"Local" eating

(Posted by Himanee)


Ten days of September's Loca-Vore Challenge have elapsed, and I have not had the opportunity to eat "local." I have been on the road since August 28, traveling with my parents. I flew to Chicago and traveled from O'Hare to the western suburbs, where I spent the next four days attending my cousin's wedding. Every meal, except for the complimentary breakfast buffets at the hotel where we stayed, featured fully vegetarian yet highly rich and extremely spicy foods. From Chicago, my parents and I drove to Iowa City and Cedar Falls, where we spent the first few days of September traversing the paths they crossed in 1961 as new immigrants to America. We then traveled to their home in Muncie, Indiana, where I've been for the past week. Every meal, except for our Papa Johns Pizza indulgence and our Sunday breakfast at the local IHOP, has featured fully vegetarian, somewhat rich and spicy fare. The past two nights' dinners have been festive, as the season of honoring deities around the fall harvests that culminates with Diwali has begun.

But in this non-local experience, many thoughts about what it means to be sustainable have arisen. One of the great assets of being a part of an immigrant/diaspora community is a sense of understanding about protocol. Meals -- especially during the festive seasons -- are in honor of God, and, as such, are prepared with the freshest, cleanest foods available, which for the members of the predominantly Hindu Indian community in Muncie (as well as the Indian community in Chicago with which my cousin's family interacts) is code for vegetarian. The blend of spices, vegetables, yogurt, ghee, and fresh chilis within each dish often overwhelms my palate, which has grown accustomed to single ingredient dishes in recent years. However, the flavor mingle pleasantly even as my body sweats, and I end the meals feeling full and refreshed.

My parents buy some of their produce at Wal-Mart, despite my admonitions, and because they are my parents and I am a polite person, I eat what they serve me without sermonizing on the corporate giant's exploitative practices. My parents also grow their own tomatoes and chili peppers, and share their bounty with other Indians who in turn provide them with fresh karela (bitter melon), eggplants, and squashes grown in their backyard gardens. Among the seasonings that my mother uses is a blend of garam masala made by my father's family in India. My uncle, who is 84, shared the secret formula with my parents when they last traveled to India in 2009, and my mother three days ago shared it with me. If I can manage to grow some of the spices it contains, I will do so. Otherwise, I feel content knowing that I can carry on a family practice of making garam masala in the village way.

As we ate -- with our fingers, mostly, blending "wet" curries with rice and scooping dry vegetable dishes up with roti -- my parents asked me many questions about the backyard farming that my husband and I have undertaken. Frequently, the topic of milk came up, with my mother asking me if we would ever have any interest in raising a cow. It's fortunate that my husband wasn't with me on this trip because he might have procured a loan from his doting mother-in-law for such an investment. He is trying to convince me that we can raise a cow; I feel that we need more land -- and more of a financial safety net than we have currently -- before we can take such a plunge. (Goat milk, by the way, is not an option for me, for reasons that are too complex to delve into here.)

The topic of milk triggered my father's memories of his family's cow. He was born in 1932 in a village in northern India, between Rajasthan and New Delhi. The family was a large one, and initially quite poor though grew prosperous over time. They kept a cow, which was milked at dawn. The milk was boiled, then consumed at a midday meal and used in cooking throughout the day. My father recalled my grandmother churning some of the milk for butter, which would be stored in a pot, and heating whatever milk was left at the end of the day with a little water. The water would steam and evaporate, leaving a thick cream-top that the family called malai in its wake. That would be the bedtime treat. The residue from that process would be used to make yogurt, and whatever liquid was skimmed off would be given to poorer families in the village as buttermilk. I laughed as I thought about how prized real buttermilk has become today.

What struck me in this discussion was how nothing went to waste. And, tonight, while attending a puja (or worship) at a younger Indian immigrant family's home, it seemed to resonate with how we prayed and prepared to eat. The gathering was multi-generational, with participants ranging from about age 6 to 86. Despite the dressy Indian attire that we donned, the atmosphere was informal. The puja -- which was the stated reason for the gathering -- lasted about 15 minutes. Dinner immediately followed and continued for about an hour. A delivery truck showed up with pizza for the younger kids. As for the adults, some of the main dishes were ordered in from an Indian restaurant that has opened up in Muncie, something that wouldn't have been possible in my children when one could count the total number of Indians and South Asians residing in Muncie on two hands. The sweets, however, were homemade, which surprised and delighted me because so many companies these days offer them via mail order and Indian groceries stock the delicacies, as well. We ate on paper plates, and wiped the curry stains and oils accumulating on our fingers on paper napkins. As we left, it became clear that none of the food was going to waste. Individual-sized zip-lock bags appeared and were filled with channa, kofta kari, aloo sabzi, and the homemade sweets. A single meal fed a community at least two times over.

I place this experience against the context of how I think of being a "loca-vore" when I'm home in New York. It's great to grow your own produce, to can your own tomatoes (as my husband has done diligently these past two weeks), and to feast on eggs your own chickens laid. But against that sense of "own-er-ship" is a price: the work behind growing your own food is clean and honest, but it is labor-intensive. Feeding a community is challenging when a crop goes awry or when ethics about eating in particular ways for certain reasons are not communally understood.

I look forward to coming home tomorrow, and eating fresh from my garden. But as I resume my loca-voring, I would like to continue to consider what it really means to be sustainable.