 Plenty of snow to eat
NOT HUNGRY, BUT AWARE Thursdays are “Hunger Awareness Day” in the Village, which means we get rice for lunch. Just rice. Steamed. You can have as much as you want, flavored with condiments of your choice. I prefer milk, cinnamon and – though they’re not always available – raisins. I notice other folks pouring on Tabasco, soy sauce and even vinegar and oil. The money saved by not preparing a full meal goes to various food banks and other hunger projects. More significant than the money is the awareness part of “Hunger Awareness Day.” The food situation in our country is nuts – no pathetic pun intended. We spend millions on diet books and weight-loss programs while the obesity epidemic continues unabated, while millions of people go hungry (including one in five children), while we throw out tons of food annually. The EPA says food waste is the largest single component of stuff going into landfills, It’s not just about hunger. That wasted food – from production to disposal – represents energy equal to 350 million barrels of oil each year. Per capita we’re each responsible for a half-pound of wasted food daily. Much of it is going right out the back door of your local grocery store, into the dumpster. That’s perfectly good food – according to the entertaining and sobering documentary “Dive!” that I watched this week. (http://www.divethefilm.com/) I’ve been aware of the food at Holden from the moment I stepped off the boat. All able bodies join a human chain, passing big boxes of food from the boat to the bus for the 12-mile trip up into the mountains. In the village, another human chain passes food from bus to kitchen. After hefting 50-pound bags of potatoes, cartons of broccoli and gallons of milk, you’re mindful of what you eat. I’m aware as I dish up my plate in the buffet line. Take all you want, but even guests are required to scrape excess food from their plates into the compost bins before leaving the plates at the dirty dish window. Leave food on your plate at a restaurant? Someone else will deal with it. Confronting your own wastefulness makes you think. This week a couple dozen students from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, arrived for their January or “J-term” to study environmental ethics. There’s a long tradition of Holden staff playing tricks on J-termers. Our plan was, instead of rice on “Hunger Awareness Day,” they’d be served all the snow they could eat. The students shrugged, carried bowls of snow to their tables and were munching philosophically when the joke was revealed; the cooks brought trays of steaming hot rice out from the kitchen. I filled my bowl with rice and sat next to a student. She was still polishing off her snow, which I noticed she’d flavored with milk, cinnamon and raisins. “You’re still eating snow!” I marveled. She looked at me curiously and responded “Of course!” as if to say, “It’s crazy to throw out perfectly good food.” Yup. I’m aware of that. Joke's on me.
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