From the beginning, I knew we were going to eat differently. I was willing. I thought I was ready. When we moved to Berkeley, I realized this wasn’t just a change of food, it was a change of lifestyle. There were none of the usual fast food or chain restaurants on the way in my daily travels.

The local places, serving food from cultures and ingredients that we were unfamiliar with, were an adventure in taste as we journeyed farther from our culinary comfort zone. Even the pizza place near me was different, serving vegetarian slices with toppings like potatoes and arugula pesto, in a tiny space crammed with eaters and a live jazz ensemble.

I felt comfortable with Mexican food, Chinese food and American standard offerings. But Thai, Indian, Ethiopian, Greek, French, Southern, Vegan and Raw cuisines–to name a few–were mostly outside my experience. The Bay Area has a great diversity of cultures and people, and the food reflects the vast, varied world they come from. We began trying new places and discovering new favorites.

There were places we could go for comfort when we felt unsettled in this new food culture. There is a McDonalds not too far away. We had been a regular Happy-Meal-and-french-fries family before the move, and the parking lot was soothing to my parking-jangled nerves.

Leaving a park one day, I told the boys we would go to McDonalds for a treat. Another little boy, no older than my 2nd grader, overheard us talking and soberly informed us that McDonalds was bad for us, maybe would kill us. At the time, I was offended by the judgement, knowing it came from his parents. I realize now that this belief in slow food is such a universally accepted fact here that it wasn’t judgement, it was just an honest statement of fact.

Berkeley has great food, but it comes with a way of thinking about food–one that feels almost like a religion in its followers’ convictions and zeal. It starts with a relationship between the producer of the food and the consumer. The ideal is local, fresh and in-season produce, humanely raised livestock, and food made locally using environmentally sustainable methods.

That points directly to the farm. From there, becoming a member of a Community Supported Agriculture farm was a natural step.