Food - So 'everyday' and such a cool subject

And here you have it.... "Rich" Americans and their food. They must be rich, right? They spent over $159 for their food this week!

Week's worth of food in a Sudanese Refugee Camp at a market value of $1.23

German Food - Look at all those bottles!

Isn't food such an amazing subject? Those of you who know me, know that I spend many of my waking hours thinking about it, planning for it, searching new ways of combining, cooking and presenting it, shopping for it - from as many different, unique stores as possible - thinking about where it comes from, wondering whether the food choices I'm making are the best, wondering why some food choices are 'normal' in some cultures, and why they'd gross out another. I wonder how some foods became foods, while other grains, seeds, fruits and vegetables became ignored, and became "weeds" or "inedible." I just found out that dandelion root is so good for us.... why do we spend so much money on Roundup trying to get rid of it? Why do we eat cows and not pigeons. But they do eat pigeons in some parts of the world, I'm told. Why do we think that eating bug larvae is disgusting, when we think that eating the muscles of animals is okay? And, why do we settle for sub-standard 'fast food' that makes us so sick, when we could cook foods that are better for us, put them in a tupperware, and eat them instead when we're on the run? WHy do we allow hormones, antibiotics and goodness knows what else into our food? Why have we become so detached from our food? WHy do we let our food manufactures take all the good stuff from our foods and let them get away with calling their products (i.e. flour) "enriched"? And, while we're on the subject of flour, what the hell does "bleached" mean? Why are gastro-intestinal diseases such as Chron's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis mostly concentrated in "modern," rich and industrialized countries (i.e. western Europe, Japan, Australia and North America).
I found a FASCINATING book just a couple of weeks ago in my local Woodland book store called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Its a fantastic book published by a Northern California publishing house that shows photos of families from all around our globe with a week's worth of food arranged around them. Here are some of the photos. While studying each of them, I couldn't help asking myself who the truly rich people are.

This family from Bhutan spent $5.03 for this week's food. Most of it was home-grown. If they were to buy it at a local market, they would have had to spend $29.

This family from Egypt spent $68.53 for this week's food. They spent the most (a little over $33) on protein, such as meat, fish and eggs; $11 on dairy items such as milk, yogurt and cheese; just over $10.50 on fruits, veggies and nutsand only 9 cents on already-prepared food.

Did you have a chance to look at the American family's food? What were the most striking images to you? For me, I just wonder "what the hell" are we thinking? Are we so far away from our food sources that we have to eat most of our needed nutrients packaged in cardboard, plastic, pumped with preservatives, made more 'palatable' with dyes, constructed with ultra-concentrated sugars to satisfy our addiction? How have we gotten ourselves into this mess? Eating low-quality, high-filler crap? I'm not saying that eating low-processed, straight from the local fields lentils for breakfast, lunch and dinner (like it seems the Sudanese do) is ideal, (God knows I like a little variety!). But, I wonder why we are so easily persuaded to eat packaged fake food? How the hell did a cute little freckled-face "little Debbie" and her cheapest quality bleached flours, hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrups ever make it onto our store shelves?

I hope you know, while reading this, that I'm trying not to be jugemental. I'm just angry. I have fallen victim to this high-calorie low nutrition crap, packaged, salted and sweetened 'just right' so that I'd gobble up as many as I could get my hands on. I've had to make a real conscientious effort (actually many millions of efforts!) to change my food habits. I've had to work hard to change my taste buds, to actually let them know that eating a non-sweetened piece of fruit was actually good, that eating real 1/2 and 1/2 cream in my coffee is preferable to hydrogenated coffee-mate oils, to enjoy the somewhat tart and sour taste of real yogurt without sugar or asparatime (or realize I could sweeten it up with dried fruit). And, none of this came easy. It still doesn't. I still long for a tweenkie from time to time, damnit. But I have to call on my higher thoughts and intentions during these 'weak' moments. I don't want to be a slave to that crap. I don't want to support their further creation, packaging needs and transportation consequences.

That's it on that.

Lammy-Pie (Grass Fed)

