Ailish Lalor
[AN: I was completely convinced that I had uploaded this blog post literal months ago, but I did not. So here it is.]
When you walk into warehouse where the Lekkernassuh market is held each Wednesday, your immediate impression is that you’ve stepped back in time. I think most of us at LUC have grown up in a world where all types of food are available nearby in the one supermarket, where the cashiers are anonymous or mechanical, and where you’ll need to do your research if you want to know exactly where something comes from, or how it’s made. And I, at least, have this constant sense of missing out, just barely, on a world where this is not the case. My parents, and certainly my grandparents, knew the people they bought their groceries from, and to varying degrees, knew where the food came from. Although you can’t be nostalgic for something you haven’t experienced, I am. And this is why I felt so intensely happy when I discovered Lekkernassuh.
It was through a friend, as these things usually are; and I wasn’t really expecting much the first time I went. But when I walked in the door, I knew already that I had found something special. When you enter, you begin on your left by picking up the vegetables you’ve ordered the Sunday before. You don’t know what these vegetables are going to be, precisely; only that they’re organic and grown within the Netherlands as close to The Hague as possible. You weigh them out yourself, as well, and you have to bring your own bag. I suggest bringing several bags to avoid crushing your produce. While there are people there to help you, if you need it, you’re more or less left to your own devices. You feel both peaceful and adopted immediately into the community.
For me, the high point of the Lekkernassuh experience is the package free goods section. You can get almost anything you might need here, from spelt flour to red lentils to apple cider vinegar. Once you bring your own containers or bags, all will be well. They needn’t even be particularly conventional containers: currently I have agave syrup stored in an old vegetable stock jar, and soy sauce in a plastic bottle that was once filled with dried strawberries. The people who help you at this section are utterly lovely, too. They were really patient with my overly detailed list of things I wanted and didn’t mind that I took up a lot of their time. Buying your food like this, in a way where you can talk to and make connections with the people who are selling it (and in some cases, who have even grown it) was for me a completely new way of grocery shopping. There’s such satisfaction in it, in knowing that you’re not damaging the planet with plastic or goods from the other side of the world.
There’s also something exciting, as someone who loves to cook, with not being able to decide what you get. It really pushes you to look at the vegetables and fruits individually, rather than as mere ingredients on a list. Last week, I ended up with a vegetable I had never seen before: poor man’s asparagus. Learning how to cook it— and indeed what it was— has been a really rewarding process. Oftentimes, when people suggest ways of eating more healthily, they veer towards the simplest possible way: a method which, of course, makes sense. I think though that if you want to eat food that’s good for you consistently, you need to fall in love with it in some way. Going to a market like Lekkernassuh, where you’re handed a bunch of vegetables you might not be entirely familiar with, is surprisingly a good way to do this. You might end up finding that vegetables are not something you have to force down your throat, or eat merely to have a balanced diet. You might find, in fact, that you end up enjoying cooking and eating them. And that, I think, is the way to a good way of eating.
Act Aware 