Seasonal Plant Based Eating

I recall fondly the beginnings of last summer as the isolation felt from quarantine gradually became bearable with the warm weather and I dropped $1500 on a 1992 van found on OfferUp lacking most bare essentials of a drivable car and simultaneously quadrupled my beach trips. In the storm of camping, surfing, and keeping up with my daily responsibilities my diet consisted of whatever was around. With the new challenges presented by quarantine, I could no longer pop into any one of Oregon's many vegan-friendly restaurants and be on my way. This gave me a golden opportunity to save my fun-size college budget for other things and explore what I can fit into a cooler. Aside from discovering I fit perfectly into the “vegan eating hummus by the spoonful” stereotype, I also found that eating whatever was around unlike in the winter was suddenly fresh and colorful.

This was the first summer in my adult years I didn't spend working at a summer camp with a diet at the mercy of the dining hall staff, car-less and deep in the Mt.Hood wilderness. I was able to have so much freedom in my daily life and rediscover the beauty of local farmer's markets. Growing up in a low-income household in suburban Hillsboro I had always hoped by the time I was an adult farmers markets would no longer be the playgrounds of wealthy foodies, but rather places where anyone could immerse themselves in what local farmers have to offer and find ways to incorporate whole foods into their diets. Thankfully this year there were new programs available such as one that allows people to turn food stamp money into coins to be spent at the market as well as a double-up program where when you spend $40 in food stamp money at select locations you can get $80 in farmers market coins! You could really see a difference in the market. The diversity of the visitors increased with the amount of business making me wonder why something like this was not offered all over the country.

Last spring and summer were also my first seasons getting to put together a sizable garden all on my own after learning about it for so long. With some plant starts I had grown in my windowsill and some baby plants I purchased from the farmers market I was able to grow quite the pile of produce with minimal effort mostly just daily watering and care. Suddenly I had zucchinis, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce mix and many other vegetables to take with me on road trips and cook up into new recipes. With the simplicity of this experience, I believe gardening is something anyone can do given the right resources. Perhaps our connection to the land starts at birth, for me, this was amplified in my childhood getting to wander through so many beautiful landscapes and surroundings. Berry picking the Oregon fields, volunteering at the food bank with my family and witnessing the magic of growing nourishment from the earth will stick with me forever.

Thankfully with the new inspection of diet culture, we are seeing new examinations on how many trendy diets harm the human body and infiltrate our minds to make us uncomfortable with our very selves. We are also seeing a recognition in the struggles people in the U.S. face with access to nutrient-rich whole foods (and I don’t mean the stuffy Amazon-owned supermarket). Through personal experiences, I have found my body to be fully well adjusted to a vegan diet having been over two years of this eating style although this is not the case for everyone's needs. For me and many others plant-based or not, the biggest challenge is finding the nutrient and vitamin-packed produce year around in a climate like that of the North West. Oftentimes this is simply not possible and we must find a way to bury our seeds for the winter in the form of rice, beans, grains, breads, nuts and other foods in order to feel our best and keep our energy. I would like to use this space to highlight that this is actually a perfectly natural response to the changing conditions and allows us to adapt to our environment enjoying as much produce as we can with creative recipes, and saving our salads, berries and fruits for summer. We must practice patience with ourselves and trust the progress by working together to discover new resources, eating styles, connections to food growth, and supporting each other's journey with food.