mention that the fresh air and exercise will do anyone good. It’s physical work that reminds us of our bodies and what they are capable of, indeed, what our ancestors had no choice but to do. Strange to think that only relatively recently have we even been able to opt out of spending our days seeking out or cultivating our food. While this is generally viewed as progress, I would venture so far as to say there’s something intrinsically satisfying about providing for ourselves and our loved ones, a satisfaction we seek but don’t often find by buying all our ingredients from the grocery stores or eating out.

A few years ago I read a High Country News article about a rehabilitation program for heroin addicts from small Spanish-speaking villages in the Espanola Valley of New Mexico (click here to read). The program focused on getting the addicts to sow small crops and tend to them, reaching through the drugs and poverty to their core beings, connecting them to the land beneath their feet and the food they put in their mouths. It is a simple transaction, yet it is central to our experience as humans. The connection is grounding.

Gardening is not an activity that discriminates against age, sex, or race. It doesn’t require a resume or good references. And it’s not just for the elite. Although not everyone has immediate access to land on which they can grow a single pea plant, let alone a garden, that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to gain access to space and materials. Those who live in and around Salt Lake are probably familiar with Wasatch Community Gardens. Through my experience with them, they are a wonderful organization with amazing resources and programs for all sorts of gardeners. The only problem is there’s a 2-3 year waiting list for an actual plot. Like many cities in the West, Salt Lake is growing and land is in high demand. Fortunately, waiting for a spot to open up with Wasatch Community Gardens is not the only option for the would-be gardener.

Gardener Seeking Garden

Another option is a program called Sharing Backyards (which is now in partnership with Wasatch Community Gardens). The idea is simple: there are people who have garden space to share and people who want a place to garden. Chances are some of these people live near each other and have no idea. The program provides a map with icons to indicate people who have space and people who are looking for space; if you fit into either category you can sign yourself up and you will appear on the map. Contacting one another and negotiating terms is largely up to the individuals involved. Through this program, not only does garden space get utilized, giving more people the chance to grow some of their own food, but it also creates a sense of community. Many people share food with their hosts, or they garden together. If nothing else, maybe they meet a neighbor they didn’t know before.

The organization behind Sharing Backyards is the relatively new Urban Village Cooperative. More specifically, the program emerged from the Sustainable Food Circle (SFC) that is one of many circles that make up the Cooperative. Kimarie Overall, an active member, passed on the story of their first shared backyard experience:

Carole was the first to respond to sharing backyards slv [Salt Lake Valley]. She wanted to convert her thirsty lawn into a vegetable garden, but was overwhelmed with the task. She met with our Circle and demonstrated a well-thought out plan that we all were excited about. Shortly there was a match, with 2 people nearby who were looking for garden space and willing to work.  SFC organized a workday, and together we created a Lasagna or layered garden in Carole’s backyard.

If you’re interested in getting help from the SFC to create your own shared backyard, or want to be more involved, they are worth looking into! More info here.

And then some. . .

There are a surprising number of other community gardens popping up around Salt Lake Valley. I would love to be able to share more about each of them, and perhaps in time, but for the sake of information, you can check out the article “Planning Season” in the winter edition of Edible Wasatch for an idea of who’s doing what.

If your area doesn’t have community gardens or programs for people without access to land, some existing community gardens offer classes on how to start your own. If you have the time and the dedication, it would be worth looking into.

Last but not Least, Yeast

I  know what I said last time about no more bread, so consider this a brief encore.

After my first post on bread, a friend shared with me his experience of cultivating a sourdough starter with blossoms from a plum tree, which I thought was worth sharing:

I made a basic dough of flour and water, then rubbed the bloom (the bloom is wild yeast, colonizing the fruit, waiting for it to ripen) off of several of the plums onto the dough. For good measure, I squished a final plum into the dough and kneaded it in. About 24 hours later the dough was rising. (You can do the same thing with unwashed grapes. Obviously, you want organic fruit.) Whenever I make bread I mix the starter in. When the dough is mixed I take a lump of dough about half the size of my fist, and put it into a container, so that I have the starter for the next time. The first couple of years, the starter was kind of slow, but now it acts really fast. I have a friend who also cultured his own sourdough. His followed the same timeline, so I suspect there is some evolution afoot, where the yeast evolves to digest the starch better than it had originally done.

