Lessons I Learned on Launch Day: Four “Aha” Moments About This Project

Yesterday was the launch of this blog!  Nearly two days in, and I’m right on track. I’ve:

• gone to a local food festival and signed up on a ton of e-mailing lists
• gone to a few nearby farmer’s markets (one conventional, one organic)
• signed up for a membership at my local food co-op
• organized all of my September assignments on a Google calendar and task list
• tried a yoga class at my gym (per Physical Education 101)
• started reading Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Courage to Start.

Image via I am marlon on Flickr

Whew.  It’s been a little bit like a carnival ride so far—fast, fun, and giddy.  Like any good ride, though, there are some hidden and bumpy parts.  Here are the four things that either surprised me or stopped me in my tracks during the opening hours of this project:

1) I have no idea how to cook

Planning and cooking meals fresh from the Farmer’s Market and food co-op is a weekly requirement of Food Science 101.  Unfortunately, I can barely boil an egg.  Dinners with my husband haven’t changed much since we were actual college students—they consist of either take-out meals or something from the A-Roni or Boyardee families.  I know a fair amount about nutrition from dieting stints and from working as a therapist on a behavior-based, weight loss research study (ironic,no?), but I have mostly neglected learning to cook healthy foods.

My shortcomings as a cook became obvious during my first organic farmer’s market trip.  The bounty of fresh vegetables was a beautiful thing to behold, but I left with nothing but a sack of heirloom tomatoes and basil. That’s not exactly a bonanza of groceries, given that I aspire to eat most of my food from these weekly market trips.  I felt confused by the differences between all the piles of Green Stuff; the use for pea shoots vs. chard vs. frisee.  When I looked at, say, a squash, I didn’t see the makings of a recipe—I just saw a shiny, yellow cylinder.

Some yellow and green cylinders (image via Wally Hartshorn on Flickr)

I shouldn’t panic too much, I know.  Right?  Right???? Being clueless in the kitchen is the very reason why I’m doing Food Science 101, and I’ve planned for it as well as I can.  I’ve bought a few seasonal cookbooks, signed up for cooking classes, and am in the process of discovering helpful food blogs.

I have a long way to go, though, before my October exam—one month with no eating out! That’s why I’m putting out a call to any readers: please post or provide a link in the comments to your #1 favorite meals using mostly summer/fall seasonal produce!! You know—that “go to” meal that you can cook in your sleep and just love, love, love.  I will try as many of these recipes as I can and get back to you, and it will be a great first step for me. Bonus points will be given for recipes that don’t require a degree from Le Cordon Bleu to cook.

2) My husband is not matriculating at Grown-Up University.

He’s supportive, sure—in fact, his own blogging expertise helped me get this thing off the ground and looking pretty—but he isn’t drinking the (sugar-free) Kool-Aid.  He’s still watching TV, for one, and has no intention of stopping. In his defense, not only is he less of a TV addict than I, he also is able to get a lot of his other hobbies done while he watches, unlike me (I’m no good at multi-tasking).  Last night I sat with my back facing the TV and headphones on so he could watch a show, which made for an awkward compromise.  Also worth mentioning is what he had for dinner last night:

Mmm...this is the food that the Devil would eat...

Which is a good point of contrast, because pizza is a totally typical dinner for me too.

Here’s what I had for dinner last night:

1 dinner down, 364 more to go!

Improvised heirloom tomato bruschetta, spinach salad, and a pliot (that’s a plum-apricot hybrid, according to the farmer at the market)—not a typical dinner for me by any stretch of the imagination.  I was a little bitter at first that he picked last night, of all nights, to call pizza delivery, but then I remembered that my dinner represents a choice I am making to counteract some of the damage I’ve done to myself by eating crap like, well, pizza.  I felt better.  Even though dinner worked out ok, I still wonder how my husband and I will make this project work for the both of us. After all, I drafted him as a semi-willing, semi-participant.  Will he or won’t he buy into the lifestyle changes I’ve chosen for myself, and end up changing in the process?

