nice and easy does it

A 'tween holidays jigsaw puzzle provides the background for a moderately tiny cuppa

This is really not a time when we need to talk very much about food. I mean, this is the question:::: Who is Hungry? Not me, and not you, I’ll bet. Not that we’re aware, and certainly not for food.
Of course everybody is hungry for something. They’re hungry for approval, for peace, for meaning, but sometimes they couldn’t care less for a truffle, whether it be chocolate or dug up by an Italian hog from under an ancient oak.

So, let’s talk about something more important than food. As if there could be such a thing, because perhaps you’ve noticed that where ever you start it always comes back to food. That’s what I realized several years ago when I started to write about it. Several? Well that would be since 1978, which is thirty-some very odd years, I believe, and since then I have often been pretty much able to use food terms to translate life into something understandable.

For instance, I can only remember one time that I was hungry. A friend and I were lost. We had left Michigan in a 1965 Mustang and were wandering all over the east looking for Rosa Parks and Bob Dylan. We’d heard they were out there. What we didn’t know in that pre-instant-information-age is that they’d been here and already left. On a side-trip we got off on some logging roads in French-speaking Quebec. Finally we came upon a gas station out in the middle of nowhere whose attendant did not speak English and apparently had never met anyone who did, just as we, probably, had never met anyone who spoke French. We found things in this alternative universe that looked like milk and Hostess cupcakes, but the milk had cream pushing the cap off and the Hostess cupcakes were... like Hostess, but just a little different. Very primitive, it was. Oh, I was heartsick, and so HUNGRY. Finally we tumbled out of the Canadian forest onto a beautifully paved road into Jackman, Maine and were able to assuage our hunger on familiar homogenized junk food, American – albeit 1960s – style.  And that’s what I was starved for – familiarity – that mild Canadian strangeness was terrifically unsettling!

 Thanksgiving reminds me of that time. It’s a day when we stuff ourselves with – besides the blameless good local turkey and roasted vegetables –  all the starches of potatoes and gravy and dressing, not even to speak of pie. It’s a pure, longed-for carbohydrate binge. It happens every year at this time and we eat the same food that Grandma cooked – starches and sweets!

And then come the recriminations! By now we have got past the talk of what gluttons we were and how we stuffed ourselves, and are looking forward with various strains of trepidation to Christmas cookies and more pies and suet puddings and holiday breads and sweets.

What’s the answer? Let’s try this – just take it

For forty-nine years I have had at least one very large and potent cup of coffee in the morning.  A couple of months ago I quit drinking it, just to see what would happen. At first I substituted decaf, but soon realized I didn’t need anything! I had no headaches, no withdrawal symptom of any kind. Well, perhaps there was a kind of emptiness at the centre of my morning ritual; and, as I gradually realized, perhaps a certain lack of energy, a lethargy, in my morning activities. So I relented a bit.

I have beautiful little pottery cups made by Susan Leader from Weston. They’d never been used much because they’re so tiny. Now I often fill one of these miniatures with coffee and cream. I might even have two cups. That serves to ameliorate the tiredness and provide a bit of ceremony, and so, in the end I have not quit drinking coffee so much as I have explored the habit and moderated it, and brought more pleasure to it, too.

So let’s take heed of our feelings that we have overly stuffed ourselves, but let’s not excoriate ourselves for it. We might say, ‘Okay, wayyyy too many carbs, I’ll just cut them out for today.’ And maybe tomorrow we’ll wake up and feel really quite as though we’ll pleasingly exist on salads and cheese and eggs and maybe a hamburger for yet another day, and perhaps find ourselves at the end of a week having lost a few pounds and feeling far less bloated and round-footed. We’ll wake up and smell the coffee, so to speak.

Then of course in come the Christmas cookies and who can blame us if we cannot resist one, or two, unless we have an extreme allergy to gluten, which we may have since the flour we grow now bears very little resemblance to the flour that grew a few years ago. It has been so bioengineered that perhaps our bodies do not recognize it as a food substance anymore. Perhaps our bodies mistake wheat flour as a bacteria, something to be flooded with antibodies. It certainly is true that many people find themselves with a gluten intolerance. One has to wonder why.

In that light it is interesting that the country of Hungary has destroyed one thousand acres of Monsanto genetically modified corn. Other countries are taking these depredations seriously. Peru has likewise passed a ban on genetically modified seeds.

So perhaps you will not abstain from all carbohydrates. But perhaps you will try very seriously not to eat anything made with wheat, barley, or rye. Try that hat on and see how it feels.

