How to Eat Like a Farmer - Part 4
If you missed the earlier parts in this series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
So what does a day in the life of eating like a farmer (like me) look like? My approach to cooking is fairly simple recipes with a few high quality ingredients. I like bold flavours, but I don’t dress things up in a lot of herbs and spices – I prefer to taste the main ingredients. When given the choice between frying and baking, I will always choose frying. I am allergic to following recipes – I tend to use them for inspiration rather than prescription.
Breakfast often starts off with a bowl of the granola I’ve been selling since 2006, adapted from my grandmother’s recipe, and made with all organic ingredients and sweetened with either our farm’s maple syrup or local honey. I’ll pour some organic milk over it and maybe chop half a banana on top. Because I’m a big drinks guy, I might have three different bevvies going at once: locally-roasted Fair Trade organic coffee mixed with cacao; a smoothie made with haskaps, our homemade sumac juice, and my house made kefir; and some herbal medicinal infusion. I’m a big believer in the gentleness, empowerment and affordability of herbal remedies, but not so much supplements – although I will throw down a large dose of vitamin D in the winter.
Lunch is typically a sandwich, like the aforementioned tomato/halloumi, but might also be made with cheddar and lacto-fermented pickles, on some organic bread from a local artisanal bakery. I recently got into the habit of making my own mayo, which seemed like the thing to do when you have a hundred chickens. I can whip up a batch that will last for a week or two in about five minutes. I often wash all this down with some of the wild apple cider we make and sell.
A little more involved than the mayo, the Caesar salad dressing I make for dinner is well worth the time. I have a distinct childhood memory of my father taking me to a fancy restaurant and watching the waiter prepare by hand a Caesar dressing at our table, slowly whisking the oil into the egg. But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I finally learned to make it, and quickly became obsessed. The key to it, I believe, is the pecorino romano cheese I buy religiously from a specialty Italian store in town and grate into the dressing, and the addition of anchovies. It’s incredible on kale, endive, and of course, romaine. Croutons are easy to make yourself, too, and far better than store bought. Add some chicken and it’s a meal.
With the Caesar salad might go some pasta – my favourite food. I find my high metabolism body likes a lot of carbs and fat, and pasta provides a level of satisfaction few foods attain. I have a pasta maker, but don’t use it much these days, since I find that the organic dried pasta from Italy I always buy is better than what I can make, at a fraction of the effort (see, I’m not a DIY extremist).
A very simple but incredibly delicious pasta sauce begins in the summer by growing a bunch of tomatoes, slicing them in half, covering them in generous doses of olive oil and salt, and roasting them until they reduce to a thick sauce. Then I throw them in the freezer to eat all year. It feels like summer reduced to a sauce. I’ll add these defrosted tomatoes to the pasta, along with some toum – a Lebanese garlic sauce that we also sell, made from our garlic.
I like to crack open a beer and listen to music while I cook. I find cooking almost as enjoyable as eating. I know some people view it as a chore, each meal the latest in an unending series of hurdles to get through. But I generally look forward to it. I sometimes think ahead to what I’m going to make, but just as often I wing it. Getting an onion sauteing is always a good place to start.
This is my philosophy of food. However you like to eat – and it’s only proper that everyone will have their own approach – my main hope is that you approach the act of eating with a mixture of respect and pleasure. Respect for the lives – whether plant or animal – given to keep your life sustained, and respect for yourself and the health of your body. And pleasure in the fact that the necessary acts of provisioning, cooking, and eating is just so damn enjoyable – or at least can be if we simply make the space for it in our lives. Perhaps attention - a scarce resource these days - is the most important ingredient in any dish.
