After a brief hiatus (4.5 years, 3 moves, 2+ kids, a marriage, a dissertation, and a global pandemic), I’m back with a sharper focus on one specific aspect of my experience: bioregional awareness. Or, at least, I’ll be exploring what it means to attempt cultivating that awareness. It’s an exercise in placefinding, with the resources, limitations, inclinations, and identities I have at hand.

Hence, Laurentia.

Laurentia is a bioregion spanning, by some accounts, from around the Great Lakes (where I grew up) to the New England Atlantic coast (where I now live).

Also classified as the “Northeastern American Forests” subrealm and the “Laurentian mixed forests” biohabitat, the region has been called various names by the people who have lived here for millennia—though many of those words have been lost or actively destroyed during the long process of Anglo-European colonization.

For me, the word “Laurentia” has become a synonym of “utopia,” though with the added complexity that it names a real place with a storied and violent history. I use it to evoke both the biogeographical realm I call home and a loose ideal of more balanced, integrated, and sustainable existence.

This digital space will record my encounters with Laurentia, as place and ideal, along with other aspects of my life in and around Cambridge, MA. And it will include recipes, more or less attuned to my bioregional surroundings. After all, the fact that most of what I buy and cook and consume comes from who-knows-where is one of the main issues I’ll be reflecting on here. The point isn’t necessarily to cut ties with distant places; it’s to develop a bioregional awareness of things; to see and evaluate the ties between places as they intersect in my life and, specifically, in my kitchen.

A. The kind that eventually gets explained in a local news segment about young people on social media.

B. The kind that eventually gets explained in a graduate humanities seminar.

C. The kind that eventually gets tossed in the recycling bin when your partner gets sick of all the junk lying around your apartment.

D. The kind that eventually gets turned into a new religious movement after said scraps get blown out of the recycling bin and into a nearby public park.

E. The kind that assembles the blown scraps into a public monument to the avant-garde.

F. The kind that dons a uniform of the state to disassemble the monument as a performative statement about the ownership status of public space.

G. The kind that uploads a video of the performance to social media because you have a large enough following to supplement your income from either service work or corporate information processing.

H. The kind that trolls the comments section of the posted video of the performative destruction of the public monument in order to criticize the influencer’s compromised economic-aesthetic position.

I. The kind that is in the kitchen cooking dinner for the troll-commenter on the couch, while watching the local news segment about young people on social media.

Z. None of the above.

Purity is, thus, best understood as the achievement of an ordered system, collectively classifying acceptable foods to consume, while also rejecting others as pollutants; as a signifier, purity speaks to the collective through its relationship with the defiled, rather than simply being an inherent property or condition of a phenomenon.

- Michael James Walsh and Stephanie Alice Baker, “Clean eating and Instagram: purity, defilement, and the idealization of food,” via Can I Have Another Snack?

Lemon Poppy Muffins 4 Count

Packed On: Jan.08.25
Sell Thru: Jan.13.25

INGREDIENTS

Sugar, bleached wheat flour, eggs, 

contains 2% or less:

   buttermilk solids,
   carrageenan,
   cellulose gum,
   citric acid,
   enzymes,
   lactic acid,
   baking soda,
   sodium aluminum phosphate,
   monocalcium phosphate,
   maltodextrin,
   modified food starch,
   mono- &
   diglycerides,
   natural flavor,
   poppyseeds,
   potassium sorbate (preservative), 
   propylene glycol,
   salt,
   soybean oil,
   water,
   xantham gum.

CONTAINS EGG, MILK, SOY, AND WHEAT.
MAY CONTAIN SESAME AND TREE NUTS.
CONTAINS BIOENGINEERED FOOD INGREDIENTS.

*

RECEIPT

Perfecting the art of fresh
Store 2583 Dir Steve

535 Trapelo Road
Belmont MA 02478

YOUR CASHIER TODAY WAS Darlene

BAKED GOODS                                                    Price        You Pay
25758000000     Muffins Lemon Popy [sic]        6.99            2.49 B
                           Sale Savings -2.00
                           for U Store Coupon -2.50

                                  TAX                                                         0.38
                                  BALANCE                                               5.86

Credit Purchase    01/13/25    16:48
CARD #  ************1720
REF:    924834417200    AUTH:    0005080Z
PAYMENT AMOUNT                  5.86

AL CAPITAL ONE
                 Mastercard 5.86
                 CHANGE 0.00

Total Savings Value                    58%

I’ve realized over the past few years how much I actually love the New Year holiday, the rituals and rhythm of it but also all the related paraphernalia of year-end lists, look-backs, predictions, etc. In other words, I couldn’t help myself.

