Beverly Hoffman

The economy has been tough the past couple of years. People have cut out splurges to concentrate on essentials. We now spend more time poring over the weekly grocery store specials and we often settle for the cheapest food rather than the healthiest.

As this new year begins, perhaps we need to think about our food in different terms - not just how cheaply we can get it. Maybe when we squeeze that loaf of bread to test for freshness, we need to consider the farmer and his efforts to grow the wheat. Maybe when we drink a glass of fresh raw milk we have available here in our valley, we need to appreciate the family that awakens in the frosty, dark mornings to milk the cows and who strive for transparency of their product by working in a glassed workroom so people can see the bottling process.

When I have a dinner party and spend several days preparing the food, I am privy to the enjoyment on people's faces as they bite into a garlic-herbed piece of pork. When summer visitors arrive, I get to watch smiles radiate across their faces when they bite into one of our perfect peaches and they remember that forgotten taste they once savored as children. Ironically, the people who grow our food never have the privilege of seeing their hard work appreciated. Rather, they hear complaints. Or receive word of a pending lawsuit. Or are squeezed to lower their prices when their overhead has increased triple-fold.

As January 2010 arrives, we can choose to live more appreciatively for the food grown, packaged and delivered to nearby stores. We've just had Thanksgiving and Christmas and perhaps were too busy to enjoy them. We now have an opportunity to offer an utterance of true thanksgiving and live out the spirit of Christmas by loving each bite of food we taste.

We can use our senses more fully. A Buddhist practice is to chew food 35 times to truly appreciate it. I feel ashamed that today I went through a drive-in coffee shop, ordered a salad perfectly prepared with fresh ingredients and then gobbled it in my car as I waited for several red lights to turn green.

As we eat some of our perfect Washington apples and peaches, let's let the sweet juices trickle down our wrists. Let us pick our lavender and let the smell intoxicate us. We can tuck some underneath our pillow cases. We can brew it into our tea and use it with bath salts for a luxurious soak in the tub.

As we buy our food, let's take time to find out about the farmers who grow the food ... which lettuces they grow and why, their recipe for parsnips we've never tried, to find out the way a baker's oven works so that his French bread is crusty on the outside and chewy soft on the inside. Let's buy whipping cream and make our own butter so that we appreciate the process.

Rather than buying picked fruit and complaining about a rotten piece, let's go to a berry farm where we must bend our backs to find the fruits low to the ground, sometimes having to turn our back while we wait for a dust whirlwind to pass. When we turn back to the bush, we can pop a berry into our mouths and taste the difference in a sun-ripened piece of fruit that has the sweetness of morning dew combined with the trace minerals in the soil.

I love to crack open a farm-fresh egg and to see the yolk thick and golden and use them in scrambled eggs that have a finished yellow color rather than an off-white anemic look. I also love to go into a grocery store or vegetable stand and see the way the produce workers artistically build pyramids of apples, and how they place the shiny, smooth-skinned aubergine eggplant next to the frilly leafed bok choy.

This year we can learn to be better gardeners by talking to one another and comparing whether a Honey Crisp or a Jazz apple tree would work best in our yard. We can tell stories to our children and grandchildren about our fathers and grandfathers who grew all of their own food and our grandmothers who stirred boiling jam to the right consistency before they canned a year's worth.

Now is the time to cut branches from our forsythia bushes, arrange them in a special vase and watch the brilliant yellow blossoms awaken to fill our gray, cold days with their sunny warmth of color.

This is a time to continue our holiday celebrations by loving our food and the food producers here in the valley. We can mingle at one of our open-air markets and bite into Cape Clear wild salmon wedged between two crusty pieces of local bread. We can listen as the musicians warm up the strings of their instruments so that their melodies weave into the townspeople's conversations where a moment of sacred harmony is felt.

Christmas is over. So is Thanksgiving. But both holidays are about a deep sense of gratitude and the love we cradle in our hearts each day. By continuing holiday celebrations where our hearts are lightened to the point when we can do nothing but tap our toes as we respond to an intuitive, ancient song in our hearts, we understand what it means to feel blessed.



Bev Hoffman's Sequim Gazette column appears the first Wednesday of each month. She can be reached via e-mail at columnists@sequimgazette.com.