When I started this blog exactly two months ago I had a few goals in mind.  The most significant goal was to shift my paradigm; to look at the world in new ways and keep my mind fresh and engaged.  To keep myself accountable for that goal I stated it clearly and on the record.  At the same time I offered up some smaller resolutions for the year in front of me.  And as it turns out that large goal and one of the smaller resolutions are about to jump into bed together.  Or, perhaps more accurately, into the kitchen together.

Throughout the past several years our culture has paid increasing attention to our food sources.  A whole punditry of dietary and nutritional hawks has emerged.  In 2001 Fast Food Nation was written by Eric Schlosser.  Morgan Spurlock tackled the dubious challenge of eating nothing but McDonald’s for a full month in 2003’s documentary Super Size Me.  Michael Pollan further explored our food sources with his 2007 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  And 2009 brought us another documentary, Food, Inc. from Schlosser and Pollan, as well as the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  In addition to these larger works, a smattering of magazine articles on related topics has also been published, such as this one in TIME about the real costs of food, this one in the New York Times Magazine about our cooking habits, and this one in Rolling Stone about the putrid realities of hog farming.

As a girl who loves to cook, a girl with a wee bit of an earthy streak, and a girl who grew up hearing the refrains of Wendell Berry echo through her home, I’ve started to feel a bit guilty about the ways in which I contribute to crimes committed by big agriculture and large scale food distribution.  Couple this guilt with the paradigm-shifting purpose of this blog and my resolution to eat more fruits and vegetables and you get:

Gale is becoming a vegetarian for a month.

(For the record, GAP is not excited about this…  Supportive, but not excited.)

Starting today, and throughout the month of March, I will abstain from all meat, including fish and seafood.  I will continue to eat eggs and dairy, though.  Veganism requires more fortitude than I can muster at this point.  (And I have a soft spot for milkshakes.)  To keep me company on this journey I am summoning the likes of Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer and their books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eating Animals, respectively.  I chose these two titles specifically because they are well-respected works that I believe will help me better understand the larger implications of the dietary decisions I make each day.

I am prepared for the fact that this experiment may take me down a path that is inconvenient and expensive.  Buying chicken breasts priced at four dollars per pound from the grocery store down the road from my house is a very easy way to live.  At this point I don’t know where that chicken comes from, or what its living conditions were when it was alive.  I suspect that my prescribed reading for this month will dispel my ignorance, which may not be an easy realization to accept.

Some of my shopping and eating habits have already changed.  I stopped buying farm-raised salmon many months ago after reading an article in The Economist (which I couldn’t find online) about the damage that salmon farms have done to the tributary ecosystems on the East coast.  I started baking my own bread after an incident last spring when I inadvertently bought two loaves at once and after six weeks on my shelf the second loaf still hadn’t molded.  (To me, food that won’t spoil is scarier than food that has spoiled.)  And I make all of IEP’s food from scratch so that I can ensure that he isn’t exposed to the skyrocketing levels of sugar, salt, and processed fats that exist in many packaged foods.

So I’m not walking into this completely blind.  But, I do not buy local produce.  I do not buy organic.  And I have never intentionally excluded meat from my diet.  It will certainly be a challenge.

I would also like to mention that I recognize that I am not unique in this decision.  Thousands (millions?) of people have gone years without eating meat.  I am here making a bit of a fuss about this experiment because, for me, it is a significant change.  I live in the Midwest where meat is the centerpiece of nearly every meal.  But many, many people have traveled this same path – for reasons both noble and silly – with no fanfare at all.  My reason for calling attention to this choice is because I believe that I am a pretty fair representation of your average, healthy American.  And if all of the attention drawn to the environmental ramifications of “big ag” and the general cause of sustainability will ever amount to real change, it will be because average people like myself find the behavioral alterations requisite in affecting the bigger picture to be worthwhile and attainable.

I have some suspicions about what long-term effects on my eating and shopping habits will be brought to bear based on this experiment.  But I will keep them to myself for now.  I will keep you updated on my progress, and will certainly have plenty to say about this exercise at its conclusion.  In the meantime, don’t forget to eat your veggies.       

Earlier this week I posted a video on my private family blog.  It is a video of IEP sitting in his highchair and crying miserably in the face of… cauliflower.  Usually he is amenable to dietary negotiations.  (“Eat this bite of cauliflower and then you can have another bite of ravioli.”)  But the other night he was not in the mood to barter.  We ended up taking a break to collect ourselves and then returned to the table for a fresh start wherein he did eat his cauliflower. 

I am adamant about picky eating.  I’m sure there are bigger things to worry about in this adventure of parenting.  But this is a battle I choose.  I was raised not to be a picky eater.  “You don’t have to like it, but you have to try it,” were some of my mother’s most famous words.  Those words got me to eat certain things that I loved (bread pudding!) and certain things that I didn’t (stewed zucchini?).   So today there are very few foods that I simply won’t eat.  And I’m very thankful that culinary breadth was foisted upon me without the opportunity to appeal. 

As a rule I think that attitudes about food can be (somewhat) reasonably extrapolated out into the larger picture of life.  And so recently I’ve been thinking about this philosophy as it applies to life in general.  The older we get the easier it is to define ourselves as a defined set of interests and activities.  Childhood finds us constantly trying new things – piano lessons, Girl Scouts, softball, tennis, gymnastics, basketball, horseback riding, ice skating, and ballet.  (Sorry guys, I don’t have any brothers, so I don’t really know what you did as kids… besides torment your sisters.)  But as adults we are no longer signing up for summer camp activities, electives, and various kinds of lessons.  We know what we like and what we don’t like, and we stick with it. 

