Forage to Feast — Cultivate Conversation A Food & Agriculture Journey

I am so used to opening up the pantry and being able to quickly prepare a meal out of whatever ingredients I have on hand. For many of us that have desk jobs, this type of convenience when making our food choices is critical.

Loquats are a type of fruit that is new to me. They have a subtle sweet flavor and have big seeds in the middle.

During my travels, I am living and working on farms and different organizations that provide a range of experiences and learning around food and agriculture. For the next month, I will be living on a farm where my meal-prep will look quite different than what I am used to when I open up my pantry.

There is an abundance of food here, but it doesn’t look, sound or taste like what most of us are used to grabbing out of the pantry and cooking up in 20 minutes. It is an abundance of a different type of food. One that has quite a bit more work put into it, but is also a heck of a lot fresher. For each meal here there are many steps that are much more involved than a quick meal made by ingredients in my pantry back home. It has opened my eyes to a different way to cook, as well as the realities of why so much food has been developed to be cheap and easy. With a busy lifestyle that doesn’t involve working on a farm, it is hard to eat the way that I am eating here. A diet filled with whole grains, dried beans and only the freshest vegetables and herbs takes time.

My sketch of Broad-beans. Stopping to draw your food definitely adds to the time it takes to cook food.

I am spending a lot of time thinking about how to make this type of diet more available to the average consumer. Time and knowledge are the two biggest factors that I have identified that make it hard for people to eat this way. Like anything else, it takes practice. Once you know how long you need to soak the beans or grains, and what type of fresh produce to pair it with from a market, it is very possible to do this without spending hours on every meal. While it will require some planning, it wouldn’t be impossible to do with a full time job.

The following are the steps that I took to prepare my dinner last night. Including taking time to write and draw a couple of broad-beans, my meal probably took me about 2 and a half hours to prepare. But I was also getting acquainted with where to find what garden beds and how to make flour out of fresh buckwheat…

Steps for Yesterday’s Meal:

Planning:

Different than my meal prep at home where I am used to cooking up dinner in 20-30 minutes. Most of the time, meal planning here has to happen at least 12 hours in advance if you want any beans or grains other than red lentils and white rice.

Soaking:

Most dry grains and beans need to be soaked for at least 8-12 hours prior to cooking. This means that you have to plan well in advance. It is important to soak grains to make the nutrients more digestible for the human body.

For yesterday’s meal I didn’t have enough time to soak buckwheat so I decided to toast some buckwheat and make buckwheat flour and turn it into patties.

Gathering:

Once I decided to make buckwheat flour, I went out in search of some fresh ingredients to add. Given that it was only my first full day on the farm there was a lot of wandering through garden beds to find what I was looking for. This foraging expedition also made me realize how unfamiliar I am with what herbs and plants actually look like. I’m used to seeing them bottled up for me in seasoning jars, but not so much identifying the actual plant in it’s natural state. Roots, dirt and all. Ultimately I ended up gathering:

Silverbeet, rainbow-chard, kale, rosemary, thyme, loquats and broad-beans

Cooking:

Sharing a wood-fire oven to cook on top of means trying to time everything right. It took me some time to think about if I should cook the beans first or start with the buckwheat patties. I was surprised with how dependent I have become on microwaves for quickly heating and making food.

Eating:

Finally getting to eat a meal prepared with so much time and love has an incredibly satisfying effect! In the end I had rosemary thyme seasoned buckwheat patties (that didn’t actually stay in patty form), pan fried kale, rainbow-chard, and silverbeet and broad-beans.

For the next month I will prepare all of my dinners this way (except for the meals that I get lazy and have oats and peanut butter and fruit)… which will undoubtedly happen. Out of necessity, I will be working on my plant identification and learning how to cook with buckwheat, millet, sorghum and other ancient grains.

While many that are reading this are likely working 8-5 jobs, a lifestyle that I also plan to return to, I hope that by reading about the steps it takes to cook a little differently and with less packaged and more whole ingredients that you can incorporate some more fresh food into your diet. Some planning ahead of time goes a long way!