The following aren’t really predictions for 2025, since they are based on nothing more than whimsy and my weakness for all things alliterated. Instead, consider them recommendations, aspirations, or exhortations for the emerging year, based on recent trends in my own kitchen, enhanced by a pinch of political ideology and the requisite internal contradictions. I think they mostly fit under my recent anti-glitz mantras, “bland is better” and #pottagecore. Start the new year right by simplifying, experimenting, giving care, embracing irony, and figuratively (if not literally) dumpster diving.

1. Beans are for breakfast.

Yes, nutritionally balanced and nitrogen-fixing pulses are all the rage these days in both culinary circles and agroecological systems. Now is your chance to eat legumes in the morning, whether sweet, savory, or straight from the can. Chickpea/lentil=granola.

2. Constant cruciferous, or, a bitter crunch a day keeps the doctor away.

I’ve heard they’re healthy. There are so many options. Eat cabbage, kale, cauliflower, arugula, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, boy choy, or another Brassica at least once a day. For bonus points, triple up your technique: what could be more fun than roasted cabbage on slaw and topped with sauerkraut?

3. Tofu/tempeh Tuesday/Thursday.

Grate and roast your tofu, steam your tempeh until your kitchen is pungent, freeze the tofu and make cold cuts, try #tempehtacos. You just have to do it.

4. Walnuts - the other white meat.

You shouldn’t eat pork raw, as far as I know. Raw walnuts can be much more than pesto: taco meat, “Italian” sausage, bulgogi, kibbeh, and so on. Culinary imperialism is real, but/and walnuts are amazing.

5. Feed off the detritus of the industrial food system and of my young children.

Yes, I will buy the green-washed box of UPF breakfast cereal from CVS for $1.99 ($1.17 after coupons), feed it to my children, and then finish what’s left in the bowl after they depart for school. You should, too.

What are your food-related predictions/aspirations/exhortations for 2025?

We take politics that exclusively valorize the local in the guise of subverting currents of global abstraction, to be insufficient. To secede from or disavow capitalist machinery will not make it disappear. Likewise, suggestions to pull the lever on the emergency brake of embedded velocities, the call to slow down and scale back, is a possibility available only to the few–a violent particularity of exclusivity–ultimately entailing catastrophe for the many. Refusing to think beyond the microcommunity, to foster connections between fractured insurgencies, to consider how emancipatory tactics can be scaled up for universal implementation, is to remain satisfied with temporary and defensive gestures.

- Laboria Cuboniks (pseud.), The Xenofeminist Manifesto (2018)

Ecosystems are open.

So-called “closed ecological systems” are typically artificial and, though they have their uses, are contingent and can be resource-intensive. Their internal coherence depends on various externalities or energy exchanges. It takes a lot of glass and metal to build a greenhouse in the desert.

Likewise, our planetary ecosphere operates largely as a closed system, as far as matter goes. Traces of hydrogen and helium, stray space rocks, and bored rich dudes on hunks of metal—not much else comes or goes. Nonetheless, we depend for life (and for our magnetopause) on a constant influx of sunlight as well as the ongoing equilibrium of gravitational fields, electromagnetic currents, and other forces.

Within the ecosphere, at the level of particular habitats and species, instances of isolation due to myriad ecological barriers can have wonderfully strange effects on habitats and species. Consider the Galapagos, etc. But fragmentation cumulatively tends to reduce biodiversity and promote… extinction.

For such reasons, I find the idea of “closed-loop” systems— whether material (e.g., municipal waste streams), culinary (e.g., the 5+ jars of vinegars, juices, and pastes clogging the back of my fridge), or symbolic (e.g., bioregional subcultures)—to be less helpful, less provocative than attention to the back loop of “release and reorganization” that follow processes of growth and stability. This is the flipside of integration and expansion, often invisible (or ignored), and typically involving collapse followed by renewal.

Even when we think a system or loop is closed, we should expect that something escapes our notice. So tell me about the oblique, the residual, or the unintended consequences. What was destroyed to build this home? What could this structure become if it were “changed, changed utterly”?

Likewise, let’s understand locality and regionality not under the aegis of “earthrise” and “the overview effect” but with a pinch of “breaking-off” or “shrinking,” of alienation even. Places are strange.

