Stir-Fry Guilt

It is with both pride and guilt that I report the successful cooking of my first-ever chicken stir-fry. I don't use the stove very often (I've been surviving mainly on sandwiches or wraps thus far this semester), and I have never cooked meat before. It's not that I'm a vegetarian - I do enjoy eating meat, if only once in a while - it's just that I have always been a bit skittish of touching raw meat. In that sense, I always thought of meat-preparation as something that fell nicely into my parents' domain in the kitchen. The Central Market 'All Natural' boneless chicken tenders I bought at Price Chopper at the beginning of the semester had been sitting in my freezer untouched until tonight. Finally, I mustered up the courage to pick up some stir-fry ingredients at the store, thaw the meat, and give it a shot. Low and behold, it turned out to be delicious! And I have leftovers!

Notice I have avoided mentioning what ingredients I actually used to make the stir-fry. That is because that is the part that makes me guilty. Besides for the chicken tenders, the label on which proclaimed that they were 'minimally processed' with 'no artificial ingredients' and came from chickens that were never given antibiotics or growth hormones, had an entirely vegetarian diet, and were humanely raised, the other ingredients of my stir-fry had no such lofty claims to be made on their labels. As the co-president of Green Thumbs, a member of this class, and a strong supporter of sustainable agriculture (theoretically, at least), it is with utter guilt that I admit that the veggies in my stir-fry came straight from the frozen section of Price Chopper. I have no idea where the cut-up veggies inside of that bag were grown or where they were processed, but I can only imagine how much energy it took to get them from the ground to the freezer section of Price Chopper.

Although the veggies are the ingredients in my stir-fry that leave me feeling most guilty, the sauce I used did not leave me guilt-free. Looking at the ingredients on the back of the 'World Classics'-brand 'Stir Fry Sauce', I couldn't help but notice that the first ingredients listed were sugar and water (in that order). Further down the list I found modified corn starch, autolysed yeast extract, xanthan gum (that comes from corn, right?), and 'natural flavor' (whatever that means). The label also reveals that the sauce is a product of Canada, meaning that it had also traveled quite a ways before residing in my refrigerator.

I would like to note that this meal is not representative of my normal diet this semester. Since coming back to school, I have been extremely conscious of eating organic and/or local products whenever possible. I have gone to the farmers' market almost every Saturday, coming back loaded up with local tomatoes, cucumbers, cheeses (including the goat-cheese spread!), granola, and bread. I have really enjoyed eating locally this semester, and it makes me very sad to think of the end of the farmers' market. Although I did enjoy my stir-fry dinner despite the guilt, I missed the feeling of pride that I get when I eat locally-grown foods. I can't stop thinking, "how will I get through the winter without the farmers' market?"

This year is the first time that I have begun to catch a glimpse of what it really means to eat locally. If I wanted to continue eating locally throughout the winter, I would have to start canning things now, like people did in the old days. But there is a limit to how much time one can spend on food preparation in modern times. We all have our school work, our jobs, our families... we don't have time to take on what would seem to be a full-time job storing food in the fall to prepare for the winter. We can only live by our morals to a certain extent before it just becomes too challenging. For a college student, there is definitely something to be said for a bag of frozen vegetables.