… then watch it again in a month.
Salatin Project from rob walker on Vimeo.
In 50 minutes Salatin sums up the most important reasons to eat locally, organically and seasonally.
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago. Add a comment
by Mike
Have you heard of the word, “terroir?” It’s French. Terroir is why champagne can only come from the Champagne region of France. It’s why you can’t call your crappy, molded chicken milk, “Roquefort.”
Terroir is the sum of the environmental conditions in a place. It’s the soil composition, the acidity of rain, the angle of the sun, the height of the hills, local farming techniques and surrounding plant species and all the minute variables that even local farmers might not know. The terroir of the Champagne region can’t be reproduced anywhere else on earth. You want to make champagne? Move to Champagne. But if you’re satisfied making some shitty sparkling wine then you can stay in Fife or wherever you live. Expand!
When you eat a meal you eat a place.1 Not only are you physically becoming part of the food and its soil, but you’re spiritually saturating your body with the terroir.2
This will blow your mind. Have you ever heard of camas or salal? Well, let me tell you about them, friend. Camas is a plant with an edible root that seems to be somewhere between an onion and a potato. (It has a bad-ass brother named, death camas, which isn’t nearly as fun to eat.) And salal is a low shrub that you’ve definitely seen around the NW if you’ve spent any time here. It lives under tall trees, near water and it makes little black-purple berries. You’ve definitely seen it.
Both these plants are native to the Pacific Northwest. Along with salmon they were the staple foods of the Northwest native peoples.
I have lived here my whole life. I wouldn’t say I know everything about Western Washington botany, but I pay as much attention as anyone else. Until a few months ago, I had never even heard of the two plants that were the pillars of people’s diets, right here, for the last 10,000 years. And it’s not like I’m six years old; I’m thirty! Over thirty!
So, what does this have to do with anything? I’m not really sure myself, I’m a little drunk.
I guess what I’m getting at is that Presence/Attention/Awareness is about more than just focusing on the moment, it’s also about engaging with this place where we are.3 Because we eat many times a day, we have many opportunities to engage with the terroir, to be sensually present in this physical Place and let the rain become our blood. We should eat food with which we share terroir, with which we have a common rhythm.
Salal and camas evolved here, so where are they in our diets? Maybe they taste bad, I don’t know, I’ll tell you this summer, but maybe they were pushed off our plates by cheap food from other places. If we are where we eat, then most of us are geographic Frankensteins.
Where it rains so much that there’s rain in my dreams and my knees can feel it and it narrates Sunday mornings, do I eat the onion that drank the rain that wet my hair weeks before?4
—
1 “Terroir” technically refers only to food and drink (and the official distinction doesn’t even require that the food be organic), but I like to think of it as applying to other things as well – clothing and building materials immediately come to mind.
Art made with local materials is, I think, something different. Of course food and clothes and structures can be created with inspiration to become more than just necessities of survival – they can become expressions of place through person – but the timing of the creative process may or may not coincide with the need for food or shelter, and those two things are going to be taken care of regardless.
2 Not to mention the spirit with which the farmer grows, treats and harvests the food.
3 Travel is, essentially, the experience of and engagement with Place. Which is why these food posts have a place on a travel blog.
4 This is what I thought about when praying before each meal in France, how our bodies mix with the earth and why I can taste Marguerite’s biceps in her wine.
Posted 1 year, 7 months ago. Add a comment
The following information is all courtesy of Fresh Picked Seattle. They are responsible for making this beautiful map, so please visit their site!
Saturdays = Blue
Sundays = Green
Tuesdays = Purple
Wednesday = Red
Thursdays = Yellow
Fridays = Aqua
Note: There are also markets in Redmond (Saturday) and Sammamish (Friday) not shown on the map. Click below for details.
Icons with dots are closed for part of the year. Click the marker for specifics.
View the Seattle Farmers Markets in a larger map. (external link)
Listings by day of the week:
Saturdays
U-District Farmers Market
Year-round. 9am-2pm
Corner of University Way & NE 50th
Magnolia Farmers Market
June 5 – Sept 25, 10am-2pm
Next to the Magnolia Community Center at 2550 34th Avenue West.
Bellevue Farmers Market
June 5 – Nov 20, 10 – 2pm
Washington Square
10610 NE 8th St
Kent Farmers Market
June 5th – Sept 25th
2nd Ave & Smith St in downtown Kent
Edmonds Farmers Market
July 3rd to Oct 2nd, 9:00 am – 3:00 pm
(Closed Aug. 14th due to the Taste of Edmonds)
Downtown Edmonds on 5th Street from Main at the fountain to Bell and east up Bell Street around Centennial Plaza.