Strange Pesto

I made several variations of this over the summer, some crumbly with lots of seeds and others thinner like a chimichurri. Either way, the sumac makes a nice regional substitution for the sour brightness of lemon. Sumac is floral and peppery, too, making it my new favorite pesto addition; though at what point does a pesto cease to be a pesto, and need a new name?

Now that garlic scapes are long gone here in Massachusetts, and sumac is on its way out, too, I’ll have to resort to kale, arugula, and/or the last of the herbs in my small community garden plot, paired with store-bought garlic bulbs or the dried grinders from Backyard Garlic.

Ingredients

• a couple handfuls of garlic scapes

• a large spoonful of sumac

• a few spoonfuls of pumpkin seeds

• about a quarter cup of nice sunflower or squash-seed oil

• sea salt, to taste

• optional: a spoonful of light miso or two of nutritional yeast; a pinch of chili flakes

Instructions

If necessary, trim any tough/woody parts of the scapes or shave them with a peeler. Add everything to a food processor or mini-chopper (which is what I have). If you use a mini-chopper, blend it relatively hard to avoid excessive scape strings or seed chunks. I kept my leftovers in a little jar in the fridge.

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It only seemed appropriate that a blog focused on regional food, history, ecology, and identities should have a server and URL of its own. But the little corner of the web I did set up has mostly languished as I figure out how to navigate the world of day-jobs+side-hustles (+parenting, +etc.). It’s been almost two years now since I left my contingent academic position and vowed not to start either a newsletter or a consultancy for frustrated/desperate academics. But I think it’s time I cave on at least the former resolution.

I’ve imported my handful of existing posts to this platform, with mostly satisfactory results, and will be attempting to formulate a hybrid relationship to this so-called “subscription network,” with its increasingly social media-ish features (but also - plaudits - growing customizability).

In other words, Substack will power the blog/newsletter portion of this project, while I continue to build out aspects of the separate blog/site for future culinary and printing enterprises. TO THAT END: if you are in dire need of a poem to hang on your wall, take a look at the letterpress broadsides that have been sitting in my closet for a decade, which could be yours for the low, low price of $20 (shipping included): https://laurentia.place/product/earth-song/

And now, a glimpse of the past:

Bioregional Longings, Part 1

I felt attached to the idea of the Laurentia bioregion from the first time I encountered it.

This was likely sometime around 2010, when I spent several hours each morning between my part-time AmeriCorps gigs perusing Wikipedia articles and Gradcafe forums in search of a vocation. The concept must have tapped into the antisocial desire for transcendence I inherited from (white) American evangelicalism, with its aversion to things like historical thinking and cultural self-awareness. Oh, to be free of my non-monetizable skillset—to inhabit a world of pure ecology!

But my attraction to bioregions wasn’t just a symptom of my religious upbringing and cultural position. I also had some personal, if not quite narcissistic, reasons. Carrying the idea of “Laurentia” in the back of my mind allowed me to integrate my regional identities, imagining that the places I had lived formed a single, identifiable place. That's something I wanted all the more after relocating to Massachusetts in 2011 and leaving behind my self-identified home of "the Great Lakes" (Mansfield, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Buffalo, NY--and kind of Chicago). Though not part of the same watershed, or even growing zone, perhaps (the thought went) these places shared some quality of ineffable interdependence, despite the fact that Boston seemed more foreign to me than London (cousins can be strange, right?).

Ten Twelve years later, I’ve decided that the cultural delusions and personal tendencies that first brought me to Laurentia are worth another look. I still want to consider my life against a different backdrop, to evaluate my choices on another basis. Bioregions provide that, even if I and the world are radically changed from a decade ago (and even though New England is not always considered a part of Laurentia). I’m not ready to settle for political withdrawal (or reformism), climate doom, technological euphoria, a salary, the nuclear family, an occasional trip to the farmer’s market, or the other potential sources of identity that have presented themselves as I approach my late 30s—though some of those things are great, don’t get me wrong.

It may all be a metaphor. It definitely still involves existential angst and settler-colonial assumptions (as noted by other white guys writing about the Laurentia bioregion). To consider one’s bioregional place and maybe even to develop a bioregional affiliation—there’s inevitably some escapism in that. But also, some hope.

Where The Water Goes

If there’s more than a metaphor at stake in this personal project, that’s thanks in part to watersheds. A parallel concept to the bioregion, and fundamental component of any local ecology, the watershed is a good place to begin to rethink one’s location. It’s where geology and biology meet, and one of the most tangible systems that skew from our built environment and social processes.

