Critter Dinner
no meal planning. no grocery shopping. we're foragers now.
You know what? I don’t want to meal plan or lunch prep anymore. I don’t want to “follow a recipe” or “go to the grocery store” or “put leftovers in the fridge.”
We’re foragers now. Okay? We look for food in the woods like the small animals in kids’ books. We’re a little bunny family and I’m the mama bunny who plucks parsnips and acorns and persimmons and whatever and then makes stew in a warm little burrow with pastel wallpaper. So please don’t ask me if I remembered the reusable shopping bags or if I have a quarter for the Aldi shopping cart or how much butter we have left. All I know how to do is cuddle up in the hollow of a tree and nibble on the chestnuts I gathered up in my apron.
Don’t get me wrong—I really do love being a capable, organized 20-something who takes vitamins and wears mascara and pays rent and goes to work. I wear shoes and use house keys and turn on lamps and everything! I even have a cell phone! But everybody else is talking about “microwaving chicken” and I just can’t live like that anymore. I need to survive on huckleberries and wild strawberries and anonymous root vegetables like all the other undomesticated little creatures.
I’m clean and I’m kind, I respect myself and others, but I don’t know why that makes me an adult and not an animal. Critters aren’t feral—they’re noble, humble, gentle little souls. They’re excellently earthly beings.
And we don’t have to get everything from the woods. If the folks in the apartment upstairs went hunting, I would totally be down to barter a jar of preserves for some venison or turkey. But really, I see myself going vegan. Not for my health or for the earth or for any other trendy, socially acceptable reason—just for the raw delight of living off of the things you find in the forest. Just for the experience of not knowing what you’ll have for dinner until you step over a fallen tree branch and realize there are probably wild mushrooms growing in its autumn shadows. When you eat from the forest, every meal is a reflection of your world; it’s a product of latitude and longitude and last summer’s rain. The foods you find in the woods each day are blessings that only exist once. They’re gifts you’ll never find again.
So I don’t think we should even name our foods anymore. When you eat from the forest, every meal is an experience you’ll never repeat. And we name our rituals—you know, “fourth of July” or “Thursdays” or “turning 30”—but we don’t name our memories. You don’t have a name for that particularly tender forehead kiss, or that really soothing bath you took in middle school, or that one time sunlight filtered through the treetops and the pine needles glowed and it healed something inside you.
So why do I have to use terms like “salad” or “soup” or “breakfast” to explain my choices? Why does everything have to be something? Why can’t it just be food? Why can’t cooking just be a series of wordless, instinct-driven decisions about how to season or prepare the things the Lord provides so we can best enjoy their flavors and textures? Why can’t we just walk around with piles of random stuff that meet our nutritional needs?
Look, I know it’s been a long week, but I don’t want to claw around in a messy fridge for some odds and ends to throw together as a pathetic little girl dinner, like beasts digging through trash cans for pizza crust at midnight. I love life too much for that. I’ve been roaming around the city all day and I just want critter dinner. I want a big hearty bowl of forest. Something cohesive and nourishing but not instagrammable. I want a dainty little teacup overflowing with a raw and wild meal. So no more “I found the recipe on Pinterest.” No more “I’ll venmo you for groceries.” No more “let’s eat normal human food tonight.”
Just foraging.
Nom nom nom.