Georgetown Farmers Market
June 5 to Sept 25, 10:00am – 3:00 pm
Located on the grounds of the original Rainier Brewery, 6000 Airport Way S in the Georgetown District, between the General Offices building and the old Malt House.
Redmond Saturday Market
May 1 – Oct 30, 9am-3pm
7730 Leary Way NE
Sundays
Tuesdays
Wednesdays
Thursdays
Fridays
[Updated 6/2010]
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago. 4 comments
by Mike
The health of our soils is the health of our bodies. If our soil is poor then our veggies are poor, our animals are poor and we are poor. It’s why people eating a modern diet can be simultaneously fat and malnourished, full and hungry: something significant is missing. Modern, large-scale farming takes nutrients from the land without giving anything back. They try to boost the soil with man-made fertilizers. It’s just a way of cutting corners, though, and it compromises our health. (Read More)
We know very little about what’s in food and how it works in our bodies. Though we know about big things like carbs and protein and fat and fiber, there’re dozens, if not hundreds, of other ‘things’ that make up a pepper. These things – together I’m calling them ‘spirit’ – include anti-oxidants and other chemical compounds that we haven’t yet studied. We might not know their significance, but we do know we evolved eating veggies & animals complete with that spirit, and now we’re not.
Most food – even organic food – in most grocery stores comes from land where there’s only one crop in the ground. This practice is called monoculture. For example, peppers come from a farm where there are only peppers. This is cheaper because it means that the land can be worked by machine or at least in an assembly-line style. All the sun and water and fertilizer goes to the same crop, so they end up with huge, handsome peppers that are delicious to the eyes.
On the modern, industrial farm this means that the peppers keep pulling the same nutrients out of the soil. If the farm is going to keep producing peppers, the soil needs a boost from fertilizers. Large-scale farms will likely use man-made, industrial fertilizer, which supplies the nutrients that help peppers grow.
The fertilizer is good for making it grow, but is it good for making it whole? Probably not. Monoculture doesn’t exist in nature, in fact it’s unique in earth’s history to our modern age. Monoculture removes its peppers from the natural cycle of life, which is the source of spirit.
In the wild, a pepper lives among other plants, fights for resources, fights off bugs, eats decomposed vegetation that’s been pooped out by worms – the natural cycle of life. Plants evolved to live in close quarters with other plants of other species, so that’s how they’ll grow most healthily, that’s how they’ll develop spirit.
Our bodies evolved to eat foods that come from healthy soil (and water). Our bodies evolved to eat plants that live among other plants. We evolved to eat foods complete with spirit, so that’s how we’ll grow most healthily ourselves.
If farmers, to save money, make compromises on the health of their soil, we compromise our own health by buying their peppers.
This is why just eating vegetables isn’t good enough. This is why just eating organic isn’t good enough, this is why just eating local isn’t good enough. To eat healthily we need to eat from healthy land. What does this look like?
Healthy land lives. It has many different plants that take different nutrients from the soil and give other nutrients back. This is the basis of polyculture farming (or ideally, permaculture) – different plants help each other. Worms are another pillar of healthy land, turning dead vegetation into soil that’s rich in the nutrients that living plants love.
Womb-apples are prehistosexy.
So, what’s at stake? A lot of these ideas come directly from Michael Pollan. In his inspiring book, In Defense of Food, he makes a compelling argument that the diseases of civilization are the result of the modern industrial diet. These diseases include cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, varicose veins and hemorrhoids, and more. To me, the point is this: we know that we evolved eating foods that grew in a wild, natural context. Are we so arrogant that we think we can circumvent nature without compromising our health?
The best way to ensure that you’re eating from healthy soil is to eat what’s growing wild. The next best is to grow the food yourself. Failing that, go to a farmers’ market and buy from farmers who are small enough that they care about the quality of their soil and plants. If shopping at a grocery store, shop at a cooperative that has information on the farms from which it buys its produce.
Avoid buying vegetables in industrial packaging. Avoid buying veggies from grocery stores like QFC or Safeway or Costco. If you’re in a pinch for time, go home and throw together a meal from what you already have at home, I’ll bet you didn’t even need to shop that day.