I used to think of moderation as the habit of boring people. I don’t think that anymore. I will try to be thoughtful about my hungers and to take it, as Frank Sinatra sang in that era when I was following my hunger along Canadian logging roads, “Nice and easy does it all the time.” I have to tell you, I never did catch up with Dylan, and now I’ve developed this inappropriate curiosity about him. You couldn’t possibly have a gluten intolerance, could you, Mr. Jones?

the many faces of hunger

thanks for permission from Jeff Danziger to reprint

When my mother saw Injun Joe* and his wife Mary tramping up our long driveway she’d exclaim, “Oh, Lord, here they come again,” in spite of the fact that it had been a month or so since they’d shown up the last time. It was common knowledge that the little old man and the little old woman would periodically (when the Check came in) walk from their shack in the woods about a mile from our house to the tavern in a neighboring village five miles further on, where they would get roaring drunk until the sheriff drove them home. They stopped at our house to pick something up that we saved for them. I think it was newspapers, though I have no idea what earthly good newspapers would have done them.

In return they insisted on giving us some of their government subsidy brown rice or some other brown grain. My mother never used it. It was common knowledge that it was weevily. Mom seemed to resent those visits. I didn’t know why – they really were no trouble – but I got the feeling that it was maybe just that these two poor old Indians had the nerve to think they could give us something that we needed or would deign to use. And maybe also that the sight of them brought up a vestigial fear of impoverishment and hunger.

There were many ways we were impoverished, but hunger for food was never a problem. We were farmers in an extended family of farmers – our entire lives revolved around food. We had fresh milk everyday and butter and eggs and a chicken in the Sunday pot, vegetables from the garden, preserves, bushels of apples and potatoes in the cellar. We had pork from the annual slaughter. We had beef. It was really GOOD food, not the kind of crap that poor people eat today when a bag of chips and a soda pop are cheaper than a bunch of carrots and much more filling.

And it’s not just poor people. A few years ago I sat in a government office talking to an official. Behind the adjoining desk was a woman* whose upper arms fell away in tanned folds of fat above her elbows. One of those elbows rested upon the desk and regularly flexed to allow her forearm and fingers to descend to a carton of little orange cheese thingies and then rise to feed her mouth, which was set amidst several cheeks, jowls, and chins. Note that she was not wolfing down porterhouse steaks with their attendant mouth-watering fats and juices nor glasses of whole milk nor rounds of fully ripened cheeses, in fact, nothing made by nature, but tiny little crisp factory-fashioned morsels made of the most refined flours and sugars and oils, so far away from anything that grows from the earth that they were unrecognizable as food at all. A beautiful woman resided inside those layers of fat, a still-healthy one, it seemed. But if she wasn’t diabetic yet, she surely would be soon, because it’s a simple case of cause and effect: sugar and refined grains cause obesity and diabetes and other deathly diseases as well. And there goes that hand again, into the carton and there it goes fingering the evil little devils into the mouth.

Putting a face on hunger is not the easiest thing. In our world hunger crosses money boundaries, and in our world the hungry are most likely not skin and bones with bloated bellies – they are, not to put too fine a point on it – the fat people, and they may or may not know that they are hungry; and they may or may not be monetarily poor.

I asked friends and acquaintances if they’d ever been hungry, and their thoughts on hunger. After I recounted my Injun Joe story to my friend Susan, she recalled her elderly mother a few years ago asking her to pick up a “tramp-lock” at the hardware store. Susan said, “I don’t know what a tramp-lock is, Mom.” Why, it was a chain lock to go inside the kitchen door so that the door could be opened thus far and no farther, so that a dish of food could be passed out with no danger of the recipient being allowed in. It made me think of tramps and hobos and stews, but I had never heard the term before. So of course I Googled it and found only one reference to the term. It was used in the book, “Afloat and Ashore on the Mediterranean, by Lee Meriwether (1904). A tramp-lock was used for guards to open prisoners’ doors enough, ostensibly, to hear the priest down the corridor saying mass.

Another person told me, “Tramp lock reminds me of monasteries and churches where they still have special windows where foundlings (babies) can be left.” She went on to say, “Handing out food, feeding the poor (the sharing of bread & wine) has a long history in Christianity, and shame is still associated with that type of charity.” She found it interesting that in those terms the giver and receiver did not have to see each other.” Yes, shame is a big part of this, isn’t it? No matter how undeserved by either party.

