How to Cook a Moose (8 page)

Michael Pollan writes in his introduction to
The Omnivore's Dilemma,
“‘Eating is an agricultural act,' as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world—and what is to become of it.” I find myself shopping in Whole Foods with mixed feelings, both guiltily seduced by and indignantly aghast at the piles and mounds of perfect, beautiful fruits and vegetables that have come from around the world, out of season, trucked and flown in and wrapped in plastic. Avocados from California, red peppers from South America, fish from Alaska, lamb from New Zealand. This can't last, I've always thought; it's not possible. As it is, only the relatively wealthy can afford to buy even conventionally grown green peppers from Mexico at $3.89 a pound.

Aside from growing your own vegetables, one excellent solution, of course, is to get them from a local farm stand or farmers' market. But the best thing to do might be to buy directly from the farmers and fishermen. CSA (community-supported agriculture) shares are widely available all over Maine, thanks to the strong ties between farmers and their local communities. Black Kettle Farm, half an hour's drive outside Portland, delivers weekly boxes full of freshly picked seasonal produce to the city's Eastern Promenade from spring (asparagus) through fall (squash). And there are also similar shares in fishermen's weekly catches: Salt & Sea is one such seafood-share program, called a CSF (community-supported fishery), and all the seafood
you get is local, freshly caught, and sustainable, “from the docks of Portland's working waterfront to you.”

Maine has a bounty of food, right here; you just have to be willing to grow it or find it. No need to eat an overpriced pepper shipped all the way from Mexico if you're willing to wait until they're in season here. And “local and in season” is not a trendy urban catchphrase in Maine; it's the best and most sensible way to eat, even in this region with its famously long winters, since the arts of preserving and canning and freezing never died out, because many people have always depended on them to get through the winter without starving.

However, that day in Whole Foods, being new to this area, not having committed to a CSA share yet, we paid $264 for five sacks of food and wine, loaded it all into the Subaru, and drove the hour and fifteen minutes back to the White Mountains. That night, putting on a pot of Jacob's Cattle beans to soak for the next day's baked beans, I kept thinking about what the fresh-faced, wide-eyed young guy at Whole Foods had said. He really meant it, earnestly, without ironic hipster self-mockery or smug hippie self-righteousness: “Doesn't it feel good to eat this way?”

Yes, sweet, wholesome checkout man at the Whole Foods in Portland, Maine, it does, and I'm very, very grateful that I can.

Wicked-Good Lamb Burgers

Because the local farm near the farmhouse had no lambs that year, we bought some ground lamb at Whole Foods, flown all the way from New Zealand. We also bought Canyon Bakehouse gluten-free hamburger buns, which are from Colorado and are the best I've ever found. Brendan picked a handful of mint from right outside the door; that, at least, was local.

To 1 lb. ground lamb, add:

1/2 large onion, minced

8 garlic cloves, minced

a small handful each of minced fresh mint and cilantro

1 T harissa spice mix

1 tsp each of salt and black pepper

1 T olive oil

a dash of Worcestershire sauce

Form 4 patties. Fry in oil over medium heat, about 7 minutes a side. Serve on toasted buns with a sauce made of the following ingredients, mixed well:

2 T mayo

4 T ketchup

a dollop each of apple cider vinegar and Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp harissa spice mix or Sriracha

a small handful of minced cilantro

Eat with oven-roasted red potato wedges and a French lentil salad with grated carrots on a bed of red-leaf lettuce. Serves 4.

Chapter Three

A Tale of Two Kitchens

Right away, when we first moved to Portland, I noticed the large numbers of homeless and mentally ill and drug-addicted and hardscrabble people on the streets. Walking Dingo through our new neighborhood, I saw a lot of strung-out-looking people talking to themselves with unselfconscious intensity as they took refundable bottles from recycling bins, as well as couples screeching at each other, enraged and incoherent, often many feet apart on the sidewalk. Every time we drove to buy groceries, passing by a series of homeless shelters on and near Preble Street, I'd look out the window of our warm car at the faces of the people standing there, huddled groups of down-and-out men and women, a few black but mostly white, hunched in wool pea coats and hats with earflaps, or watch caps and down jackets, rubbing hands together, kibitzing and standing around waiting for the soup kitchen to open and exhaling cigarette smoke as if it had warming properties.

