Archive for June, 2010
So now that Wenders has been regaling everyone with the secrets of where her world and history of food comes from, I feel it’s a good time for me to say “Hi” and a few words on where my world of food comes from.
It is actually eerily similar to Wender’s story, with the exceptions of ; A. we didn’t live on a farm and B. we lived on another continent. But my earliest and cleares memories from the homeland most often involve picking berries off the bushes, sneaking with my best friend into the greenhouse and schnagging a couple cucumbers (European ones not these nasty thing you have here in america with ginormous seeds and leather for skin) and then hiding in the hedge and devouring our loot. Or picking peas, raspberries, strawberries, digging up potatoes and carrots or cutting chives, and parsley for dinner. It seemed like everyone had a garden of some sort with something healthy to go snack on. Heck, I even remember picking apples from the trees along the bike path on the way to school.
So when I hear of kids who have absolutely no idea where carrots come from and have to make special field trips to the country side so they can see things actually sitting in dirt, it makes me wonder what it would be like to grow up in a world where food is like gasoline. Yeah you know it doesn’t start out at the store/station but beyond that it comes on trucks you don’t really give it a second thought. That makes me sad, because I remember the joys of finding my very own pea and watching it grow and sneaking it extra water, until I deemed it was ‘Perfect’ and then picking it and eating it.
Then in the early 80s we moved to Texas, hot, burning, scorching, Texas. We were very fortunate, in that mom generally kept us well fed with home made meals on a daily basis which we all ate together at the table, but the parents were busy, the land a rental in the sprawl of suburbia, and time was a precious commodity for us all and so the days of fresh handpicked berries, veggies and herbs were over.
Next… the end of family dinners and the creep of convenience.
This was such a good looking lunch I had to take a camera phone pic and post right away. It’s a meatless chicken whole wheat wrap with organic vegetables and cheese with chipotle dressing. (I’m pretty sure there should have been way more comas in that sentence.) It was amazingly yummy, even if all I had was sliced cheese, and took only 2 minutes to make. I would even wager a bet that I could even get the picky preteen to eat this!
Fast forward [# REDACTED] years and I look at what the world has become and I long for that massive garden in the middle of nowhere. Somehow, I too became a slave to the quick and easy. It all began in college where I learned about fast food 101. It was the first time I lived within walking distance to TACOS! It was the first time I could call and have a pizza delivered. It was the first time I didn’t have parents around to say no. Thus, beginning a love/hate relationship with fast food. Can you say freshman 15++! I got better about cooking when I moved out of the dorms and got my first apartment, but not by much.
Fast forward a few more years when my first son was born. It was the first time I became conscious of what our family ate. I was especially diligent and mindful about the foods my son ate until he was about 2. This directly coincided with when I returned to work. Whew! I was really tired. I didn’t feel like there was any time to cook once I picked him up from daycare. It was much much much (MUCH) easier to grab something on the way home. On the nights that I did cook, it usually came out of a bag, can, or box of preservative laden goodness. Hey, but at least I was cooking. …..Because microwaved chicken nuggets were a suitable meal……oh Lord, cooked in plastic trays none-the -less! Although, I didn’t pay attention to the fat content, I usually cooked something that had a veggie, and it usually involved chicken because I wasn’t so much of a red meat eater. The meals were actually quite wholesome. The real kicker was that I was too tired to fight a picky eater so when my oldest son would complain or refuse to try anything, I just cooked him nuggets or fries while we ate the vegetables! It is very hard to not be too hard on myself. But that was definitely the WRONG way to go.
It would still be several years before I would start seeing the light, but I did start rekindling my love of gardening. Unfortunately, apartment patios and containers were not the best environment for me or my plants to grow. It took an act of desperation to help me see that my lifestyle was not working for me. It mainly took a nasty break up and loosing everything to help me return to my roots and relearn the basics.
In my next post, I shall delve into murky depths of my despair turning into a monumental growth of spirit when I have to suck it up and move back home as a 30 year old single mom.
In the mean time. I started another blog on beautiful basics. This one is co-authored with my super BFF Kinundra. It’s called Enuff of the Fluff and it is about our journey into weight loss and exercise. I also made a big decision to use cloth diapers and you can read all about this adventure here. I have also been exploring other avenues in my emerging creative business in Wenderflonia. Life is good and I am letting the pieces fall where they may. I hope to keep up the blogging next week however I am making a well needed trip back to my parent’s house. My mother is in desperate need of some grand baby holding time, and I am happy to oblige. Problem is that, being so far out in the county, the internet is very limited.
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Simon
Wenders