I harvested the first salad from the garden this morning; spinach, mesclun mix and radishes. The greens are washed and draining, the radishes scrubbed and trimmed, ready to slice and toss. The sight and texture and taste of real food, there is nothing like it.
The garden is a shaken fist of rebellion against supermarkets full of fake food. Mushy fruits, tasteless vegetables, rows of cereal boxes that don’t contain any whole grains but have plenty of high fructose corn syrup. If you wonder why America is out of shape, all you have to do is enter a grocery store and try to find real food. You have to go out of your way to shop farmer’s markets, buy direct from local farmers and ranchers, buy organic. The quarter beef we bought from a local rancher has hamburger so lean it doesn’t need draining. You can’t buy that in a store.
In our hunger for real food, we find only cheap substitutes that don’t satisfy. And it spreads from there. Houses built with shoddy construction techniques that look sad after five years, when a well-built home from fifty years ago looks sturdy even under peeling paint. Cheap, badly made furniture that breaks after a couple of years of use. Disposable everything, from cars to pens. It’s all engineered to break so we’ll have to replace it and keep buying more of the same empty consumerism.
How do you get the real thing? You plant a garden. You find local farmers and buy from them. You make and build your own. You find quality manufacturing where you can, and you repair and maintain it. And you turn your back on entertainment that’s the equivalent of high fructose corn syrup with all the same ingredients as every other item next to it on the shelf and seek something you can sink the teeth of your imagination into. Maybe you write it yourself.
I think the worst thing we’ve been sold by the marketers of the world is the idea that we can’t do it ourselves, that we don’t have the time, the tools, or the expertise. But really, it doesn’t take that much time to tend a garden, saw wood and screw wood to build your own bookcase, write a few pages of a novel. All it takes is turning off the TV that’s broadcasting advertising telling us we can’t, and investing those hours in producing and experiencing something real instead.
Yumm. I could go for a salad about now. I think I’ll have one for dinner. Kashi has some good whole grain cereals with no HFCS. I even found a barbque sauce that didn’t have any (I checked the whole section and found 1- Stubbs if you’re interested). 🙂
Kashi is awesome, it’s one of the few cereals we buy. Mostly we just buy old-fashioned oats.
Salad is the perfect dinner this time of year!
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Last July, I moved from an area with easy access to organic foods and several choices for vegetarians/vegans. I am currently living an a city I love, except the city I love doesn’t love my diet. I have gained 20 lbs as a result. After a few difficult personal months, I just gave up watching what I eat. I eat junk now and I feel horrible.
The other day I ate a vegetarian wrap, a new item available for lunch during work days, and I almost cried. It was fresh and free of processed crap.
Ack! You can container garden to get fresh lettuce and tomatoes anywhere you get sunshine, which might help in the summer months. Here’s a good link for finding local food resources, including farmer’s markets and CSAs:
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/LocatingLocal.html
I agree 100%!
One of my worries is that the skills needed to survive without restaurants, grocery stores and so called convenience foods aren’t being passed down to the next generation. I know how to grow, preserve and prepare food. Many my age do not.
By not keeping these skills current we aren’t doing ourselves or our children any favors.
Those are essential skills. We actually have a list of “life skills” we think our kids need to learn; money management, auto maintenance, workshop skills, gardening and cooking, cleaning. Practical skills should go along with reading, writing, etc. I also think it’s time to bring back the idea of learning a trade or how to run a small business; our kids are not growing up in a world where getting a corporate job is the norm. I think the last data I saw said we’re heading towards 50% self-employment and contract work nationally.