The other night Jake and I had dinner with our farmer friends Brendan and Susan. Susan, a fantastic cook, roasted a chicken from their own flock of broilers (using a recipe from The Barefoot Contessa, so you know it was good). The salad came from greens they grow themselves. The garlic mayonnaise came from their own eggs. The meal was pretty much as “farm to table” as it gets, but neither Brendan or Susan felt compelled to highlight that fact to their guests. Neither felt the need to call out their gustatory purity or proselytize about the sanctity of locally-procured food. For them, it was just….dinner. A delicious dinner, but IT WAS JUST DINNER.
I got to thinking about this later and thought how refreshing. To prattle on about the moral superiority and nutritional piety that comes from eating organic soy nuts over Triscuits has become so very trite and cliche. Everyone’s a locavore now! We get it! The eggs are free-range! The meat in the freezer is from a farmer down the road! The fish is sustainably caught! Understood! Here’s a gold star! Here’s a feather from a free range bird to stick in your hemp-fiber cap.
I’d like to think we have transcended this tired discourse. Can we please go back to just eating dinner without verbally frothing all over it? (I include myself in this lament.)
All original content © 2012 by Jessie Knadler
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i definitely get it. dinner at my mom’s always included the fact that the chicken was ‘orgaaaaaanic’ in a high falutin’ snobbish tone. always ironic though because she drives a gas guzzling SUV for picking up drycleaning and other suburban necessities.
there is something to be said about promoting organic, local, etc., as unfortunately too many are still all about the walmart, the winco, the foster farms and such. like everything, it’s all in the approach.