Live to Eat

By Kristin Hamaker, Chef and owner of Farm to Fork, a personal chef service in the Twin Cities

While wandering round the produce department on a recent Monday morning I witnessed something extraordinary. Two small children, ahead of their rosy-cheeked mother, shuffled hysterically toward the north wall of vegetable stacks shouting, "Broccoli broccoli, we want broccoli!" At first I was stunned, then I thought, forget about good for you, these kids know taste when they eat it and see it.

There's much to be learned from those two flailing children. We need to set real food aside from its stigma of being only nutritious and therefore ho-hum, elitist and intimidating, and give it credit for its flavor and high quality. I think we are beginning to get away from those associations, what with the serious rise in restaurants, for instance, attaching themselves to the trend and value of local, seasonal, and organic eating. But we still need to be reminded and pinched back into enthusiasm over those overlooked characteristics of whole foods—flavor and quality and purity.

Real, minimally processed foods can first taste good, not just be good for you or satisfy eating obligations. We think we need to eat things like brown rice, and curly kale, and tofu because they are nutritious but often forget that first and foremost they are traditional and unadulterated. Also, they have mostly been grown by real people in real soil and have the signature of that hard work or stories and traditions attached. If you're bored or indifferent in the kitchen, head to your local library for a few new and unusual cookbooks, join a cooking class, or meet up with friends for a regular potluck and pick their brains for favorite recipes and cooking ideas.

My point, let food bring you back to life! Appreciate the subtle flavors of greens in season and prepare them sparingly. Take your time and enjoy a perfect ripe piece of fruit. Slow-roast a fillet of Coho salmon with only a bit of fresh thyme, a smear of olive oil, and a pinch of the best salt you have, and catch yourself in that moment of simple pleasure. Create a soup from what you have left in the cupboard and crisper drawer and recall how delicious a last minute experiment can be. Real food has the capacity to really inspire and impress.

In the challenging times we now find ourselves, we need to get back to simple pleasures and more than ever, keep up our health. Whole foods fill the bill in both respects. But really, we need to support what real food stands for, and that is integrity, a quality we don't bump into much anymore. While chomping down on your next Hoch Orchard Haralson apple or roasting your small Harmony Valley rutabagas or spreading a bit of Hope Creamery butter onto your piece of sourdough toast, you can feel especially pleased with knowing you're not only nourishing your body, but your local community and our vulnerable environment. Who thought eating a certain apple could mean so much and taste so good because of it? This is what good eating should mean to us now.

I love kids because they could care less about stigmas or politics but just strike right for the truth, as in the case of the small broccoli lovers. We don't have to necessarily barge in atwitter toward the bins of rolled oats like excited children but maybe take a moment and see the possibilities there for the foods we eat and buy and allow them to ignite our palate, as well as body and soul.

Kristin Hamaker is a real food eater and advocate and the happy chef and owner of Farm to Fork, a personal chef service in the Twin Cities.