Lunch Today and Thoughts on Slow Food

Today’s lunch was super quick to make. In fact, I had already gone to bed, too tired to think about packing a lunch, resigned to the fact that I would have to forage at the buffet in my office building. Finding myself up with a grumpy 1 year old at 3am I decided to “make lemonade from lemons” as it were, wandering around with a baby strapped to my back and pack a lunch. I just realized that it’s all premade so it was a super-quick and nutritious lunch to make.
Today’s bento has cut up chicken sausage – mmm… a favourite for sure – we had extra after supper one night so I cut it up an stuck it in the freezer. Actually, I cooked it and then held it back in the kitchen because whatever gets put on the table tends to get eaten. I also have 2 mini-banana muffins which were also frozen. The baggie said “sweet” so that’s promising. I probably actually put sugar in them. There was also homemade berry jello with blood oranges in it. For veggies I have cut up cucumber – precut in a container in the fridge – and baby carrots. So, all homemade and good for you, and all premade.
I was on a roll (and baby still not asleep) so continued to make a breakfast bento and a snack bento. Oh, ya! I may be tired today, but I am well fed. The snack bento was very similar to the lunch with a couple of pieces of sausage and cut up cauliflower and cucumber. The breakfast was superb – frozen strawberries dated “August 2008” and a frozen mini-quiche, again from the freezer, made from my friend’s “happy chickens”. Mmmm... summer strawberries and happy chickens - does it get any better than that??

I’ve been thinking a lot about the food we choose lately. I haven’t bought strawberries in the winter in a couple of years – they just taste like cardboard – but it wasn’t until this year that I really started to pay attention to what vegetables and fruits are in season. I’ve recently read “The 100 mile Diet” and have realized that to eat locally here means finding food in the summer and freezing it for the winter. Hence the August strawberries. Man, were they good. And hit the spot in the middle of winter when it seems like we’re in the middle of another 100 year ice age. Of course, I think I could plan to hoard away enough food to get one person through the winter, but I’m shopping for 2 kids and a nanny (who cooks, too) and a husband who hasn’t changed his lunch since junior high school. So it’s an uphill battle, to be sure. We all have our challenges.
I’m not thinking this way to change the world or anything big like that, it just doesn’t make sense to me that we insist on eating produce from Chile and China when, with some attention and planning, we could be eating far better quality stuff from actual farmers around here. It just makes more sense. I just found the Calgary slow food site which has a fantastic directory for sourcing local foods. I think some field trips will be in order this summer!