I’m no scientist, but I think cultivating your own yeast is a wonderful lesson in biology because you can see for yourself that it is a naturally occurring microorganism. We get used to things coming in packages with labels and it’s easy to forget that many of these ingredients and foods exist independently of the supermarkets. Like grinding flour and kneading dough, collecting yeast and maintaining a starter allows you to play a more active role in your food.

Aside from the yeast on fruit, people also make starters with yeast from the air by letting the flour and water mixture sit out under a cloth, which keeps the dust and hairs and critters out but lets the yeast in. Contrarily, I have also read that it’s not necessary to collect air-born yeast because there’s yeast from the wheat grains already in the flour. If you were looking for a science experiment today, this could be it. Or, if you’re like me, you can chalk it up to one of life’s little mysteries. After all, what would life be like without a little wonder, I wonder.

A special thanks to Dylan Mace for his words of experience.

Meditations on Bread Part III: Flour

There is no doubt a lot more to eating locally and sensibly than baking bread. I promise I will move on, after today. The third installment of my Meditations on Bread, which have inspired more conversations about toast than I ever thought possible, is on flour. After all, bread is only as good as the ingredients you put into it.

Blurry Wheat Kernel

I generally assume that most people who use flour are aware of the basic difference between whole wheat and white, but it’s worth exploring these nutritional differences. Whole wheat flour implies that the entire grain was ground to make the flour. A whole wheat grain consists of 3 basic parts: the bran (the outer husk that contains most of the fiber), the germ (a concentrated source of nutrients), and the endosperm (the starch).

When milling white flour, both the bran and the germ are discarded, leaving just the endosperm. Essentially, you ditch the nutrients and keep the starch. This starch is a simple carbohydrate very similar to sugar. In fact, food writer Mark Bittman tells us that our bodies can hardly tell the difference between white flour and white sugar. While neither of these are bad for you in small amounts, they are empty calories with no nutritional value. When consumed in excess, these refined carbohydrates are some of the largest contributors to the development of type 2 diabetes and obesity.

If considering complex carbohydrates versus simple carbohydrates seems too, well, complex, this little saying resurrected by Michael Pollan might help: “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead” (Food Rules, #37).

Despite its empty calories, I still like to work with white flour. (Note recipes from last week.) It certainly has a role in baking, but it should be treated more as a treat, not something to be eaten at every meal. Maybe not even every day. For me, equating white flour with white sugar is usually enough to keep my consumption in check. In baking, I find that substituting at least half whole wheat flour is a good place to start. Another option is to look for whole white wheat flour. White wheat is lighter in color than red wheat, and is also lighter in flavor. Despite differences in appearance, red wheat and white wheat are very similar nutritionally.

Buying refined white flour (all-purpose flour or bread flour) poses its own challenges. Bleached flour means that the flour was artificially aged using chemicals, which also lighten the color of the flour. This maturing and lightening process happens naturally if the flour is allowed to oxidize, but most producers consider it a poor use of resources to store the flour long enough to allow it to oxidize naturally. Benzoyl peroxide and chlorine dioxide are the most commonly used chemicals to bleach flour. Potassium bromate was also a common bleaching agent, but is now a known carcinogen. While outlawed in Europe and Canada, the US still allows potassium bromate to be used, and, as far as I can tell, only in California do producers have to indicate that they use it.

The bottom line for white flour: skip the unnecessary chemicals and buy it unbleached and unbromated.

