Dirt Doesn’t Hurt

Sometimes, I get random invitations to food-related things. And I’ll be honest with you, dear readers. I–shocking–have a full-time job. (Dude, how else would I fund all this eating and drinking? For the record, I am not independently wealthy. Than being said, I do play the Lotto and I feel really good about my chances.)

So this 9 to 5 thing I’ve got going on at the moment (9 to 6, actually) limits the number and type of events I can attend. That, and my geographical snobbishness. West of Marble Arch on a Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.? Yeah, probably not. (It’s reverse snobishness for West Londoners, isn’t it?)

So a Monday night at Liverpool Street when my office (and my home) is right at Old Street? Sign me up.

Heck, I’ll even eat dirt

Um, I was just kidding.

But seriously, there I was, at The Andaz, in front of a table full of jars of dirt. The event was for the organic brand Seeds of Change.The theme of the event was “Great Flavours, Well Grown,” a campaign meant to educate people about the taste benefits of well-grown food.

At dinner, I sat next to the very lovely Bob Sherman, who organized our dirt tasting. Bob is a gardener, but I am convinced he will be an iPhone-owning gardener soon. I showed him my iPhone compass as well as the National Rail application, and I may have convinced him to take a technological leap forward.

But back to the dirt. I think I liked Gloucestershire the best. It was pretty stunning, how different the dirts were, both in their smells and consistency. Essex did not smell like Lynx, as I had expected. London was like mud. Gloucestershire didn’t dissolve well.

In between, we enjoyed some lovely vegetarian chilli, and some red pesto crusted lamb fillet with summer vegetables, all prepared by Arthur Potts Dawson, the almost ridiculously good-looking chef and owner of the ecologically-friendly Acorn House in Kings X. (That’s Bob and Andrew in my lead photo.)

So…why am I telling you all this? Well, I think it’s important to know where our food comes from. (Don’t you?) And I like the idea of taking it a level deeper and asking, “Was this carrot grown in Coventry? Or Leicestershire?”

And then, I like gardeners. (Who doesn’t?) As a child, my mother was always gardening. We had magnificent flower beds, the envy of the neighborhood. You guys here in the U.K….you are very good at gardening. You can never have enough fresh flowers, fruit, and veg, can you?

This was a nice little event for many reasons. It was also a really weird event for other reasons, which I will address indirectly in another post at some point. Does it make me want to eat dirt? No, but it does make me a bit more conscious of exactly where my food comes from. I mean, I was conscious of that already, this being 2010 and all, but now that I know that not all dirt is created equal, I will be more likely to ask.