But what if we were a bit more adventuresome?  What if we tried new things every now and then?  Sure, we might not like them.  Sure, we might regret time or money wasted on a dud.  But we might find something we love.  Or, we might at least get a good story out of it.

Better yet, why do we limit ourselves as adults?  What is about adulthood that makes us cling to our safety nets so dearly.  Elizabeth from Life in Pencil explored the relationship aspect of this question in her guest post over at Motherese the other day.  She insightfully pointed out that with age we are more inclined to dig our heels in than to tap dance our way into a paradigm shift, which, to me, is just plain sad.

We may not be ten years old anymore.  We may no longer thirst for the next new experience the way we once did.  We may find that the familiar suits us just fine.  But how did we find our way to the familiar?  At some point, it was new!  At some point it was strange and maybe uncomfortable.  As I think about some of the things that I cherish most in my life – going to college, living on my own, traveling alone, speaking another language, mothering – my first experiences with each were exhilarating.  But they were also frightening and overwhelming.   

I am as guilty of this rut as the next person.  It’s so easy to stick to your routine.  And there is real value in routine.  It allows us to let our guard down.  We can focus on the little things that bring us pleasure and joy when we aren’t spending our days fielding new and unwieldy circumstances.  But over time our routines can come to own us, rather than the other way around.  We come to rely on them so fiercely that we never venture beyond their bounds.

Like many of us, IEP would gladly eat nothing but his favorite foods day after day.  But I will continue to push him out of his comfort zone.  Some days there will be cauliflower in my hands.  But some day there will be bread pudding.  And when the bread pudding day comes, I hope he will be happy that he learned to try new things. 

In the meantime, I will try to live by my mother’s words more broadly.

Sometimes, in the recesses of my mind, I dream about being a painter, or a sculptor, or a brick layer, or a florist.  Sometimes I think rather longingly about these types of professions.  I see the palette of colors in front of me and I picture the canvas as the scene emerges.  I feel the clay in my hands, cool and damp, and the way it takes shape slowly and deliberately.  I feel the rough texture of the brick scratch against my gloved hand as I set it into its place in the wall, and I hear the scrape of the spade as I wipe away the mortar.  I smell the flowers around me, and I arrange them into something beautiful, harmonious, and organized.

No, I’m not having a massive identity crisis. 

But here’s the thing about my career: It is completely and wholly intangible.  I am a marketing director for a medium-sized company.  Each day I spend hours tweaking spreadsheets, writing strategic planning documents, building consensus, and planning new “features and functionality”.  When I leave the office each evening I walk out with the same darling brown poka-dotted computer bag that I carried in several hours earlier.  My office looks the same, the building looks the same, I look the same. 

If I do my job well, in about 15- to 18-months’ time, my company will have envisioned, created, marketed, and sold a new product that will be used effectively by members of our industry to help better the lives of their end-customers.  

Huh?  What does that even mean? 

For reasons of privacy, I’ve been intentionally vague in my description.  But even if I’d gotten into specifics about our market, our clients, and their customers, the net effect of the statement wouldn’t be that much more concrete.  The fact of the matter is, my job is incredibly abstract.  Most of the time, that doesn’t bother me at all.  I enjoy the problem solving, relationship building, and priority juggling that I do every day.

But sometimes, at the end of a day, I wish I had something to show for myself. 

And so it is that I love to cook.  I cook, well, a lot.  I cook from scratch.  I cook from recipes.  I cook from ideas that spring into my mind out of nowhere.  I bake bread and bagels.  I sear chicken and sautee scallops.  I stir risottos and soups and bechamels.  I freeze ice creams.  I temper chocolate and eggs.  I whisk salad dressings into perfectly smooth emulsions.  I know that a soft-boiled egg is perfect after four and a half minutes.  I know that pork tenderloin is medium rare when pulled from the oven at 135 degrees.  I’ve made marshmallows, for crying out loud.

And at the end of the process, there is a completed product.  I see it in front of me – something I whipped up all by myself.  I didn’t have to wait a year, or even a full day for it to materialize.  I didn’t have to form committees, or build credibility, or write a planning document (unless there’s a party involved, in which case I’m a sucker for a planning spreadsheet…)  It is immediate, and tangible, and my very own.  And there are many things to love about that.

I get to show off my talent and my labor.  I get to eat things that taste good.  I get to make people feel special.  I get to nourish myself and my family every day. 

Most nights GAP makes a point to tell me that dinner was yummy.  (I’m not going to lie, there have been some duds.)  Even IEP readily favors the dishes I’ve made myself over the those (very few!) that came home from the store ready-made.  And while the praise and approval of others isn’t anything to shake off, it’s only a small part of the reason I spend so many hours in my kitchen.

I need to see something completed.  I need to have something to show for myself.  And I need to feel that it was worth it.

As I think about it, I don’t know many people whose jobs provide tangible results.  I wonder if I’m the only one with this gap to fill; this need to create something I can see, and touch, and smell (and eat!).  I wonder if I’m the outlier here, or if others are addressing the same need via other creative outlets.  Either way, I don’t plan to stop cooking any time soon.  Despite being psychologically fulfilling… it’s delicious!