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I love food. I really do. I can't tell you how much joy came into my life when I discovered Whole Foods, and how that joy has intensified exponentially with my subsequent journey into eating locally and seasonally. Food is such an important part of nearly every culture but ours and it makes me sad. Millions of American kids grow up eating McDonald's and other trash "food" and think that's some kind of treat. A treat for doctors and drug companies, maybe, medicating their diabetes and epidemic weight problems.
But unhappy topics aside, food is awesome. The Peppercorn, Boulder's locally owned gourmet kitchen shop, is my favorite place to spend money besides the farmer's market (and the Boulder Bookstore, but that's another topic.) I don't buy a lot of kitchen gadgets because 1. I'm not into mass consumerism and 2. I prefer tried and true methods and a fair amount of manual food preparation instead of throwing everything in a food processor or using the latest supposedly labor-saving wonder device. What gets me excited is a new razor sharp Wusthof paring knife from Germany that will last a lifetime, or a hand crafted copper French pepper mill or a hand made crock from one of America's oldest and most renowned makers of fine crockery. All intensely useful, all individually crafted, all of the highest quality.
The food I eat has been painstakingly planted by human hands, nurtured by people who actually care about the food and the environment, and harvested in small batches just hours before and a few miles away from the market stand. I think this food deserves the loving attention of being hand washed, hand chopped, hand kneaded or hand churned. I suppose, like people do in cultures who care about food, this is my way of offering a little prayer of thanks and honoring the sanctity of fresh, delicious, wholesome, bountiful food. So many who have come before me and so many who live today have no such luxury as even having enough to eat, let alone the quantity and selection available to most Westerners. Food is a gift, a very precious thing indeed. To waste it, to take it for granted or bastardize it in the form of a "McNugget" or similar abomination is just so...depressing.
I'm planning to spend most of the weekend in the kitchen. Last weekend I warmed up with two dozen jars of crabapple jelly, but this weekend it's time to get serious. How so you ask? Well, the peppers are hot and the tomatoes are red: It's salsa time.
1 comment:
You know, I have similar feelings about disposable diapers. People who have never even tried cloth, wouldn't dream of giving it a chance, consider the "convenience" of disposables a necessity that outweighs the environmental or (with the kinds of bizarre chemicals that go into their manufacture these days) very real health risks to the child that wears them. Yet washing cloth diapers is not gross or disgusting or arduous, as most people will never even find out.
I used to feel this way also about the medicalization of childbirth, a natural process. But lately - especially in light of the deep and seemingly insurmountably fugly problems with the current health care system; and after seeing my mother and a sister-in-law die of chemotherapy (whether the cancer would have killed them quicker, I couldn't say; but I can't imagine it would have been uglier in such a short period of time) - I've also come to wonder if the medical model of treatment for ANYTHING is just completely fucked up.
Then gradually, little by little, the pieces of the big picture start falling into place: fast food, convenience, ease, drugs, chemicals, profit, profit, profit, profit, profit. And I relate completely to your sense of despair at society and wanting to remove yourself from it and rediscover a more innocent time.
Your remarks about taking profound pleasure in the craftsmanship involved in preparing beautiful, wholesome, delicious food remind me of the way I felt about making cloth diapers, and how fresh and soft and pretty these environmentally friendly little creations were, how good they made me feel about myself and my place in the world. My gosh, I even looked forward to washing the darn things...!
Thanks sweetie for your always thought-provoking posts!
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