My report on our two-week experiment to shop only at the co-op and eat from our freezer and cabinets is overdue. But, of course, time has blurred the details. Let me put it this way: we proved it.
I cooked more in those two weeks than I did in the four months before, and we’ve continued the experiment as best we’ve been able.
Organizing the freezer was perhaps the biggest step. We had various meats from the co-op that seemed like a good idea at the time: a ham steak, sausages, a couple of steaks. (PS: we almost never eat steak.) They all ended up on one shelf, and the frozen vegetables, processed foods, and grains ended up on shelves of their own.
“Grains!?” you say. Yes, grains. We keep ‘em in the fridge. Pantry moths, dontcha know.
Anyway, during those two weeks I pulled out the second-hand slow cooker and threw things into it, sautéed lots of onions and garlic, let flavors blend. We husbanded the beer and the wine; managed to stick to the agreement. There were a couple-three restaurant meals, or food served to us by friends. One thing it taught me? Well-off people with lots of friends have endless access to food; more than we need. I became more conscious of the excess of food that greets us every day during this really short, non-sacrificial period of co-op shopping.
At the same time, I got ahold of Michael Pollan’s new book, Food Rules. Yes, I know how stereotypical that is, and I don’t mind. I fit several stereotypes and am not particularly embarrassed about any of them. In any case, the book and the co-op shopping experiment aligned. I became more conscious of how food derives from sunlight, how it comes to our table, how it converts into energy and body mass. How food is us.
This isn’t the kind of sensibility that just goes away. Once you know something, you can’t un-know it. Cooking with fresh, local food is like that. So we’ve kept it up. Tonight, for instance, weeks later, we had chicken-sage-garlic sausage stewed with a red onion, a pear, apples, and carrots, atop these adorable little cabbages, braised in red wine and chicken stock. Those last two ingredients were not from the co-op. Everything else was.
Is it normal that I sometimes want to actually eat the soil that disgorges these things?
Tell a friend about the Cornwall Community Co-Op today. Lifetime membership is $150, with a $25 renewal fee the following year and thereafter. Members get a 10% discount, which means you pay off your membership fee in the first year, assuming you do a regular percentage of your shopping at the Co-Op.