Lucid Food_ Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life - Louisa Shafia [3]
Like most American kids, I found plenty of ways to gastronomically rebel against these old-fashioned ideas. But thanks to my upbringing, fresh vegetables are still my comfort food, and I make a point to reuse plastic bags, carry my own thermos, and seek out vintage clothes. Those Depression-era habits were genuinely eco-friendly, and nowadays, that hard-won knowledge is being dusted off for a new generation. With my own catering company, Lucid Food, as well as through my work at forward-thinking restaurants like San Francisco’s Millennium and New York eateries Aquavit and Pure Food and Wine, I’ve experienced firsthand how a cuisine based on the simple virtues of fresh, local foods and ethical consumption can please the most discerning palates while contributing to a better future for our planet.
Bringing it all back home
Now is an excellent time to proudly reclaim old conservation-minded food traditions, many of which are disdained by a consumer culture that revolves around instant gratification. This book is a celebration of those time-honored traditions, including gardening, composting, foraging, reusing glass bottles, salvaging, preserving food, and eating local foods, all of which used to be a part of daily life and are now being rediscovered. Fortunately, an unexpected by-product of taking up the mindful habits of our grandparents is that, despite their occasional austerity, these simple practices can enrich our lives, improve our communities, and enhance our connection to the cycles of nature.
Old-fashioned habits are clearly coming back into style. To take only a few examples, there’s the Edible Estates project started by artist Fritz Haeg, which encourages homeowners to grow food in their front yards instead of using pesticides to achieve the perfect green lawn. The Obama Administration took a cue from the country’s best-known food activists, including chef Alice Waters and food and science writer Michael Pollan, and have turned part of the South Lawn of the White House into an organic produce garden. In several states, dairy farms are selling milk in reusable glass bottles with a refundable deposit. Around the country, whole municipalities and even big retailers are encouraging shoppers to suspend their use of disposable plastic bags and return to the custom of bringing their own cloth bags for shopping. From swap meets where used clothing is creatively recycled to houses built entirely from recycled materials, the conservation consciousness that seemed so basic to previous generations is finding a new voice in our own.
What is lucid food?
The mission of this book is to help you make great food in ways that will sustain you and the environment. Lucid Food is a collection of seasonal recipes interspersed with relevant and practical information on cooking and sourcing food with an eco-friendly approach. Among the topics explored to help you “green your cuisine” are: composting, growing your own food, finding animal products produced using sustainable methods, and low-waste shopping and entertaining. The book also provides you with real-world definitions of frequently misunderstood food terms like organic and free-range, and helps explain how the marketing uses of these words don’t always square with their real-life meanings.
Lucid Food is organized into chapters by season, in order to show off the best ingredients that each part of the year has to offer. In a typical supermarket, we see the same goods all year long, regardless of the season. However, shoppers are increasingly aware that the strawberries