I visited family in the US over Christmas, and was stuck by (among other things) how differently Americans and Belgians organize food for their families. I thought I would share a few of my observations on this subject, as part of what I hope will become a "series."
(My first diary was about working as a house cleaner here in Belgium, with support from a rather interesting government subsidy program for such workers.)
Grab a healthy snack and follow me over the squiggle (I promise it won't all be about Belgian chocolates.)
Where my family lives in America, there are basically two options for getting groceries: normal supermarket chains (like Safeway) and Whole Paycheck. I was in charge of a lot of the shopping and cooking during my visit, and I went mostly to the latter. I don't like their non-union policy, but, well... they have organic food and I value that. Especially in the US, where the GMO's and weak FDA regulations worry me. I did find an alternative to Whole Foods a bit further away and went there whenever I could. But either way, it was always 30 minutes commute each way, minimum, and it always felt so expensive. Over 4 dollars for a gallon of milk, over 3 dollars for a dozen eggs? Is that right? I haven't lived in the US since 1999, so it was hard to remember what "normal" was then.
Returning to Belgium, I was even more appreciative of all the options I have here for feeding myself and Mr. Averblue. In general, I can eat more healthily for less money, but that's not the whole story. I feel like I have a relationship with my food and the people who help it reach my table, and I'm very happy about that. I realize that I am not a typical food consumer here, and probably many of the things I am going to describe could never work in America... but who knows? Perhaps there are some food policy experts at Daily Kos who could make some use of this information.
Grocery Stores:
There are several large grocery store chains here. I suspect that they are secretly owned by the same 1%ers... but maybe not. They do compete with each other and their prices are low (and small farmers complain that they can't make a living from what they are paid for their produce, same as in America...). I personally don't shop at these supermarkets very often because I'm not really a large-store person and I don't react well to all the perfumes and chemicals in the cleaning product aisles. But, they do have organic versions of some of the basics (potatoes, carrots, rice, pasta) and that can be handy. What is great about these chain stores in Belgium is that there is at least one in every single little town.
Having a supermarket in every town means that just about everyone can walk or bicycle to one -- and that is what they do. The bike rack outside the supermarket in our little town (population: approx. 3500) typically has around 10 bikes parked in front at any given time. Frequently people shop for groceries several times per week -- it's convenient, easier on a tight budget, and doesn't require that you have a large refrigerator and pantry at home. And of course, it means that people can eat fresher food (however most people don't buy all their fresh food at supermarkets... see below...) In the beginning, though, I had to smile: I just wasn't used to standing behind someone in the checkout line with one onion, one tomato, one stick of butter, two eggs, and one 250 gram sack of flour (8 oz) in her shopping basket.
A word about opening hours: Nothing here in Belgium (or in the Netherlands where I lived from 2004-2010) is open 24/7, except maybe gas stations and restaurants on the highway. In addition, stores (and restaurants) that are open on Saturday typically have a "closing day" during the week. Many choose Monday as closing day, but sometimes it is just a random day. This can be really frustrating to an outsider, but once you've biked or driven to a totally empty parking lot a few times, and then back home, you start to make adjustments.
A few of the larger supermarkets (not in my town but a few towns over) are also open part of the day on Sunday, but that is very exceptional. The first time that I desperately needed something for a recipe on Sunday, I drove all around the region and discovered what my options were. Now I just try to be better organized. It can be inconvenient having almost no Sunday options, and certainly no after-9 p.m.-options, but as a member of the "unskilled labor market" these days, I realize how nice it is for the employees. They mostly get evenings and Sundays with their families.
The employees at our local supermarket seem quite happy. Even though I only go there a few times per month, their faces are all familiar, and they seem to be friendly with most of the people in line at the cash register. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that they all have what is called a "vaste contract" -- basically guaranteed work and income as long as they don't commit a fire-able offense. And I haven't noticed that any particular worker is on the "bottom rung of the ladder." The people at the cash register, for example, all seem to have the authority and the training to handle returns, and I see them all at different times working in other parts of the store.
The butcher, the baker....
There's no candlestick maker here in Small Town, Belgium... but there are certainly several bakers and butchers... also a few deli's, a fishmonger and an ice cream shop. These places do a lot of business (based on how many cars and bikes I see parked in front of them.) Bread in particular is something that Belgians seem to buy fresh every day (the day-old half loaf goes in the compost at the places where I clean house.) It is, sadly, almost all white bread with "brood verbeteraars" (bread better-makers, including dough enhancers and stabilizers).... but, it is fresh and the bakeries give a nice feeling of community.