“Like, REALLY hungry?” asked one friend. “Like, shoplifting a package of cheese to get through the day and not knowing about tomorrow? Like, panhandling enough for a box of crackers or swallowing pride to ask neighbors for something, anything? Even, gag, dumpster diving?” He paused. “Actually, yes, but not for many, many years, and never for more than a few days. But I do remember and I am always mindful of how much I have and how long it would last. Right now, in the house and garden, I could probably stretch it for about three weeks, if I had to.”

That sounded like “food insecurity” to me, and I asked what could be done about it. He said, “We need a community infrastructure to wean ourselves from the big business of food – food prepared for us, food conveniently packaged, food that has traveled too many miles, fast food, junk food, food marketed by brand instead of nutritional value.”

We kind of have that here with the Farmers’ Market and the Co-op, but what about the people who can’t afford that kind of food. Let them eat cheap meat and vegetables from the grocery store that have been adulterated by the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, antibiotics and hormones? Or a bag of chips and a can of soda? You know that that’s going to come back and bite us when we have this enormous diseased wave of people that society has to care for one way or another.

When I asked the question of Carol Tashie of Radical Roots Farm, she said, “Personally, I have never been hungry. Amazingly fortunate – especially when you think of the entire human community. What percentage of people on this planet could say that? What percentage in this country? In this state?”

When I talked to Carol’s partner, Dennis Duhaime, last Saturday at their stand at the Farmers’ Market, he told me they took a load of butternut squash down to the city for Thanksgiving, and gave it to a person who operates – entirely on his own – a little storefront soup-kitchen in Queens, and that he made squash soup from those Vermont butternuts to feed the hungry. I love this – a couple of people making a difference with no diminution from bureaucracy.

In that same spirit, RAFFL operates a Grow-A-Row program for which farmers and gardeners contribute some of their product to the Community Cupboard and BROC; and the farmers regularly contribute leftover produce after the market is over. Still, the Mission and the Community Cupboard and BROC need each and every one of us to contribute food and/or labor to help them feed the hungry.


Another friend wrote: “There is hunger in every community. My wife and I work at the Sunday Breakfast Mission in our town and serve between 150 to 200 meals Sunday evenings to homeless men, women, and CHILDREN! We don't see them during the day, or do we just choose not to see them? Some of both I believe. I encourage you no matter where you live give some of your valuable time to help feed another human being!”

In a Newsweek article, “Divided We Eat”, Lisa Miller has a conversation with a Brooklyn localvore and writes, “Over coffee, I cautiously raise a subject that has concerned me of late: less than five miles away, some children don’t have enough to eat; others exist almost exclusively on junk food. Alexandra concedes that her approach is probably out of reach for those people. Though they are not wealthy by Park Slope standards—Alexandra works part time and Dave is employed by the city—the Fergusons spend approximately 20 percent of their income, or $1,000 a month, on food. The average American spends 13 percent, including restaurants and takeout.” The woman answers, “This (buying local) is our charity. This is my giving to the world... We contribute a lot.”

You know, in this era of declining middle class and the rise of the ultra-rich and corporations with the rights of individuals, we are likely to be seeing more and more hungry people – there is greed abound in this land – and that hunger may be the result of impoverishment and/or ignorance, or simply the brainwashing power of mega-corporations and even the medical establishment. “We have rich farmers feeding lousy food to poor people,” writes Michael Pollan, “and poor farmers producing great food for rich people.” But here in Vermont we have great farmers needing our patronage – those of us who can afford it – so that they, and we, can continue to take care of our hungry, whatever face they wear.

So yes, once again, Support Your Local Farmer, but in addition call one of the following and ask them what you can do to help:

• Community Cupboard: 802-747-6119
• RAFFL: 802-417-7331
• BROC: 802-775-0878
• Open Door Mission: 802-775-5661

And when you hear the phrase ‘common knowledge’ dig a little deeper. You might be surprised at what you find.

simple foods like apples and squash are cheap and easy to prepare,
but some people don't know how to prepare them. Heck, some people don't even have a kitchen.

*I've taken the liberty to use what might seem to be stereotypes of the 'drunken Indian' and the fat lady eating crap, but please know that the first is simply an observation of the prevailing attitudes in the 1950s and the latter is my own observation as truthfully if not tactfully as I can describe it.

This post was published under the title "a common knowledge of hunger" in my Twice Bitten column in the Rutland Herald on 12/07/10.