Back [to] Bacon

Much of the summer, I've either been escaping the city for beautiful places or hiding out trying to make a visible dent in my long dissertation "to do" list, and I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the things that normally inspire posts. In lieu of that, I think it's time I tell The Bacon Story.

I've been thinking a lot about the progression of my dissertation over the past few years.... I started out thinking about models for assessing food security and sustainability on an international scale (clearly a ridiculous venture for a mere 6-year doctoral project). Then I streamlined my thinking and moved on to what may be my best idea EVER: a fascinating and dramatic tale, and one that I still hope to investigate in the future. When that fell through for practical reasons, thoughts about cooking skills and globalization eventually led me to what I am doing now: an inquiry into what motivates people to engage in food system change in two very different but strangely similar places, India and Canada.

How I got here is one story. Thinking about how "here" has affected me has taken me on a journey of self-reflection about the interplay between my dissertation and my life and value systems. Each has had a huge effect on the other in many ways, but the thread that weaves it all together is made of connection, community, and spirit. One of the most visible effects this has had on me is my recent disregard of a lifetime of avid vegetarianism. Since deciding around age 3 that I didn't think it was a good idea to eat animals, I consumed absolutely no meat or poultry (with the exception of an unfortunate phase of processed and deli meats, which one can't really call "meat", during my youth) for another 32 years. I had experiments with seafood throughout my 20s and 30s, but that's as close as I came. I was deep into my field work in the summer of 2007 when I suddenly realized I was an omnivore. My lifetime sense of identity as a vegetarian was out the window and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all.

At the risk of inspiring hatred, or at least extreme jealously, I have to say that my field work consisted largely of traveling to farms in southern BC and visiting people in all sorts of exotic places to look at, talk about, pick, shop for, cook, and eat a lot of really, really good food with all sorts of interesting people like Bollywood stars, elderly seed savers, university professors, and young activists. I also had meetings with bureaucrats and days of combing through policy documents, but that part wasn't nearly as much fun.

So back to the summer of '07 and my Conversion. I was spending the day in the Fraser Valley visiting farms with a bunch of city folk who had signed up for a tour to go and learn where their food comes from. We had arranged to have lunch at the home of an apple orchardist who also raised chickens, a few animals, and vegetables for a kitchen garden. He had asked in advance about dietary restrictions and I, along with about half the group, said that I was vegetarian. We had just finished touring the farm when we sat down for a fabulous outdoor lunch of fresh salad, homemade apple cider, and - for the vegetarians - egg salad sandwiches. The happy looking chickens (yes, I do think chickens can look happy) who kindly produced our eggs were running around in the field right next to our table. The sandwich was garnished with a few slices of very fragrant crispy bacon. Without even thinking, I reached out set the bacon quietly aside and enjoy my sandwich. I had the bacon in my hand when our farmer host started to tell its story. He and a neighbour had raised a pig from birth. Their kids had played with the young piglet. He spoke very fondly of that pig. And when the time came, he and the neighbour respectfully slaughtered and cleaned the animal right there on the farm (I'll spare you the details here). They cut and cured all manner of pork parts for their freezers, and they chose a choice piece from the back to make into bacon. For what seemed like 20 minutes, he described in great detail how they cured and brined and salted this bacon, how they aged it for months in the cool cellar below his house. This was the introduction to our lunch, and I still had that bacon between my fingers when he finished the story. He told it with such passion and respect and love that it would have felt fundamentally wrong to let any piece of that pig go to waste. My sense of responsibility toward the pig's life seemed so much more important than my own ideas of what was right or wrong to eat. That seemed self-centred and insular and no longer relevant to my own reality. Instead of putting it to the side of my plate, I silently thanked the pig and that piece of back bacon went straight into my mouth. It was heavenly.

For days after, I found myself telling my friends: "I ate bacon!", excited and giddy as if I had just won the lottery. I wasn't sure I could do it again, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. In the following weeks and months, my field work took me to more farms and more meals at which I was offered more meat from animals that had been raised, and prepared with the utmost of respect for the animals, for nature, and for the people who would share the food.

Now that my field work is complete, I miss sharing those meals with people who were living out their passion for food in every aspect of their lives, but the effect of those meals has stayed with me. I'm hardly a raging carnivore, but I continue to eat meat from time to time when I know the animals were treated with respect or when it is offered as a gift from someone I care about.

Bring on the bacon.
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