Dad's Quest for Quality
Defining a Family Food Culture, part 2
Down from an overflowing pile, there are now only two books on my bedside table. One is a devotional catered specifically for dads. The other is the second edition of The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman. An unorthodox pairing? Perhaps. But perhaps not.
A highly respected organic gardener from Maine, Coleman’s book is filled with practical and insightful tools and techniques for gardeners of all levels. And though my eyes were beginning to droop as I browsed through the chapters, one passage caught my eye.
Coleman writes:
“Standardization in food does not exist in Europe on the scale that it does here. Regional and varietal differences are treasured. Quality in food is demanded as much as is quality in other products.” (p.29)
I put that last sentence in bold because it is resoundingly true.
Here’s why.
In 2015, I had the good fortune of spending an entire semester abroad in Florence, Italy. While certain memories of my time there are foggier than others, all the vivid ones have to do with food. Shocking, I know.
The Mercato Centrale is Florence’s central food market. A large, open, wrought iron palace, the Mercato is wedged into the mess of buildings that form the path from Santa Maria Novella station to the Basilica di San Lorenzo. On any given day, trucks and vans overflowing with produce from across Tuscany, and even parts of Umbria and Emilia-Romagna, would crowd around this palace of Italian food culture. Filled with farmers, bakers, butchers, pasta makers, fishmongers, vintners, olive oil merchants, and cheesemakers, Mercato Centrale was, and is, the ultimate farmer’s market.
Old Florentine ladies, with a simple wave of their fingers, could communicate to the butchers what meat they wanted and how they wanted it cut. No small feat, considering how vast the selection was. No meat is off limits in Italy. At the same stand you could find Bistecca alla Fiorentina on display right next to testicles and organ meat.
The variety, and color, of the vegetables as astounding. The deep green of the artichokes, and bright red of the tomatoes and strawberries twinkled in the sun shining down through the glass roof.
I’m waxing poetic here, but the Mercato was a truly amazing place to experience. And it was always crowded.
We would often find ourselves shopping at Conad, the Italian version of a supermarket, because it was familiar for us and the wine was cheap. We represented the usual clientele: non-Italians. All the locals were over at the Mercato.
This is because, as Coleman said, Italians, and Europeans more broadly, demand that their food be of the highest quality. Even if they do not grow it themselves, people demand top-notch, quality meat and produce.
One of the teachers I had in Florence had taken us to Mercato Centrale to teach us about the Italian way of life. At one of the vegetable stands, she proceeded to go on a very dramatic rant. I imagine she’d made this speech several times. Americans have food all wrong, and the Italians have it all right, you see. Italians eat with the seasons and demand the best produce because it is the best thing for their health and well-being. Mind you, she said all this while rolling and smoking a cigarette. Could there have been a more Italian moment?
So, what am I on about? What does any of this have to do with a father’s responsibility to help construct his family's food culture?
It comes from that concept of quality.
I am not a trained chef. I grew up helping both my parents make dinner and, when I was old enough, took the responsibility of cooking at least one meal per week. In college, my apartment was often the epicenter of various theater parties, with all of my friends eating as much of my food as they could get their hands on. I learned techniques and built knowledge by reading books, and watching Julia Child and Jacques Pepin on PBS, and Jamie Oliver, Gennaro Contaldo, and Antonio Carluccio on YouTube. I wrote a food column for my college paper, which served as the genesis for what you’re reading now.
I have always loved food. As you read last week, I come from a strong family tradition of loving food. It is because I am rooted in that tradition, and am well practiced in the art of cooking, that I am led on a quest for quality.
And that quest has brought me to homesteading and the musings of organic growers like Eliot Coleman.
Italians have certainly figured out the perfect balance of quality, localized food. Though the “Eat Local” drum has been banged for several decades now, we here in the United States have yet to develop truly localized systems. However, homesteading and small farming have been on a dramatic rise since 2020. People are craving closer connection to their food.
Over the course of the last year, I have talked to and profiled several prominent figures in the homesteading community. Though they all have vastly different approaches, the common thread linking them all together was about the desire to provide their families with high quality, healthy, home grown food.
Here’s an annoying paradox. Even though Italians, such as my teacher, smoke like chimneys, they very often live into their nineties and beyond. That’s because they eat better than most of us could ever dream of. Each piece of meat, each vegetable, is gone over with the same kind of exacting standards as one would expect to find in a handmade Swiss watch.
The truth in what Coleman writes is this: we all yearn for quality in our food. A family food culture should be built around that.
A dad’s role, in the most traditional sense, is as the provider and protector of his family. What is more worth protecting than the food your family consumes every single day, multiple times a day? Protecting health is just as important as protecting from physical forces. And, at the end of the day, our diets contribute to so much of our health.
So, dad has a duty to make sure that his family is eating well, not merely to survive, but to thrive. How this is achieved is going to look different because all dads are different. However, developing standards, and maintaining them, is key to creating a thriving family food culture.
I’ll close with the vision my wife and I share our family food culture. Our larders are stocked with preserves, either of our own making or purchased from trusted sources. Our fridge and freezers are filled with pasture-raised meat we either grew ourselves, or purchased locally. Our yard teems with ruminants, chickens, apple trees, numerous vegetable patches, fruit bushes, and flower beds. We sit down for every meal, together, as a family, and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Is this lofty? Of course it is. But you need to be a little lofty in order to have a goal to pursue. We are several years away from achieving this goal. Like all pursuits in life, however, it’s the small, intentional changes that end up making all the difference.