To say I am disconnected from my food is an understatement. Root vegetables frighten me. A whole fresh squash makes about as much sense to me as cognitive neuroscience. Needless to say, I’m not really much of a cook. It’s not so much that I’ve tried and failed. The issue is that I don’t really feel like it. I would rather spend my time writing, walking the dogs or reading a good book. I tend to find myself in the frozen foods aisle quite often and I’m great with pre-made pasta and a jar of sauce.

Greg, on the other hand, is an amazing cook! And he likes to do it. We have a great system. He cooks, we eat, I do the dishes. I suggest ingredients for the stir-fry, he rolls his eyes and comes up with something better.

And then comes Eat Local day of No Impact Week and Greg, a bar manager at a local restaurant and pub, has to go to work, leaving me to fend for myself. I panicked. Which, in retrospect, wasn’t a bad thing because it gave me an awareness that I hadn’t yet been confronted with. The fact that only eating foods that come from the place where I live sounds difficult says a lot about the perversions of our modern food system.  The truth is, I am more familiar with Phad Thai, a dish that originates from a country on the other side of the planet, than I am with turnips, a vegetable that has been recorded as growing in the Northwest since the 1700s. And nearly anything I feel like eating, I can have in front of me within an hour—no prep necessary.

So here’s how the day went:

Breakfast: Local eggs scrambled with local cheese. No toast.

Lunch: Local eggs scrambled with local cheese (Greg was gone and I didn’t know what else to do!). Grapes and carrots from the farmers market

Dinner: Greg left me a pile of local vegetables (shallots, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, garlic, celery, onions, collard greens) beans, and instructions on how to turn them into a soup.  It took forever (four hours including prep time) but I have to say that my soup wasn’t half bad!

Come dinner, when the soup had another twenty minutes or so, I was craving carbs, intensely. I wanted to stick to my local guns, so I decided to yank down the breadmaker with it’s accompanying recipe book and fill it with flour from my local pantry. I followed the recipe to the best of my ability, but had to text Greg at 8:30 to clarify a few things: “What is yeast and is it an important ingredient? Is it the same as wheat germ?”

I got a call back in response. After explaining why yeast is, in fact, an important ingredient in bread, he asked “You do realize that if you start making bread now it won’t be ready until 11:30 at night?” Guess I’ll have my carbs as a midnight snack.

A patron at the restaurant overheard the conversation, prompting Greg to explain, “My girlfriend is smart in other ways.”

At the end of the day, I was sufficiently full, but slightly ashamed. Thanks, No Impact Week. Point taken. I suppose it’s time to learn to cook.