Learning to Eat

For the last two years I’ve participated in my University’s Hunger Week book club. We read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver the first year and In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan the second year. While I considered myself a “good eater” by preferring organics, farmer markets, etc. But these discussions and books helped me further develop my view on food, how it is processed, where it is grown, how it is transported, and what role I give it in my life. Being a college student I developed bad eating habits while at school. Eating between classes, and even on the weekends I would eat quickly…spending an average of 10 minutes for my whole meal (plus 5 for preparation of buying). I tried to cook in the kitchen provided to upper level students, but I always felt as though I did not have enough time. I loved eating when I went home for breaks or when my parents came to visit--all I could talk about was food and eat it. They always asked whether or not I was eating at all at school. .One of the things I came to realize was that I was no longer enjoying my food. Anything tastes great with Ranch dressing while your in college. I was no longer spending time with my food like my family does when they cook. Last year I lived in a wonderful community house where a lot of cooking occurred. We had community dinner, switching who cooked each week, and we cooked for ourselves and each other the rest of the time. The conversations I had while preparing meals in the kitchen, eating meals together, or just getting a glass of water from the kitchen and finding myself hours later still there talking, will be ones that I will never forget. As a community we tried to be as environmentally friendly and in line with social justice ideals as we could. We composted (yes, we even had compost worms!), recycled (each floor had about 7 different containers to separate recyclables), tried to not buy brands that we knew had unjust policies and practices, and participated in Food Not Bombs (which is a total food-influencing-life experience in itself…check out where there is one near you). Now that I’ve graduated, and am no longer living in a winter wonderland, I decided to plant some of my own food. Literally knowing where my food comes from and knowing that I took part in really creating my own food. Yummy organic purple spinach, radicchio, three kinds of tomatoes, lettuce.