34. Eat wild foods when you can.
66. Don't be a short-order cook.
Right, so, you know, I think I've done more than give Pollan's Food Rules the ol' college try; I've done everything in my power to follow each and every one in the full spirit in which they were intended. But there are a few rules where I am forced to draw the line. I don't want to - I just can't help it. It isn't going to happen.
Take Rule 34: eat wild foods when you can. Yeah. I live in New Mexico, arid land rich in squat cacti and dust. What am I gonna do? Hunt for jackrabbits and forage for tumbleweeds? We have an abundance of local food, if you take the time to find it, but all of it comes from a long and practiced agricultural tradition. To say, eat wild foods "when you can" is essentially to say eat wild foods never.
The same goes for eating a variety of colors (Rule 28). Sure, that's doable - as long as those colors come in my weekly box from the local CSA. I know that my harvest box is the closest I'm going to get to all local, seasonal produce, and I know it's more than enough to last me the week. So I make a point not to shop elsewhere unless I run out. Which means that if I get a colorful box, hurrah! And if not? Well, too bad. I just can't have it all.
Which is where Rule 66 comes in because that's what that rule - don't be a short-order cook - is really all about: not having it all. When Pollan talks about not being a short-order cook, I assumed that this rule was geared toward parents. "When kids learn to think of the dinner table as a restaurant," Pollan says, "they’ll eat the way most people do in restaurants: too much." Not having kids, I thought this rule didn't really apply to me; I thought I would pretty much end up ignoring this one.
But what I didn't realize is how much I act like Pollan's "short order cook" for myself. I'm so used to the idea that I can make myself whatever I want, whenever I want - and why not? (I used to think.) I buy the groceries, I'm the only one I'm cooking for... why wouldn't I fix exactly what I want.
But take my limitations when it comes from eating from the wild and eating a variety of colors. Those are specific limitations bound to time and place. And when you take the time and effort to really consume what the ground under your own feet is yielding at that place and time, you find that those kinds limitations proliferate your plate. You realize how strange and wonderous it is that we can step into a magic, flourescently-lit room and purchase any food we wish and buy anything we can imagine at any time, when that structure is so contrary to the way Mother Nature originally laid it out.
And I'll be the first to admit, I'm far from enlightened here. It's hard. It's really hard to tell yourself, "No, you can't have a mango on your cereal. Mangoes grow in a tropical climate, and you're in the middle of the desert in the middle of winter," when all your life you've been told that if you want a mango on your cereal, just go get one. But I'm starting to see that I can want strawberries for breakfast and have to have grapefruit because that's all that came in my harvest box was grapefruit and I don't even really like grapefruit... and it's not the end of the world. I'm beginning to accept that if it's Thursday, and I don't want lentils and chard for lunch, but that's all I had time to cook this weekend so I HAVE to have lentils and chard... I won't die.
Pollan encourages eating "what we're served, rather than what we might order or crave," When you're the one who serves yourself, recongizing that difference is tricky - but it's there. The more we understand that the abundance of choice the supermarket offers is hardly the only way to eat and certainly not our God-given right, the more spiritual, healthy, and mindful eaters we become. And, in turn, the more spiritual, healthy mindful consumers we become - better stewards of the world and ourselves. And that, to me, is what it's all about.
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