While the issue of what kind of flour to buy has more or less been tackled, the other question that nags me in the baking isle is WHERE I should buy my flour from. I think I struggle with this question more than most because only recently has it become a question. For most of my life I’ve had access to Wheat Montana flour that was grown, harvested, milled, and bagged 30 miles west of my home. All their grains are chemical free (meaning they use a natural nitrogen fertilizer, but the grains test free of any chemical residues) and are readily available in most grocery stores in the Bozeman-area. Believe it or not, I only just recently realized that in most other parts of  the country, it’s not so easy.

When I moved to Salt Lake, I was excited to learn that there was a flour mill nearby. Naturally, I assumed I would be able to find this flour just about anywhere. Not so. At least in Salt Lake City, Lehi Roller Mills only sells their flour at Costco (aside from the small bags of artisan bread flour that cost upwards of $5). This is certainly better than nothing–buying in bulk is a great way to go if you have a good place to store flour–but it’s not very convenient for those who, like me, still do not have a Costco membership for fear of what it will do to my budget and what’s left of my freezer space.

To be fair, buying flour from Costco is not an insurmountable problem. There’s also the option to take a field trip to the mill and buy some there. Though I’d wager that most people aren’t interested or dedicated enough to go out of their way to buy flour.

To complicate matters, in trying to figure out where I could get Lehi flour, I discovered that Wheat Montana has recently begun distributing to Walmarts. Now I find myself faced with a conundrum: do I buy locally milled flour from wheat harvested within 200 miles and brave the samples at Costco, or do I buy the Prairie Gold flour that was shipped 450 miles but still FEELS local because everything about it reminds me of home? To add to my hesitation, Lehi Roller Mills does not use organic wheat and their customer service rep. couldn’t tell me anything about their growing practices, whereas Wheat Montana sells organic varieties and asserts that all their products are certified chemical-free.

I almost don’t want to mention that I also wonder whether it’s better to support Costco or Walmart, or if driving 60 miles round-trip to buy it directly from the mill is best. Add to this that I don’t usually shop at any of these places so I’m looking at making a trip just for flour regardless of where I go, and I’m left pondering chemical use, miles traveled, local economies, corporate profiles, and overall efficiency. Fortunately, I have enough flour to bake a few more loaves, make some toast, and mull it over.

[To be honest, I don't fret over my flour quite to the extent that I've indicated, yet the questions that arise from simply asking what flour to buy suggest just how complicated our food system is. Some people simplify these issues by buying wheat and grinding it themselves, which I think is fantastic (and on my to-do list for 2011), but it's not for everyone. So for the rest of us, what do we do?]

Meditations on Bread Part II: Recipes

Why Bother

Aside from the peace of mind of knowing what’s in your bread because you put it there, baking your own bread has a few other, more perceptible perks. Number one is and  always will be the smell. Nothing compares to the smell of baking bread. I would almost go so far as to say that it has powers: the other members of your household will forgive you your sins, the next person that walks in the door may very well fall in love with you, and it will soothe your anxieties, which melt away like the butter you’re about to slather on a hot slice. Too much? Maybe.

The number two reason for most people, including myself, is cost. One 5 lb bag of flour yields about 6 loaves of bread. The cost of a bag of flour can vary widely, but let’s assume that a bag of organic flour costs $4 for 5 lbs. That’s .67 cents per loaf. Then add maybe a dollar for yeast, honey, salt, and possibly milk or an egg, depending on the recipe. My math is not what you would call exact, but you can safely assume that it costs, at most, between $1.50 and $2.00 to make a loaf of bread. If you buy your flour, honey, and/or yeast in bulk it will be even less. If you grow, harvest, or make some of these ingredients yourself, cost is probably negligible. So although you can buy loaves of bread with comparable ingredients at the store, you’re easily going to pay two to three times more for it, and you won’t get to indulge in the smell.

