An eye-opening and mouth watering inquiry

As we embark on our summer of studying the local food movement in Seattle, I have become more conscious of the role that food has in my life. Besides the basic nourishment factor, my life truly does revolve around food. Growing up and still today, my family plans their days, especially holidays, around what we are going to eat together. Every Sunday my parents spend the entire day cooking spaghetti sauce on a brick on their stove and on special occasions, such as every Christmas Eve dinner, they accompany the sauce with homemade raviolis. Each year before the holiday season, I start to dream of ravioli and when the day arrives to start the dough and meat rolling process, I finally feel that twinge of holiday spirit.

As I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I am recognizing how even though food has always been a central part of my life, it has been there in a somewhat superficial or incomplete manner. I have never been aware, or actually really thought about, where my food was coming from. Although the food we ate was bought from the grocery store chain around the corner, I was always under the impression that what we ate as a family was healthy and even, “pure” because the meals were homemade instead of a frozen meal from Market Day. Because cooking is a large part of my family’s culture, the act of being together while you create a meal was what always stuck out as important but the rest of the story went untold.

In reading this book which accounts for a year in the lives of a family who vows to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it, my notions of the sanctity of food and the connections it can build between family and community are being transformed. The act of cooking is without a doubt significant to the author’s family and their local food journey, but it is taken to a new level since there is a story, and even a relationship, between the family and each and every tomato chopped, egg boiled and Thanksgiving turkey carved. Through this inquiry project, I am coming to learn quickly that I have been missing the most important chunk of the story of food and it feels embarrassing, intriguing and overwhelming. I’m watching myself read each chapter of this book with increased admiration to the farmers whose livelihood it is to keep us fed and a new found concern as to what corporations are controlling one of our most basic human needs.