a childhood lived together

i am more and more convinced that one truism in life is that you appreciate your parents more as you get older. there are, obviously, exceptions to this, but as you get older you begin to understand the perspective by which they lived through the days and nights of parenthood.

my parents were and are generous people. whether or not they really wanted to, they taught me what i have come to see as a virtue of food culture: to be hospitable and generous is a higher calling.

just about every day of the summer my friends and i engaged in an endless cycle of activity that went something like this: 1. get up fairly early and assemble said friends if not already present. 2. commence outside activity of running around, riding bikes, playing basketball, football, or home run derby until it became too hot to be outside without the aid of 100s of gallons of water. 3. go to a friend's pool and stay in it for the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening. 4. eat dinner...eventually. 5. find one person's house to stay at that night. 6. eat and drink nearly everything in sight. 7. stay up entirely too late. 8. repeat steps 1-7.

our merry band of friends numbered 4-5 and we could eat in our teenage years. and our parents let us. they allowed us to form bonds over the shared experience of a childhood lived together in happiness and struggle, fun times and hard times that friendships inevitably will come upon, and successes and failures as we grew older.

whether or not our parents meant to do this is now inconsequential. i think they taught all of us something much more important than we could have intentionally taught ourselves: that to share and live together is greater and more fulfilling than to isolate ourselves and create an island of our own personality.

much of my childhood was literally lived with the same 5-6 guys and they are still close friends today. they were the groomsmen in my wedding; they were the people i called first to let them know we were having a baby...and then 2 babies a couple of weeks later; they are still the people i feel a longing to know how they are doing and what is going on in their lives. they are most likely a part of who i am and feel most connected to.

and much of this was developed over shared food and drink, over nights spent bleary-eyed and tired but not wanting to let go of the fun to fall asleep, and over the countless hours of unconscious weaving of life experienced together that we didn't realize was happening.

we all owe a lot to our parents. they taught us that to be generous and hospitable was and is greater than anything else we had going on in our lives. i am sure that we were an inconvenience in their lives from time to time, but they must have seen the bigger picture and noticed what was happening day after day after day. and for that words cannot contain the gratitude that i suspect we all have for them.

what is a locavore anyway?

our little community of people, with whom we have been meeting for 4 yrs now, was presented with an intriguing opportunity recently. we could purchase a cow. we could not only purchase this cow, but we could have said purchased cow slaughtered, butchered, and packaged for our consumption.

and so purchase a cow we did! just a couple of weeks ago some of our friends brought our portion of the cow to our house, and we have since been trying to figure out ways to eat dishes consisting of beef. our first dish was a delectable brown sugar meatloaf. what can i say, i am a sucker for down-home favorites.

the cow we purchased was not grain-fed or fattened. our cow was raised on grass, not too far from our house and slaughtered and processed locally as well. it was participation in what is called being a locavore (maybe just the light version, but you have to start somewhere right?). purchasing food from producers in close geographic radius to your home can have far reaching impact on the local economy -- not to mention the added bonus of knowing how your food was raised and grown.

all of this is basic stuff that can lead to bigger questions. what is the right balance of food production? how do you eat healthy and locally and maximize your impact on the local economy and food production with your limited budget (i assume none of my few loyal readers are extremely wealthy, and if you are i want to talk to you about other things!)? what are the ethical and moral impacts of these choices? it is more complicated than you probably think. and how should we go about getting our food?

let's explore food together.