borrowing the seasons

For the Cricket Bread project, the question “why?” could be a very common one, but I really have not had to answer it. No one has asked me, and I find that very interesting. To answer the question though, my “why” seems to change from day to day. While I’m not inclined to be evasive, I find that the reasons behind all this local eating are stacked and convoluted – at least for me.

In many ways this project has nothing to do with the actual ingesting of food or finding out where that food comes from. Sure, these two things are integral to what Cricket Bread is about, but is there a more primary reason for the project? I could say food miles or reducing energy consumption or examining carbon footprints, but many of these equations don’t come out well when applied to local food. It can be argued that it is more energy efficient to ship large volumes of produce by train than it is to drive yourself to the farmers market and back. While this might be something for discussion in the wider food distribution debate, it isn’t necessarily what I am trying to get at.

Is this project about supporting a local economy that just happens to include a food component? I could answer yes every time I hand a farmer some cash at the Farmers Market or buy local honey at the co-op or visit a farm stand. But then again, we could say this is all about nutrition, taste and slow food preparation.

Yet another possible “why” is to challenge myself to learn things that are very new to me. I made no pretension that this project would be easy for me or easily replicable. Things like fermentation, foraging and simply reaching out to growers and producers that I haven’t spoken to before are making me stretch and grow as a cook, researcher and community member.

As for the diet itself, for the most part the first month and a half has been relatively painless. Most things are pretty easy when food is in abundance. We are in the early part of the summer and produce is available in quantity and variety. The Stash has given me ample time to adjust to the new diet paradigm, and I am having fun in the process. However, it is not winter and I am not relying on stored food and very basic meals to get me by. Winter will be a very different time for this project, a time that will require a bit more scavenging and certainly more creativity with fewer ingredients.

Maybe, at the heart of it all, I am asking questions about how we choose to live our lives and what we hope to get from all that is going on in those lives. If all we want is to work eight hours a day, battle traffic to and from, eat a microwave meal and watch television until bedtime, then I think the majority of us have it covered. But if that lifestyle is not satisfying, if it is leading to emotional problems, relationships disintegrating and dissatisfaction with the normal life, why cling to it? Why not challenge yourself to get out of the rut, take yourself by the shoulders, shake vigorously, and say, “What am I doing this for?” If there is no good reason, no justification for continuing, no answer that makes the least bit of sense, then move on.

So, at the end of all that, the answer to “why” is simply that the other way of doing things just wasn’t working out for me. I could not think of a good reason to continue down the path of a non-local diet, borrowing the seasons from distant places in order to serve up a nice looking dinner plate. That way of eating had to end for me, and I hope, on some level, it can end for you as well.