We are What We Eat

Happy New Year! Unfortunately I did not get to post my Book Reviews last month. However the New Year is here, so I will again begin the Book Review!

Three years ago I read Patricia Klindienst’s most wonderful book The Earth Knows My Name, Food Culture and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. I cried through several chapters as it touched my heart so deeply. The stories are of American immigrants struggling to hold onto their culture, their sense of the land and food by farming or gardening. For many it is their livelihood, for others just a way of expressing their relationship to the land and their native culture.

There is one part of the book that I wish to share with you, as I feel that it is vital to understanding our relationship to food. Gerard Bentryn, a Polish American vintner in Bainbridge Island, Washington tells his story;

“When I worked in British Columbia,’ he explains, ‘we were doing surveys on wilderness perception in Strathcona Provincial Park. I spent days alone in the woods watching people through binoculars. When I would come down out of the woods I’d eat at a logging camp. One of the guys who works in the mess hall and would sometimes be having coffee while I was eating there was a Native Canadian. One day he says to me,

‘Oh, so you’re out in the woods, and you’re learning about this valley.’ He said,

'I’ve never left this valley. Every thing that I eat comes out of this valley. Everybody that I am related to, all my family, is buried in this valley. When I eat, I eat the people and the place. I’m made out of Vancouver Island. But look at what you’re eating.’ I said, ‘Yeah?’
and he said, ‘You’re made out of tin cans. Because that’s what you eat out of.’

‘He was teasing me in a good-natured way, but I thought about it and he was right. We use the phrase “we are what we eat,’ but I also think we are where we eat. That’s the thing that people miss. This need to be of a place, to be of a community.’”
(my emphasis)

Sharing a meal with someone in your community, it is a precious gift. Having someone over, cooking together, enjoying food from your local markets, laughing together and those moments may be the most nourishing foods we can have.

Enjoy!