Encountering the humble Plaster Creek watershed during college is what my pulled me across the threshold into amateur ecological thinking. I followed that flow of freshwater and pesticides (from exurban farms) through suburban parks and urban industrial parks on several occasions, once with the guidance of a biologist friend, once with a group of friends I coordinated to collect riparian trash, and other times to walk or read or climb trees. More than the backdrop for a handful of pleasant memories, that small tributary clued me into an unfamiliar map of the world. It’s a perspective I can carry with me, and that remains just as inspiring and provocative for me today, despite now living in a drainage basin with more visible contours (thanks to cultural factors and social action, as well as geological features).

If there’s one way, dear reader, that I would encourage anyone anywhere to begin exploring their own relationship to place, it’s via watershed. Whether a mighty river you already know well, or an assuming ditch under the highway, find out where the water goes (and maybe how it’s faring, health-wise).

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“How did corn, originally cultivated in Mexico as far back as 8000BC, make its way as far north as Canada? … Native American trade routes were vigorous and complex.

As I build our indigenous kitchen, I’m not overly intent on limiting our ingredients to this particular region. While it’s important to know the foods that are closest to our kitchens, I’m curious about the foodways of other regions. But, it’s important to understand them in their geographic and cultural context and to work with them respectfully.”

Sean Sherman, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen (2017), p. 16.

This cookbook is amazing.

We need more “close” foods these days, but we’ll always still need traded foods. Same is it ever was.

In the United States, food waste is responsible for twice as many greenhouse gas emissions as commercial aviation[.]

Households account for 39 percent of food waste in the United States, more than restaurants, grocery stores or farms.

[O]ne-third of the food in this country goes unsold or uneaten — evidence of a culture that takes abundance for granted.

The following school year, Hilliard’s 14 elementary schools cut their trash pickups by 30 percent and recycling pickups by 50 percent, saving the district $22,000. They also diverted 100 tons of food, at least five school buses’ worth of waste, from the landfill.

Changing the behavior of millions of households may be a herculean task. But changing the behavior of one household can be done with just a single Nima. Or Cameryn. Or Riley.

Susan Shaun, “How Central Ohio Got People to Eat Their Leftovers” (The New York Times, Jan. 1, 2023)

A story with sobering statistics but a happy ending, from suburban central Ohio (about an hour south of where I grew up).

Kitchens matter.

Which is to say change and policy reforms are crucial, but food waste is one area where individual households and eating choices add up to more than the sum of their parts. If we change enough meals, purchases, and trash decisions, we can see a qualitative transformation in our supply and waste streams – new patterns and possibilities, rather than just a numerical shift.

Globalization has crested and begun to recede. In its place, a more regionalized and even localized world is taking shape. Faced with rising political discontent at home and geopolitical tensions abroad, governments and businesses alike are increasingly focused on resilience in addition to efficiency. In the coming post-neoliberal world, production and consumption will be more closely connected within countries and regions, labor will gain power relative to capital, and politics will have a greater impact on economic outcomes than it has for half a century. If all politics is local, the same could soon be true for economics.

[…]

Instead of assuming that deregulation, financialization, and hyperglobalization are inevitable, [policy makers and business leaders] should embrace the coming era of regionalization and localization and work to create productive economic opportunities for all segments of the labor force.

– Rana Foroohar, “After Neoliberalism, All Economics Is Local” (Foreign Affairs, November/December 2022)

Could bioregional economies promote equality?

Consider me skeptical about much of the excitement about “onshoring production” and building “resilient supply chains.” It’s not as if building natural gas pipelines and automated industrial facilities closer to home is going to solve everyone’s problems. Even beyond the obvious climate and environmental concerns that would persist after another shuffle of the industrial checkerboard, it seems safe to assume that financial capital and the many (other) predatory forces in the economy will continue to find ways to exploit labor and appropriate value, even if the world becomes more fragmented.

But I do think there are a variety of structural reasons that regionalization will, in some form and to some degree, take place—as well as compelling political, ethical, and aesthetic reasons that it should happen. In that case, building equality within and between regions seems like a worthy goal to pursue, and a potentially useful framework for guiding both individual and collective choices.

So although some people (including a podcast I’m currently obsessed with) like to deflate the aspirations of localist foodies such as myself, I see plenty of need for building bioregional knowledge, cuisines, habits, relationships, and accountability. I think homemakers and home cooks have an important role to play in repairing our broken food system. Especially with the growing influence of independent food culture via social media, so-called “consumers” have reach and power to reshape our palettes, our kitchens, and our imaginations. Building local equalities should be a part of all that.

