Most people will not cry while reading a cookbook, I am pretty sure of that, unless of course they are doing so while also slicing onions. But that is exactly what I did a couple of days ago while leafing through the gorgeous pages of The Midwestern Table by Amy Thielen. Since context is everything, I should point out that this weeping was done while I was also riding through the same Minnesota and Wisconsin farmland I have honored in these pages at other times, a landscape that often leaves me bereft with gratitude and awe. Green fields ripe with grains and produce. Red barns and white farm houses. Cattle, sheep, horses. The stuff of grounded, solid, fragile lives that depend on the blessing of sun, rain, and seasons. Something about the stories that accompany the recipes and the hope of passing on tried and true foods held in the beauty of the unfolding scenery just grabbed my heart and wrung it out. Reading it I was transported to all the tables that have fed me……my family table, those of friends whose love of cooking is legend, my Aunt Enie’s farm table where food was simple and plentiful, and more church potlucks and dinners than I can even count.
We are people fueled by food. Over the years we have made healthy and unhealthy choices about what we put in our mouths to produce energy, have tried to make things in boxes and bags replace the stuff that comes from the Earth, but we have rarely succeeded. Food is plentiful and it is scarce depending on economic status and where we live. In the last years we have realized the terrible fact that some of our poorest city areas, those in great need of affordable, healthy food, have no grocery stores except quick stop markets. These tables are very different from the ones I have been blessed to sit at.
The food we eat around our family tables is an extension of where we come from, where our ancestors traveled from and what we value. I have friends who are vegetarians and vegans, some who eat no gluten or dairy products. This is driven by attention to how they feel and also the footprint they want to make in the world. Depending on the family traditions, there might be bratwurst, pasta, enchiladas, pierogis, dumplings, rice and beans, fried chicken, or pot stickers. In my family there will almost always be pie. Our tables say much about us.
In the faith tradition in which I have traveled, the United Methodist Church, we refer to ourselves as being ‘people of the table’. This, of course, refers to the communion table in which we welcome everyone without a need to profess any specific creed or doctrine. All people of faith are welcome to receive the bread…..that gift of sun, soil, rain and hope….and the cup……the gift of vine and years of tending. While we may argue and disagree over theological issues, this is one place where that all falls away. Hands are cupped to receive. Eyes meet eyes. Blessings are pronounced. The table becomes the great leveler.
For me, there is an invisible line of sacred connection that happens when we gather around the table, nearly any table. As bowls are passed and plates are filled we are silently remembering that we are beholden to the people who did work on our behalf…..the farmers, those that planted and harvested, those that loaded and drove trucks, those that stocked shelves and bagged groceries. We pick up a fork with the dust of those who ground wheat into flour, those that bottled beverages, those that tended animals, falling all around us. Their sacrifices, their hours, days, weeks, years,their very lives become a part of the food we take in to fuel our living. We carry that sacrifice with us as we leave the table. It is something not to be taken lightly.
Living in this slice of the country that holds the two coasts together, we are blessed with foods that know their season. We relish the first tastes of asparagus in spring and look forward to the squash that will arrive when the days turn their faces toward winter. Last Friday I spent the morning crouching in strawberry fields with a friend picking this sweet, red fruit that stained my fingers all week, a gift of early summer. Soon the blueberries and raspberries will pull at their branches and we will fill buckets and freezers and jars to try to extend the table of summer into the winter. “With winters this long, keeping some proof of summer in your pantry becomes essential.”, writes Thielen. And so it is.
This extending the table crosses seasons and traditions, family lines and political leanings,lifestyles and education. At our tables we are invited, commanded even, to remember the deep,holy ways we travel this life’s path together. One meal at a time.
