Food Stories: A Sustainable Thanksgiving

It's almost Thanksgiving, and sustainable food is on the minds and on the tables of people around the United States. It's a good time of year to reflect on where you've come from. Everyone's story is different and everyone's food traditions are different, but the flavors and feelings we get from homegrown and home cooked cuisine are the same. They remind us of family and home.

In this fast food world, home cooking is becoming less and less common. As families shuttle from activity to activity and as work hours get longer, take out and restaurant meals rule. Yet these come with an accompanying wave of garbage and often lack nutrition, especially if the restaurants focus on the fat and carbohydrates of fast food. In response, home cooking with whole, local and organic foods is making a comeback as people try to recapture the food that their parents used to make and to make more sustainable choices for their own children.

Home cooking is sustainable in other ways too. It creates a link between generations, a link that transmits cultural values and traditions. In various cultures, tortillas, rice, and bread mean the stuff of life. Here, fresh pears mean that winter is coming and apples mean fall. All around the world, everyone has meanings - good and bad - that they associate with different foods.

In Breaking Bread: Recipes and Stories from Immigrant Kitchens, Lynne Christy Anderson tells the stories that sustain people through generations of food-making.  She visits 25 different kitchens and hears peoples' stories about their food. She watches as people cook from the heart, rather than from a cookbook. This is the kind of cooking we need to cherish - it's the kind that we do off by heart.

But don't these meals require a lot of imported ingredients? Isn't this less than sustainable? Yes, if the ingredients are ones that can't be sourced in North America. However, this can also become a challenge to farmers. How about replacing some of the soy and corn grown in vast bulk with Asian vegetables or traditional European greens? This sort of niche farming is perfect for urban areas and the urban fringe, where there is the potential for micro farms and pocket markets that suit many different palates.

What foods do you remember from your childhood and what do they mean to you? This Thanksgiving, think about the roots of your cuisine and how to make those sustainable over the generations to come.