The blossoms and subsequent pods did not seem as abundant along the beach as in previous years, perhaps because of my timing or because of the widespread drought across New England this summer. But I was still able to collect a few handfuls of decent quality and ripeness.

It’s easy to quarter and boil the hips and press them through a mess strainer. In the past, I’ve added sugar to make a conventional syrup for mixed drinks. This year, I used a smaller quantity of water to try for a more concentrated liquid. My batch of hips was quite spiky and seedy, but the result, for whatever reason, was less soapy on the tongue then my attempt last year.

The taste was very late summery to me, as I combined it with juice (mainly in seltzer format) and made a few gin-based cocktails. I’m no expert when it comes to mixing drinks, but it was a fun and refreshing little experiment. And because rose hips are so high in vitamin C, I told myself that this little potion was doubling as a pre-autumn immunity boost.

Here’s hoping I can manage some more foraging adventures this fall and winter.

But her work primarily involves thrown forms and sculptures with aesthetic rather than functional ends. It’s been exciting to see her artistic practice and philosophy develop over the time I’ve known her—to see her find a supportive audience through markets and sales around Cambridge/Boston even as she stays true to her own vision.

What I love about her work is how immediately I can feel the translation of natural shapes, patterns, and colors into the medium of ceramics. When I look at her work or hold a piece, it feels as if an encounter is taking place. The room (or the art vendor’s booth) I’m standing in suddenly seems connected to elemental energies and entities. It’s almost as if the light changes or a breeze picks up. Somehow her practice condenses and channels these natural forces into formal qualities: the bend or balance of a sculpture, the heft and color-gradient of a bud vase, etc.

For some people interacting with her work, that immediate connection to nature seems to register as a deep ambiguity. But it’s an ambiguity that opens the work and/or the person to unexpected comparisons and speculations. I’ve heard strikingly different descriptions of her work across age groups and identities. I think it was our oldest child, maybe 3 at the time, who compared one of her sculptures to a “campfire,” which was a new one to me but seemed just as apt as other comparisons I’ve heard (for example, to birds, waves, leaves, hands). What such comments seem to indicate is the presence of some abstract or subconscious, perhaps metaphysical, layer of experience that these objects remind us of.

It might seem a stretch, but I think there’s a similarity between what I experience with Meghan’s work and what happens when I eat a fresh, delicious meal. There’s an encounter taking place. A deep memory being activated or recovered. A translation and distillation of energies into a material, momentary form. I recognize my place in the web of nature and enjoy the potential all things have for change, transformation, becoming. Through such moments, Formal Evolution has become an integral part of my finding a home in New England.

Finding The Veganomicon recipe for broccoli polenta in my mid-20s was a milestone in my kitchen history, and the dish has remained a favorite of mine, usually paired with a white bean-tomato stew and some fresh herbs . I often broil up a big pan of it when a friend comes to town, always to rave reviews, or when I’m craving something simultaneously sweet and savory, green and hearty, comforting yet slightly out-of-the-ordinary.

Combining polenta with the depth, heat, and acidity of kimchi brine felt like an obvious, if unusual, move. It was also a good way to advance two of my recent culinary aspirations:

• Reducing food waste

• Making the most of my recent bulk order from Maine Grains

But more on these points next week!

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Kimchi Polenta

Add some heat and depth to the satisfying corn classic.

Course Appetizer, Main Course

Cuisine Italian, Korean

Diet Vegan

Keyword Grains, Zero-Waste

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Cooling Time (optional) 3 hours

Total Time 1 hour 35 minutes

Servings 4

Calories 200kcal

Cost $6

Equipment

• 1 Medium or large pot

• 1 Loaf, brownie, or muffin pan

• 1 Skillet or baking tray

Ingredients

• 1 jar leftover kimchi juice approx. 1/2 cup (or approx. half the jar of actual kimchi, in place of spinach below)

• 2 1/2 cups water

• 1 cup polenta

• 1 tbsp sesame oil

• 1 tbsp soy sauce or liquid aminos, etc.

• 1/2 cup frozen spinach optional

Instructions

• Pour the kimchi juice into a large measuring cup and add water to get 3 cups total.

• Add the kimchi juice and water mixture to a pot and bring to a boil.

