Crazysalad is back.
After a six month-hiatus (what I like to call my unpaid, family leave of absence), I return to the food blogging world. Thank you to everyone who wrote and asked if I was okay. Yes, I’m fine.
What have I been doing? I’ve spent the last six months trying to save my city from alien invasion.
Those of you living here in San Diego have probably seen them. They are here among us, all around us, and most of the time we are not even aware of their presence.
It is only during their reproductive season that they become visible. Yet we are so beguiled by their beauty, their sunny yellow faces, that we don’t seem to notice that they are slowly taking over our city. (Either that or we are driving by so fast on the I-5 that we don’t see anything to the left and right of the windshield.)
Scientists who study these invaders call them sisymbrium or brassica, and note that they are a species “characteristic of disturbed places.” You probably know them by their common, friendly name: mustard. Here I am fighting off some of the attackers:
Seriously, I just needed a break.
Writing the blog had started to feel like an obligation, rather than the joyful sharing of food that it started out to be.
I had lost my focus, my sense of purpose. I looked at all the food
blogs out there in the blogosphere and wondered: is my blog really
necessary? Does anyone really care about what I ate for dinner or
what I did on my vacation?
What was my blog about?
To me, a good blog should be passionate and serve some higher
purpose. The blogs that I read and love capture my attention through
powerful, well-written prose or beautiful images. They demand my
attention and teach me something I didn’t know. Good blogs compel me
to take action; to get up from the computer, to cook, to try a new
restaurant, to go out into the garden.
Although I was kidding about the alien invasion before, I was only
half-joking. Living in San Diego often does feel like aliens have
invaded. Only it is we who are the aliens. Most of us are not natives
here. Most of the food we eat is not native to this area, nor is it
even grown here.
Maybe you have noticed all the pretty yellow flowers in bloom all
over the hillsides of San Diego during the past month. That’s
mustard. Some stories claim that mustard was originally brought here
by European missionaries. As the missionaries traveled along the
California coast from mission to mission, they planted mustard seeds to
help them find their way on subsequent journeys. Or they planted it to
feed their draft animals. Either way, this plant, like the people who
brought it here, are now everywhere.
Non-native invasive species.
While I recognize the inevitability of humans spreading out and
taking over the planet, sometimes I take a look around and wonder, what
the hell are we doing here? I have only lived in San Diego 15 years,
but already I can see how quickly it has grown in that time.
Everything flat is paved over with asphalt. The beautiful canyons that
are San Diego’s natural landscape are graded and filled in with
identical stucco-ed, red-tiled roof housing developments.
Does it matter where you live? When you zip past mile after mile of
housing developments, fast food restaurants, and strip malls, can you
even tell where you are living? It looks just like Los Angeles or
Phoenix or (except the palm trees) any other American suburb.
Where is San Diego in all this? What is this place we call home?
Recently, I spent an afternoon at Batiquitos Lagoon with some students from my daughter’s middle school ripping out mustard plants from this sensitive salt marsh habitat.
After a few hours I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I looked around
and all I could see were millions of these mustard plants, mocking me
with their bright yellow presence. This is pointless, I thought. We
are never going to completely eradicate this plant from our shores.
But later, I began to realize something. Just standing out there
along the trail taught me to see the landscape in a different way. At
first all I could see was mustard. But if you looked around and behind
and beneath, you would occasionally get a glimpse of other plants.
Low-growing, salt-tolerant plants like pickleweed and salty susan. Pulling out even a few non-natives leaves a little room for the native species to grow.
I feel the same way about our food supply.
I realize that McDonalds and Wal-Marts are part of the food
landscape now and they are not going away. But if we can take the time
to stop and look a little closer at what was there before, or is still
there, hidden in the background--the local, independently-owned coffee
shop, the neighborhood diner--we can save these places.
Why should we save them? Because I don’t want to live in a world
where there is only one variety of apple, one species of turkey, one
type of coffee. I love the beauty and taste of diversity. I want to
know what it is that makes this place unique, worth living in, worth
eating.
That’s what this blog is all about.
On Monday, June 26, the Heritage team stopped in Escondido to deliver a pair of Red Wattle piglets to San Pasqual Academy where they will be raised by resident foster teens. The 20-acre farm, located on the Academy grounds, is headed by farmer and teacher, Scott Murray, president of Slow Food San Diego.
