Navigating: food, culture and a kayak

I love projects. Paint, fabric, you name it. And I love that this blog gives me a space to record some of those projects, even though I am absolutely terrible at keeping it updated. But there is something else I am passionate about: real food.

I've resisted sharing it here because there are so many cooking blogs out there, and I don't want to be a cooking blog. But then I realized that:

• This is my blog and I can put whatever I want on it.
• Real food requires just as much energy and creativity as some of my other projects.
• I've chosen to make this a priority in my daily life, and so my blog should reflect that.
• I find I am asked frequently for the same recipes, so documenting them here will be much easier.

So, some background. Like many people, I have had an awakening about the state of our food system in this country. I have strong opinions on this topic and the many ways it touches our everyday lives. There is so much to say about this, but (very) briefly:

• Too much of our food is produced in factories.
• Too many people don't know how to cook. 
• So much of this factory food, while edible, is not actually food. (See Omnivore's Dilemma or anything else written by Michael Pollan). It is full of chemicals and things you wouldn't otherwise have any reason to put in your body.
• So much of our "food" is raised, grown and processed in ways that are dangerous to our health (and I don't mean that in an abstract way - see Fast Food Nation), economically short-sighted, and ecologically disastrous. 

And:

• Real food tastes better and is more satisfying.
• Real food is better for your body.
• Eating - and enjoying - real food can help us have a healthier relationship with food. 

There's nothing quite like having kids to feed to make you rethink what is on your table. And how it got there. 

The food we eat, where we get it, how we eat it - all of it is shaped by our culture. And frankly, this aspect of our culture is terrible. 

• We have allowed corporations to dominate our food culture, choices and policies. 
• Low-quality, highly processed food is by far the cheapest and most plentiful thing to eat. 
• And we eat it everywhere - in our cars, at our desks, everywhere.
• We're losing the communal element of what it means to eat together.
• We have lost the notion that eating should be pleasurable and important.
• We are losing the creativity, innovation and satisfaction of cooking.
• We are not teaching our children how to eat - but later we will definitely teach them how to be on a diet.

In my mind our food culture is like a river. A river I am not happy with at all. There are so many other rivers I would rather be in - French, Italian, etc. - as I think our river is pretty messed up and does not flow to a happy place. Think about how hard it can be to "eat healthy" or be on a diet - it basically involves swimming upstream, fighting against so many aspects of our unhealthy food culture. You can give up any of these things and swim upstream for a while: 

• carbs
• fat
• dairy
• gluten
• cooked foods 
• solid foods
• pleasure
• eating out
• the list goes on... 

And it will probably be great. For a while. But you can only swim upstream for so long before you get tired and the current overwhelms you and you are back where you started, or maybe even further downstream.  

I don't want to go where this river leads. But I was born into it and this is my home. When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to cross a river in a kayak. You don't paddle straight across, or the current will just carry you off. Instead, you aim upstream for the other side, higher than where you actually want to end up, and angle your boat so that while the current is pushing you downstream, you are also letting it push you where you want to go. And of course you paddle.

That is my goal - I have to work within this river, and I need to figure out how to make it help me and my family. We all do, for so many good reasons. 

We have to aim higher upstream.

We have to do the work and planning needed to navigate this river.

We have to forgive ourselves - we didn't create this river.

We need to explore this river - name the things that are in it and examine them.

We have to do what we can to improve this river. While we cannot control it, we should take every possible opportunity to make it better.

So... in summary, I'll be posting some things about food. :)