A locavore is born!

Dispatches from rural France, where my friend Brent has just begun a 15 month international journey .. 

.. in which he discovers the wonder of "freshness" and roosters!

We arrived in Paris, safe and sound and then trekked south to a smaller town named Portier. From there we were picked up by our host family and driven several kilometers away into a small villiage named St. Germier and we now reside in a little villa of houses on the outskirts of that which is named La Grois.

When we arrived we were jet-lagged and sort of spooked: We realized that we were in very foreign territory and we don’t have a single friend for miles and miles. Furthermore, we’re out in the boonies and everything is significantly more quiet and spacious than what we’re used to in Toronto. I was a little scared because we were to stay away from home for so long – this is by far the longest I’ve ever been away from home before! I felt isolated, even with Jessica, afraid that I would never feel comfortable here and instead would just wait and wait and wait to come back home. And to home for what? We left our jobs and we don’t have any idea of what we would do when we arrived back home.

It sucked a little at first, but it subsided once I began to learn about our new home. Basically we live in a farmhouse which is incredibly self sustaining. Almost all meals are made with vegetables grown in the gardens here, which is something I was particularly hoping for. Grown here are carrots, celery, onions, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, raspberries, grapes,  walnuts. There’s more, but I don’t know them all yet. Also herbs, such as basil, mint, chives. There’s somewhere around 20 hens/roosters which produce roughly 3 eggs every 2 days. Oh!  And you know that “cock-a-doodle-doo!” noise that we learned about roosters in books when we were kids? They actually make that noise in the morning! It’s hilarious!! I always thought that was made-up or something. Anyways. I’m fixated on the food because it was only just recently that I’ve learned about the difference in quality of certain fruits and vegetables based on what happens to them between the time they’re picked and the time they’re put on my plate. I learned that when I can eat something such as a tomato that’s just ripe and just plucked from the vine, it tastes so different than from when I bought it in the markets in the city! And the proper term is “fresh” but the word is used so much and so hard in restaurants that I really never knew what was meant by it before. But really, fruit that is fresh seems to have this quality of being more alive. The taste sort of jumps out in a way! And it’s so delicate too because the freshness declines rapidly after it’s released from the plant. If you freeze it and thaw it, it’s gone. Trying to preserve it in anyway will keep it eatable for a long time, but that aliveness goes. Anyways, I’m addicted now and I only ever want to consume foods that come directly from the source – as much as possible anyways.

Brent has been a friend of mine since 10th grade, when our neighbourhood friends overlapped and I've run into him at least once a year or so ever since.  I'm so proud to have the friends I have -- creative, engaged, thinkers who are always up to something interesting!  Every time I log online I see fabulous photos and intriguing writing about my friends travels and journeys through life.

you can read the full text of this post, and the rest of his blog here: http://brenthuras.wordpress.com