The Summer Project

This all really started back in 2001, when my friend “Christine” sublet a room in my house for a few months. I was finishing up my last credits as an undergrad and starting my first job, she was killing time before she left to volunteer in El Salvador. We had time on our hands and great swarms of young people around us looking for an excuse to hang out. We found ourselves cooking meals for these swarms. Our best times were spent in the kitchen, with a glass of wine, gossiping as we picked recipes and learned how to cook them. We were still new cooks then, just learning about what worked and what didn’t.

The next juncture came several years later, when I moved in with “Roomie” for a few months. Roomie has one of the most generous hearts I know, and his home was always open to friends. He loved to cook for people and was really darn good at it. His kitchen was full of intimidating cookbooks with friendly names but no pictures. He somehow managed to pick out winning recipes in spite of this lack of visual guidance. Our table was always surrounded by great friends having interesting conversations and sharing gourmet meals. He also had this breadmaker that could be programmed to start baking in the middle of the night so that you woke up to a house smelling of fresh bread. Oh, the bread maker….

A year later, I left for graduate school, with a borrowed copy of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, and a desire to learn how to make this world a better place. But Grad school, which I had naively expected would provide some answers about how this would be achieved, provided me only with a million questions to ask. I had expected that a Master in Public Policy would help me go work as a researcher and find the right answers to make things tick. Or go into government and implement the “right” policies. When it turned out that things were a lot, lot murkier than that, I felt uprooted from where I originally thought Grad School would take me and struggled to find my bearings about what to do with my education. What slowly began to creep into my mind were vague ideas about community, and local economies, and preserving nature. I moved into a place that let me walk to work, I brewed my coffee in reusable mugs and tried to carry reusable bags to the supermarket, I tried to smile at people in the office.

Because I love cooking and sharing meals with friends, extending my interest in the environment and economics into this realm seemed only natural. But it turned out that researching, obtaining, and cooking local, natural, environmentally friendly food could very well be a full time job. And thus, the idea of the Summer Project was born. I would start with one summer of cooking local meals for friends on Fridays, learning about local food, what is in season, where to get various products, and what recipes can be made from things available in California at a given time, and sharing what I learn through this blog.

Bon Apetit!