I thought about my own good fortune, my unexpected happiness here in this small seaside city. I was in my secondhand but hardy Subaru, on my way to buy (reusable, cloth) bags full of groceries and
wine at Whole Foods, that bastion of elitist consumption; meanwhile, I was eating well in the local restaurants. I had a job I loved, writing books and essays and reviews, teaching and giving readings and talks, which sustained this way of life, at least for now. And I was healthy, at least for now. I knew that I was very, very lucky to have this life of happiness and luxury and well-being and pleasure. I didn't take any of it for granted; I was constantly, deeply grateful for all of it, but that didn't feel like enough.

Maine has always been a place of poverty and hardship, and during the country's current economic downturn and recession, Portland has fared worse than a lot of the rest of the country. People who were already struggling tipped into a state of real emergency. Whole families became displaced and homeless. New immigrants, many of them parents with children, couldn't find jobs and found themselves on the streets and in the shelter system.

But, unlike New York City, whose relationship with its homeless is both historically and at present a complexly harsh one, involving cruelly draconian bureaucracy, bad conditions, and a catch-22 of contradictory, whimsical rules, Portland is unusually generous with its homeless population. In 1987, when a homeless encampment arose at City Hall in protest of a shelter's closing, Portland implemented a policy, which still holds, of not turning away anyone seeking shelter. It's worth noting, it seems to me, that around the time I moved to New York in 1989, then-mayor Rudy Giuliani became notorious for closing homeless camps, most notably the one in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, and exporting countless numbers of homeless people elsewhere. No doubt a certain number of them ended up in Portland, Maine, because of its reputation for being homeless-friendly. In New England, people take care of their own, even when they have little themselves. It's a long, honorable tradition.

Recently, because of this policy and the recent economic hardships, Portland's shelters have been strained to their breaking point. In an article in the
Portland Press Herald
, published in October 2013, when the city's homeless population hit an all-time high of as many as five hundred people seeking shelter a night, Randy Billings wrote, “Only 272 beds, cots and sleeping mats are available each night in the six shelters run by the city and nonprofit groups. When the shelters are full, 75 additional mats are placed in the Preble Street Resource Center to handle the overflow. When that is full, an additional 17 mats are placed in the city's general assistance office. And when that is full, people in need must sit in chairs in the city's refugee services office.” The city also rents motel rooms for the overflow, particularly families: “The number of families seeking emergency shelter in Portland increased 19 percent this year from a year ago, and a tight rental market is forcing people to stay longer and overflow the city's family shelter. Portland spent more than $61,174 on motel rooms for homeless families during the past year, more than triple what it spent in fiscal 2012.”

For another article in November of 2013, Billings interviewed a Coast Guard veteran named Chris Wagner who had been living in a tent in the woods on the outskirts of the city for two years after he'd lost his apartment. He and his partner had just found an apartment downtown. As Wagner told Billings, “Portland is known as a place where the homeless can find services such as shelter and health care, as well as help restoring their independence. If you want to help yourself, you will get help.”

And so, on one particularly cold day in winter, as we drove by the Preble Street shelter for the umpteenth time, I looked out the window at the orderly but desperate-looking crowd smoking outside and decided to volunteer in a soup kitchen. That night, I filled out the online application. When it was accepted, and I was assigned to
Thursday lunches at the women's shelter kitchen, I felt oddly thrilled, as if I'd been deemed worthy of service. I had few illusions about my reasons for doing this; I knew that volunteering would benefit me far more than it would any of the homeless women I served. Giving always feels better than receiving. Volunteering was a luxury I could afford, and I was the lucky one, not them.

On my first day, Brendan dropped me off at Florence House, a women-only shelter down on Valley Street at the bottom of the Western Prom. I was fifteen minutes early. I went in at 10:15, nervous but glad to be there. I told the women at the front desk who I was and what I was there for. A staff member led me back through the dining room, which had floor-to-ceiling windows leading out to a big deck. We went into a clean, large kitchen with an enormous gas range, stainless-steel shelves and countertops, and a roll-down window by the service area. As I signed my name in the register in the little office, I heard Nick Drake on the CD player (“Three miles from sundown, Jeremy flies”), saw a Julia Child quote on a banner (“You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces—just good food from fresh ingredients”), and smelled something good cooking on the stove.