Be Conscious

I just read this today and am reminded of something so simple, yet so difficult: LIVE CONSCIOUSLY! Everything is so fast pace, and I always have somewhere to be, and something to do....and I'm so hungry NOW!

A food poem by Gary Paul Nabhan, keynote speaker at the 2013Alaska Botanical Garden conference, featured on the next Addressing Alaskans Tuesday 4/2 at 2 PM & 7 PM on KSKA 

A Terroir-ist’s Manifesto for Eating in Place:

Know where your food has come from
through knowing those who produced it for you,
from farmer and forager, rancher or fisher
to earthworms building a deeper, richer soil,
to the heirloom vegetable, the nitrogen-fixing legume,
the pollinator, the heritage breed of livestock,
the sourdough culture rising in your flour.

Know where your food has come from
by the very way that it tastes:
its freshness telling you
how many miles it may have traveled,
the hint of mint in the cheese
suggesting what the goat has eaten,
the terroir of the wine
reminding you of the lime
in the soil that you stand upon,
so that you can stand up for the land
that has offered it to you.

Know where your food has come from
by ascertaining the health and the wealth
of those who picked and processed it,
by the fertility of the soil that is left
in the patches where it once grew,
by the traces of pesticides (or hopefully, lack of them)
found in the birds and the bees there.
Know whether the bays and shoals
where your shrimp and fish once swam
were left richer or poorer than before
you and your kin ate from them.

Know where your food has come from
by the richness of stories told around the table
recalling all that was harvested nearby
during the years that came before you,
when your predecessors and your ancestors,
roamed the same woods and neighborhoods
where you and yours once roamed.
Know them by the songs sung to praise them,
by the handmade tools kept to harvest them,
by the rites and feasts held to celebrate them,
by the laughter let loose to show them our affection.

Know where your foods have come from
by the patience displayed while putting them up,
while peeling, skinning, coring or gutting them,
while pit-roasting, poaching or fermenting them,
while canning, salting or smoking them,
while arranging them on the plate for our eyes to behold.
Know where your food has come from
by the s-s-s-s-slow s-s-s-s-s-savoring of each and every morsel,
by letting their fragrances lodge in our memories
reminding us of just exactly where we were the very day
that we became blessed by each of their distinctive flavors for the first time.

When you know where your food comes from
you can give something back to those lands and to those waters,
that rural culture, that migrant harvester,
curer, smoker, poacher, roaster or vintner.
You can give something back to that soil,
something fecund and fleeting like compost
or something lasting and legal like protection.
We, as humans, have not been given
roots as obvious as those of trees.
The surest way we have to lodge ourselves
within this blessed earth is by knowing
where our food has come from.