Revisiting the Omnivore's Dilemma
I just read the last two chapters of the Omnivore's Dilemma, finally finishing a book that I started reading (with an excerpt from the author's website) two years ago. The penultimate chapter is about foraging for mushrooms, and more pointedly, about foraging for food (as opposed to cultivating it).
Pollan's chapter on mushrooms explains the natural history of fungi and the mysteries of mycology in a succinct and eloquent prose. I teach a mushroom class at Drumlin farm, and from now on I feel like I should just photocopy this chapter and hand it to the students: "this is what I mean." But he goes a step further than me, since I don't offer advice about foraging for food. Among mycophiles, I'm a pervert: a mushroom enthusiast who doesn't eat wild mushrooms.
In fact, I'm not too into eating wild anythings, apart from feral patches of raspberries, and blueberry bushes hidden in the woods. I've always thought that there was too much detoxification involved in gathering acorns, poke, or cattails to eat. But how much more connected to the land can you be, than to take that land's products into your body? I found myself daydreaming that after each Urban Nature Walk, there should be ritual sharing of foraged wild edibles. This idea has mixed practicality; but on our walks I do tend to at least taste plants when I'm confident they are edible. Of course, in the case of many specimens, edible does not mean palatable.
The last chapter, about his "Perfect Meal," made of food he hunted, foraged, or cultivated himself, shared with the people who taught him to do these things, is inspiring. I suspect there are other philosophers that spurred the localvore movement into its current form, but Pollan is surely the most well-known and accessible. I'd like to redouble my efforts to eat food that comes from closer to me, geographically speaking. Alexis and I have made some movements toward this, but to make a whole meal this way (as the last chapter makes plain) is to use the whole day up. I suppose any decision away from the food mainstream forces the eater to spend more time looking for food; this is one of Pollan's main points: we should spend more time putting meals together. And I guess I agree, as much as it conflicts with my desire for everything in my life to be easier and less time-consuming. I don't think food should be the only thing we think about, but given how important, how elemental it is to life, we should probably think about it a bit more than most of us do.
Now, should I take up hunting...?
Pollan's chapter on mushrooms explains the natural history of fungi and the mysteries of mycology in a succinct and eloquent prose. I teach a mushroom class at Drumlin farm, and from now on I feel like I should just photocopy this chapter and hand it to the students: "this is what I mean." But he goes a step further than me, since I don't offer advice about foraging for food. Among mycophiles, I'm a pervert: a mushroom enthusiast who doesn't eat wild mushrooms.
In fact, I'm not too into eating wild anythings, apart from feral patches of raspberries, and blueberry bushes hidden in the woods. I've always thought that there was too much detoxification involved in gathering acorns, poke, or cattails to eat. But how much more connected to the land can you be, than to take that land's products into your body? I found myself daydreaming that after each Urban Nature Walk, there should be ritual sharing of foraged wild edibles. This idea has mixed practicality; but on our walks I do tend to at least taste plants when I'm confident they are edible. Of course, in the case of many specimens, edible does not mean palatable.
The last chapter, about his "Perfect Meal," made of food he hunted, foraged, or cultivated himself, shared with the people who taught him to do these things, is inspiring. I suspect there are other philosophers that spurred the localvore movement into its current form, but Pollan is surely the most well-known and accessible. I'd like to redouble my efforts to eat food that comes from closer to me, geographically speaking. Alexis and I have made some movements toward this, but to make a whole meal this way (as the last chapter makes plain) is to use the whole day up. I suppose any decision away from the food mainstream forces the eater to spend more time looking for food; this is one of Pollan's main points: we should spend more time putting meals together. And I guess I agree, as much as it conflicts with my desire for everything in my life to be easier and less time-consuming. I don't think food should be the only thing we think about, but given how important, how elemental it is to life, we should probably think about it a bit more than most of us do.
Now, should I take up hunting...?