As a child, I never thought much about where my food came from. Clearly, it came from the store. Except for the stuff that came from our family garden. (Like the bazillion apricots and plums and almonds and pomegranates we had to clean up off the lawn all spring and summer long. Did I mention I grew up in Las Vegas? Where the summer lasts for about six months? Oh, how I hated cleaning that stuff up.) Even as an adult, I never put too much effort into thinking about the origins of my meal. I've always been most concerned with the final product, the flavors on my plate.

The last several months, however, I've thought about it more. A lot more.

When we lived in the mountains of Utah (see how I said "when'? Because we have had the great fortune of leaving Utah behind, hopefully forever.) and my husband was fishing for our dinner a few days a week and bringing home big, luscious rainbow trout and bass and happy little perch (okay, maybe they weren't so happy anymore), it was the first time I'd ever been so intimately aware of where exactly my entree came from, and the effort exerted to catch it and kill it, and what exactly was involved in the process of cleaning it and preparing it to be prepared. Sure, I'd thought about it in very vague terms before, but I'd never experienced it. I'd never sat on the edge of the river/lake/reservoir/pond hoping that my husband would catch a good one and looked around and been able to observe exactly the conditions and surroundings that contributed to my dinner.

Before this summer, I'd never shelled peas fresh from my uncle's (or anyone else's) garden. I'd never taken seeds directly from a flax plant. I'd never tasted a radish before it was all spicy and bitter and weeks away from its growing spot. Oh, and, radishes straight from the garden? Completely different than radishes from the store. Just wash, salt and eat. Gooood.

When we moved to the East Coast in the late summer, I was lucky enough to become fast friends with Ruth, who introduced me to the joys of going out to pick raspberries and apples, and who then schooled me in the art of making jam. Lots and lots of jam. Ruth also has tomato plants taller than her backyard fence and pots and pots of plants growing everything from strawberries to jalapenos. Needless to say, this girl with a black thumb is going to learn a lot from Ruth.

All of this oneness with my food and the harvest and whatnot has gotten me thinking more about not only where my food is coming from, but about my kid. And how I want her to understand that food doesn't come from a store. That someone cultivated and harvested those fruits and vegetables and those grains, and that the meat or fish on her plate had a face, it was a living animal, and we should respect that. I want her to understand that someone somewhere worked very hard so she could enjoy the bounty. I want to instill these things in her, create more of an appreciation for good food and the having thereof, but I don't want to make it a killjoy, either. Hopefully someday we'll have our own little plot of earth in which I can try to teach her these lessons very literally, but in the meantime, it seems there is much thinking to do. And eating. Because really, that is the whole point.

I'm A Believer

There are few things in the world I love as much as I love food.  And one of those things is a smokin' deal.  I'm not talking your run-of-the-mill 20% off business here- 20% off is a sucker's deal.  I mean the kind of deal where you walk out of the store and feel like you got away with something.  That is a true deal, and it fills me with complete and utter glee.  

Not too long ago, a friend of mine introduced me to my newest favorite incarnation of the food/deal marriage: our local food co-op.  The beauty of the co-op we have up here in Northern Utard is that it is open to anyone who would like to participate.  It's not income-restricted, it's not specific to any one church or neighborhood, and they actually want as many people as possible to take part. 

The first time we ordered from the co-op, I was skeptical, and not just because I'm a skeptic by nature.  It seemed too good to be true, and we all know what that usually means.  But, I paid my $5 lifetime membership fee and placed my order.  I was pretty certain the food I was going to get was going to be the stuff the grocery stores turn away, but I figured it was worth a shot.  Boy howdy (yep, BOY HOWDY), was I wrong.  The produce was absolutely loverly- the stuff you'd find in the yuppy grocery stores that I can't afford to shop in (and wouldn't if I could because paying double to shop in a status-market is against my moral code), and the meat and grains were equally good.  Whenever possible, the co-op I belong to buys from local growers and producers.

Last week I picked up our order for this month.  Here's what I got for $23:

1 pound of top sirloin fajita strips, 2 pounds of chicken drumsticks, a 2-pound sirloin pork roast, a pound of lean ground beef, a 2-lb. bag of carrots, 5 Fuji apples, 5 oranges, 1 head of romaine lettuce, 3 red bell peppers, 2 avocados, 5 pears, 5 tomatoes, a pound of rice and a loaf of wheat bread from a local artisan bakery.    

FOR TWENTY-THREE DOLLARS.

I may have died and gone to heaven. 

It's time to Revolt

You know what makes me crazy? Drives me up the wall and fills me with the desire to storm restaurant kitchens and have words with the chef? Good, because I'm about to tell you.



I HATE IT when I am at a restaurant and see garlic bread on the menu, and thinking, "Yum, garlic and bread together is one of heaven's greatest gifts," order the garlic bread only to receive a basket of slices of french bread with a butter/garlic powder mixture on it. That is not garlic bread. That is bread with a garlicky butter on it. Putting garlic in some form on top of bread does not make the bread itself garlic bread. In fact, putting anything on top of bread does not change the type of bread that one has. You do not put peanut butter on bread and call it peanut butter bread. (ooooh! Peanut butter bread! Delightful! Hurry, someone go invent that and send it to me. And maybe to Sara Lee or something, too, because that stuff will be HUGE.) You do not put jam on bread and call it jam bread. (Although you do put butter and cinnamon and sugar on toast and call it cinnamon toast... odd.)



