Taking A Big Healthy Bite Out Of Summer

I am in the mountains this summer.   Well, it is more the Champlain Valley, or the surrounding lakeshore.   OK, fine, so maybe I am more accurately, and geographically precisely enjoying a long stay in my charming lakeview cottage, or sweet little village home within the Adirondack Park which encompasses a great many mountains.   Away.   I am away for the summer.  Enjoying mountains.  Very much. 

The Universe seems to be prodding me along.  It is nourishing my soul and feeding my mind.  And as much as I continue as a reluctant learner and determined, but scrappy full on, life-living participant, to try to rush ahead, I am on a track that is moving slowly and thoughtfully forward. I am in Essex, enjoying farm fresh foods.  I am being nourished and restored by a great many local and seasonal pleasures. 

I have joined the iconic Essex Farm.  A bi-weekly share provides dairy; yogurt, fresh raw milk with cream, that rises to the top, buttermilk, sour cream.  It provides freshly butchered meats; European sausage, fresh ground beef, loins, chicken, fresh.  It provides grains; corn meal, wheat flour, pastry flour, and white.  There are wheat berries too.  It provides vegetables, the first week I chose what’s left of the winter root vegetables; carrots, parsnips, onions, and cabbage,  Adirondack blue potatoes.  There are fresh greens; kale, Swiss chard, arugula, lettuce, mesclun, and scapes.  A variety of herbs; dill, cilantro, lemon balm, sage, basil!

Best of all, I am cooking!  Again!  I have not cooked this way, in such a very long time, at least not since my seemingly epic divorce, which by now is seemingly from lifetimes ago.   I had missed it greatly, but as much as I wanted to, I had found it nearly impossible to spend a moment giving thought to preparing a meal.   In talking with friends and acquaintances, I have learned the kitchen can be one of the hardest places to reenter after a divorce.  The kitchen symbolizes the center of the home and family.  In far too many homes the kitchen also becomes a place of great stress and tension.  It is no wonder we eat toxic colored foods that offer little more than abrupt brightness and temporary distractions followed by noxious and growing consequences. 

Prior to coming up to the Champlain Valley for the summer, I attended an event sponsored by Hudson Valley BRAWL, Broad’s Regional Arm Wrestling League. All money raised went to a culinary program supported by the Washbourne House, a seventeen bed shelter for victims of domestic violence.   Cooking Matters, is a program aimed to educate and provide information to promote the use of natural, organic, healthy foods to families in need.  In addition to enjoying the raucous theatrical entertainment and competitive arm wrestling, the event raised my awareness and awoke in me a restored desire to prepare food with care, to reenter and reclaim my kitchen as a place central to my own sense of being “home”.  Who would have thought?

The kitchen in the homes where conflict and abuse are the norm become pre-satellite weather stations.  Impossible to track whether you are in the center of the storm or it is a bright sunny day, tension wears down and rattles, as well as renders the porcelain dishes useless. It might become impossible to tell when the storm that is heading your way will be a sun shower quickly passing, providing that rainbow of hope to keep you going, or if you are sitting under the eye of a hurricane requiring immediate evacuation.  And so the kitchen stops being a place central to heart and home, and instead becomes a place of foreboding dread. 

There is no place in a home more central to the functioning of family, than the kitchen.  Following a divorce, whether the marriage was abusive or not, there is a sense of failure, and loss. When the family no longer functions as one, the kitchen can be a very challenging place to be. In addition to my divorce, my two older children were in varied stages of college completion and attendance, and living in faraway cities. I felt like each meal I prepared for my youngest son screamed of the new, almost inexplicable dynamics of our suddenly altered, broken and changing family.   Three years passed.  Meals were prepared and shared and became easier.  Although take-out and pizza delivery were much more the norm than they had ever been before.  My son left for school, and I continued my sporadic and sustenance inspired food preparations, seldom cooking or eating at home for or with pleasure.

And then I made the decision to go to the farm.  To get back to the root of myself, and plant myself firmly in a place that I loved deeply.

Essex Farm is an institution.  It has grown in popularity and grown in breadth.  The farmers have become a vibrant and well-liked addition to the very small village of Essex.  I had signed up for a seasonal CSA share at Essex Farm prior to attending the Hudson Valley BRAWL event, and was looking forward to discovering which foods would be offered in this beautiful land several hours from the agriculturally rich Hudson Valley.  For over twenty years I had driven to Essex and thought the sagging roofs of barns and overgrown fields were the sad remains left by unfortunate attempts of would be farmers that had not been aware of the frozen landscape or the brief and mercurial summer season.    Aside from a roadside market selling corn and the occasional cucumber at a local dairy farm, I was not aware of any other operational farms.  This had been the case for many, many years.  And then we began to notice some stirrings at what appeared this big, make-shift farm.  Horses appeared. Young ambitious earthy types showed up and occasionally were spotted riding bikes past my home. The farm was making a rumbling attempt at rebirth, just as a large part of my life was nearing it's inevitable end.  

Last summer my daughter called Essex home, as I traveled the country mending my heart. She met some of the young farmers-in-training and became a part of the bigger very small community.  Although we have come to this area for over 20 years, we had only before "visited", in spite of our small home here.  I wanted to learn more about the farm.  I wanted to become a bit more familiar, a bit more connected to the community.

