one bowl of rice please

farming my favourite food in the world

in this week’s newsletter: sharing about my experience harvesting rice, deeper appreciation for rice, and reflecting on food waste

dear penpals -

at the time of writing, i’ve officially attempted 5 different types of farming experiences ranging from awa bancha tea to kiwi picking, perilla seed harvesting and みかん [mi·ka·n] (meaning: tangerine) picking, but today’s newsletter is talking about the farming experience that hits close to home, because it’s harvesting my favourite food in the whole wide world - rice.

i often joke with family and friends that my cooking skills are below poor (i’m the type that sometimes forgets to add salt and pepper to her dishes), because i’m just so content in this life to eat a bowl of white rice, with a fried egg, and a little bit of soy sauce, why bother learning to cook any other dish when the one i want is fool-proof every time hahah!

i don’t think i can love another food as much as i love rice, so why not actually learn and do the grunt work to know how much labour goes into the production of the food i love to consume and break the linear consumption of simply going to the grocery store and knowing that there will always be a bag of rice available for me. it’s time i actually worked for the food i eat way too much of hahah

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since rice is typically planted in the spring, i only participated in the harvesting portion of this experience which involved going into the muddy rice paddy fields to cut the stalks of rice, hanging them to dry, and then putting them through the separating machine to remove the grains from the stalk.

i’m excited to take you on the journey of planting the rice in the new year, but until then, enjoy this harvesting video!

click on the image or the link to the video here.

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growing up, my grandparents used to say that everytime any of us grandkids had leftover rice inside our bowls, each grain would be a future pimple on either ourselves or on the face of our future partner. minus the whole ‘pimple thing’, i think my grandparents were onto something about the importance of knowing the cost of food waste, especially with something as important to our culture as rice.

lately, my thoughts have been drifting to think about the process of how things come to be - whether that’s in relation to the foods i eat, to how things are made, and even with the process of re-learning things again (picked up the car keys after 2 long years of not driving, only to find myself on the opposite side of the car and road!)

harevesting rice was an eye-opening experience of how labourious all the things we choose to participate and/or consume requires of the people stepping in before us to provide these objects / opportunities. it’s not longer simply scooping rice from a giant 10kg bag, but a reminder of the people who planted, tended, harvested, and transported the food that is now on my plate.

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maybe food waste with my favourite food is more unnatural (you better believe i still eat every grain of rice, not for the beauty of my skin, but because it’s just so dang good), but what about the things i don’t want to eat?

how can experiencing or seeing the process of how even my least favourite food challenge me (as i hope it does for you as well) to reflect on how this knoweldge can, should, and will move me, beyond just a temporary emotion and sense of gratitude, into action. to re-evaluate what and how much i choose to consume, how to properly manage food so it stays fresh longer, and to focus on supporting local and organic whenever and wherever possible. 

if you have the joy of having something in this world you love to eat, as much as i love to eat rice, i hope that the next time you eat it you think about the effort it took for that bite of food to land in your mouth and take a little more time to practice the art of gratitude for the people who made it all possible.

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