Again, the closer you are to your source – the fewer hands through which your money passes to get to the soil – the more sure you can be that the health of the pepper is not being compromised. And, in turn, you’ll be healthier and spiritier.
Three times a day you medicate yourself. Be efficient and discriminating.
Be overjoyed about wild crab.
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago. Add a comment
This too.
by Mike
Joe is Mexican, he lives in Mexico. He grows peppers and cows for a living, selling his veggies and meat to neighbors. Often he’ll trade steaks for other veggies to round out the family’s diet. The family has always made just enough money to get by, enough for food and for the kids’ school.
Unfortunately, Joe was renting his land, and that land was sold to a tomato company that exports its produce. Joe’s going to lose his farm, but they’ll rent another house in town and try to make it work. The company also bought most of the neighbors’ farms, so now anyone who wants to eat has to buy food from a restaurant or store.
Joe tries working at the tomato farm, but the wages are too low, the family finds they can’t make ends meet. Joe decides he’ll follow others’ example and go to the US, leaving his family at home. (Read More)
He illegally goes to Arizona to find work. He finds it at a diner, busing tables. The pay is much better there than at the tomato farm, which means that if Joe sacrifices his comfort, he can send money home to his family. Obviously he’d rather be in Mexico, but, you know, that’s life.
After the hullabaloo in Arizona about illegal immigrants, Joe moves to Seattle where he finds work busing tables at a cafe.
Then, in December, you walk into the cafe and you order water and a tomato. Joe brings it to you. Neither he nor you know where the tomato is from. The tomato is originally from Joe’s old land, from the farm that didn’t pay him well.
The cafe owner might know that it’s from Mexico, but they might not, and besides, they’re watching the bottom line. Of course, that’s why we eat Mexican tomatoes in Seattle – because it was so cheap to grow and harvest that the cafe can buy it and serve it to you at a great price in the middle of winter, or maybe you buy it at a grocery store for the same reason.
The local stuff the farmers grow here is too expensive, you think, and besides, there isn’t any local tomato in December, and you want tomato in December, seasons be damned.
You smile at Joe, and he smiles back, and both of you are oblivious to the fact that by ordering tomato you’ve indirectly separated Joe from his family. He may or may not resent you for it. You may or may not resent him for being here.
You might buy Coke from Iowan farmers displaced by corn, order chicken from an Arkansan displaced by chicken farms, drink wine with French people displaced by vineyards, order salmon from Alaskans whose fish runs are trickling. These are gastronomic refugees, maybe some generations removed, but they can’t go home.
You’re no socialist, but you also don’t want to hurt people, you tend to like them. But money alienates us from the spirit and people at the source of our food. So you spend the money and you hurt others. You’re not bad, you just didn’t know how else to do it.
So, now that we can see how it works, we have to ask ourselves: given that we have money and there’s tomato on the menu or in the Costco, do we have a right to buy it just because we want it? Am I greedier than I am compassionate?
Your money can be used for good, to support things you believe in. It can be used here, for the farmers and farms that are here. For the families and nutrients here, even if they don’t have tomatoes. You don’t need a tomato, like, ever.
The default use of money, these days, supports practices that hurt others, so it’s not good enough to go with the flow. The closer you are to your source – the fewer hands through which your money passes to get to the soil – the more sure you can be that your food isn’t hurting people. It kinda doesn’t matter how bad you want the tomato.
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago. 3 comments
by Mike
There are people who don’t care whether they hurt others. They don’t want to improve themselves. They don’t care about being nor doing good. These posts aren’t for them.
There are others who want to do good and are critical of their own habits and practices. They pay attention to the consequences of their actions. They do the research to make sure that they live and spend cleanly and according to their morals. Even if they aren’t perfect, they’re working on it. To them I say, Keep fighting the good fight. But these posts aren’t for them either. The next few posts about food are for... clicky
The next few posts about food are for the people who want to do good but don’t have time to do the research. They want to improve themselves but find the information confusing. They don’t want to hurt others, but they aren’t sure what that means in practice, or maybe they aren’t aware of the importance of their food source.
These food posts will show some of the political, social, economic and spiritual impacts of our eating decisions. I’m sharing this stuff because it’s tremendously important that this awareness spread, that we all work on this together and support each other in our eating practices. I’m convinced that eating consciously is the foundation for a clean life, personally and nationally.
Eating is a political, social, economic and spiritual act. Three times a day we vote, speak, support and pray. Our food sources deserve careful attention.
That’s the disclaimer. See you tomorrow.
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago. 2 comments
