Food

Ocean to Table

~ Elizabeth ~ 3 Comments

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I spent many happy years in Camp Fire Girls, the west coast equivalent of Girl Scouts. Here I am plucking mussels from the rocks at low tide on the Oregon coast with a troop leader and another friend. I had never eaten mussels before this trip, but we had a feast steaming them over a fire.

On other excursions to the coast, we would buy fresh Dungeness crab and wait while it was boiled and cleaned. Then we would sit outside with a pile of napkins, pulling the crab apart and eating the delicious meat.

We are going to Nova Scotia in a week, and I am looking forward to seeing what fresh seafood is local and available. We tried dulce, dried sea weed, in New Brunswick a couple of years ago, but I can’t say we became converts. They said it was an acquired taste–one we haven’t acquired!

Lake to Table

~ Elizabeth ~ Leave a comment

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While I no longer fish, I still eat fish a couple of times a week. Here in my very itchy wool bathing suit, I show off the trout my father and I caught that day. I was very aware that there were rules about fishing. You never caught fish you didn’t intend to eat. You took the hook out carefully if the fish was too little and eased it back into the water, touching it as little as possible. You killed the fish quickly. You didn’t put the “guts” back into the lake. You ate it right away.

I try to buy fish that has been caught with the same care that I learned as a little girl. And I try to remember to always say my grandfather’s favorite grace, “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful.”

Farm to Table?

~ Elizabeth ~ Leave a comment

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It has taken me a while to figure out what the big deal was about “farm to table.” Here I am surrounded by the vegetables in our back yard in 1949. I only knew two kinds of food: fresh and canned. I assumed that food came from the farm and landed on the table. The excess from the summer was home canned, stored in the basement and eaten during the rest of the year. I had heard of “hothouse” tomatoes, but we never ate them, since my mother thought they tasted like cardboard. So it was fresh tomatoes or canned ones.

Everything had its season, and the things we ate reflected that. I take some ironic delight in the “rediscovery” of food in season. It took me a long time to realize that there might be any other way to eat.