Simple Food

When our son, Zealand, was three months old I was overcome by a sharp desire to purchase The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. I came across the book in San Francisco's Warming Hut while taking a break from the wet fog. Thumbing frantically through the introduction and recipes with son in arms I decided then and there that this was just the book I needed. My husband chalked it up to as an impulse buy greased with sleep deprivation. With our lives so recently turned upside down when would there be time to cook?

It turned out to be the single best purchase as a new mother. The free flowing always moving sense of time punctuated by one to three hour breaks proved to jive beautifully with recipe gazing and meal planning. Cooking had always been a love of mine but I tended to do so in spurts or for occasions that called out for a cake, a salad, a dip, or a special bread. The Art of Simple Food became a road map for a whole new way of being in the kitchen that, surprisingly, was well suited for a traveller anchored to baby, home, and neighborhood.

The timing really could not have been better. For the first time in my life I was home for long, long stretches of time caring for my son. Round the clock nursing and sleeping only allowed for short walks around the neighborhood or quick stops at the bakery or market. The smell of coffee roasting and colorful pastries arranged under glass was an intoxicating feast for the senses after long stretches on the couch feeding and rocking. I would stroll along our uneven sidewalks with my son bundled against my chest beaming over the new found joy of strolling through our San Francisco neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon to stop for a block of fresh cheese or a baguette from the French bakery. Each walk from the corner coffee shop for a latte to the small market brimming with local, organic produce to the pharmacy for a few sundries began to create a sense that our home was connected to a vibrant urban village. How easy it now seemed to grab a head of lettuce, a few vegetables, some herbs, and a bottle of wine for a dinner that I could conjure up while heading home.

The Art of Simple Food became my resource guide to pulling together quick meals from produce purchased on the fly while strolling and from our farm box that continued to roll in from a farm in Capay. I was beginning to see that a well-chosen olive oil, vinegar, and sea salt could transform any vegetable from a single note into perfect melody of flavor. The salt and oil coaxes to the surface treasures buried within tough, rough, and bumpy skins. Add parmigiano reggiano and homemade croutons to your repertoire and you really are set. Suddenly the knobby beets and gangly leeks that were always a bit intimating when they arrived at our door became friends, easy ones at that.

When I wasn't filling the underside of my son's stroller with produce, I was drawn to cookbooks listed as favorites on food blogs. Their easy melodic prose describing the satisfaction of preparing good food was a sweet tonic for the crackly nerves of new motherhood. And, the soulful perspective on kitchen and food preparation from those passionate about food was a refreshing take on a domestic activity often just seen as more drudgery for already overworked mothers.

Purchasing and preparing local, organic foods from my neighborhood and farmers markets became an important expression of my new role as a mother. Cooking, love, and life are indeed intimately interrelated as is our relationship to food and nature. The birth of my son placed me into relationship with home, family, and community in entirely new ways.

At the end of the day there is nothing more satisfying then a rustic tart lovingly shaped with apples from our neighborhood market. It embodies our family's desire to live in ways that respects the environment and the interconnections between self, community, and the earth.