Oktoberfest
Given that it is both the month and the season for Oktoberfesting (also, #spookyseason), I wanted to ask you all what comes to mind when you think of Oktoberfest? Brats with mustard, pretzels with mustard, beer? A lot of beer? A busy pedestrian street populated with food stalls, face painters, and breweries. Waiters and waitresses with braided hair and blue plaid outfits. We all love this season. The quintessential autumn.
🌭🥨🍺
Let me paint a different picture for you. The sky is bluer than ocean water and the trees are all on fire, which means the hillsides are as well. Instead of standing on a street corner, you’re standing in a grassy field punctuated with rune-like stones next to an open air kitchen. A fire pit buried into the ground has been burning for 36 hours where a whole pig, bison steaks, fresh mushrooms, and honeynut squash are roasting. The pig was raised 50 miles from where you’re eating your slow-cooked pork and apples. Same with the bison. The squash and apples are growing 15 miles away. The mushrooms were foraged on the hillsides that form your backdrop. Local brew, cider, and cream are served readily but no one is drunk. This is a different kind of meal, a different group of people, and a fairly ordinary day in spite of its tremendous natural beauty.
☀️🌳🍂
These are people who like to walk. People who don’t mind sweating in sunshine. People who eat when they’re hungry as opposed to at breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime. People who care where their food comes from, what that means for their bodies, and what that means for our world. (But yes, there is still someone dressed like a sexy cat because, after all, it is the 21st century and it is Halloween). I’m looking at the t-shirts. Pen Druid. Sumac. Potomac Vegetable Farms. And my own, Long Stone Farm. All purveyors of #localmeat and #localproduce.
There are four things on the menu, plus some beer, cider, and fresh ice cream. It isn’t elaborate. And as I watch the man with the PVF t-shirt chop wood to stoke the fire and the sun sink a little lower towards the mountains, I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t need to be. It’s okay that this moves more slowly. It’s okay that there are fewer options. It’s okay that the world of consumption isn’t at our fingertips. On a day like today, why would you need it to be?
Yeah, I’m going to go to work on Monday; brush my hair, put on my makeup, put on my suit, and hit the office. But I keep thinking that this is the right kind of Oktoberfest. Not the town center equivalent. This is much more authentic. Ironically, it is less. There is less. I’m sitting on the grass because there are not enough tables. There are only four things on the menu. But somehow, this seems like more. And I wonder, why is a simple, subtle day the most unique day I’ve spent all week? What if we didn’t need more, but less, to make something special?
So you’ve all got to be wondering… what did I eat? Slow-cooked Autumn Olive pork and apples (my recipe forthcoming this fall), and charred mushrooms with fresh ricotta and grilled bread by Sumac. Honey hopped blonde ale by Pen Druid. And ice cream that tasted like the two best pies at the Thanksgiving table (fig with streusel and pumpkin pie… thanks Happy Ice Cream for the world’s best waffle cones).
Beyond what I ate, what is my point? My point is that between Sumac and Pen Druid, you’ve got a metric fuck ton of philosophy and passion for what they do. Local meat, local produce, local cooking, sustainable farming. They collectively used this philosophy and passion to curate the perfect, unique, heart-and-mind-filling day (okay, the weather helped).
What we should take from all this, beyond just a fantastic Saturday, is the concept of this being life, not a special celebrated day in mid to late October named Oktoberfest. What if we cooked our own food, ate simply, didn’t get drunk at parties, invited our neighbors, spent time outside even when hot or cold, met one another, talked to one another, and walked two miles to the other side of town? What if we walked those two miles to the other side of our proverbial mindspace where another frame of reference lives? What would we find there?
Open the aperture. Cook. Taste. Connect.
#measurelesslivemore
Happy Oktoberfesting OneandahalfSlicers.
🎃👻🦇
P.S. In case you need a spooky cocktail or a not-so-spooky playlist…
