| ch-ch-ch-changes |
[May. 13th, 2007|06:54 pm] |
I am going to turn and face the strain.
Two books I've recently read, Plenty: One Man, One Woman and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: One Year of Food Life have managed to do what others (including Fast Food Nation, which I read *while* eating McChicken McNuggets) have not.
I have been trying (albeit on and off) to eat better for myself, but somehow feeling like I was falling short. Sure, I was getting leafy greens and brightly-colored fruits and vegetables, but there was something missing. Or a lot of things, as the case may be.
It's come to my knowledge that perhaps I don't like some fruits & veggies precisely 'cause I've never tried them. Or if I have, they've been of the grocery-store out-of-season trucked-in-from-god-knows-where variety. Mealy. Pale. Stringy. Unappetizing. I hate tomatoes, hate them with a passion, but after reading the aforementioned two books, I have this indiscriminate longing to taste one. Not just eat one, but taste it, really savor it. I hate nuts, and yet my "snack food" that I picked up at the convenience store on the way to my riding lesson was sunflower kernels. Just barely nuts, but nuts all the same. I usually loathe and detest any vegetable save for broccoli, corn, onion and various lettuce varieties, yet I brought myself to buy some (locally grown) asparagus and now am putting it into almost everything I eat. I cleared my plate of (probably not locally grown) cauliflower (which I don't like as much as its green cousin, but will still eat), green and yellow zucchini at Vinsetta Grill the other night at dinner. I couldn't reconcile myself to eat the carrots, because those things have hounded me for years to no avail.
But they will win soon.
I am slowly trying to dedicate myself to a local diet, I won't admit to keeping it to within 100 miles a la the authors of Plenty, and it won't be all-inclusive (hell, B. Kingsolver - co-author of A,V,M) even admitted to buying those blue boxes of mac & cheese which I hold so near and dear to my heart- and just so you know, I did try the "organic" m&c, and the original orange powder I so very much love isn't orange... it's white and turns orange when you mix in milk and butter. To me, that's just a little bit scarier than its original, non-organic fluorescence). I need to do a lot of research for this, as far as farms around the area, because I'd like to not just restrict myself to a weekly trip to the farmer's market, and trips to the u-pick farms scattered about. I want to know where, essentially, everything comes from. Things will be given up, and some things will be allowed (there will probably be a list of non-local things I will allow myself to have with impunity).
But for now? The 2 lbs of local chicken in my freezer, the local sweet & mild Italian Sausage links, the loaf of local Italian bread, the local asparagus and green onion, and the local Jarlsberg Swiss and Cotswold Cheddar with Chive, the local eggs, and the local Ida Mae apples will just have to do.
Along with, of course, the various seeds I have bought and plan to cultivate (onions, zucchini - and yes, I'm aware of their prolific little lives, pumpkins, chives, tomatoes, strawberries, even grapes, peppermint and spearmint, and various other vine & root grown vegetables).
Yesterday was the Royal Oak Farmer's Market. Next week - Rochester Hills Farmer's Market.
and soon, a better me!
and other news: Stupid Storm in May didn't win... in fact he did the complete opposite of winning, ending up something like 16th place. I still love him.
Bah. |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fit_to_ride's journal