I think almost all of the bakeries, delis, butchers, etc., in this country are family-owned, and often through several generations. Typically the family lives behind and above the shop. (This is also true of many small businesses, including banks and gas stations...) Perhaps they hire a few people to help in the kitchen or on weekends, but I think they use spouses, children, siblings and cousins whenever they can. Hiring someone is a big commitment, because if the employee gets sick or disabled, the employer is required to continue paying the person's wages. In the Netherlands (where I worked in a small grocery store and was involved in personnel matters) the law mandated two years on the payroll for an employee who, for all intents and purposes, wasn't working at all any more. After two years, if the person was still unable to work, the responsibility for paying their salary shifted to the government.
(An aside concerning employee sickness: If you own a store or other small business with employees, of course you make sure that you have insurance to cover employee sickness. The company that offers the insurance coverage to the shop owner is also motivated to make sure that the employees are getting proper medical care. That is quite useful. The owner and the managers at our shop were often too busy just trying to keep the place running, and we were glad that someone else was checking up on the employee to be sure he/she was going to the physical therapy appointments, etc., and making progress. But the insurance costs money, and there is usually a deductible and so forth -- in our shop, coverage kicked in at 70% of the employee's salary after the employee had been out sick for one week.)
The markt kraam
The markt kraam (market... vehicle?) is something you find at open-air markets all over Belgium and also at a few other fixed road-side locations. Some are filled with ladies polyester underwear or faux-leather handbags... the ones I like have fruits and veggies, a nice selection of local goat cheeses, or various quiches that you can purchase whole or per slice. Of course, the kramen (plural for kraam) with freshly-baked Belgian waffles or oliebollen are hard to resist. ("Oliebollen" translates literally as "balls of oil," which sounds horrible, but actually they aren't bad: more like a cross between a donut and a bagel.) The open-air markets also give an area a very nice community feeling. Every city and town in Belgium has a central "plein" (flat, paved, pedestrian area, usually next to the central church or cathedral) and markets are typically held here, once or twice a week.
Personally, I tend to avoid markets. Not too many organic products, way too many people for my taste, and lots of second-hand smoke.
But the kraam concept is a good one, I think. Is it used anywhere in America? I can imagine that an enterprising person could build a structure on the back of a pick-up, or convert a trailer or caravan, and drive around on a regular schedule to under-served urban areas with a load of fresh produce, and do quite well. Right? But I suppose there would be 1000 hoops to jump through: is the vehicle safe? does the produce stay cool enough? is parking allowed at a given location? Sigh. Entrepreneurship is not that easy in America, I've noticed.
But anyway, we are coming to the grocery options that I actually use regularly....
The automaat
In Europe, you naturally find geld automaats (automatic money machines) everywhere... but I think Belgium has taken the automaat concept to new heights. The brood automaat ("brood" rhymes with "road" not "rude") can be found in the parking lots of various restaurants and small businesses in nearly every town. A company keeps the automaat stocked with fresh sliced bread in sacks, and consumers come day and night to put in their coins and choose one of perhaps six different varieties. It works essentially like a coke machine, just with a bulkier product.
The brood automaat is everywhere, but sometimes you see other options, for example the potato automaat. Yes, Belgium is a country where people eat a LOT of potatoes. I like these both as concepts, but don't use them myself because they don't have organic options.
One automaat that I do use, however, is the melk automaat. There is just one in the region, and it is rather far from home, but if I'm ever driving that way I always try to remember to take along an empty glass bottle. The automaat is located at a hormone-and-antibiotic-free dairy (they are not certified organic but I can understand why -- they are using good methods but don't have the money to apply for certification.) You enter the milk shed next to their parking lot, open the door of the refrigerating automaat, drop in your coins, put your bottle under the tap, and push "on." Voila, you have a liter of really delicious, fresh, whole raw milk (you have to scald/boil it yourself at home) for less than a dollar. The farmer earns much more for his milk this way than by taking it to a central distributor, and the consumer gets a top quality product that tastes 10 times better than any milk in the store. But, I suppose the machine itself is quite an investment, and then the farmer has to promote it.
The small natural-foods store
I get perhaps a third of our groceries at the local small health-food stores. Unfortunately there isn't one of these in our town, but I have four decent options in neighboring towns. These are all places with a "mom & pop" feeling, even though a few of them seem to have non-family employees. They don't have large selections, most of them don't get fresh produce every day, and the produce they do have tends to look tired (no automatic sprinklers with the rainforest soundtrack like at Whole Paycheck, that's for sure....) Still, I like these places, and I like the personal contact with the people who work at them.