Baking bread is certainly a time commitment, but most of that time is hands-off. For me, baking offers a good, structured time to work. I can get things started in 15-20 minutes, then work for an hour or two while the dough rises. I’m much more focused and productive when I know that I will be playing with dough before too long. Whatever you do with that time–read, cook dinner, exercise, watch tv–you will have the satisfaction that if nothing else, you made some sustenance. If you prefer to use a bread machine, that works, too. It can save time and attention if you lack either. The problem with bread machines is that they give us the false impression that making bread is hard and you therefore need a machine to help you do it. And as far as machines go, a standing mixer takes a little bit of the elbow grease out of the equation, but is also not necessary. A bowl, a spoon, and your hands can do wonders.

Kneading dough is, I think, the most important part of making bread. Not because of what it does to the bread, but because of what it does to you. Kneading forces you to touch the bread and to understand what it lacks because of how it feels. Physically working  the dough offers a connection that we rarely get to our food, one that reminds us both of our capabilities and our responsibilities in feeding ourselves. While there are surely techniques to kneading, all you really have to do is rough it up a little bit. Punch it down, push it around, poke it, massage it, go with whatever your mood is at the time. If you’ve ever worked with clay, it can be a similar movement to wedging (simultaneously pushing and folding ), and this is what I tend to do. Whether you want it to be a gentle, meditative activity, or a way to work out some frustrations, it will result in the same thing. You just can’t be afraid to get your hands on your food.

All of that to say, here are some recipes if you’re in the mood to make bread:

Focaccia Bread (great for dinner parties, or eating the whole pan by yourself)

For the dough:

1 Tbs honey

2 cups warm water

1 Tbs active dry yeast (one packet is a little less, but works just fine)

1 Tbs sea salt (note: if you have to use table salt, use a lot less, though I don’t recommend it)

1 Tbs olive oil

1/2 cup diced onion

5 cups of flour (approx.)

For the top:

3 Tbs olive oil

2 Tbs chopped rosemary

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 Tbs sea salt

-Dissolve honey in warm water, sprinkle yeast over the top and let sit for 5 minutes or until it begins to foam. Stir in salt, oil, onions, and flour until dough comes together. Knead on a well-floured surface until smooth and elastic (about 5 min.). Oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat. Let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes.

-Preheat oven to 415 deg. F. Place the dough onto an oiled baking sheet and flatten to cover evenly. Make indentations with your thumb all over the surface of the dough, about an inch apart. Drizzle with 3 Tbs olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary, salt, and parmesan. Let rise for 10 more minutes.

-Bake for 20 min. or until golden brown.

[This focaccia doesn't turn out as light and airy as others I have had. Longer rising time would no doubt help in this regard, but I like the fact that this bread is relatively quick.]

Honey Wheat Bread ( a good, basic sandwich loaf)

2 packages yeast (or 4 1/2 tsp)

2 cups warm water

2/3 cup honey

3 Tbs melted butter

1-2 tsp salt

3 cups whole wheat flour

2-3 cups all-purpose or bread flour

-Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 cup warm water until it foams. Add honey, melted butter, water, wheat flour, and enough all-purpose flour to bring the dough together (meaning it’s not so wet and sticky your can’t handle it).

-Knead for 5-10 minutes on a floured surface, adding all-purpose flour as needed.

-Place in a large oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover and let rise, about an hour if it’s warm enough.

-Punch dough down and divide in half. Flatten into rectangles and roll up into loaves. Place in oiled loaf pans. Allow to rise again until reaching the top of the pan, or an inch above, depending on your patience.

-Bake at 375  for 30-35 min.

-Coat the tops with melted butter before they cool (optional).

*You can  also place a metal pan in the oven while it’s preheating, and then add a few cups of tap water when you put the bread in to create steam that will give the bread a crispier crust.

If you have a favorite recipe, or a recommendation, please do share.

