the blogger and food enthusiast known as the early bird was born in the woods of new england many decades ago. dissatisfied with a nest fashioned of twigs and a diet of worms, she was quick to start flapping her wings and get the heck outta dodge. with stints in the cities of boston and new york, the bird continued to desire a broader horizon and freedom of cuisine. and so she found herself a tiger, and that tiger swiped her away, ever so gently - not a single feather ruffled, scout's honor, to the san francisco bay: where the sun shines, the produce is plentiful, and there is room to fly.
sort of.
in reality, my name is julia. i was born in massachusetts, a mere three decades ago, where i was raised and earned my bfa in theatre studies from boston university in 2001. upon graduating from school, i promptly moved to new york (with stints in astoria, the east village, the lower east side, williamsburg, and greenpoint), where i remained until july 31, 2010, at which point i threw all caution to the wind, followed my heart, and climbed into a penske moving truck with all my worldly possessions and the love of my life to undertake an adventure in berkeley, ca.
shortly after arriving in this newfangled universe, where we have more room than we know what to do with, no sleet or freezing rain or snow, and flowers and trees everywhere, i decided that, whatever else i do while i'm here (which is a frame of time i do not know concretely, ryan will be in school until may 2012, so it's at least that long, but if we will stay or go after that still remains unanswered), i must take advantage of this lush and abundant vegetation. this is my chance to eat well and to be well, and to learn while i'm doing it. to try things i've never tried before. to put my money where my mouth is and try to eat as locally and sustainably and freshly and healthy and mindfully and enjoyably and cheaply and easily as possible. these are all things i have aspired to for a very long time, but they were difficult for me to do, as often or as fully as i would have liked, in my former new york life. limited by the climate of the northeast and its limits on the crops of farms that work the farmers markets and supply the stores that would dare to carry and sell from local producers. limited by subways and traffic and city crowds, the hectic pace, the late night hours. limited by the cost of buying fresh or organic. limited by a lack of hours in the day, 24 never being enough to satisfy my job, my obligations, my artistic and personal commitments. limited by cooking and eating for one, in kitchens that didn't exist in apartments that couldn't afford to spare the space for counters or cabinets. it was easier said than done to buy what i need, buy it fresh, keep it local, prepare it dutifully, and consume it without wasting it. i gave it my earnest all and am proud of how healthy of a city gal i managed to become, especially in the last year of new york living. but, still, my record was far from flawless, and it was definitely a struggle.
thoreau wrote "i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately" well, i have come to northern california, in part at least, because i wish to eat deliberately. and, to some, eating is life. and, there you go, i am thoreau. my acts of civil disobedience shall be forthcoming in my next blog.
just kidding.
my interest in food and nutrition goes way back. for every tale i hear of a girl who learned all her cooking tricks from her mom, i hear two of the girl who "rediscovered" cooking after it skipped a generation, that generation being her mother. i fall into the latter category. which is not to say that my mother cannot cook or is a poor cook, she just has no interest in it. it was a duty and a chore which she put up with when her children were young and her husband was alive and they needed to eat dinner. it was never anything she seemed to derive pleasure from. with the sole exception of calzone. whenever we had a family party at our house, my mother would spend days rolling bread dough and stuffing it with italian meats and provolone cheese. she was meticulous and maniacal in this ritual. the passion and the focus behind it utterly unlike her and absolutely intoxicating. these calzones, which went in to the oven to bake long and thin, would be cut into slices when they emerged, a perfect golden brown, put on a giant platter and devoured as soon as they were set down on the table. and you could feel her pleasure in this moment from across the room or down the street. i wanted to have a dish like that, or the ability to please that many people with something i had made, for as long as i can remember. my maternal grandmother, grammy jo, had a reputation as a good cook. and the prowess in the kitchen of my namesake and maternal great grandmother, grammy julia, was legendary. i was enamored and inspired by these women, and, so, i decided that those skills and that passion could also exist within me, even if they were nowhere to be found in my mother, and that i would learn to cook. and that i would make things that i liked, not things that i was obligated to. and, furthermore, that i would find the joy and the pleasure in it and not ever lose sight of it. and, so far, i have kept that promise. i have learned from mothers and aunts and friends and television and cookbooks and trial and error, and i have found that cooking brings me tremendous satisfaction and joy. i love the challenge, i love the moment when i have no idea what i'm doing and absolutely doubt any sort of edible outcome, i love the moment it comes together and takes form, i love the moment i get to share it with someone else. it offers me peace and release and purpose and pleasure.
so that is how i came to be interested in the art and act of cooking itself. as for the nutrition and health side of the equation, well, that goes back pretty far as well. i was aware from a very young age that some people were "thin" and some people were "fat", and in general it wasn't good to be one of the "fat" ones, and that food and exercise had something to do with keeping you from being one of the "fat" ones. i watched my mom and her friends try out various walking and jogging and aerobic regimes to get in shape. but these were just the observations of a child at that point, shaped by the superficial standards to which i was exposed. at the age of 9 everything changed when my father, at the age of 41, died from a massive coronary. all of a sudden health came to the forefront of my awareness and to the center of what mattered to me. in a reaction to this shocking development, for there was no history of heart disease in my father, nor any warning sign before the heart attack, my sister and i, ages 8 and 9 respectively, were whisked in to have our own coronary health assessed and monitored. we were taken to a nutritionist at tufts medical campus in boston, who would order blood tests to screen our cholesterol and tell us what we could or could not eat. with initials like ldl and hdl swirling around my traumatized grieving 9 year old head, i would be coerced with fear tactics into keeping a diary of everything i ate and adhering to a stringent list of what was good and what was bad. i was trained to read nutrition labels and react with immediate obedience to the numbers they contained. it was dreadful. and the absolute opposite of healthy. i was made to fear food and deal with it like an enemy that was out to get me. i have spent the better part of the 22 years since then trying to undo that damage and embracing food and the nutritional benefits it has to offer. there is little to fear about food. what is to fear are the synthetic products that the food industry has created to replace natural foods with cheap, tasty, easy, addictive alternatives to the real thing. i believe that food can heal us and sustain us, that it's chemicals that destroy us, our culture and our health. i believe in sustainability, both for the sanity of our society as human beings and for the future of the environment and this planet. we are part of a long evolutionary chain, components of an ecosystem. the things that grow around us have what we need to survive and flourish. i am in the middle of an incredible journey to learn more and more about just how smart mother nature is. and i hope that by sharing some of these experiences, lessons, anecdotes, and recipes, you might join me.
