Summer of Food

Last Christmas I received Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and read it just as fast as I could shouting out things to Kyle like, “We are totally going to raise chickens! YAY chickens!” “Can we somehow convert our concrete hole of a yard into a garden this year??” and, “I’m so totally going to make CHEESE in the KITCHEN.” Needless to say, I was more than a little intrigued/enthused/consumed by the entire notion of eating locally. It just makes a lot of sense. Without going into it much here, I’ll just say that the book is a must read and has left me craving a small farm in Appalachia a bit more than the next girl.

It was the cheese in the kitchen comment that really caused Kyle to throw on the brakes and declare that perhaps I should slow down before attempting to turn our fairly urban apartment into an 1800s homestead. So I spent the next several months eating take out four nights a week and putting off any local eating experiments until the weather turned warm and their was local fair to be had. (Actually, my take out shame spiral had nothing to do with the cheese-free kitchen edict and everything to do with the fact that my job search was dragging on and leaving me more than a little down about it).

But the spring brought gainful employment and a rededication to the idea that trying to find ways to eat locally would be awesome and was something that I just had to do. Right. Now. And after several months of working on this, I’m feeling compelled to record the attempt here. Blogging has never stuck for me. Just as I have horrifyingly embarrassing middle school journals that are all false starts, lamenting about boys and declarations that, “this time I am determined to keep writing here!” that were abandoned after days, so too has this blog been one false start after another. The difference is, this time I don’t care. Right now I feel like sharing our food adventures, so I will. If tomorrow I change my mind, OK!

That being said, the biggest thing to get the ball rolling in terms of giving this a try was subscribing to Boston Organics. Boston Organics has always offered great organic fruits and veggies delivered to your door, but only recently have they started a locally sourced option, the Dogma box. For me, it was the local nature of the food that was the most important, not necessarily the fact that it’s organic (although that is awesome) so this is really the box for us. Every week we’re delivered local, organic, interesting produce that we then have to figure out 1.) what it is and 2.) how to consume it. This has been an awesome opportunity to learn to cook a variety of veggies we would have walked right past in the grocery store, to find out that I/we like some (kale, collard greens, cabbage) and that others aren’t as popular (Kyle finds eating baby bok choy to be the most cruel form of torture imaginable). It’s also helped me to remember that I love cooking and that take out is expensive and not very tasty. I’m spending far more time in the kitchen than I have in recent memory and I love it. While we still struggle to get through all the produce in one week (either freezing it for the winter or eating it all up) we’re getting much better at it and I’ve found a lot of joy in the attempt.