About

1 cherry-red-rav-4.

3 cameras.

4 summer-ish months.

45-ish american states.

70-ish food-focused-festivities.

22,000(ish?) miles.

ENDLESS cans of diet coke.

an adventure of a lifetime.

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In a world that constantly strives to make us afraid of food (Don’t eat that, it’ll clog your arteries! Steer clear of that, it’s full of sodium! You know the drill…), it is remarkable how powerful food’s draw continues to be.  Little girls bake chocolate chip cookies for the quiet-but-sweet boys at school, secretly crossing their fingers and hoping beyond hope that these kind boys will grow up to be the high school hunks who will offer them the coveted empty seat in the cafeteria feeding frenzy. Suburban dads work for days perfecting their bbq sauce recipes, praying to win the powerful ‘dude’ accolades heaped on the annual ‘backyard king of the ribs’ fest.  Time-worn-wives bake Splenda-enriched chocolate cakes for their sweets-craving-husbands, even after the cardiologist repeatedly warns about the elevated risks of heart attack.

We brine turkeys at Thanksgiving. We roast hams at Easter. We bake birthday cakes, and wedding cakes, and welcome-to-the-family-new-baby cakes.  We cry over fallen soufflés that were supposed to impress the in-laws, and we fume over the carbon-charred edges of grandmas ‘never fail’ three cheese lasagna.  We eat the middle of the cheesecake and the middle of the cupcake.  We dig the yummies out of cookie dough ice cream. We plant vegetable gardens. And we try our best to remember to water them. We yearn for state-fair blue ribbons and home-grown blue-berries.

We eat when we are sad. And ecstatic. And even when we can’t really pinpoint exactly how we are feeling. We eat because we have to. And we eat because we want to. And we eat because it is the glue that knits us all together. It is the fuel that brings kids home from soccer practice, and partners home from jobs that never want to release their vice-grip of expectations and responsibilities. And even when we are in our darkest moments, it is food (in the form of chicken enchiladas, or even chicken nuggets), tucked behind the glowing bulb of the humming fridge, that reminds us that we are loved and cared for. That someone worries about our well being, and wants us to feel nourished. That we are not alone.  It is food that nourishes our deepest hungers, and that reminds us what we are truly hungry for – family, community, memories.

It is from this premise that we start this journey together – a journey that will take nearly four months and nearly 20,000 miles.  A journey across a nation that is as vast as they come – full of people who speak immensely diverse languages, who cheer for rival sports teams, who drive different cars, and who spend their time watching extremely unusual  and strikingly different reality TV shows.  But a nation that is connected intrinsically by our love for one thing – our passion for food.   Be they pork tacos or pork belly, apple pies or apple martinis, tom yum soup or Tom Turkey, we love to eat. And to celebrate the memories brought together by generations of food traditions and food cultures. And to plant, tend, and harvest food that we have tilled ourselves – food that we have cared for and nourished lovingly and sweat over, and that we know will be the sustenance that fuels the adventures of our loved ones.

It is an inherently American idea, this notion that if we work and hunger hard enough, we can control our own destinies – and through our commitment to amazing food, we celebrate our unique American-ness.  We grow cranberries in New England and hot chilies in New Mexico.  We press wine in Oregon and bake key lime pies in southern Florida.  We eat our veggies straight from the garden in northern California, and cook ‘em till they’re ‘fall-off-the-bone-soft’ in Georgia.  Yet all of our tables yield the harvests of an entire nation – celebrating holidays in Alabama with cranberries from Connecticut, annually packing the RV in Wisconsin and driving to the gumbo fest in Louisiana, having navel oranges shipped in corrugated cardboard boxes in February to Montana ranches. We love the ties that connect us – and the epicurean treasures that celebrating our shared nationhood allows.  We are a people who love our food – and the more gooey/sticky/hot/sweet/or extra-crunchy the better.

So I use this adventure to celebrate these people and these places and these stories – the lives of the farmers and chefs and festival-goers and vintners and bakers and back-yard-bar-b-que-ers and moms and dads and lemonade-stand-sellers who exhibit a shared hunger for the food they love.  Who embrace the inherent connections between food and love. Between food and community.  Between food and the American spirit. This project honors the power of food to bind us together – to lure us to a common table to share our greatest hopes and our deepest fears, to celebrate our communal successes, and to mourn our shared losses.  In short – to honor the inherent American experience that is found in the foods we hunger for, and the nourishment we fill our bodies with daily.

With but pennies in my pocket, and a lovingly-battered GPS device mounted to the dashboard, I embark on this journey to demonstrate that it’s not simply gobs of money, or 5-star-restaurant-ratings, that create amazing adventures.  Instead, the most amazing journeys are often fostered merely by a deep sense of wonder.  And a thirst for travel. And a commitment to creating a life of new adventures and fearless days. They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  They also say you are what you eat.  With that in mind – let’s start the first steps of this ‘great-American-food-journey’ today – and I promise to tuck a tiny sliver of my absolute-most-favorite-pecan-pie in my back pocket!