two hours from your front door

and other simple pleasures

greetings, greetings to you, dear reader.

i need to tell you about the lunch i just made for myself. well… that i’m still in the process of eating. i can’t believe i’m stopping to even jot down these sentences, because it’s just that damn good.

it’s incredibly simple, a take on the ham and cheese sandwich, if you will — and immediately brought me back to the time period i lived in germany in high school: two toasted pieces of bread, with salted butter, a few chips off of a block of cheese, and two slices of cured ham. but this is not your average ham and cheese sandwich! (nor will i ever count myself as one who enjoys something with that name). notably, because i have not smushed the contents of the interior between two pieces of bread, allowing for each piece of hearty sourdough to stand up to the other contributors of the meal. but even more important, everything i used comes from within two hours of my front door, save for the butter, which is exported from ireland (as the local dairy farms have not yet opened their roadside stands for the season).

picture me running around my kitchen taking pictures of all of the labels of the products i used whilst en train de finishing said lunch. this is a lunch worth sharing!

the bread is organic french sourdough from bread alone, made in lake katrine, new york, 50 minutes (or 36 miles) from my front door

the aforementioned butter is salted kerrygold out of ireland (produced for the company based in evanston, illinois).

the cheese is berleberg (pronounce bur•lee•berg), from berle farm in hoosick, new york, a little over an hour (or 60 miles) from my front door.

the ham is proscuitto from casella’s, distributed out of hurleyville, new york, the furthest from my home at under two hours of driving or 83 miles from my front door. the farmers with whom they work are all listed prominently on their website.

my fixation on the details of this meal that i share with you, dear reader, doesn’t stem from a sudden interest in the nature of food distribution. although i’ve been spending the last few days thinking deeply about the next long-form pieces that are ready to flow through my fingertips to the page on-screen. as i have proudly declared since middle school that my retirement goal is to have a farm, it’s deeply on-brand for me to have notebook after notebook filled with ideas and classes i’ve taken and notes i have on food and where it comes from and why that matters.

it’s something like divine timing that i felt called to share this lunch with you. because, to borrow michael pollan’s words from his book in defense of food, “‘eating is an agricultural act,’ wendell berry famously wrote, by which he meant that we are not just passive consumers of food but co-creators of the system that feeds us.”

i’m sure i’ll have more to share in the coming weeks and months about the interconnectedness of all of this, but for now, enjoy on my behalf, the simple pleasure of something (or some things) made two hours from your front door.

onward,

sara