Less than a month!

This picture pretty much sums up my family's relationship with food. Seen here are my sister and me, circa 1993, desperately wrapping our tongues around the prongs of the cake batter-smothered electric beaters. Not a drop to be wasted!

But first, before we go there, let's go here: With my South America departure date rapidly approaching, I feel like I should take a little time to sit down and write a brief overview of the story of my journey to this point in my life before I depart on my next big trip down south.

I guess it all started, in a town outside of Boston, with the utterance of my first word (or really, my first piece of a word). Pepe (pronounced PEH-pay). No, this wasn't my cute word for "papa," or "please," or something seemingly obvious. This was my word for "pancake," and it was my first. My family has always had a tradition of good food, and especially long, leisurely meals prepared at home, and on Saturday mornings, my dad would make pancakes. My parents tell stories of tiny toddling me, who would waddle into the kitchen, bleary-eyed from having just woken up from a night's sleep, chanting, "pepe? Pepe? Pepe? Pepe?" I would proceed to climb up into my high chair, buckle myself in, and slide the tray back towards my belly and click it into place, ready for my weekly ration of those beautiful, round, flat cakes of love. At first, my dad thought it was maybe my cute little word for him, but alas, sustenance slang won out over paternal petnames. It probably didn't take my parents long to realize my little toes were curling as I shoved fistful upon fistful of pancake into my sparsely-toothed mouth.

Years later, maybe twenty or so, and I found myself in Burlington, Vermont, where organic, local food can be found year-round, despite the fact that snow, too, is almost a year-round phenomenon (ok, not really, but its climate and soil make it a far cry from a farmer's paradise). Surrounded by barefoot vegans and organic crusaders, I started to question my own food choices. I was a self-proclaimed foodie and wine lover, but had never really challenged myself to find out where my food came from. I never thought about the long journey my apples took to get to my supermarket, and certainly never thought there was anything weird about the fact that, depending on the season, my apple might have a "producto de Chile" sticker on it. On the contrary, I would sigh romantically, head tilted slightly, eyes closed, as I thought back on my college semester abroad in Argentina, which of course is next door to Chile. "How nice," I'd think, "to be eating an apple grown in my favorite continent! And it's amazing how pretty it looks!" And then, slowly, amid the modern-day hippies with whom I thought I shared so little, I started to re-think our food system, and how my own food decisions affected the rest of the world. Why do our fruits and vegetables come from other countries, even in the summer time, when we could just grow our own? Why are processed foods actually cheaper than the ingredients from which they claim to be derived? What is the point of eating organic--that is, food grown without chemicals or pesticides? Is it really better for you? Is it better for the environment?

I started thinking about disparities. I started thinking about health, and how poor people are either starving (in most other countries) or excessively overweight (like in our country) and how both are often signifiers of poor nutrition and the lack of access to real, healthy food like fruits and vegetables. I thought about how our current food system might be affecting this. I had an epiphany. The community where I grew up had instilled a sense of social justice within me, and my formal education fostered and built upon that desire to pursue it in some way. I was a dedicated lover of food who was interested in systems change, and I realized that I could put both passions together through exploring the current food system and how it affects us all. Who benefits? Who suffers?

After Vermont, I moved back to Boston to work at a community health center, where I worked with children and families in a nutrition program. I saw firsthand how the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in a community (and the lack of money to buy it, even if it were available) will negatively affect the health of a population. I also saw that education and policy initiatives can help change the systems that make us sick. I managed a farmers market, learned about community gardening, and coordinated a community supported agriculture program, and through these projects I observed the true beginnings of a movement to change the way we relate to food.

And now, to further my food system education, I want to study successful, sustainable small farms. I'll be traveling down to South America through the WWOOF program, which stands for Worldwide Opportunities in Organic Farming. Through this program, I can work as a volunteer on a farm affiliated with their organization, and in exchange, the farm provides me with room and board. I hope to learn more about organic farming, to see the process from planting to harvest, and to talk to as many people as I can. I hope to absorb as much information as possible and to take it back with me to implement it into practice in the U.S.

And that, my friends, is my story. I promise the posts to follow will not be nearly as wordy as this one. Hope you enjoy!