Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [19]
I put down the list, tried not to chew my pencil, and consciously shut out the image of my children going hungry…Lily begging leftovers from somebody’s lunchbox at school.
Let me be clear about one thing: I have no interest in playing poor. I’ve logged some years in frugal material circumstances, first because I was born into a fairly modest rural social order, and later due to years of lousy paychecks. I understand Spam as a reasonable protein source. Both Steven and I have done our time on student stipends, government cheese, and the young-professional years of beans and rice. A huge turning point for me was a day in my mid-thirties when I walked into the supermarket and realized I could buy any ten things there I wanted. Not the lobsters in the aquarium, okay, but not just dented cans in the bargain bin, either. I appreciate the privilege of food choices.
So why give them back voluntarily? It is both extraordinary and un-sympathetic in our culture to refrain from having everything one can afford. Yet people do, mostly because they are allergic, or religious. We looked around the table at one another, knowing we had our reasons too. Strange, though, how much it felt like stepping into a spaceship and slamming shut the hatch.
“It won’t be that bad,” I said. “We’re coming into spring.”
It wasn’t spring yet, however. We were in for some lean months before the midsummer bounty started flooding us with the real rewards of local flavor and color. But April is a forward-looking time on the farm, full of work and promise. It seemed best to jump in now. Sink or swim.
Hedging, we decided to allow ourselves one luxury item each in limited quantities, on the condition we’d learn how to purchase it through a channel most beneficial to the grower and the land where it grows. Steven’s choice was a no-brainer: coffee. If he had to choose between coffee and our family, it might be a tough call. Camille’s indulgence of choice was dried fruit; Lily’s was hot chocolate. We could get all those from fair trade organizations that work with growers in Africa, Asia, and South America. I would rely on the same sources for spices that don’t grow locally; a person can live without turmeric, cinnamon, and cloves, I’ve heard, but I am not convinced. Furthermore, dry goods like these, used by most households in relatively tiny quantities, don’t register for much on the world’s gas-guzzling meter.
With that, our hopeful agreement in place with its bylaws and backstops, we went back one last time to our grocery list. Almost everything left fell into the grains category: bread flour and rolled oats are big-ticket items, since Steven makes most of our bread, and oatmeal is our cool-weather breakfast of choice. We usually buy almonds and raisins to put in our oatmeal, but I crossed those off, hoping to find local substitutes. Then we came back around to the sticky one. FRESH FRUIT, PLEASE???
At the moment, fruits were only getting ripe in places where people were wearing bikinis. Correlation does not imply causation: putting on our swimsuits would not make it happen here. “Strawberries will be coming in soon,” I said, recognizing this as possibly the first in a long line of pep talks to come.
The question remained, What about now?
“Look,” I said, “the farmers’ market opens this Saturday. We’ll go see what’s there.” Around the table went the Oh sure, Mom face that mothers everywhere know and do not love.
Saturday dawned dark, windy, and fiercely cold. The day’s forecast was for snow. Spring