Category Archives: Food & Place

One Fine Feathered Day

Posted on by under Food & Place

In May 2012 I pulled up behind a truck, parked just two neighborhoods from my own. The seller and I had been texting to arrange the exchange: “I’ve got your pullets.” “Great. Be there in 10.” “Just look for a white truck. Remember to bring cash.”

It was all over quickly, and I was on my way, a cardboard box on the passenger seat, grinning madly at the scratching noises and small bock-caws coming from inside it. I called my husband, “I’ve got them! Tell everyone the six of us are on our way!”

It was an exclamation point kind of morning. It was the morning we brought our chickens home.

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We had been preparing for months for their arrival. We attended an information session at the library, searched the chicken internet universe for tips, and dog-eared a book called “City Chicks.”  Along the way, we built the coop.

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(Note the skylight. These are some spoiled hens.)

We researched nutrition, planned for pest control, and amused the well-worn country folk at Tractor Supply every time we went north to visit my parents. What are your organic options? Do you sell food-grade diatomaceous earth?  What about treats? Is this waterer BPA-free?

Okay, we really didn’t ask the last one. They were still recovering from our discussion of non-GMO based layer feed.

Now. Why did we do all this? Well, originally we thought that keeping hens would save us money, but this hasn’t been the case. On one hand you’ve got housing, food and chicken accessories (waterer, heat lamp, etc.). On the other, you have… not nearly as many eggs as you would expect.

Here is the deal with chickens and eggs: First, they have to be old enough to lay. Second, they can’t be broody, molting or recovering from a traumatic predator attack (a story for another post). Third, it can’t be winter. Fourth, you have to be able to find the eggs…

Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

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 Answer: To hide her eggs in the abandoned lot on the other side.

Let’s just say that the financial incentives aren’t overwhelming, but the daily Easter Egg hunts are a lot of fun.

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So, why chickens? My answer is more of a hunch than a full-blown philosophy, but I suspect we keep chickens (and keep cleaning out their coop) because we love the sense of connection they give us.

An egg in a styrofoam carton is just an egg, but an egg that appears after “Queenie” struts out of the coop and announces her accomplishment to the neighborhood (bock, bock, bock, baCAW!) is something more. “It’s still warm, Mom,” my daughter informs me, “and guess what, it came out of the chicken’s butt!” “Eww!” the rest of the kids collapse into giggles, and then start chanting, “chickens butt, chickens butt, chickens butt!”

Maybe it’s just a bit disgusting, but I like it that my children know–and by ‘know’ I mean through immediate experience–that eggs come from chickens’ butts. Not from egg factories, not from sanitary supermarkets, but from animals that poop, crow, and cross the road. Eggs come, and thus breakfast comes, from animals who are part of our daily lives.

This is why we will keep keeping chickens–not because it is terribly practical, at least in the way we do it–but because they remind us that food exists in a web of connections beyond buying and selling. Eggs exist because chickens exist, and our particular chickens exist because we fill their feeder and lock up the coop at night.

I’m glad we do. The eggs are amazing.

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(photo by Emily Duff, http://family2table.blogspot.com/2013/02/chicken-or-egg.html)

The Price of Avocados

Posted on by under Food & Place, Guest

It is large and green and looks so inviting. I imagine it mashed in a bowl with a jalapeño, a hint of tomato, some spices. But I can’t do it. I can’t spend $2.99 for an avocado, not even an organic one. I walk out of the store with my bag of kale and wine, avocado still on the grocery list in my mind.

One birthday, when I was in my teens, I asked my aunt to send me some avocados from her tree in Southern California, where I spent my first seven years. The box winged it’s way through two states and arrived at my Washington State door in February. Her avocados were different than the ones I could buy at the store, they weren’t as bumpy, or as small. All too soon, they were gone.

At least once a week, when I was growing up, we had tacos. My mom would pour a generous helping of oil into a skillet and fry our tortillas until they were crispy. Sometimes, we would fill them with equally crispy fish, cut into small pieces, coated in flour and sizzled in a neighboring pan. Other days, she would brown ground beef or turkey while I grated cheese and sometimes tore lettuce.

We would put all of the ingredients into the sections of a plastic tray. It was our taco tray, and I never thought to question whether it could have another purpose. Each member of my family would pile their shell high with the filling of their choice. I always made sure to add a generous dollop, or two, of guacamole.

When we had guests for dinner, after we moved to Washington, there was often a conversation about the way we served our tacos. In the Pacific Northwest, I learned, most people purchase pre-formed “taco shells” which seemed much more like large, curved tortilla chips to me. For the very brave, tacos were made with cold, soft tortillas. I was a polite child, and I ate these foreign foods without complaint when at friend’s houses, invited to stay for dinner.

When I went away to college in central Indiana, I was thrilled to be paired with a roommate from Texas. She will understand, I thought. We will pursue authentic Mexican food together.

