The Bowdoin Orient

This weekend, I went to Stew Leonard’s, in Norwalk, Connecticut. For anyone who does not know, Stew Leonard’s is like if an Ikea, a grocery store, and an amusement park got put in a Cuisinart and congealed together. Upon entering the store, one follows a trail marked by yellow duck feet on the floor through a labyrinth of food sections, and throughout the store there are mechanized stuffed animals swinging around little trapezes with signs above them that say, “We flip for our customers!” Along the way you come to stations where digital clocks with big red letters count down the time until the next show; show, here, referring to robotic milk cartons singing Christmas carols, or huge dogs dressed in overalls playing banjos and singing an indiscernible and jaunty tune, probably brimming with canine puns.

I was taken there by my very excited 22-year-old girlfriend who made me wait at every one of these stations (the dogs were her favorite) so that I could experience the magic of her childhood food shopping experience. In my pocket was a shopping list from her mother, who had offered to share one of her recipes with me. I was extremely honored because she is one of those people that is The Cook of every circle she is part of. I was also a little worried that I would overstep my boundary with a suggestion to use local products, but thankfully, my also very dutiful and wonderful girlfriend pointed that out so that I wouldn’t have to. So, the recipe of the evening was amended to fit the produce available locally, and so, friends, again, I bring to you, soup.

Butternut squash soup is remarkably simple. On my list: two large butternut squashes, two cartons of vegetable broth, and chicken apple sausages. The thought process behind it, however was a bit more complicated. The two large butternut squashes came from Stew Leonard’s, sourced from a farm in Hamden, Connecticut, just a forty-minute drive up the road. Very little guilt there, although ideally, yes, I would meet the farmers and help them raise their children and offer up my extra kidney before buying their squash. The vegetable broth came from Whole Foods, the second stop on our tour of Connecticut food stores. More guilt there: non-recyclable packaging, showy and hard to decipher labeling, no idea of where or how it is produced. The chicken sausage was also from Whole Foods, from the case that advertises Whole Foods’s premiere 5-Step® Animal Welfare Rating, involving somewhere close to 100 species-specific standards telling you how “good”—by environmental, health, and taste parameters—your meat is, with the quality improving as the numbers get higher, and the price skyrocketing in the same direction. More guilt there: did “local” mean locally manufactured, but made with chickens from who knows where? If these are mass produced sausages, does the company think about its energy sources and usage and try to minimize it? Do they treat their workers well? Feeling overwhelmed, I shut up, and we bought the food, crossing everything requested of us off the list.

We went back home, and I chopped, baked, sautéed, and pureed. As I said, the process was quite simple, which left me a lot of time to think.

I know how to eat locally in Brunswick. Summer farmers market at Crystal Springs, winter farmers market in Fort Andros (everyone go!), Portland Food Coop, many a nearby farm to visit. I was totally disoriented in Connecticut: I had no idea where to go. Even though I was in a new place, I wanted to still support the local food economy and the people involved in it, but it was hidden behind the convenience of Stew Leonard’s and the glitz of Whole Foods that are such a part of how our food system works. One makes food shopping fun instead of mindful, the other makes shopping expensive and exclusive. I left the stores longing for Brunswick, feeling hypocritical and false. I am going to Germany next semester, and I am responsible for feeding myself! Am I going to be able to find local foods? If I ask about them, will I be regarded as snobby, pretentious and naively privileged?

Forgive me for the foray into the every detail of my thought process, dear reader, but I wanted to give you the framework that leads to this ultimate statement to wrap up my series of columns for this semester: Butternut squash soup may be simple, but eating locally is really freaking hard. It is expensive, it is time consuming; it involves research and establishment in places to the point that is maybe impossible to achieve while traveling. It involves suspicion of standards, difficult discussions, an awareness of the social connotations of “local” and an acknowledgement of the privilege I have to be able to eat this way. For me, it invokes a healthy dose of guilt mixed with a lethal dose of self-righteousness and a sprinkle of hypocrisy. But I’m trying. And now my family is trying, and my girlfriend is trying, and my friends mock me, but also try, and hopefully, things will change so that it doesn’t involve so much trying, but instead demands the things that are fundamental to it: eating, cooking, learning, talking, congratulating, helping, caring. Hopefully I have inspired some caring in those that read this, and maybe some willingness to try. Go home this winter, ask about a recipe, think about how you might be able to get the ingredients locally. Ask about a recipe for which you know you can get the ingredients locally. If you can’t, consider why that is and what could make it different. For me, it is hard, but it is so, so worth it.

And now for something simpler but also so, so worth it.