It’s ‘Blog Action Day,’ time to ‘Eat Local and Laugh’
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['Eat Local and Laugh' will be an ongoing series exploring ways to develop a psychologically sustainable approach to eating. This initial post is being made specifically in recognition of Blog Action Day '09 Climate Change.]
You may think you’re just scarfing-up another slice, or maybe savoring a bright red strawberry in the middle of winter. But eating your food is not a simple act, you are also taking sides in a slew of geopolitical conflicts. Our daily routines of nutrition and communion inevitably put us right in the middle of the fight about catastrophic climate change. Like it or not, eating is a political act.
The American Psychological Association convened a task force to study the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change and issued a helpful report in September ‘09.
“What is unique about current global climate change is the role of human behavior,” said task force chair Janet Swim, PhD, of Pennsylvania State University. “We must look at the reasons people are not acting in order to understand how to get people to act.”
The long, detailed report goes on to say that even for those who understand the problem, appreciate the need for immediate action even though the catastrophe will not be fully felt for a generation or two, and want to work towards a solution even while feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge, there is still that pesky problem of actually changing what we do:
Habit – Ingrained behaviors are extremely resistant to permanent change while others change slowly. Habit is the most important obstacle to pro-environment behavior, according to the report.
In other words it is all about changing habits, which will not be easy. Given everything we know about both the consequences of our eating habits and the difficulties effecting habit-change, changing habits will come neither from appeals to reason nor self-interest. But it might just come from changing the hedonic-balance, that is, from making change more satisfying and gratifying than not changing.
We know that mainstream American eating habits significantly contribute to global climate change. Our plentiful, cheap food floats in an ocean of oil and gas. That can’t go on. Also, our eating habits are killing us. We trade future health to purchase today’s convenience. Many have become receptacles for high-fructose corn syrup and end up contributing to soaring levels of diabetes and obesity (about 32 percent nationwide according to a 2006 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
If we were rational beings we would change how we eat today. Now. This instant. We would subsidize a nationwide system of small, sustainable farms instead of pouring tax money into large agra-business mono-culture farming. But we are not rational nor terribly smart when it comes to food. In fact, at the extreme people will eat, or starve, themselves into early graves. Change is hard. We can’t just prescribe sustainable eating. After all, if change were easy the “diet industry” would go the way of Big-3 Detroit after we discovered “eat less, move more” was the only diet advice anyone really needs.
That then is the challenge: How to find a psychologically sustainable way to eat that both helps reduce carbon emissions and supports a mind-set of environmental sensitivity? And that question, how to “eat local and laugh,” will be the topic I will explore in this series. I’ll be talking about things as different as the psychology of savoring, how I fell in love with my chest-freezer, the pleasures of lacto-fermentation, and the role social-networks can have in increasing enjoyment and pleasure. The point of it all being to maximize the pleasures of real food rather than falling for the sweet, salty, greasy seductions of overly processed simulated foods and calorie-delivery systems.
I’ll tell stories, like a neighbor who followed our lead over to a CSA and began putting food up for the winter. With her family’s food now in a freezer in the basement, she became much more sensitive to the ups-and-downs of the electric grid and has started looking at solar panels and a generator. She’s figuring out that some money spent today will save her lots down the road, as well as making sure all her frozen vegetables are safe. Who knows, maybe she’ll even be one of those people who think wind-turbines are actually beautiful when wind-power finally makes it our way.
Plus, “eat local and laugh” will have recipes, lots of recipes, along with discoveries from my farm-to-kitchen-to-table journeys.
Red Pepper “Confit” for the Freeezer
Best done when your farmer is pulling in more peppers (red, yellow, orange) than he knows what to do with. That way it is cost-effective, as well as fun and delicious. Remember the goal is to enjoy more, not get by with less. If you’re a bit a south of the Hudson Valley where I do my eating you still may be in the midst of peppers now.
1. Wash and cut the peppers in half. Take off the stem and remove seeds and white-ribs. Clean garlic, lots of it if you like garlic and little or none if you don’t or you want some peppers without garlic. Remember, you’re roasting a bunch of peppers for the freezer, it’s not an exact science.
