Opinion | I'm finding more meaning in the food I eat - TheRecord.com

The chirping of crickets, quiet traffic noises and a limp breeze came through my kitchen window. I perched the last dish on top of the pile and unplugged the sink. As the water drained, my eyes couldn’t avoid the blueberries on the counter.

The oven clock said 9:21. Even this late in the day my tiny kitchen was still hot and irritating in August. I had other work I needed to do. I just wanted to go to bed. The berries had only been out for one night. Surely they could wait until tomorrow.

Two fruit flies floated over the berries. I had spent my afternoon picking them the day before, and I couldn’t bear to waste all that work.

I grabbed the colander, found and lined some baking trays, rinsed the berries, sorted out some bad ones and laid the rest out on the trays. Then I shoved things around in the freezer to make space. Whatever wouldn’t fit went in a green plastic basket in the fridge.

I wonder if I should craft this piece to read more Pinterest-worthy, a clean and charming blog post. I could. But truthfully, I often feel tired and scattered when I think about this side-project.

This summer I tried to source more of my food locally. The idea was to establish a deeper connection with nature in my everyday life by sustaining myself more from the land near me.

In February I read Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s book the “100 Mile Diet.” (Yes, yes, I’m 12 years late to the party). It scratched an itch I realized I’ve been feeling for a while.

Smith and MacKinnon write about the anonymity of food in a typical grocery store: rows of food exactly the same week after week throughout every season, with ingredients produced all around the world, from anonymous people and places. I wondered if the disconnection I felt from nature was in part due to how industrial and anonymous my food is.

Research shows people need nature. Spending as little as 15 minutes in green space is proven to lower levels of stress chemicals in the body. One study showed hospital patients whose rooms had a view of a stand of trees tree recovered faster than similar patients with a view of a brick wall.

I spend most of my time facing a wall, typing at a desk in the middle of Kitchener, feeling cut off from the natural environment. I get outside as much as I can, but it always feels like a temporary solution.

I want to know what happens when I focus on the fact that the act of eating is a direct link to nature: the food I need cannot exist without soil, water, the sun and other people. Therefore, each meal is an opportunity to become more familiar with the soil, water and people nearby — or so goes my idealistic line of thought.

I’m not the only one thinking this way. An estimated 1,000 people are on waiting lists for garden plots in our area. The pandemic brought the rise of online farmer’s markets like Local Line or Open Food Network Canada. New people are joining online foraging networks and the idea of planting edible food forests or gardens is catching on.

Alison Blay Palmer is the founding director of the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at Wilfrid Laurier University. She says the top three reasons people begin to look for food closer to home are a desire to know what is in the food, to support the local food economy, and to reconnect with nature.

First, I took stock of what I eat the most. Then I started finding ways to source more of these items locally. Now, I get excited when I find local replacements for items on my list. This approach makes the project feel more like a fun scavenger hunt than a burdensome chore.

Eating more local food isn’t just about finding new places to spend money, but about creating new consumption pathways.

For example, instead of buying a few cans of beans at a time, I made a trip to a farm and bought six months’ worth of dried beans. Then I had to start a new habit of routinely soaking and simmering beans in the background of my life so I actually eat them.

It has been slow, but I’ve noticed as I’ve replaced more of my staples with local sources, I go longer between big grocery store trips, and buy less when I’m there.

I tend to beat myself up about how sporadic this process has been. The seasons change so fast, it seems like I blink and miss something important like strawberries or blackberries.

But eating local food in season has been teaching me gently, nudgingly, about seasonality.

Here’s the secret I’m learning: the earth is continually pulling out good things for us. First came the wild leeks. Then the strawberries. After the strawberries came the peas, blueberries and the peaches. Then the tomatoes, mushrooms, pumpkins and apples, and more. If I miss something, I can catch the next surprise.

I started with the ingrained reflex that I need to stock up, get it all, grab the sale, get the deal. But really, I can relax and enjoy what I can, when I can.

My disjointed attempts have led me to spend more time outside connecting with nature — the main goal — often with other people, and made a difference in my diet.

I’ve watched maple sap boil in a sugar shack outside of Plattsville, picked mulberries at my grandma’s house in St. Jacobs and blackberries in a park near my Kitchener apartment. I canned a couple cauldrons-worth of salsa with a friend and perfected my hummus recipe with beans grown only 60 km away. I’ve chatted with the lovely farming couple who grow most of my veggies, and developed a taste for Lake Erie pickerel.

I’d say that’s a pretty great start.

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Opinion | I'm finding more meaning in the food I eat - TheRecord.com
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