The March Hare: Summer 2007 Issue 53

Cover Page • Cooking at DR • Nature Corner • BJ's Bio • Local Foods • Slow Food

Learning How to Cook in Community

by Suzanne Schroedl

I moved to an ecovillage to learn how to cook. Well, that's not actually true—but it was an awesome unintended benefit. I did know how to cook before— vegetarian food for one that is. When I moved here I found that cooking for eight people in a vegan food cooperative, cooking from scratch using mainly local foods, either freshly grown or canned/preserved on a wood stove, is a whole different ball game. Talk about a steep learning curve!

In Portland I lived in an apartment building three blocks away from a natural foods store. When I was hungry I would walk to the store and pick up a couple of avocados and some cheese or soy cheese (depending on whether I was vegan or vegetarian that week) a tomato and some bagels. I would go home and make avocado melts. It would be so good, I'd do it again the next day, only it would be a tofu melt or a fried onion and greens melt. My main food groups were tortillas, cheese, refried beans and avocados. I remember those awful occasions when the local stores were out of tortillas—it never occurred to me in those days that you could actually make tortillas. My beans came out of a can, and there was fresh produce available all year round. My fridge was never without a can of salsa. Making dinner was a pretty simple affair.

Ohhhh.... those were the days. Then again, I somehow spent an outrageous amount of money on groceries and never seemed to have anything to eat. I ate a lot of deli food and packaged vegetarian food. I often had produce go bad and felt really guilty about that. I was at work all day and often tired when I got home and not in the mood to cook. I frequently got into food ruts—my family had been a meat-and- potatoes kind of family and none of the dishes I learned how to make growing up worked for me any more. So, I kept it simple. I never invited anybody over for dinner because I didn't consider myself to be a good enough cook.

My first day cooking for the Blueweed cooperative was a frightening experience. I couldn't believe that I would somehow produce a meal using only dried beans, grains, and dried/canned veggies. (it was April—long before the gardens would start producing and long after all of the good canned veggies were gone.) Ted impressed on me the importance of thoroughly checking all dried beans—he did not, repeat, not want to bite into any rocks. Tamar showed me where all of the spices and dried goods were. Somebody recommended making something from the New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook. And then I was on my own. I felt especially intimidated about cooking because I had been eating with Blueweed for a week and I knew they were all super cooks. I was also pretty nervous about using the wood stove.

I'll skip ahead because to be honest, I don't remember those first days very well.

I do remember that I dreaded Wednesdays (my cook days) for a long time, that I put a lot of time and anxiety into all of my meals, and got very mediocre results. Well, Blueweed members tell me that I made good dinners from the first but I don`t really believe them. I drove everybody nuts by denigrating my own cooking. "The meal you are about to eat is going to be so awful!" But gradually over time Wednesday went from being my least favorite day of the week to my most favorite day. Slowly, through a process of asking people in my coop questions about cooking and trying to repeat dishes that other people had made, and of trying recipes in books, I began to make dinners that pleased me and other people. I started to relax and to became more confident—nobody was dying from any of my meals and the leftovers were getting eaten. Over time I started feeling pretty good (even cocky!) about my cooking. It was such a great feeling to get compliments on a meal, to watch people going back for seconds, to have people request special dishes. I discovered that I love cooking for other people.

Two years later, I'm still a pretty basic cook. My preference is for comfort food, especially Southern comfort food: biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, greens, soups, casseroles, mac and cheese. And of course burritos—I still make those a lot although now I make the beans, tortillas, salsa, tofu sour crème and cheese all from scratch (vegan cheese sauce made with nutritional yeast). And now I grow the greens! I cook for large groups of visitors—up to twenty people at a meal. Cooking for eight seems like nothing!

I discovered that if you learn how to do a few simple things, cooking becomes really easy. First of all, learn how to produce a bread product: tortillas, flatbreads, biscuits, cornbread, bread. They are all a lot easier to make than I ever expected and add so much to a meal. Second is learning to make gravies and sauces. No matter how bland the meal, if it comes with a good gravy or sauce nobody will notice. Third is learning how to season beans without over-seasoning them. I learned a lot about cooking beans from Madhur Jaffrey's Global Vegetarian. The recipes are organized by bean so you can look up whichever bean you want to base the meal around and then choose from several different recipes. Fourthly, every meal should include onions.

And finally: make dessert. If nothing else turns out well, at least you will have something sweet. My favorite dessert cookbook is called Simple Treats by Ellen Abraham. It is a wheat free, vegan cookbook and many of the recipes use maple syrup as the sweetener. I make the recipes with wheat because no one in our coop is allergic to wheat and I find that every recipe from that book always turns out well. Once you know how to make a few basic things, it is pretty easy to put it all together. Cooking is all about preparation, I think. Deciding what you are going to make for dinner the night before, making sure that you have all of the ingredients, soaking the beans or grains, thinking ahead and deciding when to start cooking the next day.

I like to start cooking early— then, even if the whole meal somehow goes wrong, I still have time to make something different. It takes the whole element of stress out of it. I love waking up early and putting beans on to cook, knowing that before most people are even awake I will have finished making the soup or chili for that night. Letting the soup/chili sit for the day only improves the flavors. I can come back in the afternoon and leisurely make the other elements of the meal. I listen to music while I cook, and I clean up all of my cooking dishes before the meal so there is nothing to do afterwards. I find that I get a lot of pleasure from the repetitive actions of cooking— chopping, stirring, kneading, washing.

I love knowing that no matter how little is in the fridge or cupboard I can figure out how to make something good to eat. I enjoy being able to show my love for community members by cooking great food for potluck dinners and festive events. I love it that past visitors write and rave about how much they loved the food when they came to visit. I love knowing where all of the food I eat comes from. Learning how to cook in community has given me a really basic survival skill, an activity I'll enjoy for the rest of my life, and a gift I can share with other people. sources for these. For many of us honey and sorghum are our primary sweeteners, but white sugar is still found in many a dessert. Unfortunately, we have yet to find organic beet sugar, while cane sugar comes from Florida at the closest and is notorious for poorly treated field workers.

For many who come to DR, eating regional food takes some getting used to. There are some common foods that one rarely sees, such as bananas, avocados, citrus fruit, pineapple, and other tropical fruit. It also means there are times without certain fresh foods, with things like tomatoes, onions, or garlic only available dried or preserved. Generally after a season at DR people get used to the seasonal flow of our diet, and have discovered there are few things they really miss.

Cover Page • Cooking at DR • Nature Corner • BJ's Bio • Local Foods • Slow Food

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