Her uncle, a professor at our university, invited us for lunch some Sundays. On one such occasion, my roommate made guacamole. I watched, with mounting horror, as she added spoonfuls of Miracle Whip and stirred it in.

We were saying the same words, but we did not mean the same thing. It has taken me a long time to try Tex-Mex again.

On my visits to San Diego, my birthplace, I often see avocado trees from the window of our rental car. These trips are filled with family, driving, and the beach. Still, no matter how long I’m there, I always venture to Old Town, to a little place we used to go when I was small. I pause to watch the women in the window, making tortillas by hand as fast as they can. The perfect distraction, while waiting to be seated at the busy part of the day.

When my brother and I were little, my parents would order two Tostada Supremas and fresh flour tortillas. We would all make tacos out of these plates, which seemed monstrously big to my little eyes.

Now, when I go, I order a Tostada Suprema all my own, with extra guacamole, and a margarita. Somehow, I usually manage to finish the plate (though I have carried leftovers with me on the plane, inspiring jealousy in my fellow passengers).

Periodically, I buy some oil, tortillas and ground beef. I’ve been waiting for the price of avocados to go down, but they never seem to fall very far. I compare the small green fruit to a coffee, measuring it against any other indulgence, and it usually makes it’s way into my basket.

3665955683_a630020fcf_zI fold a paper towel and put it on a plate, ready to catch the excess oil from the golden brown tortilla, waiting to be filled.

I cut the avocado in half and draw parallel lines with my paring knife, just as my mother used to, scooping the resulting little squares into a bowl with a spoon. Always, I sigh with relief when the inside is green and a little firm. There is nothing like the disappointment of an avocado too ripe to eat.

I don’t belong in the land of my birth any more than I belong in the mountains and valleys of the Northwest. My roots don’t lead to any one place of belonging, but to many. Still, when I take a bite and close my eyes, I taste the peace of that which is familiar and much-loved, and I’m glad that I splurged on the avocado after all.

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cara profile“The Price of Avocados” was written by Cara Strickland. Cara has lived in San Diego, California, London, England, and Upland, Indiana. Once, in college, she wrote an essay saying that she was from Narnia. She currently lives in Spokane, WA, where she is a writer, blogger, editor, and food critic. She almost always finds a way to write about food. Cara blogs at “Little Did She Know” and can be found on Twitter @littledidcknow.

(Avocado photo curtesy of HarmonyRae.)

What’s possible around a table

Posted on by under Food & Place

My husband Jason is a true amateur chef—at least if you understand amateur as a French word derived from amare: to love. He cooks because he loves to, and he cooks for the purpose of showing love to others.

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One of my first significant encounters with Jason’s cooking took place at a birthday dinner he prepared for a friend—a friend who happened to be (and still is) his ex-wife’s partner.

At the time, the birthday dinner plans didn’t strike me as unusual. Jason and I had been dating for about a month, and I knew he was close to his ex and her partner. I had also heard (but hadn’t yet fully experienced) that Jason was a great cook. Why wouldn’t he offer to make the celebration dinner?

That evening, we all chatted as friends arrived, pouring glasses of wine, helping to set the table, and keeping an eye on one-another’s children as amazing scents wafted from the kitchen where Jason was working his magic.

It wasn’t until we sat down around the table to give thanks for the food and for our friend on her birthday that the beautiful peculiarity of the event struck me—with enough weight to trigger a physiological response: goose bumps on my arms and a tingle of emotion rising up behind my eyes.

My boyfriend just prepared a dinner to celebrate his ex-wife’s partner, I thought, with amazement.

The sentence rolled through my mind like a ticker tape all evening, taking on slightly new meanings and more weight each time. My own life had gone through its share of rough waters the past few years, deadening what had once been an optimistic expectation that there was goodness in the world. That birthday dinner made me believe in the possibility of redemption. It suddenly felt like anything that seemed impossible to the world was, in fact, possible. Especially around a table.

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chefjacketAs our relationship developed over the months, Jason continued to surprise me with his capacity for rendering not just delicious flavors, but also soul-feeding grace. I soon realized that for him, the food and the emotional substance go hand in hand.

My first Christmas with Jason’s family (just days after we got engaged) was my introduction to his extended family and their collective love for food. Jason’s aunt is African American, and in her kitchen, Jason and his cousins combined all they had learned from Aunt Gina and all they had taught themselves, creating a truly fusion Christmas dinner. The traditions of the older generations blended with the new, as recipes from the African-American South were served up next to recreated dishes that had recently been tasted in Chicago’s hippest restaurants.

In our own home after we married, “What’s for dinner?” became our young daughters’ most eagerly-posed question. Their very favorite answer was one that rose unmistakably from the kitchen to their noses—roasted cumin, peppercorns, coriander, cardamom, and cinnamon being ground together for Jason’s Tikka Masala. I loved watching our daughters’ tastes and appreciation for delicious and new foods develop. I also loved the subtle yet powerful ways our two families first got to know one another and then blended and bonded over conversations around the table. Dinners that take time and care to create, it seems, demand meal times that mirror that time and care.

