give us this day

Eli and I finally made it to the Corpus Christi Southside Farmer's Market. (The market in Houston hung around was called Eastside.) It was overcast and rainy, which makes for a good day at the market: You may get a little soggy, but it's not so crowded, and the vendors don't mind you squeezing under their covering to chat for a bit. We bought some lettuce from Terra Madre Mini-farm (grown pesticide free, just around the corner from the market), and a beautiful hand made Valentine's day card. Oh, and the little girls in the background of this picture were selling hand-painted rocks; Eli picked out the blue one with a red crab on it.

On our way home, I listened to "Whad ya know," and heard part of an interview with Eddie Huang about his book, "Fresh off the Boat." This guy's pretty interesting, for lot's of reasons. The thing he said that I tried to remember and write down was that, "Slow/local food should be an American standard, not a restaurant gimmick." He was talking about his own practices, and mentioning that he doesn't promote his restaurant as "slow food or local." It was a simple statement, but it stuck with me.

Really, the fast food/mass produced movement is the alien here. Not too long ago food had to be local. It was just food. Not too long ago those relationships with growers, producers, ranchers, and creators was a familiar reality, not a novelty. So, perhaps his comment stuck with me because the truth of it points to a cultural memory that lives on despite the newer cultural teaching, "faster and more is always better."

Emerging from the renewed interest in farmers' markets, locally produced foods, and slow food, whether a national standard or served in a specialty restaurant, is the opportunity to be intentional about how we eat. It has health implications, it has economic implications, and perhaps most importantly, it  has relationship implications. Relationship with the food, relationship with the producer, and relationship with your body.  Because of all that, it has the potential to become a spiritual practice. An intentional practice about the way we live, especially where we find our "daily bread" can be offered as a lived-out prayer. Prayer incarnate.