Meditations on Bread

There I was, standing in the bread isle reading ingredient lists for ten minutes, wondering what soy and corn products were doing in whole wheat bread. Maybe you’ve been in a similar situation. These are my ‘What Would Michael Pollan Do?’ moments. I am routinely baffled by ingredient labels, often to the point of painful deliberation that has doubled my average shopping time. I usually run through the gamut of possible solutions, most of which are not currently financially feasible or don’t satisfy my immediate need to eat, and then settle on some sort of middle ground—not TOO many weird ingredients, not too much money. On this particular occasion, however, it was pretty clear what the answer was. I picked up a packet of yeast and went home and made my own.

This was about a month ago, and I haven’t bought a loaf of bread since. This may not seem entirely remarkable. After all, how much bread can one person eat?  Let me just say that I come from a family of diligent toast-eaters. Somewhere along the way, my dad picked up the idea that toast is an appropriate side dish for any meal. Spaghetti? Naturally. Tacos? Claro que si. Stir fry? Yum. Sushi? Well, there’s a first for everything. My mom, meanwhile, has taught me that toast is a meal in and of itself, which she no doubt learned from her mother. Needless to say, I love toast and I eat a lot of it. So rather than waste my time deliberating at the store only to buy something that’s a little less bad, by making my own I know exactly what and how much is in it, and I get the  pleasure of eating home-made bread.

Ingredients

Fortunately, baking bread at home requires only a handful of ingredients, which I usually have, and no special equipment. Most home-made bread recipes consist of about 6 ingredients: yeast, water, honey/sugar, salt, flour, and butter/oil. If you choose to add things like nuts, whole grains, herbs or spices, or chocolate chips, the list can get longer but usually for the better. Take a look at the ingredient list on a package of store-bought bread. It’s probably longer than this. Wheat and whole grain breads in the grocery store can range anywhere from the standard 6 ingredients to upwards of 30.

Ingredients on food labels are listed by weight from most to least. Judging from standard bread recipes, sugar or honey should be the 3^rd or 4^th ingredient by weight, following flour, water, and maybe butter/oil.  If sugar is 2^nd on the ingredient list, you’re looking at a very sweet loaf of bread. And even if sugar is in the right place, there are probably some alien ingredients like rice flour, cultured corn solids, soy lecithin, or soy flour, to name a few.

Reading these ingredient labels brought to mind a few of Michael Pollan’s food rules. If you’re not familiar, Food Rules is a collection of tips with brief explanations based on all the food advice Pollan has been doling out over the years.

• Food rule number 3 says: “Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.”
• Number 7 says: “Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.”

These two are really getting at the same thing—if it’s not what you would normally add if you were making it yourself, you probably don’t want to eat it. At the very least, you don’t need to eat it.

Many of these kinds of ingredients, like cultured corn solids, are added for preservation, and if nothing else they are the mark of a highly processed food. Bread that’s two weeks old and is neither stale nor moldy is not normal. I’m not a food scientist, and I can’t say that all these extra ingredients are bad for you, but why eat them if they’re not necessary? Pollan wisdom suggests that “whether or not any of these additives pose a proven hazard to your health, many of them haven’t been eaten by humans for very long, so they are best avoided.” In other words, we don’t know the long-term effects of eating such manufactured additives, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The Exceptions

I have found two or three brands of bread that are made in or near Salt Lake City in the bread isles that have refreshingly short ingredient lists. Prairie Grain Bread Co. is carried by Smith’s, Fresh Market, and Harmon’s. Whole Foods carries Aspen Mills Bread out of Ogden, along with breads from local artisan bakeries like Vosen’s. There may be others as well. The point is that real breads with basic ingredients do exist in the retail world, so if you don’t always have time to bake bread, fret not. Just be prepared to pay a little more since they likely come from smaller companies that don’t use cheap soy and corn additives.

To be continued. . .

This is part of what turned into an epic discussion of bread with no end in sight. I think I’m going to try for fewer words, more often. I hope it can also allow me to be more responsive to discussions. Still to come? Recipes and a some thoughts on flour. . .

