Archive for October, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011, is National Food Day: It’s Time to Eat Real, America! Why do we need to be reminded to eat real, fresh, locally grown food? Because for the most part we’re not doing it. Don’t blame yourself. There are many reasons we don’t.
- Twinkies are cheaper than carrots.We’ve grown accustomed to buying cheap food. The food that is bad for us like high fructose corn syrup is subsidized by the government, and it’s making us sick.
2. We don’t have as much access to fresh, locally grown food as we should. Example: San Diego has the most small farms in the Country and yet the vast majority of the food grown on these farms go to L.A. only to be shipped back to us.
3. We have lost our connection to the land, to growing food. Our lives are too busy with jobs, obligations, extracurricular activities, running from here to there to plant a seed, nourish a plant, or to even find out the story of our food.
The list can go on. The bad news is our food system is broken. The good news is each and every one of us can do something to heal it. Am I talking about marching to the White House and demand the President start subsidizing carrots, oranges, spinach, etc. instead of corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat? Should you grow dreadlocks, grow out your armpit hair, move to a commune and live off the land? Of course not, unless these are the things you want to do.
I really don’t have anything against Twinkies. I have a problem with the food that nourishes us being more expensive and harder to get than said Twinkie.
Here’s a short list of things you can do to change this.
- Plant a seed or a starter. I’m not saying create a farm. But why not have a herb garden? I’ve started a container garden. It’s all I can commit to. I have tomatoes, basil, thyme, strawberries, rosemary. I’m going to plant celery, peppers, and spinach.
- Buy local. You can find local produce at your farmers’ market. Grocery stores and markets will claim some of their produce is local but this can mean up that the food was shipped up to 150 miles away.
- Go to a farm to table restaurant. These are restaurants where if you asked the owner, chef, waitstaff, “Where does the ingredients for the Chicken/Fennel Sausage Flatbread Pizza come from?” They’d be able to tell you the story.
- Vote with your fork. We have the opportunity to do this three times a day.
“Michelle, I don’t have the time to do any of these things,” you say. It’s a statement I made to one of the growers at the New Roots Urban Farm.
“Do you have time to eat?” he said. “Then you have time to plant and to find out where your food is coming from.”
“What if people don’t have the money to spend on locally grown food?” I asked. “Fast food is cheaper.”
“You’re right. I can go right now and get a taco for ninety-nine cents,” he said. “But when you’re laying sick in your bed from eating too much cheap food, when you have to pay for a whole bunch of medications, don’t you think paying more for good food today will pay off in the long run?”
I do. Don’t you?
“
Do you realize you are not alone?
Do you realize the remake of FOOTLOOSE is just as cheesy and fun as the original starring Kevin Beacon in 1984?
Do you realize while you appreciate the “new” Kevin Beacon, Kenny Wormald, for being cute and a hell of a dancer, you realize you are more attracted to Dennis Quaid? Do you realize you’re getting old?
Do you realize the Dixie Chicks haven’t made a new album since 2006? Do you realize six years is too long to wait for an album regardless of Natalie’s desire to have babies and concentrate on her family? Do you realize how selfish that sounds?
Do you realize it’s harder to listen than to talk but it’s harder to hear than to listen?
Do you realize no matter how smart and into culture and arts you are you will never understand the poetry of e.e. cummings? Do you realize the reason you don’t understand e.e. cummings is because he went to Harvard? He be smart. Do you realize you’re quite proud you understand (and like) some of his quotes? Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination. A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize – we’re floating in space -
Do You Realize – that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize – that everyone you know someday will die (Flaming Lips)
Do you realize when you have children time speeds forward, and sometimes nostalgia gets the best of you and time goes backward, but time is never still?
Do you realize you are loved?
Do you realize the only control you have is over yourself?
Do you realize even though college standardized tests will test you on geometry you will never, ever, care about a hypotenuse triangle unless you’re an architect, mathematician, or artist? Do you realize you are none of these and never, ever will be so you could give a rat’s ass?
Do you realize it’s NEVER too late?
Do you realize sorry seems to be the hardest word?
Do you realize you matter?
Do you?
Thank you to Pioneer Woman who inspired (maybe more than inspired) this post.
I just turned forty-eight.
