Regional Field Organizer Emma Brewster shares about food, family, and giving thanks this holiday season
After over a year of friendship and neighbordom in Seattle, my good friend, Laura, recently (and reluctantly) divulged a well-guarded family secret – a secret she was quite self conscious and sheepish about: her family doesn’t cook. At all. Ever.
Growing up, her nice and larger-than-average home in Colorado had every coveted toy, every new gadget, and a beautiful, large, and well-kept kitchen. But in this kitchen there were no pans in the cabinets, no peelers in the drawers, no potholders on the counter, and their state of the art refrigerator remained empty except for cereal milk. The pantry was loaded with ready-to-eat packaged snacks and microwave meals in case there was a need for an after-school or midnight snack. Every meal was eaten out at restaurants, or delivered to the house. This was never odd to Laura. To her, this was just how food was had. Laura’s two working parents were together very well-off and to them their limited time with their three children was much more valuable than the money spent on going out to eat. Because of the centrality of food now inherent to the Thanksgiving holiday, the lack of skill in and appreciation for the practice of cooking, and because of the high value placed on their time, Thanksgiving was never a celebrated holiday at Laura’s house. Some years, her family would go out for Chinese Food, but most often they just stayed home, ordered in, and watched a movie as a family.
When Laura told me this, it made me feel really sad. My immediate impression was (without good reason, because Laura has a wonderfully caring and tight-knit family) that something so essential and fundamental must have been missing from her upbringing. That somehow, her childhood had been incomplete.
Growing up in my family, cooking was done out of necessity and utility, but also – more so, even – as a thoughtful and direct way of nurturing, nourishing, and showing love for one another. My Dad made dinner most nights and loved getting good feedback on a successful new stir-fry concoction after a long day of often hurdlesome work at a nonprofit. My mom, who worked very long hours and served as a volunteer board member for many local organizations in the evenings, cooked less often but when she did it was phenomenal! She’s famous for her garlic-heavy fresh basil pesto and her apple pie, both of which take a lot of time to prepare. Taking time to cook with us and for us was maybe the most primary way my family shared and showed love. As I got older I began sharing the work of preparing dinner: sometimes just a quick meal thrown together after sports practice and before homework, and sometimes cooking all day long during summer vacation just to surprise my parents with a thoughtful, inventive – and yes, laborious – meal that through the passion put into it showed the love, gratitude, and respect I had for them.
The process of preparing food makes me feel intimately connected with and responsible for the food I buy, prepare, eat, and share with loved ones. This is part of what baffles me about Laura’s situation. To never have cooked food or even seen food prepared by a parent or family member at a holiday meal, and to only relate to food in its finished state as a plated restaurant dish, to me must mean that Laura has an extremely reductive, selective, and limited understanding of and relationship with food. It’s like trying to glean the context, plot, characters, and meanings of a book by simply reading the last sentence to see how it wraps up. Of course, one can select restaurants that place more emphasis on the sourcing of food and talk up high-status and high-integrity ingredients and exquisite cooking technique, but there is inherently a reduced amount of connection to food when someone else prepares it for you, especially in a commercial setting. From the diner’s perspective, the meal is more often than not ambiguously sourced from anonymous places through abstract or foreign channels; it is prepared by an often nameless chef in a sterile, stainless steel kitchen behind closed swinging doors; is cooked with undisclosed ingredients; and is served or delivered by a polite and obliging stranger (a situation not unlike that at our campus dining halls, I’ll note). On top of that, dishes are selected by each diner according to her tastes and preferences, and rarely does a meal eaten at a restaurant actually involve sharing the same food and food experience, and sharing food… well… to me that’s the bottom line.
Thanksgiving is maybe the epitome in some ways of why food matters to me. Food to me, both while growing up and now, is most notably a way of bringing people together. Bringing family, friends, and loved ones to the table for a meal; connecting the family to the farmer; bridging rivers, continents, and cultures in connecting field to fork. At Thanksgiving we come together with family and friends (for many, just that one time a year) to share food, secret recipes, and cooking tips; to share company, memories, and laughter; to share updates, stories, and plans for the future. Thanksgiving at our house was a somewhat chaotic gathering of a motley crew of uncles, aunts, spouses, and cousins. Everyone contributed a dish: mashed turnips with tarragon and butter; braised carrots with apricot brandy and amaretto liqueur; Campbell’s green bean casserole… My mom has a habit of straying from recipes, and many things were improvised or invented for the occasion. Little was magnificent (in fact, some dishes were quite mediocre) but the eclectic whole was perfect. It wouldn’t have felt like Thanksgiving without those dishes made year in and year out, with love, by family. Through the exhausting and time-consuming efforts of cooking, cleaning, and hosting we give and take nourishment, and nurture our bodies, our families, and our spirits.
It is this idea of nourishment which inspires the work of the Real Food Challenge. Real Food has the power to truly nourish – to nourish the body and soul of the consumer with real, quality food. To nourish the producers of our food: the breeders, farmers, ranchers, processors who work and sacrifice to bring food to our plates so that they might also be healthy, be safe, and thrive. To nourish the communities in which our food is produced, processed, packed, shipped, prepared, eaten, and disposed of so that our own experience as consumers is not at the detriment of another being. And to nourish the environments and resources that beget our own nourishment. Real Food goes beyond the supermarket shopper looking for health food, and beyond the stereotypical environmentalist looking for reduced packaging, shorter food mileage, and a smaller carbon footprint. Real Food, in many ways, is not food at all, but rather a system of decisions, players, actions, and commitments that fundamentally respects the integrity of producers, communities, the earth, and consumers. It’s about connection, relationships, and saying yes to a better way.
Thanksgiving, after all, isn’t just about the food. It’s about being grateful for the resources, experiences, and privileges we’ve been given; being generous with our time, our contributions, and our patience; and it’s about validating and saying out loud the things we are thankful for and so often take for granted.
I’m thankful that my family cooked for me and that the responsibility of preparing food for the family was shared with me.
I’m thankful for friends like Laura, who remind me about the gifts I’ve been given and remind me about what I value, and why.
I’m thankful that I am engaged in communities of people who thrive on cooking and sharing food with friends, and who place an enormous amount of emphasis on expressing gratitude for their gifts and for one another.
I’m thankful that through the tools of the Real Food Challenge I am able to affect change in our food system on a large and far-reaching scale and with effective impact.
I’m thankful that I’ve met so many of you inspired and inspiring students engaged in the Real Food Challenge who are learning that we have a say in the decisions being made for us, and in the food system we create, enable, and support; you who are working to leverage your power to create a better world.
To all of you: thank you, and Happy Thanksgiving.
Emma Brewster is a 2011 – 2012 Northwest Regional Field Organizer
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