beyond the crudité

For the last several weeks, I've been co-leading a study at church called Just Eating? Practicing Our Faith at the Table. In one of the sessions each participant was given a slip of paper with a small amount of money written on it. Each was instructed to bring food in for the group the next week without spending more than their limit. My amount was 25 cents.

What can be bought for a quarter to feed even a bite to eight people? As I walked down the produce aisle, I had an idea. Grapefruits were 24 cents. I would peel and section it the way my grandma often did and my stepmom still always does.

If you have never peeled and sectioned a grapefruit - where you painstakingly free each section from its bitter membrane, attempting to keep the beautiful, bursting fruit intact - you are missing a rare moment of zen. Grapefruit peeling is an art form. It is meditative and rewarding, not only because the final product is so luscious and delicious but because the act itself feels holy.

I explained to the group that I chose the grapefruit because although the money I had to spend was small, each bite of the shimmering, sweet red fruit on the plate was precious. I couldn't imagine wasting a section because of the effort and care that went into preparing it. How often do we look at our meals this way?

Amazingly, all the items offered up that night, for which we had each spent $1.50 or less, were thoughtfully prepared and presented. And they were all real, whole foods. Nothing preprepared. No sugar. No junk.

One participant brought homemade carrot-apple juice. Another, a savory dish of rice and beans. Another, chopped veggies in a vinegar-oil dressing.

The thing that surprised me most was how we each took such care with our very meager budgets. We wanted to bring the best, most delicious, most wholesome food we could to share, even when we had so little to spend. Or, maybe, because we had so little to spend. The limits required creativity and care. Two aspects to eating that have been lost in our extravagant, convenience culture.

I took home one idea that night and have been making various versions of the chopped veggie salad ever since. A couple carrots, a cucumber, some cauliflower. I have always just cut them into sticks and slices and florets and dipped them in ranch. An okay way to eat raw veggies, but after a while, pretty boring. The salad, however, transforms the crudité. I eat it all day. Sometimes I add tomato or chop a red pepper. It's lovely to prepare, look at and eat. Food becomes holy. The way it should always be.


Chopped Vegetable Salad

3-4 cups of chopped, fresh veggies
4 T olive oil
2 T rice wine vinegar
1 t agave syrup or honey
salt and pepper

Chop. Observe the vivid color of the carrot. Chop. Inhale the clean, subtle fragrance of the cucumber. Chop. Marvel over the odd beauty of the cauliflower. Mix up the dressing. Enjoy knowing that none of these ingredients were created in a laboratory. Toss the vegetables and the dressing together. Add your own variations. Give thanks for the farmers who grew the vitamin-rich vegetables. Take a bite. Say thanks to the God who made them. Take another bite. Eat. Savor. Eat. Smile knowing that you just ate a whole plate of raw veggies and it wasn't boring. It was actually pretty darn good.