Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter.
Last year I heard a true story that keeps coming back to me as much of the
country approaches the beginning of the local fresh produce season. In this
story, one mother is considering joining a CSA. She has heard, rightly, that
she's likely to receive many vegetables that will be new to her family. So she
calls a friend who has been a CSA member for some time, and asks how their
family has dealt with the expansion of their vegetable repertoire. "Easy," says
the friend. "If we don't know what it is, first we fry it in a little butter.
If that doesn't work, we try it with a little Ranch dressing."
Now, I grew up watching a lot of television, including that great series of
health education spots that ABC ran in between Saturday mornings cartoons. One
was an animated song called "Don't Drown Your Food,"
in which Our Hero rescues a variety of foods from a surfeit of dressings.
"Food's so much better when it's practically plain!" he sings, while pulling a
baked potato from a vat of sour cream. Sound advice in the 1970s, and probably
even more needed now. The chorus rang in my head when I heard the Ranch
dressing story.
Still, I think this story points to a greater truth: we all need to start where
we are. If it's a choice between familiar but negligibly nutritious tater tots
or kohlrabi dipped in Ranch, I say go for the kohlrabi. That might not be the
desired end point, but it's a place to begin. Whether we're trying to eat more
vegetables, less meat, better meat, or what have you, I think that a real shot
at change starts with two things: being honest about where we are starting
from, and acknowledging that most change happens incrementally. These first
steps remove the false hope that change is going to happen magically, without
effort. Thus freed, we can make a realistic plan for how to get from where we
are to where we want to be. Maybe it starts with a schmear of salad dressing on
the foreign vegetable, and later moves to ketchup, then salsa, and eventually a
little swirl of olive oil makes everybody happy.
Spring is the time when many of us make plans for how we're going to eat this
summer, whether we're signing up for a CSA, laying out a garden, or counting
the days until the farmers market opens. We say go ahead and be adventurous
this year! It will likely be a lot of fun if you start with small changes and
build from there. If your family has had success changing its eating patterns
for the better, we'd love to hear how you did it. You can post your ideas here.
To Spring and new beginnings!
Eat well, and take good care.
Erin
Erin Barnett
Director
LocalHarvest
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