Introducing These Salty Oats…Again

Also titled: I took 7.5 years off from writing and now Substack exists!

It’s the fifteen year anniversary of my food awakening. 

In the summer of 2009, I lived in the Washington DC area with my fiancee. I had left my job and burgeoning identity as a school counselor, reaching a dead end on a life path I had followed on auto-pilot. I had no idea what was next: where we would live, what I would do, and why I would want to do it.

Then, one weekend, I had a food awakening double feature, and 15 years later I’m still on the path I wholeheartedly and passionately entered.

That fateful June weekend, started by seeing the documentary Food Inc. If you were an adult in 2009, you may remember this movie and how its subject matter captivated the nation, briefly setting many people off on a locavore organic craze, with farm-to-table restaurants swelling, menus proudly featuring local purveyors, and farmers’ markets becoming the hottest place in town. (Fifteen years later, the hysteria has calmed down, but remnants of that time period remain, especially when you see a chain restaurant’s menu promoting “local and organic when possible”).

Food Inc was the first time I truly considered the concept of a food system. It was the first time I honestly thought more deeply about the sources of our food, how it was grown, and its relationship to my personal health, but also to the health of the ecosystem and community. It opened up my eyes to food inequity, to the concept of flavor, and gave me names of people dedicating their lives to the challenging work of growing food sustainably, cooking it seasonally, and educating others — from all socioeconomic walks of life and cultural backgrounds — to understand the vital importance of “you are what you eat”.

The funny thing was, despite not knowing anything about what Food Inc was detailing, I was already “into” food in many ways, the way many young, childless couples with a bit of disposable income are: my now husband and I frequented both fast food and high dining restaurants all over the city, met friends at new restaurants, read restaurant reviews, and consumed cooking shows on TV (Top Chef was in its infancy!). When we traveled, we researched restaurants, seeking out new flavors. Food was never an afterthought; never once have we thought — oh I forgot to eat lunch!

And we tried to cook. We had a few go-to recipes: phyllo-wrapped chicken from Justin, a meal that wowed me on our first date, and (okay, I’ll whisper it) muffin tin meatballs from me.  We were fairly clueless in the kitchen. Our food background was one we were simply replicating as young adults: restaurants were where you celebrated major life events and had a break from cooking and dishes. The idea—and art—of cooking simply was lost on us. We weren’t going to bother with whipping up a simple breakfast when we could go get a blueberry muffin and huge smoothie from Whole Foods or gorge on the all-you-can-eat buffet at Whitlow's on Wilson (since shuttered). We didn’t even know how to flip pancakes! There was a well-attended farmers’ market just up the hill from our apartment that we occasionally frequented for in-season peaches or handmade pasta. Nothing resonated beyond that.

So, what was it about Food Inc that managed to stick with me for fifteen years? It didn’t, not on its own. The next day of that weekend featured a field dinner at a farm and peach orchard in Purceville, Virginia, about an hour outside the city. I hadn’t planned on a food themed weekend, but the combination of the two transformed me.

I consider Food Inc the initial seminar reading in a college course before you take a deep dive into the content. Food Inc gave me a broad understanding of food, one that I wanted to tease apart and learn more about. The visual imagery of the different kinds of farms stuck with me; the passion with which Alice Waters, Joel Salatin, and Michael Pollan spoke sat with me. I heard words (sustainable, biodynamic, CAFO) I had never heard before, and I pondered concepts that seemed to make sense even if I was just hearing about them for the first time. 

Food Inc was the seminar reading that got me excited about learning. The farm dinner became the sensory event that hooked me.

Today, dinners pop up all summer long at various farms. But in 2009, they were still a relatively new concept. Outstanding in the Field had been around for 10 years, but it certainly wasn’t a topic of conversation amongst my peer group. I don’t remember what incentivized us to sign up for the dinner at Moutoux Orchard. Perhaps we signed up simply for the novelty and an experience to share together. Truly neither of us had spent any time on farms, so when we arrived, every single experience felt unique. Drinks around the chicken coop with spectacular late afternoon light illuminating the clucking hens. A few banjo players roaming around. A trek down a tractor path towards several long tables in a field. Sitting with new people — including farmers (one of whom was visiting from Vermont, where I now live). Chatting around farm-fresh food. I remember the peaches and salad, the freshness, the smells. We lingered until nightfall and felt wrapped in something we couldn’t explain on our drive home.

It’s no understatement to share that after those two experiences that I located my entrance into my identity: a winding, novel, beautiful path, and a path full of unexpected turns, falls, and mistakes. At 26, I couldn’t have said then what I know now about food, but I could have said that I felt something powerful, and something to be pursued.

As I look at my life now, one entirely focused around food, I realize how much of this journey started in a single weekend, a transformation I never could have predicted.  And yet, as our lives unfold from baby to child to adult to “seasoned” adult (I put myself in that category, but only by an inch), we are not unlike the plants that I cultivate on my small farm and in the various flower gardens around our property.   

Each plant comes from a single seed.  Each seed, whether a large squash seed or a tiny foxglove seed, has within it the potential to blossom into something much larger.   Take the foxglove.  I used to see these blooming everywhere in the Pacific NW, on late Spring hikes in the Columbia Gorge.  They towered over everything else, their pink and purple and white blooms looking impossibly fragile while they held up to intense wind, rain, and animal pressure.  

Last Spring, I decided to start about 30 foxgloves;  when they finally germinated, I was unimpressed.  In fact, I had to find places to put them because too many germinated and I hadn’t prioritized space.  I tucked them into the farm and the garden behind my house, with my younger son helping.  They grew all summer, putting out huge green leaves, remaining squat, looking more like groundcover than a flower.  Then winter came and they shrank back, many appearing dead.  With the start of another spring, about 80% of them immediately began growing again.  They had spent the previous year growing their dense low foliage and all this spring they pushed towards the sky on tall spikes before presenting clusters of speckled purple, pink, and white trumpet flowers.  They’ve been towering in our own wind-tunnel property, through thunderstorms and then drought, with no supplemental water from me for over three weeks now.   I keep expecting them to fade, but each morning when I wake, I glance out the window and they’re still there.   

Those foxgloves had, in their single seed, the latent power and energy to transform into their full potential — and many of them did.  That fateful weekend in July of 2009 was the first watering of something latent inside me, and much like waiting for the foxgloves to bloom, this path has taken time, energy, and patience.  I am here now because I recognized a passion then.  And I’m here on Substack to share this passion with you. I’m excited to share food musings, recipes and conversations with you, to inspire a new passion for food, or to re-inspire your own journey.  Please subscribe to join this conversation. And thank you for reading!