Wildflowers

Yesterday, I was walking back from our family-owned produce market, Hyde Park Produce, when I heard someone playing music. I followed the sounds to Nichols Park, which I'd never walked through before, and found a band playing the blues while people casually stopped by to listen. I sat by a fountain surrounded by wild roses, and listened for a few moments, then went on my way.

Further into the park, I spotted a wildflower path, where a few people were weeding out the flowers and taking care of the space. I turned and decided to walk through the path. While I was wandering through, one of the women working told me that if I wanted them, I should take a bunch of the beautiful yellow wildflowers they were cutting, that they had too many.

I thanked her with surprise and sincere gratitude, and walked the rest of the way home with a huge bunch of flowers, stems, and leaves bundled in my arms, and a smile on my face. So many people stopped me and commented on my pretty flowers, and they smiled too. It was something I'd never experienced before quite like that.

When I got home, we cut the flowers out of all the brush, and put them in vases. Then we took the rest of the cuttings over to the compost pile in the community garden across the street from us. What a beautiful gift from nature, and from a kind stranger who must have intuited my love for wildflowers!

Ingredients: The Movie

We watched the movie "Ingredients," and it really inspired us to get into the sustainable food movement even more than we already had- beyond Whole Foods, beyond eating healthy, beyond even organic.

This movie does a good job of looking at the relationship between production and consumption, in this case, in the form of the restaurant industry. However, I really internalized the consumption aspect, seeing how supporting farmers is vital to supporting so many things I care about: family business, the earth, the health of the soil, the availability of quality, nutritious food, empowering ourselves against corporate and hierarchical structures, etc., etc.

In this, we see Alice Waters' oft-quoted perspective: that paying higher prices for these things is not a painful reality we accept, but a thing we choose and want to do in order to make every step of this process a worthwhile living choice for everyone involved. If we continue to demand cheaper and cheaper food, we price farmers out of making a living. More than that, we discourage those who might otherwise choose this career as a passion, an art (which then increases quality and intention of good) from pursuing this life.

However, if we offer good, fair prices, we increase the odds that passionate, talented people will pursue a way of life in farming in a way that supports a healthier economy (one that challenges corporate, detached ways of life), a healthier planet, and a healthier population.

After watching this movie, we decided to dedicate ourselves even more to what we believe in: we will be composting (WITH WORMS) in the apartment, we will be seeking out local foods in the form of farmers markets and CSA's, we will be structuring our menus around what is seasonally and locally available (which is a fun and welcome challange to my creativity), and we will be in general more sustainably-minded.

Don't get me wrong; we still bought some lemons and limes, and even an avocado (things that CLEARLY do not grow in Illinois!) for our menu. But, as a wise mentor has always impressed upon me, every little thing you do makes a difference. We hope that every step we take to dedicate ourselves to what we believe in will make us feel more purposeful and excited about, well, life! I'm certainly excited about the new challenges in cooking!

I realize that not everyone has the resources we have in Chicago, and that our resources will become vastlty more scant in the coming winter months. But, again, every little effort to eat what's in season, or grow your own herb garden on the windowsill, is something towards taking the power from forces outside of ourselves (namely, the food industry), and empowering ourselves.

More to come, especially on the worms!

Cooking Channel Seasonal Recipe Finder!

This is so cool! Cookingchanneltv.com has a recipe finder for produce that's in season! I'm not necessarily endorsing the recipes (but anything Jamie Oliver does is always good!), but at the very least, it's a good tool to find out what actually IS in season right now.

Just go to: http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/index.html and look on the right side toward the bottom in the box "In Season Now."

So cool!