The Life that Sustains Us

A few months ago, before the snow started to fall and the smog nestled into the Salt Lake Valley for the winter, I sat in the shade of my tomato plants and read an essay highlighting the beauty and terror following the oil disaster in and around the Gulf of Mexico. “The Gulf Between Us”, Terry Tempest Williams’ impassioned essay in Orion magazine, prompted me to ask why? Why do we destroy that which sustains us, that which makes life possible, and moreover makes life worth living?

Spread across my lap were words describing loss on a scale I still cannot fathom. Everything about what happened seems wrong—the blowout, the lack of a reliable plan to cap the well gushing 60,000 barrels of oil a day, the chemicals that were dumped into the water to “fix” the problem, and the senseless loss of so much life. The gulf historically has provided people with sustenance, income, and the aesthetics that are so particular to place. Although I’m sure no one said, ‘We should destroy the life in the gulf,’ or even, “I don’t care if we destroy the life in the gulf,” our societal behavior suggests that we in fact do not care. We need oil so much that we will go to whatever depths are necessary, even if the consequences are unpredictable and irreconcilable. And we more or less have continued on as though nothing happened. The gulf disaster is just one example of this destruction; it happens everywhere and all the time.

As I read this essay, I was confronted by a stark contrast. Not three feet in front of me, hanging from a drooping limb, was a tomato the size of my fist just beginning to turn pink. I would look up and contemplate the life growing on my cement patio, and I would look down and read about human life, marine life, avian life, plant life, all of it threatened if not already decimated. Faced with the simplicity and joy of growing even a little bit of my own food and appreciating both the energy that helps create it and the vitality that it in turn gives to me, I was horrified by what we do to jeopardize this life, any life, that sustains us.

I learned over the summer that it doesn’t take much to grow a tomato. If you grew up near the gulf and know what you’re doing, it apparently doesn’t take much to catch a redfish either. It doesn’t matter what the life—fruit, fish, or fertile soil—and it doesn’t matter if we eat it directly or if it sustains us in other ways, we depend on this life to live. And, not surprisingly, the healthier the life that we consume, the healthier we will be. Yet somehow we’ve managed to separate our individual health from the health of what we eat.

To my sensibilities, limited as they may be, it should be simple enough to let our ecosystems live, to encourage them to thrive, and to allow them to sustain us. Instead we have taken what I see as the hard road, destroying life seemingly without thought, and then devising ever-more complicated recipes of technology, science, innovation, and efficiency to provide solutions to fill the voids we have created. I have nothing against science or technology, but I have a problem with using them to try and supplant naturally functioning systems. Genetically modified foods, growth hormones, and hydroponics are just a few of the technologies I’m referring to.

Dale Allred, a local farmer in Salt Lake City, says you can taste the vitality in a tomato. Indeed, you can taste the vitality in just about anything you eat. All those tomatoes that look nice and round and shiny red and taste like watery cardboard are not as full of life or nutrients as we should hope. Sometimes I feel like most grocery stores are taunting places, full of foods that look real, but are actually wax replicas and franken-foods expertly disguised as the real thing. The glossy fruits and vegetables are mere skeletons of what they could be. The meat looks meaty enough, but the poor creature that existed briefly to provide it probably doesn’t fit the bill of a healthy animal that you can feel good about eating.  I won’t list statistics about what fraction of fruit and vegetable varieties you can find in a store compared to what actually exist, or about the miles your food has traveled or the calories it took to grow, harvest, and transport it, or about all the weird things they put in our food. These statistics are abundant, should you care to look. What I’m concerned about is that our food is strangely devoid of vitality, and we’ve gotten used to it.

The point, if I have one, is that you don’t have to be a foodie or a gourmand to care about what you put in your body. We all depend on food. It is the life that sustains us, that makes our own lives possible, and it’s about time we gave a damn. Hopefully to come will be information and stories that encourage people to think more carefully about what they eat, things that may make the larger food issues relevant on a local scale, and suggestions on how to incorporate these ideas into your daily life.