What’s for Dinner?

If only we could eat like our great-great-grandparents did. We’d be healthier, the planet would be in better shape, animals would be happier, and we could eat delicious, wholesome food — guilt-free. Is that true? Certainly it’s a little naive to think all our great-great-grandmothers had a plethora of glistening, colorful organic food in their pantries and ice boxes, and access to ethically raised meat from their neighboring farms. Mine probably subsisted mostly on potatoes.

I often think about my meal critically — how it tastes, what’s in it, how many calories it has, how much I paid for it or the steps I went through to cook it. I pore over labels in the supermarket and wonder how foods are made and who made them. Who raised that boneless-skinless chicken breast? Who slaughtered it? Illegal immigrants being bused in to do dirty, dangerous work that Americans refuse to touch, making less than minimum wage? Who mixed the preservatives into that batch of Quaker Oatmeal Squares?

Like many Americans who have recently watched Food, Inc. or started reading Michael Pollan’s work, I feel guilty about eating. There are so many reasons, from the treatment of animals in factory farms to the amounts of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer added to the soil to the amounts of food wasted by the average American household. And here I am wasting my day feeling guilty about what I’m eating, instead of helping starving people the world over get something to eat.

I have to do something different, so in all earnestness, I’ve decided, I’m going to attempt to turn my kitchen into my great-grandma Zelda’s mother’s kitchen. I’m inspired by the web cooking shows by charming elderly ladies like “Feed Me Bubbe” and “Great Depression Cooking With Clara.” I’ll make my own schmaltz and my own stock. I’ll bake my own bread. I’ll stop buying frozen fish sticks for my three-year-old, even though it’s one of only two sources of protein we can count on him to eat. (He can eat my misshapen fried slices of haddock, coated with breadcrumbs made of stale homemade bread, thank you very much.)

My husband was all set to put “Beef and Barley Stew with Winter Vegetables” on our menu for this Tuesday, but I stopped him. “We aren’t going to eat unethically raised meat anymore,” I proclaimed. We don’t have to become vegetarian, but if we can help it, we should eat only grass-fed, local meat, slaughtered locally (and we can, since we own a share in a local farm).

He raised an eyebrow. This was a step he had not envisioned taking — limiting our menu options based on a conviction that Whole Foods’ beef wasn’t ethical enough for our plates was not something he was used to. Could he stomach my conviction?

I replied to his skeptical eyebrow: “My great-great-grandma did not have beef that was raised on corn in industrial feedlots, thousands of miles away. She had beef and chicken and lamb raised in her own backyard or in a nearby farm’s pasture. Cows are ruminants and are not meant to eat grain, and that’s how E. Coli got to be such a huge problem in our food supply.”

Or, at least, that’s what I said in my head. Out loud, I capitulated. “Whatever. Get the beef if you want it.”

“Well,” he said, “Can you come up with an alternative meal for Tuesday? I’ve been coming up with menu options all morning and we can’t seem to get it together, and we’ve got to shop today.”

“No,” I said after a few seconds, “I can’t. Beef and barley soup it is.”