Dinner Diaries

4/12/23- an essay inspired by Greens with Chicken

Why am I having such a hard time writing about this damn romaine salad with roasted chicken breast? It’s what I made for dinner last night. Pan-roasted the boring ‘ol chicken breasts in a skillet with olive oil, salt, and pepper and then added that to a salad of baby romaine from the grocery store and tossed in some croutons I made by dousing 2 day old bread pieces in olive oil and cooking them for about 10 minutes in a 400 oven. Nothing extraordinary. Tasted pretty good- I had some leftover miso-lemon dressing from the other night that tied it all together.

I almost feel ashamed about this dish. It’s basically a Caesar Salad- so basic. The Basic Bitch of salads. I know how to make something more interesting. Something with better textural complexity. Something expressing seasonality and place. Something that you can’t just buy in a plastic clam shell at the 7-11. What does this effing salad say about me as a cook? As an eater? And also, who is even watching?! Why do I even care?

I needed to make dinner, and that’s what I made. I solved a problem… with the basic bitch salad. So what’s my damage? Did I enjoy the salad? Yes. It was fresh and gave me a boost of protein and I particularly enjoyed the varied texture of the slightly fried crispy slightly soft-in-parts croutons. It was good. I love that dressing. Umami and tart and always makes my lips pucker- just perfect to dress the greens.

Writing about this salad today has sparked something in me; a desire to start a larger conversation about how we value food. How we use it to judge people. How we use it to prove to people that we’re “the right kind”. How we use it to reflect our values. How we use it to reflect our wealth. How we use it to reflect our poverty. Why should I even bother to think about what this salad “says” about me. The reality is that it should say that I was hungry, needed to make dinner, and that’s what we ate. So why do I feel like it’s saying something else?

I guess I don’t have an answer to that… yet. But I do know that I’m tired of using food as a metric to value who people are. There are too many hungry people. Too many grocery stores with no fresh produce. Life is too flipping hard. Just getting from one day to the next and trying to keep fed in between is a major challenge in and of itself, let alone adding the stress of ensuring that you’re making the most responsible dollar votes at the checkout stand… or doordash. There are too many places in this country and world that just don’t have access to the foods that we “should” be buying. Period. No access.

I have to drive an hour to get to the closest local farmstand, which is only open on Thursdays, and not during winter and that’s only assuming that the roads are open. And I do make the trek for my clients because I believe in supporting the small guy or gal whenever possible. And I think a lot of people feel that way. But, it’s that word: possible. And to be honest, it’s not always even possible for me. And I feel ashamed about that. Ashamed. And it’s taking a lot for me to share this with you, but I think it’s necessary.

There is too much pressure placed on the everyday person to bear the burden of solving these problems. These problems of environmental degradation, food deserts, malnutrition, hunger, a proliferation of garbage food stuffs that are more accessible than anything real. Parents have to choose between the organic chicken this week, or sending their kid to the better daycare. And how is it fair to vilify that parent for making that decision? I wish I had an answer. I want to will one into existence and maybe that’s why I’m writing this.

Supporting our local food systems has been at the absolute forefront of my cooking for over the past 20 years, ever since my Eco Ag class at WWU. We met so many different small farmers in Skagit and Whatcom Counties (north western WA). People who embodied the ideals I was learning to value in class and people who simply couldn’t because the infrastructure or economics didn’t allow them to. That class changed my life- I mean, clearly. It showed me how complex these issues are. It showed me that peoples’ motives and issues are not black or white. It showed me how little communication actually happens between agencies and the people being affected. It showed me how arrogant and condescending some people can be when they think they know more about an issue with which they’ve only studied, but have no practical application experience and how that creates barriers to achieving a goal. Yeah, I think on paper problems are very easy to solve, but once we introduce the human element, it all flies out the window. We’re not Vulcan, after all.

So, I think we’re experiencing that in the food world. With how we value food. I once overheard a girl say that her partner brought home yogurt that wasn’t organic and she just threw it away and went to buy an organic one. It turned my stomach. The waste. The waste in money, in packaging, and in food. For what? Eating one jar of non-organic yogurt is not going to kill you. What a disservice society has done to create this mindset that waste is preferable a loosely-regulated word on a package.

I will always choose organic when I can. But, I also would rather buy from a small local farmer who is not certified organic, but who I know is farming responsibly, than to buy a pre-packaged certified organic label product. It’s better for the local economy and the local ecosystem. Period. And I guess I’m getting to a point here- finally! What the average consumer understands about the food system is so easily manipulated by marketing and green washing. There’s a need for more conversations that go beyond branding and labels and actually explore the farming practices and accessibility of these products. And that needs to go hand-in-hand with a cessation of this absurd judgement on other people based on what and how they eat.

Probably going to eat salad again for dinner tonight.