I was walking through the fields at my local CSA farm this morning, filling a basket with stunningly speckled dragon tongue beans, and the sun was hiding behind what turned out to be our first little rain cloud of the season. I had already picked our share of Albion strawberries (three pints) and shishito peppers (two pints). One of my dearest friends moved in the aisle of beans next to me, and we chatted about everything and nothing, the way the friends whose innermost selves are well-acquainted can do. It was easy, freeing, soul-filling.
I needed a break from the chaos that is our perpetually under-construction home, the one I struggle to keep tidy, the one that contains my wildly passionate homeschooled children and an excessive amount of kitchen tools. Last week, my children helped with the weekly picking, before they ran off to play with the other children in the swing set under the ancient oak tree. Every time I see them harvesting something, be it a tomatillo or a cherry tomato or a snap pea, my heart swells in my chest. The power of being connected to our food isn’t just a catchphrase or a nice idea— it is vitally important to me in ways I have always struggled to articulate.
When I was a child, I went through several bouts of food insecurity, dipping in and out through to my teen years. Being food insecure, being poor, in one of the richest counties in the United States, was profoundly affecting. I feel the reverberations today, almost every time I head to the market or the farm; when I clean out the fridge and have to throw away something that has turned; even especially when I am preparing meals for my family.
And, as most every parent understands, meal preparation happens a lot. Three to six times a day, I am cooking, feeding, helping, handing out, somehow engaged in the act of providing my children with food. I love it. Watching them explore new flavors and textures or take delight in a perfect plum is bliss-provoking. I love seeing their cranky moods bounce back up to bubbly when they’ve finished off a meal. And. And. It can also be an endless drudgery that takes up so much of my time, and happens with such regularity, that sometimes I can’t help but wanting to shriek into the abyss, “How is it possibly time to feed you little people, again!”
Of course, I do not shriek this. I voice note a friend, or I turn to my journal. I simplify the meals for a day or two until I get my verve back. I remember how much healing work I am doing for myself, every time I feed my children.
Food has always been a key player in the background thrum of my life’s decisions. I worked in restaurants from my earliest job waiting tables at 14 and supported myself through college selling hot dogs at beer at the local golf course. I worked at an Irish pub in Germany and hosted guests on a culinary river cruise in the south of France. Tired of the hospitality front lines and unsure that I’d ever be able to make money by writing for myself, I turned to writing for restaurants and wineries and other food businesses: Marketing, copywriting, PR, social media, all of it in service to the food industry at large. My entire career was a testament to my deep devotion to the act of eating and enjoying life.
I was profoundly affected by the Bay Area’s farm to table movement of the aughts. Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food came out in 2007 and I bought it new (at Border’s! RIP). Michael Pollan, Anthony Bourdain, and indeed, even that Julie and Julia movie tinted the lens with which I viewed most everything. After growing up on ramen and store brand boxed macaroni and cheese, I always knew I would do things differently for my kids. I would teach them to revere food, to revel in it, to prioritize it for the sake of their health and the health of the planet.
And I have, and I am. We pick our vegetables at the farm and the children know their way around both the farmer’s market as well as the knife drawer in the kitchen. We eat a varied diet that is mostly healthy and made up of local, organic, sustainably grown whole foods. Mostly. Because to be honest, it hasn’t been exactly as I’d pictured it. I was such an incredible parent, before I’d had children! I certainly never anticipated feeling the existential dread that washes over me, as the afternoon stretches on, when faced with what to make for dinner. Again.
And so, I confess that my children are also well-acquainted with chicken nuggets. With processed granola bars and those cute little cheesy sandwich crackers from Trader Joe’s. I can make them all the sourdough discard crackers I want, but they still prefer Annie’s bunnies. And I am learning to let that guilt go, even as I step up my efforts to fill our plates with whole and simple real foods that we prepare from scratch.
Because it is undeniable to me that eating a diet that is more aligned with our ancestors is much better for our physical health and for the environment. It helps us turn away from plastics, from factory farming, from pesticides that destroy our pollinators and our land. My body genuinely feels better when I’ve had pasture raised bone broth and several cups of cruciferous vegetables. I know these things to be true, but I also know that perfectly living this way, unless you have an abundance of money and assistance with the physical labor of preparing food, is nearly impossible. That boulder needs to be pushed up the hill again and again, half a dozen times per day. Because while sourdough is joyous, and sourdough can take up so much energy! And sourdough is only one component of one or two meals in a day.
Instagram influencers in the slow and simple living space can sometimes obfuscate this truth — living this way is hard. Those mothers in the calico dresses, the ones with the spare houses filled with antique kitchen chairs and a few well-placed wooden toys? The mothers who whisk a loaf of fresh bread out of the oven every single day while homeschooling their four to seven children and keeping their house spotless?
It’s not real.
It’s not real. Even my YouTube videos are staged, beautiful depictions of a reality that does not happen every day. This type of content can contribute to the very real guilt that we can feel when we strive to live like this and can’t measure up. When we know we want the healthiest food and lifestyle for our children but we find it impossible to do all the things and we give in to grilled cheese sandwiches made with processed American cheese. We give in to frozen nuggets or fast food and we feel the guilt of not living the way we know we should.
My loves, I am here to release you from this guilt. This guilt does not serve us, and it both robs us of the joy of cooking and adds to the weight of our boulders. We do not have to aspire to the perfection of a pretend life on Instagram, nor can we fully return to the ancestral ways of our forbears. We can work to make the choices that align with our values, but it is simply not possible to avoid all plastic, all processing, all that this capitalist patriarchy conspires to put in our path.
We will walk the third way. The way that simplifies our cooking so it makes food preparation less cumbersome on harried weekly evenings. We choose to prioritize what we can, and celebrate our small wins. We will not berate ourselves for doing what must be done when our mental health or our family’s well-being demands food that doesn’t live up to the unrealistic standards set by some nebulous authority. We will give ourselves the grace so lacking in our modern society.
I have been on a path of food exploration my whole life. It is only now, when I am approaching forty in a few months’ time, that I am beginning to see the complete picture that I’ve only glimpsed in pieces. Perfect is not my responsibility. We can never be whole without room for improvement in a world that is as broken as ours. But our efforts will reap rich rewards, for our families and for our society. We can continue to talk about food and where it comes from, the interconnectedness of nature and our role within it. We can continue to learn from each other and the land. We can continue to cook.
Once home from the farm, I unpack my bags and baskets onto my unfinished kitchen counters. I admire the colors, the scents, the sheer joy of this collection of pristine produce. My children rush in and pounce on the strawberries, stuffing their little faces until their mouths and fingers are stained red. They help me wash and spin the lettuce dry, watching the spinner whiz around like magic. I may not do everything right, but I am doing this. And that brings me joy.