Rural Romanticism About Food

[SuzySushi]

Let me weigh in with a couple of more anecdotes about rural romanticism.

My grandmother owned a Civil War-era farm in a small village in the Catskills, NY. She turned it into a chicken farm (selling eggs), and sometimes took in boarders during summer vacations. By the time I was a young child, the chickens were gone -- there wasn't anyone left to work the farm. Before then, my grandmother had fresh eggs, and would go out to the backyard whenever she wanted a chicken. They had fruit from the apple trees in the fall, and vegetables from the small kitchen garden, which my grandmother "put up" for the winter. I don't know where they got their milk and butter... maybe from neighboring farms? Or maybe from the the grocery store. My grandmother made good, homestyle cooking (and the best pies I've ever tasted), but nothing exotic. I'm pretty sure she'd never seen a mango in her life, and the pineapple juice came from a can.

Flash forward to rural France. We have a friend who lives in a hamlet in central Bretagne (Brittany). The average age of the people around there is probably in their 60s. There aren't any working farms in the area because young folks have left for the better-paying city life. ("How're you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Par-ee?") Her mom's a good cook, but the food comes from the supermarket in the closest large town; there's even a hypermarché a 15 minute drive away. There's a pretty decent crêperie in a neighboring town, but that's about it for restaurants in the area. No one's in production making or growing any other foodstuffs because there isn't any demand for them. Why does our friend live there? Because her aging mother grew up in Bretagne, because they have a lot of privacy, and and because housing is dirt cheap. But they travel every chance they can, driving to other parts of Europe because they get cabin fever.

[devlin]

A few things: both the radical shift from small to industrial farms and the fact that so few people cook in the ways people used to cook (at least in this country) has changed the landscape of food so dramatically I think the thing you're imagining hardly exists, except maybe in the artisanal food movement. And that's hard to come by.

When I lived in Chicago, I could get nearly any kind of food I wanted on just about any street corner. Especially in the past ten/fifteen years. Decent produce, imported foods of all sorts. Not to mention the restaurants. Food heaven. Really fabulous strawberries and the like, of course not. Certain kinds of melon you can only find at farmers' markets.

Because of my husband's job, we've since moved from one rural community to another, where his industry is able to buy land and buildings cheap and find enough folks to pay cheap wages to (I'm not talking about Wal Mart, but manufacturing ). And it's frustrating as all get out. We're surrounded by farm land, but the quality of prepared food, fresh food, is godawful. We currently live in southern Indiana, and Louisville KY is 20 miles south of us. To get good food, to find a decent restaurant, we have to go into Louisville. To find good bread,... well, I make my own in my Alan Scott bread oven in my garage. We do find fabulous produce at the local farmers' markets, but then of course only during the summer months.

We have that idealized idea of the rural life too. Even still. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to find in this country. I really miss the food culture of Chicago. On the other hand, I love looking out to the ten acres behind the house to see my three horses grazing, and I really love my bread oven and the local melons which are the best melons I've ever had in my life.

[racheld]

I really love my bread oven and the local melons which are the best melons I've ever had in my life.

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YESSSS!! It's almost DECKER-time!!!

I'd never heard of them before we moved here. Anyone else familiar with Deckers?

[CarolineLD]

My friends who live in quaint little villages in the UK and go to the pub after church mostly seem to eat things like satay and vindaloo.

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So true! I grew up in rural England, but left for London at the first opportunity; my parents still live there. They get potatoes and eggs but little else from local farmers; the farmers' market in town is on a weekday when most people are stuck at work, and has all of half a dozen stalls.

By contrast, I get a whole range of that region's produce (meat, smoked fish, honey, cheeses...) at Borough Market, a five-minute train journey from my home. For my parents to get that same produce locally would involve a full day's driving from one end of the county to the other. Ironically, then, it's much easier for me to eat good country food simply cooked etc etc than it is for them...