And I’ve never:
1. Been to Spain (or anywhere else in Europe)
2. Had a one night stand
3. Gone bungee jumping
4. Been to jury duty
5. Broke a bone
6. Been to New York
7. Liked snow skiing or snowboarding…probably because I sucked at both of them.
8. Drunk a cup of coffee
9. Watched PULP FICTION in its entirety. Somehow I always see the same two scenes over and over. “Say that again, Mother Fucker.” Ugh. I know there are lots of people (mostly men) who don’t get this.
10. Understood William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Again mostly men…
11. While we’re at it…understood The Doors, Bob Dylan, Yes, Three Stooges, Benny Hill…the good news here is I could never be mistaken for a man
12. Been mistaken for a man
13. Been able to tell a joke
14. Wore braces
15. Sat still
What have you never done? Is there anything on my list that you have done? Do tell!
Listen I didn’t set out to write about my family. This may be contrary to what some of my friends, family and kids think. I actually began a completely different memoir about my troubled relationships with men, and how after marrying David and having Jack I began healthier associations with the men in my life, I came to understand the past. I let go.
After reading the first two chapters of my memoir, it was my time to be critiqued in Debra Monroe’s memoir class two years ago in Taos. There was a lot of accolades over my writing. I sat straighter in my chair. I breathed in the rain and the smell of sage coming in the open windows of the meeting room. I breathed out the breath I’d been holding, nervous about the critique. This is going to be okay.
“But I didn’t get why you were keeping the fact you were going into labor with Jack a secret from your girls,” someone said.
I looked around the table at the other eight participants, all of them nodded, confused looks on their faces. I held my breath again. The stomach ache I’d been carrying around all day had come back with a vengeance.
“Was it because they were older and you didn’t want them to understand about sex? You didn’t want them to get pregnant? Is that why you were protecting them?” Debra, the teacher, asked.
Shit, now tears.
In that instant, I knew the truth. I knew what I’d been carrying around for the last seven years since I’d gotten pregnant with Jack and had him. I’d been trying to protect Molly and Kelly from me getting married and having a baby. I tried, and realized I was still trying, to not impact the girls’ world anymore than I had by divorcing their dad, remarrying and having Jack.
I realized in that moment how much I’d wanted to control the whole situation, the blending of the family, but Jack had other plans. Read the first two chapters.
To David, Molly, Kelly, Jack and Bill
Below is my recipe for a blended family. This is not a family recipe since my parents are still together. It is the best recipe I’ve come up with after almost ten years of marriage to David. It’s not perfect, so I keep on trying.
BLENDED FAMILY
Ingredients:
1 mother
3 children (ages 8, 19, and 22; two from previous marriage and one from current one. You will think that eleven years and fourteen years between your son and daughters will be the right amount of time to introduce a baby to the family. However, you will learn quickly there is no perfect time, no right age. But in spite of their parents’ mistakes, they will be awesome, funny, empathetic, warm, genuine, loving kids. This makes blending a lot easier since they are so easy to love.)
1 understanding second husband (This is important to the mix. If the second husband has an overbearing personality, a huge ego or low self-esteem, it can ruin the whole blended family. It also helps if he doesn’t have an ex or children from a previous relationship.)
1 ex-husband (It is important to remind the ex the children you share are the priority. It’s not about hurt feelings from the break-up, or the rage, or the sadness. Never, ever use the kids as pawns between the two of you. I’ve tasted other blended family recipes with hurtful, acrimonious exes who stick their children in the middle and the result is always bitterness.)
1 ex-husband’s new family (one second wife and two young children. As the mom to the two daughters you share with your ex, it’s important to pour more sugar, more love onto the girls. This can be tricky since you have a new baby and it’s hard to divide yourself in three (million?) pieces but the guilt over the divorce, your empathy for how much it must suck to be children of divorce makes you find more love and more energy to make the blended family sweet.)
A heap of family and friends (This is a tricky ingredient. At first when you’re divorcing and when you remarry, the flavor from these people are strong. Sometimes they can overtake the whole taste of the blended family. However as you get more confident in your ability to make this recipe, the taste of the family and friends mellows, or maybe you do, or maybe you’re tired from chasing after kids and the perfect blended family.)
Directions:
- Throw mother into a food processor. Add a dash of guilt, regrets and caffeine. Puree until a soft, creamy paste or thick liquid.
- Toss the rest of ingredients into a large bowl.
- Pour pureed mother over the mixture in the bowl. Blend.
- Pour blended mixture into a greased oven-safe dish.
- Bake in the hottest oven you can tolerate.
- Cook until it’s cooked all the way through.
- Serve with hope.
