Woke Vegetables Keep Us Growing and Eating Well
The Year in Mindful Eating: Summer — Peppers
Nothing demonstrates how far I’ve come in life than what I eat. My community Supported Agriculture box (CSA) this week had Mini Bell Peppers and Jimmy Nardello Peppers. Last week it was Corno di Toro Frying Peppers and Shishito Peppers. Didn’t faze me, I cooked up a storm.
In my final year at high school the graduating class held a barrel (keg) party in a farmer’s paddock somewhere out of town. Everyone had told their parents everything about it except the barrel, and so each student arrived with a “plate” of barbeque food made lovingly by our mums who assumed this shindig was a well supervised celebration of our final year’s hard work.
One of my classmates, a robust red head with a liking for the good life showed up with a salad in an elegant glass dish. The boys had been drinking for a while, so she had to navigate her way around the puke to shepherd her salad to the food table. I noticed something strange in the salad, a slice of green. It was hollow, with uneven corners and periodic indents.
“It’s Capsicum. God, you’re a peasant,” she said.
Yes, well, there it was, in attending the inaugural year of Bendigo Senior High, I’d joined a more cosmopolitan, central city set, leaving my old mates from Kangaroo Flat behind.
Though skeptical, not wanting to appear the bumpkin I was, I dove in. What an explosion of flavor. My first 18 years had been spent in denial. Most of us were born Aussie, but we considered ourselves British through and through. We pretended we weren’t living in the Southern Hemisphere. That meant our Easter was a harvest festival, whereas for the Brits it was all about spring, renewal, and fertility. We cared for none of that, to us it was the last long weekend before the cold weather set in.
Capsicums were exotic, almost dangerous; they tasted of escape. I’d always known there was a world beyond the aptly named, Great Dividing Range that separated my inland Australia and its populous coast.
As a young child I’d put my return address as Kangaroo Flat, Victoria, Australia, The World, The Solar System, The Galaxy, The Universe. That pretty much covered where I placed the boundaries of my possible future. My senior year of high school was a time of rebellion and anticipation. At that moment, that first tantalizing encounter, the humble capsicum, green pepper, embodied all my hopes and dreams.
NB: A CSA is a system of food distribution whereby communities buy food “shares” directly from a local farmer. CSA members pay for their food in the spring when the farmer needs the money for seed, fertilizer etc. then receive their food as a weekly box until the fall. This way they share the rewards — organic produce picked hours before delivery — and risks — no rain, no food — with the farmer.