2. Take out a big roasting, pour in some olive oil, and fill it with a layer of peppers. Mix it all around so the oil is distributed. We’ve sometimes had two, even three pans going. Distribute the garlic and sprinkle in some more olive oil if you want.
3. Roast in a 350 degree oven until, well, they look done. Remember, this is not an exact science so if you need to run an errand and take them out sooner or if you get involved in a football game (hopefully playing and not just watching!) and they look a little charred, both wonderful.
4. Once cooled put roasted peppers with the oil ( now deliciously flavored) into labelled zip-lock or vacumn bags and put in the freezer.
Truly an afternoon well-spent. And over the winter when you defrost packages of peppers for sandwiches, pizza, pasta, eggs, or whatever you’ll notice the skins on the fully-defrosted peppers easily peel right off so you’ll be ready, no matter how you are using them, to eat local and laugh!
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Yes, great blog.
After several years of buying fruits and veggies from the grower’s market I discovered something that would have my grandmother laughing, food tastes better in season, not just a small difference but significant, white peaches and strawberry taste like candy, asparagus nutty and crisp. My local citrus guy told me a couple of weeks ago that Red grapefruit was on its last harvest a month ago, but since then other vendors were selling them bagged…so I bought some…not the same not even close. See produce that comes a way is picked not quite ripe and sometimes not even close to ripe, treated with gases to bring the color to the rind and are tart without the sweetness. So I am learning the seasons and buying properly for less money.
Do you know that now is the time to buy apple and fig duck sausage? My god what a treat.
So my plan is simple I only buy what is unpackaged from local sources that can tell me exactly where my food is coming from.
Thanks so much for the kind words and the comment … I wholeheartedly agree with you that seasonal = delicious. And I hope you’re feeling your freezer with that sausage, sounds amazing.
One thing I’ll be talking about lots during the ELL series is preserving seasonal bounty. In my corner of the world it gets pretty cold pretty soon (in fact, there was snow in the Hudson Valley this afternoon!) so if I ate ONLY what was seasonal I’d be eating lots of ice by March! Luckily, there are all kinds of ways to keep a healthy, delicious harvest going year-round so there’s no need to rely on simulated grapefruits trucked in over thousands of miles.
For example, just this past weekend I teamed up with a friend to make smoked paprika. I took a bag of paprika peppers (different than the red bell peppers above), cleaned them and then smoked them over hickory chips for about 6-8 hours (always trying to keep the temp between 135 and 150 F). My paprika team-mate then dehydrated them the rest of the way and ground them up in a spice grinder. Just one way to keep some seasonal bounty all year long.
In response to another comment. See in context »Ah, forgot to mention I live in southern california but since the water storage it has become difficult to grow cantaloupes in the desert…I did live for a while in Oregon with a cook whose in house grandmother did all the preserving…I found out in my first year there why in summer we picked every blackberry in sight…an amazing thanksgiving pie.
In response to another comment. See in context »Eating locally is a perfect antithesis to Murphy’s Law. Local foods are freshest, tastiest, most seasonal and cheapest. Eating locally puts you in harmony with the Earth–its seasons, its soil–and with your neighbors, the farmers who grow it for you. It’s a way to celebrate the passage of time rather than to fear it.
Here on the Central Coast of California our cold ocean current makes our summers come late and October is the month for the best tomatoes. Peppers go right up to Thanksgiving usually. Romano beans stewed with tomatoes, garlic, a bit heavy on the olive oil, sopped up with artisan bread.
Between Dec. 10-25, the window is very narrow, we knock on the doors of homes with persimmon trees, asking to pick. The people usually say, yeah, sure, I left some bags next to the ladder on the side of the house. For about a month we eat 2-4 persimmons a day.
We just got a very early rain. The storm knocked down a lot of tomatoes and sugar snap peas but soon wild chanterelle mushrooms will be available at the many Farmers Markets. Who needs to kill a turkey when there’re wild chanterelles on your plate?
There aren’t many ways to change your life really–just thoughts and actions. Medicines may cure a disease or merely treat a symptom but almost always there is a price to pay in side effects. Tonics, like eating locally or exercise, rather than producing side effects, produce ancillary benefits.
Eating locally will change your thoughts for the better. I think psychiatrists/psychologists should prescribe it. Wild, anti-Murphy synergies will erupt.