3) I have two new part-time jobs.

In the past, I’ve always had the luxury either to be a full-time student or a full-time employee.  Now, the coursework in Grown-Up University is a part-time gig on top of my full-time job.  Over the next four months, I will be completing 45 assignments and 7 exams.  I expected that this would take a lot of organization and time.

What I didn’t expect is that writing posts and maintaining a blog—at least at this early stage—is another part-time job.  I’m not complaining, because it’s a hoot already.  I have to confess, though, that in my head I pictured me spitting out a quick little post, diary-style in the space of, let’s say, twenty minutes and then being done with blogging for the day. Like Carrie Bradshaw.

Those of you with your own blogs know that I was undershooting just a teensy bit.  First, there are the technical aspects of blogging.

“What’s a Widget?” I asked my husband two days ago.  He laughed at me.

Image via Dolmansaxlil on Flickr

Second, I have to dust off and use my writing skills, which I have never used much in the first place.  Sure, I got a decent grade in creative writing in college, and have flirted with journaling since then, but that’s about it for writing since the eighth grade.  Writing is part of the subject matter for my blog, at least for the Fall semester.  I am glad I have incorporated writing itself as part of Occupational and Leisure Studies 121, with time planned each day to devote to writing and books to help me on my way.

I would welcome any advice from all you Veteran bloggers out there on how you’ve balanced blogging about life and living it, and which aspects of blogging you have found to be the most fun and the best uses of your time.

4)      I am used to having what I want, when I want.

Don’t get me wrong—I am not unusually bratty or spoiled.  I am spoiled in the way that most Americans are.  Life for us is generally easy and convenient.  We whoosh around in our temperature-controlled cars to go wherever we want to go to in order to buy (mostly) whatever our little hearts desire. For example, it’s effortless to wander into the grocery to buy a roast chicken that someone else has put a lot of effort into acquiring, feeding, raising, killing, plucking, shipping, roasting, and packaging. I don’t know much yet about slow food/ locavore movement, but I know enough to suspect that a way of eating and living that at first glance seems more effortful is more meaningful and healthful.

But I’m not used to doing things that are hard! (go back and read the last sentence in a really whiny voice). If I want a burrito, I go out and get a burrito.  If I want to sit motionless on my couch watching TV all night, then I do it. Freedom in America has come to mean the freedom to buy stuff and waste time in whichever way we want.  It’s a luxury indeed, but it’s not enough to make me happy.  I have lost touch with how my behaviors connect to the world at large and to my own wishes for my life.

I’ve grown soft–literally and figuratively—and facing the truth is bound to cause some minor blisters.  I realized this during my trip to the (non-organic) Farmer’s Market.  I was there on my second trip, and I had a mission.  When I first went to this market with a friend two weeks ago, there were juicy peaches in all shades of coral and crimson literally spilling out the back of pick-up trucks.  These peaches were the best dang fruit I have ever had. Fast-forward to trip number two, when I discovered that the peach season has already ended.  I finally found a few pale, hard ones more reminiscent of your standard grocery store peach, but they weren’t the reason I had come.  I felt disgruntled.  Didn’t my friend, the Burger King, say I can have things My Way?

Fortunately, I realized that I was moping over peaches and got a grip on myself.   I had a moment of clarity when I realized that this small disappointment is the kind of thing that I’d been spared in the Land of the Free, Home of the Superstore. In superstores, peaches are endless; in nature, peaches run out.  They are tied to real things like the sky and the soil. They are fleeting.  Standing in the market, I remembered that connecting with real things is why I’m doing this project.  It is requiring a shift in my perspective of what is easy and what is hard; of what things I should be thoughtless about versus thoughtful.

Image via Wanderingnome on Flickr

Well, on that note, I’m going to read The Courage to Start, eat a PBJ sandwich on local bread, and go searching on the food blogs to figure out what in the heck to do with a pea shoot.  Thanks for spending some time with me!