Here's a guest blog written by our friend & CSA member, Emily Estrada (we love her enthusiasm!!!):
If I were to ask those who know me
well for an adjective that best describes my personality, I suspect words such
as dramatic and theatrical would be used often.
I’ve made my peace with this and can admit that from time-to-time I
have, in order to (try to..) captivate an audience, presented certain things in
a dramatic, theatrical and maybe on occasion, even exaggerated manner. However, when I write that becoming a CSA
member with In Good Heart Farm has been one of the most life-changing decisions
I’ve ever made, I assure you that I am
not being dramatic, theatrical or
exaggerating in the slightest. On
the surface, one may think, “Really? Really?!?
Having a vegetable subscription has changed your life…?” Yes – that’s exactly right – joining the CSA
in spring/summer 2011 changed my core, and even deeper, challenged what I
thought I knew about myself. Before you
dismiss me, read on.
The
most obvious (and I suspect common!) change is simply that I eat many more
vegetables now. Before the CSA, I would
honestly go days…weeks…and maybe even….months without eating a fresh
vegetable. Today, I average about four
servings of vegetables per day (and in some weird way, increasing my vegetable
consumption has lead to an increase in my fruit consumption…who would have
thought? It’s like this is the type of
food my body was designed to consume...weird
J ). I was 28 when we joined the CSA, when, up
until then I had always resisted eating vegetables. Think about that: over two and a half decades
of thinking one way (1. Veggies are
gross. 2. We’re “suppose” to eat vegetables but could never actually taste
good.), changed so quickly by being a part of the CSA. Actually, it’s best not to think about it;
when I do, I become angry. How is it,
exactly, that I resisted eating vegetables for a very long time – without ever
even considering how great they could taste (and make me feel!)?!?! That’s not rhetorical – I think I have some
answers. First, I was not raised in a
veggie-centered family. Although we are
all much more concerned with healthy eating today, this definitely wasn’t how
it was back in the day. Growing up my palette
much preferred battered, deep-fried meats and (limited) vegetable items. Thus, as a grown up, eating that type of food
feels normal. Second, moving beyond my
family, I recently caught a few minutes of a cartoon on Nickelodeon when my
nephew visited us. In the segment I
watched, the “punishment” given to a kid (or baby fairy, actually) was to eat
beets. Beets?!?!? How, exactly,
is that a punishment[1]? And, more importantly, what message are we
sending our children when we tell them eating beets is a form of punishment rather than the wonderfully root-y treat
they are? My point is that growing up in
a family that was not veggie-conscious coupled
with living in a society that
tells children vegetables are gross, and that instead, they need to pick up a
bag of those ever-so-cool triple-dipped toxic waste flavored cheese puffs, left
me veggie-disillusioned for the majority of my life. As a CSA member, my wonderment and absolute
amazement towards vegetables has been restored.
Change #2: I’m eating more diverse types of vegetable;
joining a CSA probably introduces many new and exotic vegetables for even those
that have been life-long produce lovers.
The more adventurous vegetables I’ve tried through the CSA for the first
time include: kohl rabi, leeks, fennel (OMG
– fennel – I still get chills when I think about the first time I had it; I was
seriously angry that this wonderful,
joyous product only entered into my life when I was 29!!! How did I live before it??), purple potatoes,
garlic scape, and Daikon radish to name a few.
But, to express even further the change brought about by the CSA, let me
also list the more traditional veggies I tried for the first time with the CSA:
broccoli, cauliflower, any type of
green (collard, swiss chard, kale (again – OMG
– kale chips?? An existential question
of the vegetable variety: can a life
before kale chips, really be
considered living?), beet greens), beets, cabbage, carrots (alright, yes, I had
baby carrots before – but they were
those little tooth-pick shaped carrots that somehow get widdled down to
stumps…I’m talking about those amazingly beautiful purple, yellow, orange, and
white ones that look as though the ground was actually their home at some
point), and radish. Before the CSA I
was, flat-out, unequivocally a Grade A weenie when it came to trying all food,
but in particular veggies. The CSA has
made me braver[2]. I love getting
a vegetable that I’ve never eaten before; even better if I’ve never even heard or
seen it. Almost every week I play the
“Name That Vegetable” game with family back in Texas. I send a picture of the veggie and they
submit their guesses[3]. In short, the CSA has made me not only a much
more frequent fresh food eater, but a more adventurous one. I now know first, what the heck kale is, and
secondly the difference between Red Russian and Winterbore varieties. Same goes for radish – I can spot and
describe different varities. Same goes
for potatoes…and on and on. Five years
ago, I never would have thought that this discovery and knowledge would have
entered my life. Thank you CSA!
The last, and in
many ways, deepest transformation the I’ll write about concerns the realization that food is so much more than I ever thought it was. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always known that food tasted good and,
because of this, can make me happy. But
by saying that food is so much more than what I could have ever imagined, I
mean that the CSA has helped me realize the natural and social connections betweens
the food-production earth, the farmers that cultivate the food, and me – the
being that consumes it. I’ve often joked
that until I met Patricia and Ben, I thought vegetables came out of the ground
in a can filled with a water solution, is because when vegetables did make an
appearance in my family, they usually came from a can. As such, I cannot express in words the
wonderment I felt the first time I saw a carrot pop out of the ground; my life
changed in an instant. Seeing that
carrot come out of the ground reminded me that in many fundamental ways, I
depend on the earth and, likewise, when treated properly (as Patricia and Ben
very much do) the earth depends on us as well.
Because of the modern-day industrial food production systems and
messages that we’re surrounded by, it’s easy to forget how food connects us to
the natural world and, what’s more, it’s easy to ignore the relationship we
have with food, the earth, and the food producers. Gaining this knowledge – the knowledge that
my time on earth is connected to a much larger phenomena – has helped me gain a
new perspective on life.
It’s
weird to admit, but one of my favorite things to talk about are vegetables. When a friend joins the CSA, it’s all I can
do to stop myself from wanting to know how they’re going to store their
veggies, how they are going to prepare them, and how they tasted. On the first day of pickup this season, I
wanted to take a picture as in “First Day of CSA!” in the “First Day of School”
sense. Next go-round, I think I may
actually do it.
[1]
UNLESS they ate so much of the AMAZING Raw Beet Salad recipe Wake Cooperative
posted on facebook and got a belly-ache like I do, but that’s only because it
was super-yummy!
[2]
And not only about trying vegetables.
For, I’ve recently discovered a fondness for shrimp – LOVE them. The old Emily would never even entertain the idea of trying shrimp.
[3]
Admittedly, these submissions tend to be more comical than serious. The garlic scape elicited a response of
“Freddy Krueger herbs” and…well, I won’t tell you what they came up with for
Daikon radish. J