This weekend Bernie and I became more "at one" with our earth. Through one of his workmates, he found us a local Woodland "farmer" who raises sheep, and who was willing to part with one for a mere $100. Buying an animal to eat opened up all kinds of excitement and questions for us. Some of the questions were just about logistics.... who's going to kill it? Where are we going to store the meat? How are we going to butcher it? Do we know how to butcher it? Some of the questions were a bit more weighty. Do we really want to get that intimate with our food sources? Are we willing to kill an innocent animal, transport it, then butcher it? And we love lambies.... they're so cute! But we also love lamb chops and gigot d'agneau spiked with garlic and served with gooey green mint jelly. So we decided that we were up for it. The farmer from "Keene's Acre" here in Woodland was nice enough to shoot it in the head before we got there, and just 20 minutes before-hand, no less! Bernard was prepared to slice the animal's throat ("egorger"), but I'm not sure our neighbors would have appreciated the noise. I'm not sure I could have stomached it either. We loaded the corpse into the back of our Highlander on a plastic tarp, and its eyes were all glazed over with a green sheen over them....looking kind of like a cataract. Bernie said that was how they all looked. He had blood coming from its nose and mouth, and his body was still really warm. When we got it home we hung it from a contraption Bernie set up. He hung it from its ankle, where he made a slit between two bones there. Ingenious. Then he did something else that impressed me. He made another small incision under his knee-cap, and inserted the nozzle of his air compressor, and turned it on reverse mode to pump air in between the muscle and skin so as to slowly detach the tissues. Amazing.... and it worked beautifully. As he began to cut the skin off, it was clear how much easier it was. Gutting the animal was VERY interesting. I didn't touch any of it, but I sure could smell it. Pee-yew! I just held my nose though, and watched as each of the organs came out. All of this animal's organs looked so healthy, and just like the pictures I'd seen in books. The liver was dark red-brown, the intestines all squiggly and greyish, the heart was red, and the lungs were so perfectly shaped, right down to the aveoli. What a miracle a body is. The larynx looked like a decompressed tube that I see coming from my clothes' dryer vent. I remember discecting a rat in college, and being amazed at that too. I know that discecting isn't the most pleasurable activity for many (including me), but it has given me the opportunity to observe nature's miracles up close. I know, it may sound corny, but I do have a lot of respect and love for this sheep who gave his life for us, to nourish us. Seeing a life given up for me (and my husband) makes me want to not waste, to respect, and to appreciate where my food comes from. Bernie must have been feeling the same thing, because since the sheep's death on Friday, he's eaten the head (yes), the heart, liver and sometihng else I forget now. I would have liked to have saved the wool for some project (maybe a sweater for each of my rats :)), I was a little overwhelmed at the time. I did touch it, though, and could feel the lanolin between the fibers. No wonder someone way back when decided to use this "material" as a (human) skin moisturizer.

So, there's that story.

grass fed lamb

food around world

michael pollan

vespa license

organic gardening

compost

strawberries & cream

lentil soup

Lammy-Pie (Grass Fed)

This weekend Bernie and I became more "at one" with our earth. Through one of his workmates, he found us a local Woodland "farmer" who raises sheep, and who was willing to part with one for a mere $100. Buying an animal to eat opened up all kinds of excitement and questions for us. Some of the questions were just about logistics.... who's going to kill it? Where are we going to store the meat? How are we going to butcher it? Do we know how to butcher it? Some of the questions were a bit more weighty. Do we really want to get that intimate with our food sources? Are we willing to kill an innocent animal, transport it, then butcher it? And we love lambies.... they're so cute! But we also love lamb chops and gigot d'agneau spiked with garlic and served with gooey green mint jelly. So we decided that we were up for it. The farmer from "Keene's Acre" here in Woodland was nice enough to shoot it in the head before we got there, and just 20 minutes before-hand, no less! Bernard was prepared to slice the animal's throat ("egorger"), but I'm not sure our neighbors would have appreciated the noise. I'm not sure I could have stomached it either. We loaded the corpse into the back of our Highlander on a plastic tarp, and its eyes were all glazed over with a green sheen over them....looking kind of like a cataract. Bernie said that was how they all looked. He had blood coming from its nose and mouth, and his body was still really warm. When we got it home we hung it from a contraption Bernie set up. He hung it from its ankle, where he made a slit between two bones there. Ingenious. Then he did something else that impressed me. He made another small incision under his knee-cap, and inserted the nozzle of his air compresser, and turned it on reverse mode to pump air in between the muscle and skin so as to slowly detatch the tissues. Amazing.... and it worked beautifully. As he began to cut the skin off, it was clear how much easier it was. Gutting the animal was VERY interesting. I didn't touch any of it, but I sure could smell it. Pee-yew! I just held my nose though, and watched as each of the organs came out. All of this animal's organs looked so healthy, and just like the pictures I'd seen in books. The liver was dark red-brown, the intestines all squiggly and greyish, the heart was red, and the lungs were so perfectly shaped, right down to the aveoli. What a miracle a body is. The larynx looked like a decompressed tube that I see coming from my clothes' dryer vent. I remember discecting a rat in college, and being amazed at that too. I know that discecting isn't the most pleasurable activity for many (including me), but it has given me the opportunity to observe nature's miracles up close. I know, it may sound corny, but I do have a lot of respect and love for this sheep who gave his life for us, to nourish us. Seeing a life given up for me (and my husband) makes me want to not waste, to respect, and to appreciate where my food comes from. Bernie must have been feeling the same thing, because since the sheep's death on Friday, he's eaten the head (yes), the heart, liver and sometihng else I forget now. I would have liked to have saved the wool for some project (maybe a sweater for each of my rats :)), I was a little overwhelmed at the time. I did touch it, though, and could feel the lanolin between the fibers. No wonder someone way back when decided to use this "material" as a (human) skin moisturizer.

So, there's that story.

grass fed lamb

food around world

michael pollan

vespa license

organic gardening

compost

strawberries & cream

lentil soup

Planted Today

3/3/08
French Green Lentils (lentils themselves, whole, unsprouted)

2/20/08
"Early Girl" tomato 6-pack
strawberry plants
"Yukon Gold" potatoes
"Fingerling" potatoes
Garlic (already sprouting on my kitchen counter)
spinach seeds
mustard seeds
rutabaga seeds
cleri "Rave" seeds
lettuce 6-pack
butter lettuce seeds
shallots (starts)
red onion (starts)
leeks (seeds)
rhubarb 6-pack
chives
carrots