Is It Un-American If You've Never Eaten a Big Mac? (If You Aren't A Vegan/Vegetarian, of course)

Today is apparently National Hamburger Day.  So, of course, I thought we would have hamburgers for dinner.  Then something occurred to me.  My son has never eaten a Big Mac.  Is it un-American of me not to expose him to what may be the most famous American dish in the world, the renowned "two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-bun" of commercial fame?

It is not that we don't eat hamburgers, at least now.  I didn't eat beef for over 25 years after reading Diet for a Small Planet  by Francis Moore Lappe and realizing the environmental impact of eating meat, particularly beef.  But several years ago, after trying to become more of a locavore after reading The Ominovore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen, I started to eat beef again because it was easier to get local beef than it was to get local poultry under North Carolina's food laws, and I've given up most fish that isn't sustainable, although that makes it really expensive.   But my husband and son really favor beef, so hamburgers are a part of our diet these days.

Fast food, however, is not.  My son and I abandoned the fast food industry in 2005, when we watched the movie Supersize Me, which told the story of documentarian Morgan Spurlock's attempt to survive for one month eating only food from McDonald's.




So my son, who was only six at the time, watched about 15 minutes of the movie, and then turned to me and said, "I'm never eating at McDonald's again."  "The problem is, honey," I told him, "that the other fast food places aren't really any better."

And that was it.  Since that day, we have only eaten at fast food restaurants under "emergency" situations, like when we are traveling and we can't find anything else open, or when my mother was clearly going downhill rapidly (physically and mentally speaking), and she really wanted to eat at Wendy's.  I'm really proud of my son, because since seeing that movie, he has never been tempted at all to cheat, despite whatever wonderful Happy Meal toy McDonald's was pitching to the children.

But, of course, at the time we abandoned McDonald's, he was too young and his appetite was too small to be eating a Big Mac.  So he's never tasted one.  Of course, there are many other mainstream things he has never experienced--like going to school.  But, still, it crossed my mind that maybe he should know what the big deal is about a Big Mac.

Then I found this great website.  It is called The Burger Lab:  Building a Better Big Mac.  It is really fantastic, because this guy has figured out everything about how to have a Big Mac experience, but with healthier and even better-tasting ingredients.  I mean, this guy even calculated how many sesame seeds there should be on the bun!

Of course, his version of the dish was much too much work for me to do, at least tonight.  But now at least I know that, should I really decide that I'm not a good mother if I don't provide my son with the Big Mac experience, I know where to go to get the ultimate recipe for it.

Celebrating Strawberries (and How that Relates to Earth Day)

I was so excited today when I went to our local Farmers Market and discovered the first local strawberries of the season!

Our first local strawberries of 2011!

As someone who finds meaning in these things, it is actually perfect that these strawberries first appeared during the week of Earth Day, because they are a symbol for things our family is doing to try to reduce our carbon footprint on this planet.

Readers of this blog know that I love books, and there are many that I carry within me in my heart and thoughts.  However, there aren't nearly as many that I can say truly changed my life.  But one that did is The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.  Of the many gems in this fabulous book, in which the author considers the financial, environmental, social, and even ethical costs of four types of meals in modern America (fast food meal, meal from "corporate" organic like Whole Foods, meal from local organic, and raising or hunting all your own food), probably the one that struck me the hardest is the fact that current American industrial agriculture actually consumes more calories in raising the food that we eat than we can actually get from eating it.  Obviously, that is about as non-sustainable as you can get!

My son and I had already eschewed fast food by the time I read the book several years ago.  When he was six, I had him watch the movie Supersize Me with me, and after 15 minutes, he told me, "I'm never eating at McDonald's again."  I told him that the other fast food places weren't any better, and that was it--in the six years since the, other than the RARE emergency (when we are out of town with no other alternative), he hasn't eaten a fast food meal since.

But I had never considered the energy costs of having all this food brought to us from all over the world, nor never new the energy costs that went into producing our industrialized food.  But after reading that book, I became a committed localvore...ish.  I'm certainly not 100%, especially over the winter when our local produce is limited.  But when our local market is open, I buy all the produce I can from them.  And I have adjusted our eating to try to eat most produce when I can get it locally, and just give it up until comes back in season next year.

Strawberries are perhaps the epitome of that attempt to eat seasonally.  We love strawberries, so at first it seemed really hard to give up fresh strawberries for all of those months of the year that they don't grow here (full disclosure:  I do buy frozen strawberries offseason, since I use them in my breakfast protein smoothie year round.  I'm thinking that is helping to consume food that might otherwise go to waste, and thus converting energy already invested into human use, but haven't actually researched it).   But really, it is a relief to stop buying these things that are called "strawberries" in the grocery home, but to get them home and find them to be hard and white inside and actually tasting more like "straw" than "berry."  Plus, my natural health doctor tells me that strawberries absorb more pesticides than any other fruit, and our local strawberries are raised without pesticides (although these small local farmers typically can't afford to jump through all the hoops the government requires to be certified "organic"), so I feel better about feeding them to my family.

So when strawberries come in, we've been missing them for 3/4th of the year.   So those first strawberries call for a real celebration!  This year, they happened to coincide with one of our Easter-related traditions.  On the day we color Easter eggs, I blow out the insides and use them to make quiche, which I serve with sausage (pork for my husband, turkey for me and my son) and buckwheat pancakes, for dinner.  This year, we got to top off our annual Easter "Breakfast for Dinner" meal with local strawberries, which made the event even more special!

Dying Easter Eggs

Easter Eggs 2011

PS--I have to add one story about supporting local farmers.  The strawberries today were a surprise--even last Saturday, our farmer wasn't sure he would have them.  And at this point, he didn't have many.  During the season, he has a sign that says "Fresh local strawberries" that he hangs by the road.  But he didn't do that today.  He told me that he knew if he had put up his sign, he would have sold the entire crop in half an hour.  But he wanted his regular customers to be the ones to get these first precious strawberries.

All the local farmers I've dealt with have been wonderful people.  They deserve our support, and they give us so much in return.  These are all lessons I'm trying to make sure that my middle schooler grows up with.  I don't want him to be my advanced age before realizing what a difference it makes where his food comes from.