Living Like a King(solver)

I'm not usually one of those people who believes that "everything happens for a reason"--at least, not in the guidance-from-above sense. Yet on the very same day I wrote about localvores and how the idea of self-enforced food restriction wasn't something I was ever likely to try, I began reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle thinking it was a book about eating organic foods. As it turns out, the book chronicles the cross-country relocation of the author and her family from Arizona to Virginia and their decision to eat only locally grown and produced foods for at least one year. Within twenty-four hours, I was devising plans in my head to convert my entire back yard into vegetable beds and contemplating which breed of heritage chickens would be the best type to raise as egg layers. However, I still have that nagging problem of not having access to locally grown and milled flour, not to mention two of my other necessities for life: sugar and coffee. And while I could probably get by for a few months without fresh berries, cantaloupe, and cucumbers, my four- and six-year-old children would not be quite as content to wait for the appropriate seasons for the afore-mentioned to arrive (are you kidding? They can't even wait the fifteen seconds it takes to walk from the toy store to the car before they demand to open it NOW). From what I've read thus far, I've already deduced that I do not possess even one tenth of the patience or self-control that the author and her family seem to exert almost effortlessly when it comes to eating only foods that are in season locally--not in Florida or California or Mexico. I know those blueberries in the grocery store were picked weeks ago and then sat in boxes in trucks or on trains for days, and that blueberries really are not meant to withstand all that travel and still look as fresh as the day they were picked. In the case of conventionally grown berries, the fact that they do look freshly picked should signal to us that these blueberries are packing more than antioxidants. And even the organically grown berries (which are not usually quite as pretty nor do they last as long), although they may be physically chemical-free, are still using up a lot of precious fossil fuels to get from point A to our refrigerators. But my kids really love them, and I hate to deny them the pleasure of eating something as enjoyable (not to mention healthy) as blueberries, especially when I know the reason "they're not really in season right now" would be falling on youthfully deaf ears. Suddenly, eating organic is not as simple as going to Hannaford's and loading my grocery cart with organically grown produce (like I did last week--and I was so proud of myself, too.)

One item I have decided against eating out of season from now on, though, is the tomato. For years, I have been simultaneously disappointed and outraged each time I've ordered a caprese salad in a restaurant, even in a really fantastic restaurant, and the tomatoes have been pale, mealy, and bitter--disappointed because the tomato tastes terrible, and outraged that the restaurant had been so foolish as to have purchased such poor quality produce. Now I understand who the true fool in the scenario is: the same fool who, on a trip to Maine just this past weekend, ordered a pizza with pesto and tomatoes. As soon as the pizza was set down in front of me and I looked at the chunks of barely pink fruits with crystallized flesh sitting in watery puddles on top of the cheese, I thought "Why did I order this? Tomatoes don't grow in Maine in the middle of January." Then and there, I decided I would not eat another fresh tomato until I could pick it myself out of my garden, purchase it from a local farmer, or take it out of my farm box this coming summer. It's not much, but it's a start.

Whether it be the result of divine intervention or pure coincidence, it seems obvious that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the perfect book for me to be reading at this point in my quest for information and guidance on organic living. Although I have read barely a hundred pages of the Kingsolvers' story, I have already begun to understand what is likely to be the most important lesson I will learn from their localvore experience: in order to live like kings, we should strive to eat like the Kingsolvers.

Kate
The Ordinary Organic