Walking the Talk: Part 2

The time tracker feature of this website blog is a useful but annoying feature. Right now it reminds us that it’s been 22 (scratch that- now 28) days since my last blog- and what do I have to show for it? Well…in the past three (scratch that- now four) weeks I have:

Baked and sold 38 pies, 25 pounds of “breakfast bounty” granola, 11 dozen savory muffins, 6 large scones, 4 kinds of biscotti, and mastered the difference between buckles, crisps, grunts, and cobblers. I have baked and thrown away one half-dozen strawberry banana breads because substituting butter for Crisco was a disaster, and I have eaten the remains of two pans of zucchini brownies. I’ve gone through 25 pounds of flour, 8 pounds of sugar and at least 30 pounds of butter, and 35 pounds of fruit.

I’ve learned that you can’t make good reliable pie crust (at least in a 88 degree kitchen) without using good ‘ole trans fat Crisco with the butter; that people are scared of zucchini brownies even if they are full of chocolate; kids never tire of picking huckleberries, strawberries, and raspberries; and that if I could physically make 25 pies a week in my small kitchen without getting heat stroke I really could get rich (at least for a few weeks).

I have also learned that you can go one month without mopping the floor and your husband will still love you and your kid doesn’t doesn’t get sick when she snacks off it. Thankfully my mother in law showed up last weekend and inspired us to do a 4-hour whirlwind clean up- before she came.

My daughter set a new record of watching four hours of videos at the neighbor’s house while I was at the farmer’s market one day, but otherwise she’s been pretty helpful and loves to roll out the pie crust scraps and make her own creations. Other events to fill up the past three weeks include: coaching a three-day volleyball camp; 5:00 am trips to the house I care take to prepare it for the owners who showed up two weeks early; a handful of glorious nights at the Jenny Lake Lodge compliments of my husband’s climbing clients; three 4-yr old birthday parties; one Cosmic Apple Farm party; four concerts; a Slow Food meeting with lots of wine; enough bike rides and mountain runs to keep me happy; and THREE nights in THREE weeks without visitors staying at our house. Oh, and about 3 hours of writing…

I have been fully immersed in food and sustainability. Deciding which recipes to bake, which fruits to buy (and from who- the fruit stand, the grocery or the mega market), which ingredients to use (Crisco makes a trans-fat free product, although I’m skeptical), going through my grandmother’s recipes, and interacting with customers at the farmer’s market market has given me a chance to concretize my ideas:

It is possible to have a balanced diet of pleasure and health without breaking the bank and sustainability is catching on. My heart soars to see the volumes of people buying fresh, local, colorful produce from the farmer’s at the market, and my mom has almost talked my dad into going to see An Inconvenient Truth. Children can talk their dads into buying whole-wheat blueberry muffins and college kids are walking around with leeks in their cloth bags.

But the eyes of peach grower selling fruit out of his rickety truck fill with tears when he talks about the groves in Southern Idaho being plowed over by subdivisions. A friend from Chile asked me, while we munched on home fries, how many kinds of potatoes grow in Idaho and I had to break the news to him that it’s basically only one- the kind and size McDonald’s likes. Wow, Peru has 12o or so he said in disbelief, obviously disappointed that Americans who are so innovative would only have one potato.

In the bulk section of the supermarket I watched with consternation as a worker took 32 oz bulk bags (that hold about 3 boxes) of cereal out of the cereal isle, open them up and pour them in the bulk container and throw away the bag…all this so the environmentally conscious customer would think they were doing the right thing buying their Raisin Bran in bulk. It was sick. Looking at it this way we have such a long way to go.

Baby steps…baby steps…I have to remind myself. It’s like we have had a bad head injury over the past 50 years and are re-learning everything people have known for eternity. “Walking the Talk- Part 2” ends the same as Part 1- we have to learn to walk before we can run.

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