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Call me naive, but I was unaware until quite recently that embedded, or should I say buried, within our trendiest food movements are those with a hunger unlike our own. I first encountered "them" in my garden one night under a full moon. Like the ravenous raccoons, skunks and sundry varmints that prowl the North Berkeley hills where I live, they had but one gastronomic goal: devouring my vegetables, sucking up my honey and poaching my eggs. Call them what you will -- veggie vandals, gourmet ghouls, creepy culinarians, terroirists -- I call their nightmarish perambulations "The Night of the Living Locovores." (Cue the soundtrack from the film, "Night of the Living Dead.")
Don't get me wrong -- I respect the whole locavore thing. Limiting one's diet to fresh seasonal foods grown within a certain radius of one's home makes perfect sense. Some of my best friends are locavores, and I've read the manifestos of the movement's leaders, like Charles Thompson who sanely and deliciously tracks his locally-sourced, green, sustainable lifestyle on his blog 100 Miles. Except for my non-negotiable attachments to Malabar pepper, Breton sea salt, Scotch, Spanish sherry, French wine and cheese, Russian vodka and Italian olive oil (not to mention coffee and tea), I'm as locavore as the next person, as long as the next person is, um, a person, if you know what I mean.
Late-night raids
The locavore movement erupted in San Francisco in 2005, which is the year I fell in love with Lois. Lois grew up in rural Vermont in the 1970s, which means that she was born into an indigenous locavorism of necessity. Her mother could either shop at the ubiquitous roadside farm stands that popped up each season near her house, or drive an hour to the nearest supermarket. A no-brainer.
So when Lois moved in with me, I proposed that we follow the typical 100-mile locavore credo. She laughed. For Lois, an avid and green-thumbed gardener with Pilgrims in her pedigree, the preferred radius for food sourcing was no further than the property lines of her own home. So she planted a vegetable garden and installed a beehive, a chicken coop and several fruit trees. On her wish list were pigs, rabbits and a goat -- first as pets, then as milk, cheese, yogurt, bacon and chops. Right here in the hills of Berkeley, our very own private (or so I thought) farmers market. Forget about locavores, we were casavores. How green was our valley.
That's when "they" appeared, like moths drawn to a porch light, the locovores. Their food-sourcing radius included MY garden. You could hear them rummaging about late at night, muffling their shrieks of delight or quarreling amongst themselves over the lemons, figs and zucchini. I would stand at the second story bedroom window and peak through the curtains. Not a pretty sight: chickens dragged from their coop, salad greens torn from their beds, stone fruit ripped from their branches. And no matter what I did to protect the garden -- fences, floodlights, padlocks and calls to local law enforcement -- they were undeterred. Even Lois' dog, Buddy, was useless after a violent encounter with a band of foraging Goths wearing flat-topped fedora ("pork pie") hats. Later I learned that these were anarchist Dumpster divers who had run afoul of their host supermarket.
And then, suddenly, it was over -- the love affair and the nightmares. Lois took Buddy, one surviving hen and the beehives and moved to the flats of West Berkeley where she was able to organize an even more ambitious collective farmstead with several adjoining properties. And, she beamed, no midnight gastro-zombies. Really? I'm told that her new cohabitating co-casavore (a casanovavore?) wears pork pie hats. Hmm.
From locavore to casavore to CSAvore
With my brief stint as Farmer John behind me, and my garden no longer a food source or target, I was once again sleeping through the night. But I still had to eat well and eat local, and that meant what? A return to strict locavorism? Well, yes and no. Friends were now championing another food movement -- Community Supported Agriculture and the food distribution services known as CSAs. Faithful to locavore principles, CSAs deliver local farm products, animal and/or vegetable, directly to subscriber homes. "Sign me up!" said my inner foodie bachelor.
From locavore to casavore to CSAvore, I had finally found my food movement. Let Lois and her clan do the urban farming and let the locavores do the shopping. I'll do the cooking and the eating. As for those lunatic locovores, beware! Lurking within our deeply virtuous food movements are people with voracious appetites who will stop at nothing to secure a local, sustainable, fresh -- and free! -- meal. But then they are not exactly people, if you know what I mean.
L. John Harris is a writer, cartoonist and filmmaker whose recently published "Foodoodles: From the Museum of Culinary History” celebrates and skewers the California cuisine revolution with cartoons and commentaries.
Illustrations: Foodoodles. Credit: L. John Harris
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glad to hear you are stil happy healthy and eating well !!!
what can we do but continue laughing at the antics of hunanity...