Meghan Elizabeth Lewis: New Columnist

(I´m proud to introduce you to a new columnist, Meghan Lewis, an expat foodie who'll be writing on food issues in these pages.  Welcome, Meghan!)

There are few things that we do as frequently as we eat – hopefully we have the opportunity to do it several times every day. An awareness of where our food comes from and how it was cultivated can provide an increasingly missing connection to the land around us; to our families, cultures, and traditions; or to new cultures and traditions.

I grew up in Monument, a small town in the foothills of Colorado. I have a BA in holistic health from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. After graduation I spent 6 years teaching first grade at The Living Wisdom School in Palo Alto, CA. In March 2008, three months before my 30th birthday, I broke off an engagement for a wedding that was to have taken place in Lima, Peru. For years I’ve wanted to speak Spanish and was tango lessons at the time so I switched my ticket to Buenos Aires and enrolled in a month long language course.

I never expected to fall in love with any big city. As a teenager I was the only one of my friends who was not anxiously biding my time until I could escape Monument. But each time I was faced with decisions about education or work the better choice seemed to be away from Colorado. Almost immediately after arriving in Buenos Aires I was overcome by a desire to do something important here. That’s actually the word that floated in my mind as I marveled at the architecture and warmth of the people. I wanted to walk those crumbling sidewalks purposefully. I returned to CA briefly to sell my car and furniture and I told my family I would be teaching English for a year. September 17 will be my official 3 year anniversary as a resident of San Telmo.

From the point of view of dedicated students I know that teaching English is ‘important’. Even so, by November I was tired of putting in the effort it takes to do it well. Fortunately one evening I met my future business partner, Katrina Petney, while waiting for a bus in Belgrano. We soon discovered we were neighbors way across town on the border of San Telmo and La Boca, and also that we had each just finished teaching school in California and we were both certified to teach yoga. I lamented the fact that I had yet to utilize this skill and she said, “Don’t worry, when the time is right you’ll do something.” I asked her, “Is the time now?” and we immediately began creating what would become BuenaOnda YOGA.

Starting a business with very shaky language skills, in a city lax on the enforcement of rules and laws was exciting and disconcerting. Everything seems more possible than I felt it to be in the USA- one has only to choose a name and make a website and voilá, one is a business owner. At the same time operating under the radar has it’s challenges. A few months after we started classes a producer from TeleNoche contacted us to be part of an episode about foreigners running businesses here. We were convinced that it was actually a plot to discover illegal aliens working without visas and we spent lots of time learning how to explain in Spanish that we were ‘in the process of applying for residency’. The subject never came up, and our Spanish was atrocious, but I do know of one student and dear friend who found us because her boyfriend saw the episode.

Eventually BuenaOnda became stable enough that Katrina and I each started complimentary side business. She with outdoor group fitness training in Boot Camp Buenos Aires, and I with Jueves a la Mesa, a closed door restaurant serving spicy vegetarian food. A friendship with a barista in my favorite café led to another wonderful work relationship/friendship. I’m now also cooking for home-delivery with a Costa-Rican friend, Sofia Madriz. Since moving here I had let go of or ignored my preoccupations about food quality and it’s relationship to wellbeing and politics. All of this time in markets and kitchens prompts me to recreate foods and flavors I miss from home, and more importantly it puts me back in touch with what I consider the Real Food Movement that is taking place all over the world in various forms.

Food production has become something largely invisible to those not directly working in that field, even though it directly affects our individual health, the health of our communities and societies, and the health of the planet. A simple way to contribute to the health of all beings on the planet is to stop taking food for granted! The privilege of eating must not be undervalued.

If I’m going to stay here I want to learn about agricultural practices, find out where my food comes from and how it’s been processed. Whether we know it or not we are always acting politically when we buy food. It’s not at all a cliché to talk about voting with our pesos. Writing this column is my way of giving myself assignments to pursue and hopefully encourage you readers to investigate your food and perhaps cultivate a willingness to seek food that is grown, harvested, and processed in ways that benefit all involved.

So, I’ll be writing about why it’s good to eat plants, raw milk, why animal fat is not bad, which fats to cook with, reducing trash production through eating unprocessed foods, the political benefits of buying real food, the pleasure of the sobremesa. I’ll leave you with a quote from the website for El Galpon Organico.

Entender lo que estamos haciendo y qué recibimos a cambio,
debería ser una consideración de primer órden en nuestra vida.
Si cada uno de nosotros supiera el costo real de las cosas que consume, o que hace, seguro lo pensaríamos dos veces. Aprender a través de nuestro alimento puede enriquecer cualquier experiencia educativa. La comida es el hilo conductor que une biología, salud, historia, ciencias sociales y matemáticas con nuestro entorno social y con nuestro medio ambiente.
No podemos obviar esta relación básica.