Tasting Lab Week 2

-Cornbread & Wild & spring greens salad-

The readings this week made Doug ponder local food issues which led him to bring a salad of fresh local greens as well as some wild crafted dandelion and mustard greens.

Linsey made a cornbread, based on her mother’s loose recipe – not a lot of exact measurements, similar Vertamae’s vibration cooking.

While eating the salad and thinking about what it means to be a locavore, I was reminded of a paper written by Brandon Born and Mark Purcell titled, Avoidingthe Local Trap. The local trap is the assumption that the local scale is inherently good (or bad). What is local? Is it down the road, within city limit, regional? Scale is fluid, fixed and relational to other kinds of scale. The paper argues that scale is a strategy and not necessarily a goal. “Therefore, it is social justice (or sustainability or democracy, etc.), not localization or globalization, that must remain the focus for those planners who seek to change the current structure of food systems.”

I was also reminded that I want to be more intentional about wild crafting this year.

Linsey called upon us to reflect on our heritage and foods that make us think of home. This is easy for me – something I spend a lot of time doing. Something I feel strongly about. I am a New Mexican – both of my parent’s families have lived there many generations back. And although I have been in the Northwest for about seven years now, I will be tied to the red earth of the southwest forever. Chiles are the most important food there. When they are still green they are roasted in the fall and canned or frozen to eat throughout the year, the more mature red pods turned into a sauce. Chile is eaten on everything. There are also: Beans, tamales for Christmas, calabacitas, biscochitos, sopaipillas, fresh tortillas, chicharrones…

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *