Ci siamo: food

One night last winter as I was complaining about the lack of strawberries at the market, our Italian roommate looked confused. “What? Strawberries in the winter? You will have them in the spring” he said. Italians, as we learned during our year there, are used to eating local, fresh and seasonal food. They look forward to what each season brings and savour the ever changing tortellini stuffing knowing that it will take a full year until they can cook the same recipe. As for me, I was annoyed. I wanted strawberries in the winter and pumpkin ravioli all year long.

I had heard about the importance of eating local for environmental reasons, but as Italians constantly remind you, fresh food simply tastes better too. So I set out to learn more about food and what we eat. I read books like The Omnivore’s D ilemma, and the 100 mile diet, watched Food Inc., the No Impact movie, and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution episodes. By the time we went back to Canada, we had started eating healthier, simpler meals.

We were determined we would try to eat local, to lower our environmental impact, and to be “environmentally friendly.” But then we decided to move to Haiti.

Yes, what you see here is the milk that we had with our cereal this morning. “Fabrique en France”-yes, it comes from across the Atlantic. Our cereal is from Memphis, the bread from the Dominican Republic, lemons from Spain, cookies from Colombia, chocolate spread from Canada and spaghetti from Mexico.

After wondering if we would have to eat rice and beans almost every day like we did in Central America, it turns out foreign workers are able to buy all the food items they are used to back home. Craving Godiva chocolate? Our supermarket has it. Aunt Jemima frozen waffles? You can find them there too.

Our dilemmas are countless. Should we be purchasing luxury items that most Haitians can’t afford? How should we consider the negative economic impact of importing goods that can often be produced locally? And what about the environmental impact of importing dairy from France?

Hopefully we will have a better insight into some of these issues by the end of this year. In the meantime, we are trying our best to buy Haitian food. As of this week our bread, coffee, cocoa and eggs are produced here. I also got some local produce at the market.