Eating whole foods appeals to the Laura Ingalls Wilder in me. Like most people, I became interested in eating whole foods as a way to improve my health. When I say “whole foods,” I mean foods that are in as close to their natural state as possible. On the advice of a chiropractor friend, I bought Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation [WAPF] (see http://www.westonaprice.org/). From the moment I opened this book and started reading, I knew at an intuitive level that this approach to eating was right for my family.
Ironically, part of what appeals to me about the Nourishing Traditions approach to food is that it gets you back into the kitchen. When I was a girl, my favorite book was Little House in the Big Woods. I loved Wilder’s descriptions of how her family prepared for the winter by stocking their snug house with food from their garden, barn, and woods. I even liked the part where they made “head cheese” and played catch with the pig’s bladder!
So with Sally Fallon as my guide, and Laura’s “Ma” as my inspiration, I began learning how to fill my own snug house with whole foods prepared in traditional nourishing ways. I have learned how to make sourdough pancakes and breads; real chicken broth; yogurt; lacto-fermented vegetables (sauerkraut and fruit chutneys); etc. My husband has mastered the art of making butter and homemade ice cream. I love all the stewing, simmering, steeping, bubbling, rising, and fermenting that goes on in my kitchen. Preparing food in this way is not something that I do quickly and mindlessly in order to get to something else. It is an end in itself and I enjoy the creative process, although it would be nice if my creations didn’t disappear so quickly!
The other thing that appeals to me about Nourishing Traditions is that it has given me a greater sense of place. We live in a rural Ohio county very near the Amish, where people still have small family farms that are diversified and sustainable. We had not taken advantage of this, however, until we began our whole foods journey. Our family is “omnivorous” and I had been concerned about growth hormones, antibiotics, etc. in animal foods. We now get all of our meat, milk, and eggs within a 20 mile radius of our home and it is all grass-fed. Our freezer is filled with chickens from an Amish farmer; beef from our neighbor down the hill; pork from a friend’s daughter’s 4-H project; and venison given to us by one of my husband’s co-workers. We get raw milk from a dairy farmer in our community. Most of our eggs come from our own small flock of chickens. We buy our cheese from a local cheese factory, which buys their milk from local farmers. We have a garden and a small orchard that provide us with an unpredictable amount of our fruits and vegetables—we’re still working on improving our soil and gaining gardening expertise! We supplement with produce from the farmer’s market and local orchards. We also belong to a food co-op where we order bulk quantities of oats, flour, coffee, tea, etc.
Supplying our table in this way makes us feel more connected to our local community. We know the people who raise our food and we interact with them on a regular basis since we go to their farms to pick up our food orders. (I also see some of them frequently in the library where I work and have the chance to help them out when they are looking for a particular book, etc.)
Needless to say, gathering our food in this way is quite different from shopping at a big, anonymous supermarket. There are some things that we do get at the supermarket, but we try to do most of our shopping at a locally owned store.
Raising, buying and preparing food in this way takes time and commitment. Without realizing it, we have become members of the “Slow Food Movement:”a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. (see http://www.slowfood.com/)
This is not something that we did all at once; it happened over time as we gradually made changes and incorporated new techniques and recipes. Now it has become a way of life and is an integral part of who we are. Although there are still things to learn and improvements to make, (we still occasionally dash through a drive-thru, graze at the China Wok Buffet, and make my sons’ favorite Oreo ice cream cake on their birthdays) eating in this way has become second-nature. We can get supper on the table pretty quickly, using a few standard “fast” slow food recipes, a 7-quart crock pot and a little pre-planning. I knew it was all worth it and that our choices are making a difference, when one of my teen-age sons commented one evening as we sat down to a meal of roasted chicken, garlic sautéed brown rice, steamed broccoli, and salad, “You know, it really is amazing that we can have a meal this good when we all just got home an hour ago.”
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