More food, forethought?

It's mid-January. We don't have a root cellar. Our winter Community Support Agriculture [CSA] shares ended several weeks ago. Our spring CSA shares won't begin for several months. We won't go hungry though because we have access to several food co-ops, although at a distance of more than twenty miles. Our local grocery store offers fresh fruit, vegetables, and meats. It isn't organic but it's only a little more than five miles away. A larger "big-box" grocer is available ten miles beyond that. As long as we have money, vehicles and travel time, we shouldn't go hungry.

rutabaga, a root vegetable

Photo by J. Harrington

If we lived in the city, how far would it be reasonable for us to walk or bike, and how often, to refresh our food supply? Presumably, one of the advantages of city living is the ability to limit vehicle usage. There's also food delivery services available in some areas. For some frozen and/or prepared foods, there's companies like Schwan's.

Not long ago, Minnesota had a number of folks and organizations involved in crafting a Minnesota Food Charter. Apparently, there was insufficient interest ($$$) to provide for ongoing staffing from any of the state organizations. We wonder if the Walz administration even considered food supply and availability as an issue when they shaped their vision for "One Minnesota." It seems to us that one of the most significant dividing lines in demography and health is the one between those with access to sufficient, healthy foods, and the time and knowledge and place necessary to prepare and eat those foods, and those without. Some states have food system plans. Minnesota doesn't appear to have one. Of course, Minnesota used to have a state planning agency at one time, too. Separate departments of  agriculture, commerce, and health do not a food system yield.

onions in a basket

Photo by J. Harrington

If we were really concerned about a rural-urban divide, we'd give lots of thought to linking producers and consumers and processors and wholesalers and retailers together to talk some more about how we can best feed ourselves. If there's anything we can be sure democrats, republicans, independents, anarchists and others all have in common it's that they (we) all have to eat. Right now we're all depending on someone else to make sure our plate is full.

Onions

By William Matthews

How easily happiness begins by   

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter   

slithers and swirls across the floor   

of the sauté pan, especially if its   

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto   

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions   

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,   

though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease   

from the taut ball first the brittle,   

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,   

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on   

weeping as you go on in, through   

the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on   

in to the core, to the bud-like,   

acrid, fibrous skins densely   

clustered there, stalky and in-

complete, and these are the most   

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal   

comfort that infant humans secrete.   

This is the best domestic perfume.   

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed   

hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual   

endurance. It’s there when you clean up   

and rinse the wine glasses and make   

a joke, and you leave the minutest   

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.

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