Jason’s cooking skills also make our home a favorite destination for friends—those who love to eat as well as those who love to cook. As our circle of food-loving friends began to grow, Jason and I decided to host an annual chili and cornbread cook-off. The event has evolved and grown over the years (eight and counting!), but the heart of the event has stayed the same: It’s an opportunity for us to bring together friends from all parts of our lives—friends we know from church and friends from the local music scene, foodie friends and work friends, family from Chicago and friends we know through our daughters’ schools. The event lets us gather the often-disparate parts of our lives—each with their own cooking styles and secret family recipes—and create a single whole, a representation of who we are and who we love.

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I won’t lie—when it comes to Jason’s cooking, the food alone is an amazing thing. But it’s the spaces those meals create that I love most.

Those of us who grew up in the church tend to see The Table as a powerful metaphor, but that doesn’t mean we can always see or articulate how that metaphor plays out in our Monday-through-Saturday lives. I saw it clearly for the first time at that birthday dinner Jason cooked so many years ago. And once I recognized it for what it is, I started to see it everywhere: in the words our now-teenage daughters share with us over dinner, in the collaborative bustle in Aunt Gina’s kitchen, in the beauty of diverse friends gathered together for a co-created meal in our home. It begins to seem that some level of powerful grace and forgiveness—of authenticity and wholeness—is always possible when people sit down together for a meal.

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A Grocer’s Daughter

Posted on by under Food & Place

I grew up in a grocery story. This is a family story that began before I was born. My father began working in the early fifties as a bag boy (also known then as a sacker)  for a small grocery chain near Nashville, Tennessee. He and my mother met in the store, and a romance that began with a smile ended up at the end of an aisle—a church aisle.

By the time Dad’s little pumpkin, as he liked to call me, entered the world, he was moving up the hierarchy of management. When I was eight years old, a new store in the chain opened, and Dad was appointed the manager. I knew my Daddy was THE BOSS, and visions of free Hershey Bars danced in my head.

When I accompanied my mother to do the grocery shopping, my dad would often walk with me to the cold drink machine (pronounced cold “drank” by some Southerners). The machine was located next to the shelves lined with Cheetos–the puffy kind that painted my fingers orange—and other salty snacks: Mr. Peanut peanuts, crispy pork rinds, corn chips, and skinny, fat-enriched potato sticks in a can. My cold “drank” of choice was Nehi Orange in a glass bottle, purchased for a dime. I’d stick the coin in a slot, open the machine door, grab the neck of the bottle, give it a tug, and out it came, cold and sweaty in my hand.

On the weekends, the “sample lady,” Mrs. Wise, served small cups of the store brand coffee, “Fit For A King,” and petite biscuits filled with Tennessee country sausage. The fragrance of breakfast greeted the customers as soon as they crossed the threshold of the store. Mrs. Wise was gracious to me and turned her head, pretending not to notice the multiple times I swiped biscuits from her serving tray.

In that store, I received a cornucopia of knowledge about fruit and vegetables from my dad. Tap a watermelon. If it sounds hollow, it is ripe and ready to cut, eat, and let the juice run down your chin. A ripe cantaloupe smells sweet. Pull back the husk of an ear of corn and look for plump rows of kernels unblemished by rotten or wormy areas.

Dad bought “local” from area farmers before “local” was part of the American food conversation. Clear glass jars of dark amber sorghum molasses made by a nearby Mennonite community enticed customers with the promise of a sweet, thick, syrupy spread for a hot buttered biscuit. Freshly dug sweet potatoes were piled high in bins, ready to accompany a customer home for baking or to use in a Thanksgiving casserole with sticky marshmallows on top.

My dad is eighty-four now, and he does the grocery shopping for himself and my mom. When I visit them, I enjoy accompanying him to a large, sprawling market unlike the grocery store where I grew up. As he gets in the car, he pats his shirt pocket to check if his coupons have stayed put. His eyes light up as he tells me the latest prices for items and compares them to the prices during his days at the helm of his store.

As soon as we enter through the sliding glass doors, Dad steps nimbly and heads for the produce section, leaving me behind as I struggle to pull out a shopping buggy that is stuck to the one in front of it. I see him from afar surveying the displays and posted prices.

I catch up with him and say, “You ran off and left me.”

He walks with purpose like a physician on her hospital rounds examining patients. He thumps and listens, feels and sees as he diagnoses the health of the produce with ease and expertise.

I look at his hands, speckled with age, and I am thankful for the work of those hands and his kindnesses to customers and vendors, and to me. I remember the fizzy, orange taste of a Nehi, the clink of the glass bottle against my teeth, and the fragrance of sausage frying and coffee brewing.

“Come on,” Dad says. “I need to get some yogurt for your mama.”

As I turn my buggy around, I tap the corner of a display of red polished apples and several roll from top to bottom. I quickly rearrange the wayward apples.

As always, I’m a grocer’s daughter.

Fruit and Vegetable Market