BY KATHRYN A. BERT, MINISTER UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF GREATER LANSING, MICHIGAN
This is a small accounting of the Thursday I wrote this sermon. I was up early. I cooked breakfast for my family to lure them out of bed. We had eggs from Charlotte, sausage from Jones Dairy Farm in Wisconsin, and tortillas from Detroit.
After they left, I took our dog, Scotty, for a walk. On the trail between Abbott and Lake Lansing Road I looked out over the field of drying grass—colors of yellow, green, brown—with dots of deep purple, white and cornflower blue scattered throughout.
When we got home, I took a tour of our neighbor’s garden. They have left for awhile and told us we could harvest whatever is left. I picked beans and admired their garden, which is so much more prolific than our own—or seems so. Perhaps other people’s food always looks more attractive. They have tomatillos, beans, and tomatoes left.
Five years ago, when I first came to East Lansing, I was invited to join a minister’s study group called the Ohio River Group. Their topic that year was food. And this was really the first time I did any reading on the Slow Food movement. I offer you the mission statement of Slow Food USA, for context:
Slow Food USA envisions a future food system that is based on the principles of high quality and taste, environmental sustainability, and social justice—in essence, a food system that is good, clean and fair. We seek to catalyze a broad cultural shift away from the destructive effects of an industrial food system and fast life; toward the regenerative cultural, social and economic benefits of a sustainable food system, regional food traditions, the pleasures of the table, and a slower and more harmonious rhythm of life.
One of the books we read that year was Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser. I came home and told my husband we should find a local CSA to join. CSA is Community Supported Agriculture—individuals who support a farm, with the growers and consumers sharing the risks and benefits of food production—consumers buying shares of the farm, and receiving a portion of the farm’s produce throughout the growing season. By directly selling to community members, the farmers get working capital in advance, receive better prices for their crops, gain some financial security, and are relieved of much of the burden of marketing. The consumers, in turn, get a portion of what the farm produces—you don’t get to choose it—you simply get what is ready.
However, this was my first year of ministry, our first year living in a new area, the first year of a new job for my husband, and the first year in a new school for my son. We weren’t ready to add to all that change, a completely new way of buying food and therefore, cooking. So, we never found or joined a CSA, or really changed our supermarket habits at all.
But, we’ve got roots now. We’re settled in. We have a home; we have a community and even some deep roots outside of my job. We have some predictability in our lives. I think that is the main reason that this summer, when I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, it took us no time at all to embark on the change we had only talked about five years ago.
Barbara Kingsolver’s book is a chronicle of her family’s year of food life. And I shouldn’t say it’s just Barbara Kingsolver’s book, though her sections are largest; it is co-authored by her husband Steven L. Hopp, and daughter, Camille.
For me, it was gripping. It reminded me of Thoreau’s year at Walden Pond. She describes their life in the same kind of detail that Thoreau describes his—including the accounting of the tab at the end of the year. They fed themselves, organically and well, on about fifty cents per family member per meal. Less, she speculated, than spent during the years she qualified for food stamps. Of course, they had some land—3,524 square feet. But she calculated that it took one acre to feed their family of four, whereas the current nutritional consumption in the U.S. requires an average of 1.2 cultivated acres per individual.
What I loved and noticed about Kingsolver’s book was the non-judgmental tone. But what also came through in her writing is how much they enjoyed this year of eating locally, this year of food. She said they all anticipated how much they would miss, but discovered as the year progressed that the year was much more about eating and living well than sacrifice. They stopped missing bananas after awhile.
Writing about food made me hungry, so at this point in the day I took a break for lunch. I ate a hamburger bun that was decidedly not local, leftover from a recent party—I can’t waste food. I topped it with a local tomato from Meijer’s supermarket—I searched hard to determine it was truly from a local farm, asmost of their produce is mis-labeled and I’ve told them so. I picked some basil from the front yard, and topped it with cheddar cheese from Linwood, Michigan. Delicious. Satisfied, I returned to writing this sermon.
I was inspired by this book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and it’s led me to other books on the subject. My favorite, right now, is a 1948 classic called The Unprejudiced Palate by Angelo Pellegrini. Its subtitle is Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life. Pellegrini came to the U.S. as a child, an immigrant from Tuscany, landing in Washington State. It should be called the Prejudiced Palate, Alice Waters suggests, because he is very opinionated. Like Thoreau and Kingsolver, he writes in detail about what he gardens, cooks, and eats—and, like Thoreau, he offers scathing opinions about the errors of the rest of American society. Prophetic, to be sure. He anticipates the Slow Food movement even before fast food has taken hold.
One of the myths that all these authors chip away at is that you must be rich in order to eat well, or eat locally, or eat organically. In fact, all of them feed themselves well on far less than you would expect. All three have known poverty in their lives, and know of what they speak. They all work harder to produce affordable food, but they all report that by working harder, their enjoyment of the food increases.
Three eggplants are growing. I harvest one yellow summer squash, and leave four on the vine. Four zucchinis are growing. I’m pleased by the abundance of squash—I thought we were just about done. My favorite discovery, however, is that the two tiny cucumbers I thought weren’t growing seem to be larger—and, even better, there is a bigger cucumber I somehow missed until this day! I’m just thrilled.
So, back to the house and writing about pleasure activism. I first heard that term on the radio show The Splendid Table. Occasionally, Lynne Rossetto Kasper will introduce a guest as a “pleasure activist,” and then that guest will go on to describe delicious food in X, Y or Z city. I just love it. Because if there is one thing I have noticed this summer it’s that by trying to eat locally I take more pleasure in my food. A cucumber we ate earlier in the week—one we thought would be our only from our garden—it was more precious and tasty for being unique.
It is a happy coincidence that good choices—that is, choices that are good for the environment and for the body, are also delicious and enjoyable. I love the idea of becoming pleasure activists and helping ourselves make this connection, helping us nourish body and soul.
I could see pleasure activism bringing gardens to the city—providing community gardens, as the UU church in Ogden, Utah does, for our own use and that of our neighbors. Or simply holding community meals such as have been held for the Localvore Challenge in the Lansing area. Pleasure activists could advocate for families who struggle to find time to be together to break bread.
“The American,” writes Pellegrini “has neglected the trifles which in their totality constitute a principal ingredient in human happiness.” He continues:
I should not be at all hesitant to say that, of the principal ingredients, it is the most important, and that this book may therefore be properly regarded as a continuous emphasis on neglected trifles: the garden, the cellar, the simple pleasures of the dinner hour, a scrupulous husbandry in the home, the quiet joy of modest achievement.
Or, to paraphrase Thoreau: “if life is sublime, we should know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it.”
This is the season of pleasure activism, the season of abundance and sharing. It’s the simple pleasures, the trifles, as Angelo Pellegrini calls them, which are at the core of this movement.
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