22 ~ Milestone, without millstone
Last week I reached a milestone of sorts - six months since I last went grocery shopping (on December 23 in Switzerland, for Christmas dinner).
In some ways the pandemic has made this endeavor easier, by freeing more time to produce my own food. Yet in other ways, the lockdown has made it more difficult. With the closure of cafes and restaurants, and the grounding of travel (normally I travel quite a bit for work), I’ve had to provide more of my meals than is the usual pattern.
Overall, I remain surprised at the ease of my sabbatical from grocery shopping. I have little sense of hardship, of white-knuckling it. It’s as if grocery shopping was a disposable habit, which I’ve now let go of. It reminds me of those times – and I’m sure we all have them - when I eat lunch or dinner out of habit (“time for dinner”), rather than appetite. Similarly, many of my previous trips to the grocery store were probably driven by habit, underpinned by sloth - much easier to buy something than put in the time and effort to make something.
I didn’t start this endeavor as a crusade, with any sense of making a point about the superiority of eating locally. I just did it out of curiosity and fun. But as I’ve educated myself along the way about our industrial, fossil fuel guzzling food system, and the gift to the planet of eating locally, I’ve found a deep sense of satisfaction, a sense of having found a small corner of ‘rightness’ in the world. This in turn has engendered a supportive desire to keep going.
When giving up a habit or addiction, it is helpful, even vital, to replace it with something else. And this sense of contentment, born of a confidence that I am doing a good thing (while enjoying it), seems to have helped fill whatever hole I sometimes sought to fill through a grocery shopping run - an alternative source of sustenance.
Another unanticipated benefit is the best state of physical health I’ve been in for years; decades, in fact. I just got on the scale – 153 pounds (69.5 kg). Except for perhaps during some long field surveys in Laos, I haven’t weighed under 155 in the last 20 or 30 years – and all without an exercise program, other than trout fishing and working in my gardens, and my regular bit of yoga. The replete shelves of grocery stores are replete with temptations - ice cream, chips, Pecan Sandies and all manner of processed, dead calorie foods. Out of sight, out of mind, out of cupboard. I don’t really miss any of it. Part of it is probably the activation of a positive feedback loop – as you anchor a bit into better health, unhealthy choices hold less attraction.
The bit of a gap since my last post was due in part because I’ve been occupied with a dive into a thorough decluttering under the tutelage of Marie Kondo’s books. Some of her perspectives and approaches are quite profound, and I love her eccentricity (“I have very few interests other than tidying…”). For those of you not familiar with her method, she advocates (nay, dictates) decluttering not by rooms of your home (living room, bedroom, etc.) but by category of possessions, in this order: clothes, books, papers, miscellany, and mementos. I realize now she neglected a category: food.
One reason this no-grocery experiment has been painless is the large amount of forgotten or neglected (but still good) food I’ve found in my cupboards, fridge and freezers. For instance, a five pound bag of whole wheat flour in the back of the freezer (which I used last night for a strawberry-rhubarb pie and a quiche); packages of forgotten frozen vegetables; and enough jam and jellies to last until the unification of the two Koreas. I’ve been able to live in part on decluttering my larder, which has helped bridge the period until food began to emerge in the garden.
And the blessed emergence has started. This early summer season, when the vegetable gardens stretch toward the sun, is one of the best eating times of the year. Last evening, I made one of my favorite meals, by simply going out to the garden at dusk (barefoot, natch), with a basket and small knife, to see what the garden had to offer – which changes almost daily now. In the past, I often entered a big shelf grocery store with an attitude of demanding what I wanted, even if it was mangoes in winter. Now, a more Taoist approach holds sway - listening to the world, seeing what it has to offer, and accepting and working with that. Last evening I collected some asparagus (still!), fresh garlic, a small onion, chard, kale, peapods, a fingerling carrot, the first, small zucchini and its blossom, a small summer squash, and thinnings of a beet and a turnip with their greens. Into the wok, with some peanut oil (another back-of-the-shelf find) and some sweet soy sauce still on hand, I turned out my signature ‘what’s-in-the-garden-today?’ stirfry. Fantastic –and beats anything I could have assembled from a grocery store. Deprivation is furthest from my mind, with my dingy knuckles creased with dirt and stained with beet juice.
In an upcoming post, a recipe for a simple summer cocktail (or mocktail) from the garden.
What I’m reading and can recommend:
A Collection of Essays, by George Orwell
Nothing feeds my writer’s well better than reading George Orwell (and Somerset Maugham). I unearthed this one when I applied Marie Kondo’s method to my horde of books this past week, and dove into it. If you admire and enjoy stellar non-fiction writing, treat yourself to a copy.