I picked up my first farm share at the end of June after leaving work and driving north, the first late afternoon I arrived  in the mountains.  The day was sunny and clear.  No threat of rain or storm for days out.   It was reassuring to know the weather was going to be predictable, up in the mountains, and in my kitchen.  I pulled into the long driveway and parked.  When I approached the tables filled with produce, I was quickly acclimated by a young intern who directed me to sign in and gave me a quick tour.  I gathered my bundles, and bushels, and jars.  I wrapped my meats in brown paper.  I measured out grains in careful degrees, cupfuls were emptied into containers with care.  With my greens and fresh strawberries gently bagged, I went home with an abundance of farm fresh foods.  Delighted, but also slightly intimidated by the responsibility before me I unloaded my car and filled my refrigerator.  Now what?  I could no longer avoid or shirk the kitchen.  The growing weight of this task exhausted me.  Dinner would be a salad of greens, and berries, feta cheese and wine.  I fell asleep deeply, before 9:00.

The next morning, rested, I rose at 5 am, ready to meet the eggs and flour, the berries.  I added yogurt and butter and prepared scones.  Baking is my mood barometer.  Sweetness returning like a gentle and familiar scent, it informs me of my happiness, of my gratitude for all that I do have. Happy, cheerful, and humming I gather bowls and measuring cups. I was glad to make a small dent in the milk jug.  My coffee turned a beautiful mocha shade after adding the fresh cream that sat floating on the top of the jug.  I have heard about milk, fresh in this way.  And read about it in books, an antiquated practice from long ago.  I never imagined experiencing this first hand.  Such a remarkable gift, so pure and simple, stripped of packaged promises and toxic treachery. 

Several months ago, while visiting Trader Joe’s, during my annual impromptu pilgrimage,  I overheard a conversation about food consumption and waste in this land once referred to as the place of milk and honey.   As a nation we waste great amounts of perfectly good food.  The clerk and customer were discussing why people in developing nations are much more thoughtful and appreciative of their food.  According to civileats.com, Americans spend about seven percent of their income on food.  In comparison an Indonesian, spends almost 43 percent of his/her income on food.  Those in the Ukraine can expect to spend over 40% as well. The fact that we view food generally as inexpensive and easily accessible creates a strange relationship we seem to have with it.  We will spend great amounts of money in restaurants and varying amounts on food trends and fads.  We don't think much of the dyes and packaging, the sugars and chemicals, or the calories.  Or we overthink these ills and jump on the next food bandwagon with the hopes of curing our overall discontent, culinary or otherwise.   We tend to throw great amounts of food away with little thought, and we continue to suffer from growing levels of obesity. As one American, I have wasted far too much.  I have thrown away meat, and milk and many more products packaged and purchased and then dumped.  All bought with good intentions.  All discarded with a numbing disappointment.  For some time I personally wasn’t in a position to throw away food, nor was I, for far too long, in a frame of mind to prepare it and adequately cook with care for myself and my son.  The truth of this was jarring.  I was glad to be gaining much distance from this reality and closing the gap between myself and my food choices.

I awoke the first morning relishing in knowing the food now filling my refrigerator was all grown from a farm less than a mile from my front door.  The farmers, apprentices, and students all had their hands on it, and their hearts and souls in it.  Grit and sweat and determination, love, hard work, and occasionally, I am sure, resignation toward a crop smaller than expected, helped to form the conical cabbages and coax the blooms of the zucchini now visible in the fields.  You can’t help but see and feel the hard work that was demanded in the production of everything in my share.  I could see the draft horses in the fields and the sun freckled skin of some of those working along the rows and rows of crops as I drove into town.  It was suddenly a responsibility to prepare this food.  It would be an affront to throw away or waste anything. 

And so I cooked, and baked and prepared.  Salads, scones, bread, sausage with mint and feta, roast loin. Cold parsnip soup.  Roast chicken.  I made frozen yogurt, trying different flavors and fruits purchased elsewhere.  Mango and Coconut frozen yogurt became my favorite.  As June lulled its way into July, I enjoyed more farm fresh surprises.  Fennel.  Bok Choy. Chorizo.  The fresh basil granted a few cups of pesto, an old favorite, a summer treat. 

I continued restoring and nourishing my soul.  I hiked, and added 5 more high peaks to my goal of becoming a 46er, I now have 24!  I rode my bike and gardened.  I painted and crafted and wrote occasionally.  I thought frequently of my relationship with food. And family.  And community.  I entertained friends and shared with them my love for this beautiful place.  I thought longingly of my children, who are all right now too far away or too busy trying to find their way in a world that is vastly changed and very much the same.  I cooked for my youngest son in a way I have not, in far too long. And his gratitude filled my kitchen.   I have restored my heart, my soul, my own grit and determination.  My resignation toward understanding that my family has changed greatly, has been softened by knowing change brings opportunity.  Letting go allows room for more. 

I may be found once again humming in my kitchen,  a pie cooling on the sill, bread rising on a counter.   With time and thought I will decide which blends of herbs and oils will compliment my meals.   I will patiently learn how to infuse the seasonings and flavors that bring pleasure and remove the slow boiling of bitterness long before it hardens.  

Thank You Essex Farm for bringing me home and nourishing my soul.