Many of these stores (as well as the store I worked at in Holland) are located in buildings that used to be private homes. At some point in history, someone removed some walls, painted, and brought in coolers and shelving, but you can still tell that it was once a row-house. If you walk down the sidewalk on a typical street, every 6 meters or so is a new location, either a house where someone lives, or a shop. Frequently there are doors between the houses/shops leading to narrow steep stairways to apartments above. What is amazing is that even the large supermarkets often use remodeled row-houses for their shops: you enter an area that is just wide enough for an automatic door and a row of shopping carts, you pass two check-out lines, continue further back from the street and suddenly -- you are in a real supermarket, with 12 aisles and a bakery and a deli section. The supermarket has bought out the back sections and back gardens of the neighbors on either side, and expanded left, right and behind, while keeping a very modest-looking 6 meter wide entrance. The first time I experienced this, I thought I was in a Harry Potter film and someone had done an undetectable extension charm. It is weird, but in a good way.
I find it especially fascinating that people can live and work and shop right in the same place. It is so unlike America, where people (at least in the suburbs) live all together in one area that is completely devoid of any shops whatsoever, so that they are all forced to get in their cars in order to do anything.
Sometimes I wonder how the small health-food stores stay in business, especially as the economy is also not so great in Belgium, and many store fronts are empty. Our health-food store in the Netherlands was much busier than the four stores where I shop here, and it could barely meet payroll each month... but we also had more employees. These local stores, I think, are able to keep costs down by getting help from family members, and also by closing during lunch break. Almost everyone closes for lunch in Belgium (except the restaurants, of course) and that means you don't need extra part-time workers to cover the lunch shift. As a consumer and worker who was hoping to do a little shopping on my lunch break, however, I had a bit of trouble adjusting to those hours, but now I am ok with it.
Local producers
In our area, there are several almost-organic farms that have little adjoining farm stores. (Having fun with the occasional Dutch word here? You'll love the word for small shop: "winkel.") I really like going to a local dairy winkel for butter, cheese and so forth. It is a family run farm where they gave us a nice tour of the facility and explained many things... in Dutch... which I couldn't quite hear over the sounds of the machinery. But apparently by letting their cows graze on clover instead of hay, they are able to produce better milk. (The clover is a nitrogen-fixing plant, which keeps the ground more fertile, which means the cows get more minerals naturally in their diet....)
Many local producers (organic and not-quite-officially-organic) are supplier for the "voedsel team" which is coming up next:
The Voedsel Team (voedsel = nutrition, more or less)
The Voedsel Team is a very nice concept that I would love to see copied in America and beyond. (Perhaps if you visit the Voedsel Team website and do some magic with google translate, you can get an impression of what they do.) Basically, consumers sign up via internet and get directed to a team in their area. Each team has around 25-30 members. They all pay something like 20 dollars per year membership dues and a 60 Euro refundable deposit. Suppliers sign up and get directed to several teams in their area. They pay 5% of the value of the orders placed with them, to be part of the network. All the contributions go to support administrative aspects: the website where people place their orders, controls at the suppliers to be sure they are being eco-friendly, marketing, and various educational projects and gatherings.
How does it work week to week? It's pretty simple. I log in to the website, go to the "winkelwagon" (shopping cart) and place my order. I can choose from lots of meat and dairy products, also apples and pears from local producers, honey from a local beekeeper, a whole range of bread, rolls, pastries, quiches, etc., from a local organic bakery, and various vegetable packages (the contents change with the season and the weather.) Recently, a new supplier joined our local network: they grow organic Shitake mushrooms! Wow, I order them by the half kilogram... On Wednesday afternoon, the producers deliver all the orders for our members to a central distribution point. In the evening, between 6:30 and 7:30 pm, members drive (or bike) to the drop-off point with our bags and coolers and pick up our orders. Sometimes a few of us have to arrive 15 minutes early, and stay until the end, because it is our turn to help with the distribution. Once a month we get an email reminding us to check the website and pay our invoice for the previous month. And that's it. Sometimes there are glitches, of course, because it is a new system and most of the people involved are volunteers, but all in all I think it is great.
The down side of this system is that you need to be able to predict what you will be eating 7 to 13 days in the future. Planning what I'm going to eat tomorrow is already a big challenge for me. Also, you will never be able to order bananas within this system, at least not in Europe or America. But that is kind of the point: voedsel teams are designed to support local growers and producers, promote the idea of eating locally and in season, and lower all our carbon footprints. I think it does all those things very well, and in addition it is a nice way to meet like-minded people in your community.
