Peggy and Food

In the past I may have mentioned our friends, Frank and Peggy.  Frank: former veterinarian, raptor (not rapture) specialist at the Minnesota Zoo, and for the past 20 years or so, rhubarb grower and spoon carver. Peggy: Lawyer, lobbyist, liberal activist, chef and generally a force of nature. She does a food blog for Featherstone Farm CSA and for herself. Cook Out of the Box. This is part of a rant about eating a meal after listening to Francis Moore Lappe, famous global change agent and author of Diet for a Small Planet:

"Now that I have set the stage a bit, I would like to tell you about the dinner we were served at the banquet.  Remember now - - the speaker was Francis Moore Lappe.  The woman who has been talking for forty years about food and social justice and sustainability of resources and planetary limits and good health.  And we all had just spent two days learning about:  nutrition, food insecurity, causes of obesity, global poverty and hunger, the importance of small scale farming in the developing world, the impact climate change will have on agriculture, equitable access to diverse foods and seeds, the organic and local food movement, taste in our food and food ethics and philosophy.  Whew.

Our dinner menu was:
Salad greens (quite conventional)  with industrial croutons, a few carrot shreds and vinaigrette
White dinner rolls and sliced (7 grain?) bread and butter
Steak - I would estimate half a pound per person- with mushroom sauce
Wild rice pilaf with a few small pieces of vegetable, including zucchini
Thinly sliced potatoes with a very few slices of winter squash and onions and a generous amount of cream
Cheesecake with caramel sauce and sliced apples

So this is what I need to say.  This was a reasonably tasty meal.  It was nicely presented.  I ate everything except half the meat.  (Frank ate that.)  There were beautiful flowers on the table and good conversation.  But I would not call it a "good" meal.  By many of the measures discussed at the conference, it was a pretty bad meal.   There was a shocking disconnect between the talk at the conference and the "walk" on the table.  Given the quality of ideas, curiosity and imagination of the conference speakers and participants, I expected much more."   More