From raw to royal

I wrote a few weeks ago about a six-week series of food demonstrations and tastings that my husband Jim and I had begun offering at a local food pantry as part of a goal to encourage people who live on the tightest of budgets to incorporate more fresh locally produced vegetables into their diets. We just finished our fourth session today, and so far have featured preparations of kale, Hakurei turnips, summer squash, and green beans. While we have not yet been able to encourage very many people to watch the actual cooking process, our samples and recipes have been gaining a warmer and warmer reception.

The series is teaching me quite a few things and leading to a range of thoughts about politics, health, and food security. It also is motivating me to make changes in how I cook on a nightly basis and how I value certain vegetables and fruits. It also is encouraging me to look a little more deeply into how one can create a well-stocked kitchen while subsisting on a low income.

So step-by-step, let's start with politics. Well before the seeds for this project were sown, Jim and I were trying to dispel presumptions that shopping at the farmers market and/or eating organic, fresh-from-the-farm food were privileges of the affluent. Our stake in this fight was fairly personal -- as most political battles tend to be. We discovered the value of farmers markets ourselves in the summer of 2007 when both of us were unemployed for a brief period of time and had applied and were receiving food aid in the form of an EBT card. Going to farmers markets and buying local produce not only was a healthier chance but an economically feasible one because we could buy exactly what we thought we would consume in a week. Nothing would go to waste.

A year or so later, I was working several part-time and/or temporary contract jobs, one of which was as a fitness coach at a local Curves. My work shift on some days coincided with the farmers market, but understanding the budgetary and health value of purchasing produce at such markets, the Curves manager would cover for me for about forty-five minutes so I could get down to the market. And another year later, as I was still working several contract jobs, I found myself researching environmental justice and coming to a realization that there was a direct link between economically underprivileged neighborhoods and obesity. One study in Seattle, where I was living at the time, had found that people who lived in the generally poorer, more inner city neighborhoods south of the Lake Washington ship canal were generally about fifteen pounds heavier than those who lived in the more affluent northern neighborhoods. That insight was staggering to me for both personal and political reasons: I was a resident of a south of the ship canal neighborhood, and despite my high level of education and deep commitment to physical fitness and health, I was about twenty-five to thirty pounds overweight. These insights led me to theorize what is perhaps obvious: If people can find fresh, local affordable options for food (or even better yet, grow it themselves), rates of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and obesity would drop significantly.

That memory rang itself back into my consciousness this morning as I handed clients of the local food pantry dixie cups filled with green beans that I had gathered from my garden the previous night. I prepared the beans in four different ways, starting with simply washing them, snapping them into bite-size pieces with my hands, and serving them raw.

"Wow," said one woman who was waiting in line, "what a treat. I don't usually eat healthy things like this."

She then shook her head and looked me in the eye. "You probably can tell by the way I look."

"We're trying to get you to eat healthy," I responded.

I went on to explain that a pint of green beans cost between $3 and $5 at the farmers market. Unlike the cheaper versions that could be purchased at grocery stores, however, the beans that were fresh from the soil would last considerably longer. "You know that they're fresh when you can snap them into pieces like these ones."

For the second preparation, I emphasized the simplicity of raw with one added touch: I steamed the beans in a bit of water. "You know that they're ready when their skin turns a bright green," I explained, noting that the $3 pint of green beans probably would make at least two or three meals.

"What did you put in them to make them taste so good?" one person asked.

"Water," I replied. "Just a little bit of water."

The third preparation emphasized a medley of flavors. I added oil, fresh onion, cabbage and cherry tomatoes that I quartered to the basic green beans. "This meal would cost about $2 to prepare," I explained. "There's nothing in it but fresh vegetables."

For the fourth and final preparation, I made the same mix of vegetables as I had for the third preparation. I added a simple twist: spices from India. I started with about one-eighth of a teaspoon of turmeric, which I added to the oil and allowed to froth as the oil heated up. I then sautéed the onions, added the beans and cabbage, and then two more spices: one-eighth of a teaspoon of ground cumin and the same amount (more or less) of coriander. I finished the dish by tossing in cherry tomatoes, once again chopped into quarters.

"Wow," said the intake officer at the food pantry's front desk, "You went from raw to royal."

"You know what this would go good with?" added one woman, a client of the food pantry?

"What?"

"Brown rice."

I couldn't agree more. Before making the final dish, I had given some thought about how to present it. My fear was that the spices would add too much complexity to the dish and put it out of the price range of the food pantry clients. After thinking the issue through, however, I realized that most of the spices I use cost about $3 per jar and that a little bit of spice can go a long way.