A quick salad of farm box arugula, marinated baby artichokes, and shaved pecorino fueled me for a somewhat nerve-wracking evening. Litquake had recruited me to be “in conversation with” Raj Patel about his fab book Stuffed & Starved. The book is amazing. It has changed how I think about food. And I think about food a lot. And I have done so for a long time. So changing that is quite a feat.
While its subject–the global food system and how it is terribly, frightfully global and terribly, frightfully f’ed up–is as depressing as it comes for me, Raj maintains a humorous, optimistic, power-to-the-people stance towards it all that keeps any audience who hears him from just slitting their wrists on their way out.
So we talked about the book while people listened and nodded and got a bit bugged-eyed and wrote questions for the Q&A that can be summed up as: What Can I Do!?!?!?
We can do a lot. We can support farmers who eschew monoculture, we can buy from local businesses, we can shop at farmers markets and join CSAs. But you know what we can’t do? (And this sort of kills me but it’s true. ) We can’t shop and cook and eat our way out of this system. For a little bit there I think even I fell for what Raj calls the “honeypot of ethical consumerism.” It seemed like my aesthetics and politics (nay! my very morals!) were in line and in a happy-happy-joy-joy feedback loop when it came to food. I could buy the best, freshest, artisinally produced, delicious and nutritious food and it was also a goddamn political act. And it is, but it’s not enough.
So I’m thinking a lot about what that “something more” will be for me. I long ago drew a line in the sand about the kinds of recipes I’ll develop, so I’m in the clear there. I’m in contemplation mode.
In the meantime my cupboards will be re-examined. Along with the high fructose corn syrup I banished over the summer (anyone else see King Corn? when they showed how the stuff is made I did a sweep of the cupboards), soy products without definite origin are out of here. And almost all processed food has soy in some form in it. The problem with that? Too much soy is worked by slaves. Yeah, I know, bummer. As I’ve said before on these very pages, I am against slavery. It’s a pretty firm position and I’m comfortable with it.
Ethical consumerism may be a honeypot, but it’s a start. Seeing it for what it is should keep me from being dulled into complacency by its seductive, sticky sweetness.
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