Thursday, March 7, 2013

currently reading: the omnivores dilemma.

I am currently reading The Omnivores Dilemma.   It has been on my to-read list for a while now but life and a plethora of other books got in the way of me tackling it until now.  I'm only a little more then halfway through it so I really shouldn't even be discussing it as of yet, but it has totally transformed the way I think about food.  I am a girl who prides herself on buying almost all my produce exclusively from the farmers market, I buy humanely raised eggs and meat, I support as many local and independent food purveyors as possible, and I cook almost all my meals myself but not I am not perfect and I've realized that there is so much more I can and should do.  Food shouldn't travel hundreds and thousands of miles to get to our plates. It doesn't seem logical for an apple to take such a long journey.  Our grandparents and great-grandparents would have never dreamed of eating anything outside of their farmland or their neighbors farmland.  At that time everything was local and seasonal.  Food meant something to people because they went out each and every day and worked the farms to make their meals.  As a society we've lost sight of what it means to eat quality food.  I know so many of my co-workers and friends who value the highest quality phone or clothing or car but they don't think twice about where the turkey in their sandwich came from or even if it tastes good!  It's a shame because we should think about what we're eating and what it's made of and how it got to our plate.  

Every spring when the first strawberries appear at the farmers market and I buy my first quart, I always think to myself that there are people in this world who have never tasted a strawberry that is red all the way through.  A strawberry that's juicy and sweet and entirely red.  And every time I think about that I get sad because nothing tastes better then a perfectly ripe strawberry.  To me that's what food is about.  It's about eating the best most local and most seasonal food because it's always ripe and pure and of the highest quality.  Here's to eating a lot more food that actually tastes good.  

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