giving thanks

In lieu of preparing Thanksgiving dinner here in Japan, where neither Turkey nor the use of an oven is at my disposal, I have been reading a lot about the holiday itself. I didn't know, for example, that the original Thanksgiving was accompanied by a period of fasting, after which a resplendent meal was well-deserved.

Admittedly, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love scheming on recipes, the sense of accomplishment that comes with making an elaborate meal, and the joy that friends and family take in eating good food together. Yet I can't help but be a little torn between appreciation of such an immensely luxurious meal, prepared with care, enjoyed with our most significant others, and a vague sense of indignation at is pure extravagance. For me, these same thoughts often extend to so much of food culture - recipes from Gourmet magazine (R.I.P.), fresh cheese at the farmer's market, heirloom tomatoes. But why? What is remarkable to me, and rather disheartening, is that eating fresh, locally grown, home-cooked (and by their very nature, relatively healthy) meals has gone from being the norm in American culture, to being a so-called bourgeois pursuit.

Certainly, to a girl whose own family has gone from raising pigs and tending a 1/2 acre garden through through the cycle of fast food consumption and back again, the power of bourgeois popularity to bring about cultural sea change cannot be disregarded. After all, at some point, eating a Big Mac was considered rather desirable, even glamorous. Still, it remains unknown whether the food renaissance taking place among the upper class will ultimately change eating habits as a whole, and furthermore, how to define my own role in this predicament.

This opinion piece, from the NYTimes, by the artist and writer Maira Kalman, may oversimplify the problem or it may be naive, as several of the comments point out. But its purpose is more than just negative rhetoric. The humanity it depicts in portraits of farmers, students, and foodies (including lunch with the top of the slow food chain, chef Alice Waters) succeeds in giving me just a little bit more hope. It reminds me that eating well might be in our nature and that nature, like it so often will, may slowly force its way back to the surface, championed by those who can afford to help.

So on this Thanksgiving day week, I am thankful for the students at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, who are learning how to create food with their own hands and sharing that experience with their families. I am thankful that in Japan, every elementary school has a garden. I am thankful for a President who serves pumpkins grown on the White House lawn at his first state dinner. I am thankful for all those people, like my friends Phoebe Garfinkel and Katie Ries, who organize gleaning tours and study public policy, and work in their own way toward making good food more accessible to all. I am thankful for my parents, who, after all these years, both grow vegetables again. And I am thankful for my own, delicious, food.

Happy Thanksgiving from Sapporo. In place of turkey, here is what we ate:

[soup curry from Legon restaurant]