Garlic bread is bread that actually contains garlic. La Brea makes a wicked roasted garlic loaf that has beautiful, lovely chunks of roasted garlic in it. It is delightful with dinner and for making eggs in a basket the next morning. THAT is garlic bread, my friends. Not this french-bread-with-butter-and-garlic-powder passed off as garlic bread at restaurants and grocery stores and dinner tables nationwide. And I am not going to take it anymore. No siree, next time that happens to me I am SENDING IT BACK. And then probably leaving, because I don't want to eat a dinner that has been spat upon. But I will have made my point. Take THAT, lazy restaurateurs!

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

Alright all you Utahns, the moment we've all been waiting for is upon us: Next Wednesday (July 2) Sunflower Market is opening in Murray (6284 South State Street)! The doors open at 7 am and the first 200 customers will receive a free reusable shopping bag filled with groceries valued at over $50 (note how it says customers- you do actually have to purchase something to get the free stuff, but trust me, once you're inside, you'll want to buy stuff). Now believe you me, I don't get out of bed before 7 am for ANYTHING, but if I could be in the area next Wednesday, I would be in line waiting for the doors to open with a big grin on my face. $50 in free groceries from Sunflower Market has that effect on me. SO, if you want to know why I love Sunflower Market as fervently as I do (Lovely cheap produce! All natural wheat mac & cheese that tastes like the blue box stuff! Ethnic food! Natural meats! Flatbread! Bulk bins!) and you want some free groceries to try out, get your bum out of bed and drag yourself down there in your pajamas if you have to and rejoice! Now you have the glory of a Sunflower Market near you!


P.S. No, they don't pay me, but they should, huh?

A Culinary Evolution

I love food. I mean, I really love food. I think about it. I read about it. I crave it. I long to know what the foodies know. I, however, am not a foodie. Not even close. This is not a blog for foodies. This is a blog for people like me. Me, who at the age of 19 or so discovered that garlic did not, in fact, originate in powdered form. Who had no idea what basil was, or that oregano could be obtained as a fresh herb. Who could not cook many things and did not cook well. Who thought Olive Garden was authentically Italian.

I'm really not dumb. I could whip out my standardized test scores and prove it. I was just food-dumb. I know it's so blase to blame things on one's mother, but it's kind of her fault. Not entirely, but kind of. She just never really liked cooking or bothered to excel at it, or loved food, and she had an army of children to feed. Our family was big. Not the four-kid "big" family of today. I'm talking sports-team big here. With that many mouths to feed, I'd probably hate cooking, too. The woman could bake like nobody's business, though. No one's been able to duplicate her dinner rolls yet, even with the recipe. But, I digress. I came from simple All-American food. Meatloaf, casseroles, homemade pizza, pot roast on Sundays. We never ate anything more ethnic than sweet-and-sour chicken from the Chinese restaurant in the grocery store.


When I was engaged to my husband, he came to dinner at my place with his buddy and his buddy's girlfriend. With some serious advice from people who knew their way around a kitchen, I'd successfully made him salmon and shrimp during earlier dates (though the shrimp triggered his first-ever allergic reaction to shellfish and landed him in Urgent Care), so I had him somewhat fooled into thinking I was a better cook than I was. So, on this night, I went to the grocery store to procure the necessary ingredients. Chicken breasts. 2 limes. Rice. So far, so good. Six green onions. I went to the onions. Red onions, yellow onions, white onions, but no green onions. I looked and looked. I settled for yellow onions; six of them, just like the recipe said. Seemed like a lot, but who was I to question the almighty recipe-writers? When I got home, I began slicing the onions per the recipe. After three, I thought, "Holy crap, this is a lot of onion. I think they cook down a lot, though." After four, I decided that since no more onions would fit in the pan with the rest of the ingredients, the other two would just have to be our little secret. (I don't know who else was part of the "our", but that's not the point.) Needless to say, I think on that night my cover was blown. My husband didn't ask me to cook much after that. In fact, a lot of the time when I would offer to cook dinner, he'd say, "No, you had a long day. I'll cook." A few months into our marriage, I began watching the Food Network. Imagine my surprise when green onions were mentioned and out came these green straws-on-steroids. "Six of those would have tasted a lot better," I thought.

And thus began my quest. I became a woman on a mission. I was determined to figure out this cooking thing, to become that woman whose skills inspire people to angle for dinner invitations. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting better. My husband says I'm "an excellent cook" now, and not just to me. Before, when asked about my cooking he would say, "My wife makes the best banana bread" and leave it at that, unless further pressed, at which point he would divert attention by speaking about his own cooking skills. I must be getting better- or his taste buds are getting duller. One of the two. I've impressed others with my cooking and cooking-related tips (okay, they're not necessarily mine, but I remembered them, so I deserve some of the credit). I've even shared recipes with others and had them later complain to me that theirs was not as good as mine was and proceed to grill me on my exact ingredient choices. So, yeah, I'd say I've improved. But when you remember where I'm coming from, that's not saying much. I'm sure I'll have more green onion moments, and when I do, feel free to mock. Just don't ask me to cook you dinner.