• Gradually whisk in the polenta (or use a fork to stir it in), trying to avoid any big clumps or sticking to the sides of the pot. Stir in the frozen spinach, if desired, and boil on medium-high or medium for approx. 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

• Remove from heat and stir in the sesame oil and soy sauce.

• Transfer the mixture, while hot, to a bread or brownie pan. Use the back of a wooden spoon to press the mixture into the corners of the pan and flatten the top.

• If you're short on time or want to eat the polenta soon, set the oven to broil and place the pan directly in the oven to crisp the top (this will leave the polenta soft and creamy inside). Watch it closely and serve hot after the top starts to brown/crisp.

  To make the polenta into baked or fried steaks (my preferred method), let the polenta cool partially on the counter and then transfer to the fridge or freezer if you want to speed up the cooling. When the polenta is thoroughly cooled, slice it into bars approx. 3/4 inch wide (or run a knife around the edges of the muffin tin and pry/tilt out the cups of polenta). Fry in a skillet with a little oil or bake in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes or until the pieces begin to brown/crisp.

• Serve on a bed of greens (e.g., arugula) and/or with a side of roasted tofu/tempeh (east to throw in alongside the polenta steaks.

In the case of both farming and child-rearing, part of what makes the process so confusing is that it’s often sold to us as natural, as innate, as timeless.

But how we farm or raise children is, in large part, determined by cultural norms—not just natural impulse. To cut down trees in order to plant vegetables or husband animals, to bring children into the world: these are deeply entrenched human activities, whose commonplaceness is undermined by the fierce contentions around how they should best be done.”

Eva-Lynn Jagoe, “How Will We Farm?” (LARB)

Though I’m not currently farming, or even gardening, due to my apartment arrangements and child-raising activities, this reminder from Jagoe helps me recognize a continuity between my work in fields and with children. Both undertakings involve grappling with the malleable, contingent basis of where we come from and how we sustain ourselves. Agriculture and parenting both require choices amidst multiple uncertainties, and both work through processes of gradual accretion, over years, seasons, decades, erosions, generations.

And the fact that these choices and processes are social, cultural phenomena also means that they will vary geographically, and can be tailored regionally. Though the socio-cultural pressures can be a source of conflict, they presents an opportunity, as well, if we understand how food systems and family systems can work together toward a bioregional future.

While fruits have never contributed as much to the economy as staples like soybeans, which last year brought $25.7 billion in exports as a result of varieties found by USDA explorers, they evoke more passionate cravings. […]

Though we now eat fruits from every part of the globe in every season, the selection we enjoy is far more limited than the one promised by the USDA’s mouthwatering collection. The concerted efforts of plant explorers, researchers, breeders, marketers, government officials, entrepreneurs, and giant corporations enabled fruit to flow around the globe—but at a human, ecological, and ultimately gustatory cost.”

Willa Glickman, “Fruits of Empire” (NYRB)

I still, perhaps from childhood associations, think of “fruit” as a largely tropical category, lush, unfamiliar, a bit exotic. This despite growing up in frequent attendance at my maternal grandparents’ nearby orchard (mainly apple, increasingly peach, and two accidental pear trees, if memory serves). And despite being the type of kid who liked to point out that, actually, tomatoes are a fruit.

My conflicted romances with bananas and coconut products each deserve a blog post of their own. In the meanwhile, it’s time I continue recalibrating my associations and assumptions involving fruit. Here’s a starting point for New England “fruit” that goes one step further than the rote apple and cranberries, compliments of the Ecological Landscape Alliance.

During the Cold War, the United States became obsessed with food production as a weapon in the war against communism. Consequently, the United States doubled down on policies to encourage abundant excess, such as subsidies for farmers based on sheer quantity—rather than, say, quality—of food produced.

Today, the nutrition transition is happening around the globe—and quickly.

This is no accident. All that excess from “quantity over all else” global agriculture had to go somewhere.

It wasn’t just grain (soy, too, for example), and the sacrifice wasn’t just the quality of the food, but entire local economies that previously had not been based on monocultures.

And the glut—just like after World War I—was fed to animals, fueling a growing global meat industry. (The excess grain was also dumped into developing countries as “aid,” undercutting local farmers and economies, and it was made profitable when transformed into highly processed snack foods.) It is hard to overemphasize the power and dominance that multinational food companies accrued in this process.

[…]

As we eat our way into the future, instead of choosing “new foods” that perpetuate the same systems, perhaps we should be opting into different systems.”

– Paolina Lu, “Why Seek Impossible Foods?” (Public Books)