We are the eye of our own upcoming storm.

So my husband Tony and I went to the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce (CVCC) luncheon today, which we do from time to time to stay abreast of what is happening in the CVCC community, and get a little face time (the old fashioned sort of face time, wherein you actually sit across a table from other people) with some of our community members.

We go representing the ranch, and enjoy the lunches and speakers, as well as the visiting we get in.

And generally there is the usual multiple choice buffet set up by one of our wonderful local caterers.

Because I am celiac, I cannot always count on there being a wide variety of entrees for me, but I can usually pick and choose from the veggies and salads, and sometimes even the meat dish, depending on how it is prepared. For that reason, I have never bothered to request a g-free meal.

Today however, we arrived at the CVCC building, and there were exactly two items on the buffet: lovely individual tortierres (meat pies with home-made pastry) paired with a green salad.

My first reaction was “Well, the pickings are slim, but at least I can eat salad.”

My immediate second reaction was “This is really all we need, and it is a beautiful meal.”

When I declined the tortierre explaining I am celiac, the owner and chef of From Scratch: A Mountain Kitchen, look distressed and said to me quietly, “Oh if you had let me know I would have had something for you.”

I told him not to worry, I could have salad and it was my own fault for not calling ahead about a g-free offering.

I took a healthy portion of salad and was wonderfully surprised to discover the homemade salad dressing he had provided was not only g-free but dairy free. Even better, it was delicious, and will be available at our local grocery stores in a week. Tony, lucky man, got my portion of tortierre and was a happy camper.

But the reason I am writing this has nothing to do really with food sensitivities or the quality of the food (which by all accounts, was delicious!).  After all, if you have a specific dietary requirement, the onus is on you to call ahead of time to ensure you will have a meal you can eat.

I am writing because of the immediate chastising I gave myself when I saw there were only two items on the table.

What a statement that is of the excess we have come to expect as “the norm” in our society.

I can say, with a good degree of certainly, that a large amount of food from those huge buffets goes to waste.

Yes, some can be take home by the caterers or their families to be consumed themselves, but it is not like they can re-use the food they have already laid out to be served.

Growing up, we were not given a buffet to choose from. We were fed what was prepared for us, and in my household growing up, and in the household I raised, you did not raise a fuss if you did not have choices.  Nor do you go to dinner at a friend or family members’ home and see an insane amount of choices.

I gave my children the option of naming three things they really did not like, and if I served it, they did not always have to eat it. However, unless it made them ill or physically gag (and they learned quickly I knew the difference between a real gag and a fake one) they were required, every few weeks, to politely eat a small portion of one of those three items so they would learn how to do so without embarrassing themselves (or me) if they were served them elsewhere.  Don’t get me wrong. I took their preferences into consideration, like when my youngest son chose to be a vegetarian for several of his young years. But I did ensure they understood the value of appreciating the meal prepared for them, and they ate what they were given.

But back to my original point: why do we need 20 selections at a lunch or buffet? What went wrong with our society that compels us to demand selection after selection, waste be damned, just bring on the six different salads, soups, multiple meat choices, sixty kinds of veggies and breads, desserts, dressings? Ok, sixty kinds of veggies is an exaggeration, but hopefully you get my point.

Everyone else at the lunch seemed very contented with the fare. And after the keynote speaker, Susan from the CVCC addressed us regarding our lunch and why it did not include dessert.  The gist of it was, rather than spend money on a bunch of sweets, she thought the handmade tortierres were a better use of the budgeted funds, and, after all, we are entering the season of plenty of cakes, cookies and candies.

I would like to take that a little further. I would rather pay for a smaller number of selections, which are as much as possible locally sourced, and of wonderful quality, with far less waste than a giant buffet of absurd proportions.

That is not to say our other caterers do not do an excellent job or choose locally produced food. If I could eat Ann Riches’ amazing chicken cordon bleu, which is full of luscious gluten and dairy, I hazard to say I would nosh on it daily. It is not a knock to the caterers, who are simply providing what is requested of them at the best price they can.  

What I am hoping is we, as a society, can begin to appreciate small portions, responsible numbers of selection, and understand that we ourselves, with our greedy notion that we need more and more and more, are truly the reason we are facing an intense crisis in our near future when it comes to food.

Locally produced organic food does indeed cost more.

And that cost is passed on to the consumer.

But the real cost is in what we are teaching our children. Rather than teaching them they do not need a hundred choices, we should be teaching them where their food comes from, and the ramifications of not knowing, and of, frankly, gluttony and greed. Harsh words, for what is a harsh reality.  

We should be educating ourselves about where our food comes from, and remembering when we sit down to eat, far more of us than not never see such bounty, and would be devastated to see the ease with which we encourage such waste.

So many of us fear and, in many cases, abhor Monsanto and genetically modified products. We despair that nearly everything on the shelves of our stores can be traced back to perhaps six or seven parent companies.  We want to believe our food comes from the sweet looking farms on the packages.

But sadly, often times it does not. And the majority of it is not likely to be produced that way as a norm, at least not anytime soon. Unless… perhaps, we force the issue via our purchases.

I know you are asking me right now, can you say that you, yourself, Stephanie, never buy any of those products?

No, of course I cannot. But I can say I buy far fewer than I used to, and I whittle down that amount shopping trip by shopping trip.  And I love that our local grocery stores are providing more and more of those options. I try daily to educate myself, I try every time I go to the store to make healthy choices not just for myself and my family, but for our community, for our environment. It is not an easy task, but it is one I strive for, one I hope one day will be not just the norm, but the affordable norm for us all. Never in my life have I been able to go to the grocery store and purchase, within reason, pretty well anything I wanted. This is the wealthiest I have ever been, and believe you me I am far, far from monetarily wealthy. I have been there in my life, had to swallow my pride and go to the food bank, had to tell my children no. It hurt. It still hurts, even now.

It is the poorest members of our society who suffer the most from this gastronomic corner we have painted ourselves into. More often than not, the least healthy of the choices are, sadly, the most affordable by far because they are mass produced, with products produced as inexpensively as possible, and that includes both animal AND non-animal related foods. The research is readily available, if you choose to seek it out, and is more than a little disturbing. It is, frankly, shocking. The change we need is to ensure the healthiest of foods, grown and raised ethically and with the environment in mind, are also the most affordable.

That will require a serious, and painful, local, national and global societal shift. I believe it all starts locally.

I am ashamed of my first reaction to the offerings at lunch today. Not only was it an insult to the chef, who prepared an amazing meal, and our host, who made a sensible and accountable choice: it was a point blank, in my face realization that I, too, am still a part of the problem.

Chrimbo  is a-comin’. I will cook and bake, I will prepare, of course, some of my family and friends’ favourites. But I will offer, as well, what I have always offered: a place at my table for a few of the many who do not have either enough to eat, or company to eat with, or both.

And I will offer endless gratitude that I am able to do so.

Merry Chrimbo to all, and to all, a good night.