Thinking Inside the Box

by Suzanne Podhaizer

The first thing I notice is the buzzing of fluorescent lights and the parallel lines of black and chrome shopping carts, like hearses in a funeral home parking lot. I walk through the automatic doors into the slightly chilly, climate-controlled environment, and land directly in front of a display of out-of-season fruit. I take in row upon row of plaintively under-ripe nectarines, plums and peaches that surely were wrenched from trees in sunny places and confined to refrigerated trucks, and are now disheartened by the knowledge that they should be giving off alluring aromas they will never possess. I am here with my sister so we can get my mother a package of cream cheese for some pastry dough she is making to celebrate my sister’s visit. It is my first time in a chain grocery store in eight months.

As if we have no other choice, we begin to walk up and down the aisles, and are confronted by an army of factory-farmed chickens in skin-tight plastic sheaths, hordes of flavor-free processed cheeses and a multitude of cereal boxes, their contents as sweet as the lollipops and candy bars in the next row. As we continue our tour, we pay attention not only to the massively manufactured products lining the shelves, but also at the people doing their shopping: Shoppers edge their carts past each other with downcast eyes and pursed lips, as if their fellows are mere impediments to be passed along the way but given no notice. The aura of ennui in the aisles unsettles me, and I quietly reflect to my sister that there is little joy involved in selecting a particular can of gloppy condensed soup over another, or in grabbing one of eighty-five identical bags of icy peas.

I pick up a package of strawberry yogurt “health bars” so I can read the ingredients: High-fructose corn syrup is listed in both the filling and the topping, and partially hydrogenated soybean and sunflower seed oils each appear twice. The box brags that every bar contains the same amount of calcium as a 6 oz. serving of yogurt. Later I will look up the nutrition information for 6 oz. of organic whole-milk yogurt with cream on top, and will find that there are 127.5 calories in six ounces of the yogurt while the cereal bar contains 140. If you add a half-cup of sliced strawberries to the yogurt, your snack will have the same amount of calcium, three times more fiber, three times more protein, 111% of the recommended daily value for vitamin C, and only twelve more calories than the bar. I leave the store with my mother’s cream cheese, some Vermont summer sausage and a case of local micro-brewed beer. They are the only items I can bring myself to buy.

:::Saturday in the park:::

The first thing I notice is the buzzing of conversation and the parallel lines of colorful booths that stretch down the street like gypsies’ carts. I stroll along the crowded sidewalk, scrunching up the back of my neck to avoid the drizzle that has been falling insistently in Vermont since May began, and land directly in front of a display of Spring vegetables. Row upon row of young spinach with arrow-head shaped leaves, svelte and pale baby carrots, and bunches of pale cilantro bask in the light rain, the pungent aroma of the cilantro snaking out to greet people who walk even several feet from its resting place. The farmer, a young girl with fine blond hair held back by two pink plastic barrettes, is talking to another customer about the recent flooding that wiped out almost all of her Spring crops, and turned Vermont’s farmland into a federally recognized national disaster area. “But life is good,” she remarks, and smilingly holds up a chocolate croissant from one of the bakery stands to demonstrate the generosity of the universe.

I walk up and down the rows of booths and see carefully crafted displays of pasture-raised meats, samples of artisanal cheeses with bloomy white rinds and oozing centers, and multitudes of cakes and pastries made with cultured butter and local eggs. As I continue my tour, I pay attention not only to the freshness of the products displayed on the carts, but also to the people doing their shopping: Shoppers greet each other as they pass, and start discussions with strangers about whether or not a particular French-style cheese has the aroma of black truffles, and about how to prepare the coiled garlic scapes that appear at the market for a mere two weeks each year. The aura of camaraderie bolsters me, and I think about how much pleasure there is in selecting the tenderest spears of asparagus to roast in butter and sprinkle with Parmesan, or in choosing between five varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

I pick up a box of organic strawberries so I can look at the way the tear-shaped seeds make smooth indentations in the dark red flesh. The farmer tells me that the berry crop survived the flood, but that a few days of sun would help to sweeten the fruit. He suggests that I buy some fresh chèvre from the cheese maker across the way and serve the sliced berries with a generous dollop of goat cheese and a drizzle of balsamic. I tell him about the strawberry yogurt bars and he laughs, displaying no fear that the automatons of industry will ever usurp his customers. “There’s nothing strawberry about them,” he says, and sells me two quarts of berries, which I plan to serve with goat cheese like he suggested, and then in a spinach salad with toasted walnuts, and then maybe alongside 6 oz. of whole milk yogurt with cream on top. When I have my change, he turns to help a woman with a curly-haired boy who already has a jammy red smear from his chin to his cheek.

The foods that I can’t get at the market I buy at a member-owned cooperative grocery store, which is why I’ve been able to avoid the regular “box stores” for years with very few exceptions. I know that not every town has a market or a co-op, and that for some, shopping at a huge chain store is inevitable. For those who have a choice though, buying food directly from the people who grow or raise it doesn’t just ensure fresher, higher-quality food, it also helps to mitigate the feeling of ennui that is engendered by a combination of fluorescent lights, aroma-free fruit, and row upon row of cardboard boxes holding products made by complicated mechanized processes, rather than by the collusion of some dirt and a few human hands.
Photo: Mark Tafoya

Suzanne Podhaizer is a freelance food writer from Burlington, Vermont, and a columnist for The Gilded Fork.  Her favorite activities include cooking with local meat, cheese, and produce, and snapping up all of the exciting culinary texts from local used-book stores before anybody else can get their hands on them.