My idea of good living is not about eating high on the hog. Rather, to me, good living means understanding how food connects us to the earth.
Obviously, if I'm in Argentina, I'm going to have a steak, but I don't love meat, really. I always think about where the food came from and who had to get it.
Laos is a country where everything is eaten. When I came back, I would find myself chopping parsley and thinking: 'Why am I throwing these stems away? They're perfectly edible.'
I don't want any vegetables, thank you. I paid for the cow to eat them for me.
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.
I'm not a vegetarian, but while I don't want to defend it, I try to be mindful about the amount of animal products I consume. I eat a lot of vegan meals at home, and I'm okay with paying more for higher quality meat and eggs as a tax.
I was raised vegan. My mom would always make quinoa with squash and kale, hippie stuff like that. Now I eat meat, but I try to be conscious about where it's coming from.
In my home I tend to eat a very simple version of what we cook at the restaurant, which is vegetable-oriented, with a little bit of fish and very little meat. For instance, a dish in my home could be steamed spinach with spruce, where I take a spruce branch and put it in the pot and that infuses into the spinach.
I'm not a gourmet. I just like the planet.
Beef should be organic and grass-fed; fish should be wild, not farm raised.
When I can afford it, I'm very into organic food and I love going to restaurants that use organic produce and such. I think that it's a shame for everyone that, unfortunately, organic can be pretty expensive, so you just do what you can.
I'm not a big chicken or meat eater, but sometimes I'll eat it if it's locally raised. The family dinner will be stir-fry, or we'll roll our own sushi with brown rice, spinach, salmon, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and seaweed. The kids love it!
It's really important to teach people how to get food, how to grow it, how to pick it, how to prepare it and what's safe to eat.
If we really want to change the way Americans eat, we need to make delicious, sustainably-raised food accessible to everyone. Most people are not willing to sacrifice taste or pay a lot more when it comes to eating better. That's why the Chipotle model is so important.
I'm not crazy about oysters and offal and brains and stuff like that. It's vegetables that I really like. I worked in the River Cafe restaurant when it first opened, and I used to eat the leftover vegetables on the plates. They were so delicious.
I eat meat, but no meat that isn't pastured is acceptable, and we probably need to eat a whole lot less.
I'm actually no longer a strict vegan. I don't hang out in the cheese section - I don't even eat cheese. I don't drink milk. But every once in a while I'll have an egg. I'm going to eat eggs that come out of my next-door neighbor's farm, that's just the way it is.
As a consumer and a mom, I've always been interested in local products.
I won't eat frozen food and I like to know where my food has come from. I don't like anything going in my body that's from a packet. I used to eat microwave ready meals, because we were so busy, but now I like to eat clean.
It is difficult to get organic food at most restaurants, so when possible, eat at home. When not, do your best.
When I'm home, I cook my own dinner, all organic.
I'm a bit of a dude. I like meat. But I am buying it more responsibly, where it's more sourced responsibly.
My family lived off the land and summer evening meals featured baked stuffed tomatoes, potato salad, corn on the cob, fresh shelled peas and homemade ice cream with strawberries from our garden. With no air conditioning in those days, the cool porch was the center of our universe after the scorching days.
I go in the butchers and there's not a lot of meat I can eat these days, with having all the animals.
We eat every day, and if we do it in a way that doesn't recognize value, it's contributing to the destruction of our culture and of agriculture. But if it's done with a focus and care, it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life.
