I spent a few years in Belgium during college and remember how much time I spent with my host family and friends around the table enjoying food. Now I'm back for two weeks to learn more about the food culture I lived in, but to which I paid little attention at the time.

The day I arrived, we met at a fair at La Place Saint-Job a few blocks from the house. I stopped at a stand selling meats and cheeses and asked where they come from. He told me the country and region of each with no hesitation, mostly from Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Then as we walked down the street, I watched as a lady with a bee colony showed kids how honey is made. Further down the street, a line of cows stood with their shaved butts facing us. These are a popular breed of cow, the Bleu Blanc Belge, which were at the fair to be shown to the public and to be judged by a panel of experts. The butts are shaved so that the judges can better see the cows muscles. We circled back around to see the sheep and goats standing on the grass around a beautiful old church. Then around the corner we looked at a collection of birds, rabbits, hamsters, and other small animals. A few minutes later, we walked over to a demonstration of how to make thread out of lambs wool. As we left the fair, there was a table with a collection of different apples to taste. Long ago, Brussels was surrounded by apple orchards, and as the city grew among the orchards, old varieties of apple trees remained in the neighborhoods. After the fair, some people told me that they thought the fair was loosing its character. It used to be a much bigger event with more animals and with fewer booths selling things like CDs.

Later that day, I went over to a friends house. When we arrived, I played soccer in the back yard with his kids as he raked up the leaves and put them in his compost bin. Later, when he showed me around the house, I saw a portable clothesline with clothes hanging on it set up in the basement next to the dryer. In the garage, there were two recycling bins and one trash can. Recycling is mandated by the government here and everyone must do it. That evening, trying to resist falling asleep from jet lag, I spent some time talking with him about where food in Europe comes from. He's an executive at a large supermarket chain here, so he's knowledgeable on the subject.

Each country in Europe, over the centuries, has developed a food culture based on the ingredients available to them. For example, in Italy there are many dishes based on rice and pasta. In Germany, they eat a lot of meat and potatoes. Recipes that people are familiar with in each country don't rely heavily on ingredients that don't grow nearby. You do find foods in the grocery store which are imported from great distances, like asparagus from Peru, but compared to the United States, much more of the food they eat is grown closer to home. The countries in Europe are also geographically smaller and divided by language and cultural differences. Supermarket chains and food producers are also divided by country and language, decreasing how far your food travels to get to you. And when food does travel, such as importing oranges from Spain, the distance is generally not as far as in the United States.

The next evening, I went to Philippe Duplat’s house where I had lived during college. Philippe opened an organic grocery store about six years ago. A few years later, he opened an organic restaurant. (He has since sold the restaurant since it took too much of his personal time.) As I ate breakfast this morning, I noticed that almost everything was labelled as organic, even things I haven’t thought too much about such as dairy products. Even the Q-tips in the bathroom are organic.