Years ago (long before internet) I belonged to a food buying cooperative in Portland, Oregon... the idea was a bit similar, without the carbon-footprint aspect. I remember that it was a nice way to get organic products for a reasonable price, and meet interesting people, it just took FOREVER to handle the logistics. "I'd like 10 pounds of rolled oats, who'd like the other 15 pounds in the 25 pound sack?" "Well, I've got oats on my list but I'd rather have the steel-cut...." And so on. The ordering evenings would go on for hours, and I just didn't have the time. I wonder if food buying clubs are getting more popular now that many more Americans can't get full-time work? I can imagine that people have more "free" time and could really use the financial savings, and I'm sure the ordering process is much more efficient now, thanks to the internet.
Very very local producers
And finally... I get maybe a third of our groceries really, really locally: from my neighbors and my own garden. This is the most fun and rewarding (and easiest on the finances.)
I get eggs from one of the women where I clean house. She and her husband, like many people in Belgium, have a few chickens in the back garden. Years ago, when I first came to Belgium, I tried keeping chickens as well, but I made the mistake of adding a rooster who turned out to be very aggressive. Now that I'm seeing again how many people have chickens and how easy it is, I've decided to try again. It turns out that you can let them run around your yard and garden all day, eating up bugs and worms, and they will go themselves back to their coop at night.
Other neighbors had pumpkins, zucchini, tomatoes, cabbage and New Zealand spinach to give away last summer -- what we couldn't eat right away went in the freezer.
In December I started a course in ecological vegetable gardening (borrowing many aspects from permaculture) and I am totally sold on it. We have learned how you can set up a vegetable garden directly on top of a piece of lawn or field, without arduous digging and weeding first. You just lay down several layers of cardboard, from old cardboard boxes, and cover with at least 6 inches of compost or good dirt. The first year, you plant seedlings or largish plants like potatoes and onions, making a hole in the cardboard underneath them. After a while, all the grass and weeds under the rest of the cardboard are dead (from lack of light), and the cardboard is decayed, and your vegetable plants are growing like crazy.
We are also learning in this class how to choose good plants for our gardens. Factory-type farmers want a large yield all at once and don't care if they have to use pesticides, but home gardeners do better with plants that produce a little bit continuously over many months, and are resistant to pests. Those types of plants tend to be the old races, and they also tend to be healthier to eat. Plants that are naturally resistant to pests, for example, tend to have bitter substances in their leaves, which are also good for detoxifying your liver. We are also learning about mixing plants, so we don't end up with a monoculture, and about putting various herbs and flowers in between plants, which also works to reduce pests and disease. And we're learning how to look at various weeds and not see weeds, but instead see hardy and interesting edible plants. I already knew that dandelion is edible (it was a regular part of my diet last summer when finances were especially tight -- hooray for our big, weedy, pesticide-free front lawn) but there are many others as well.
The idea with this course is that we would learn a lot of theory during the winter, and plan our gardens, and get started in the spring. But the teacher lives not far from me, and I volunteered to go help him in his garden last week, so I'm already benefiting. I came home with a pile of aardperen (Jerusalem artichoke in English) -- that is a delicious underground tuber that is particularly healthy for people with diabetes or poor immunity. And it looks nice in a flower garden. I also came home with a pile of zwartemoeskervil leaves -- I have no idea what that is in English, but it is a perennial plant that tastes like celery and you can harvest it all year, including in January. We harvested turnips and chives and horseradish and fennel -- a sort of fennel that produces many small knobs all year, instead of one large bulb. It was all extremely interesting.
Yesterday I carved another foot off our back lawn to add to our small vegetable garden (since we're renting we don't have the option to convert it all to vegetables, unfortunately...) and put in several small plants, roots and cuttings from the instructor. Next week I'm sure I'll get more, and I can't wait.
Could more people in America have their own ecological vegetable garden? I'm not sure... I recall reading that many communities prohibit chickens, and some also have rules against putting vegetables in front of your house. I think that is a real shame. It is certainly possible to make something beautiful and healthy in your own yard, no matter how small. It's good for you, your family and also your pocketbook. Of course, it's not good for Monsanto, but that alone would be a good reason to promote it, right?
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Oh dear, this diary ended up much longer than I had planned! I hope it isn't too terribly dull.... Next time I'll try to keep it shorter and maybe add pictures....
I have to leave in an hour for an evening class, but I will be back later tonight (5 p.m. EST) to respond to comments....