Phase Two: plant a seed and watch it grow
Lately, I've been really into food. I've always considered myself a food lover ("omg I loooooove foooood!"--yeah, I'm kinda that girl) but I think in reality, I just love eating; I've always been really into eating but never really gave and real thought to food. Which is weird, since the two kinda go hand in hand.
So when I say lately I've been really into food, what I mean to say is I've been really into where food comes from, how it's grown, and how it gets to me. It's something that's really easy to take for granted when there is so much food around all the time. It's totally possible to run into a supermarket, pick up some produce, and never once think about where that food came from. Why would you? There's so much of it, its as though it just appears and multiples in the bins at the store like it does on the plates during the meals at Hogwarts in Harry Potter (side note: how awesome is Harry Potter? The whole enchanted feast thing definitely played a huge role in my deciding to apply to Hogwarts in my dream world where I am a witch and magic is real, yet I still have to apply to schools of witchcraft and wizardry like colleges because, c'mon, they can't just take anyone, right?!? My fantasy world has structure. I am the most boring girl alive. More on that later.) But, tragically, we don't live in Hogsmeade or secret London or wherever it is that Harry Potter takes place. And the food had to be grown in the ground by people! And, if we're shopping in a typical supermarket, those people are probably very, very far away from us! And this doesn't just stop at produce. All those canned and boxed processed foods are also made from food that grows in the ground! It's really astonishing to me how little I've though about this over the years.
Now, I can't stop thinking about it if I tried. There are so many problems with our food system that go unchecked because so many people like me just don't think about where food comes from, not because we are hell bent on destroying the world, but simply because it just genuinely doesn't occur to us to question it. But, here and now, think about it, just for a second: how many miles does food travel to reach us? Are we over-producing? How are we handling waste? What are GMOs doing to our bodies? To the food supply itself? How is big agribusiness affecting small farmers? If we continue the way we are going, will there be enough food for future generations??
I will try to delve deeper into these questions once I've read more books by smarter people than me about them because I'm still not nearly as informed as I should be. All I know for sure: the outlook seems kinda bleak.
As far as the theme of this blog goes, for my part, I'm going to try to think long and hard about where my food is coming from now on and make my choices accordingly. Local foods, organic, foods, minimally processed foods.
Hopefully, at least some of my food will be coming from the vegetable garden that I will be starting this year!!!*
*I've never grown anything in my life. Not on my own, anyway. I once killed a spider plant which I was told are "impossible to kill". Well, challenge accepted and mission accomplished. I had a cactus once. That did okay. But they're designed to withstand the harshest conditions so if anything, I think that's an indicator of how un-nurturing I am? Does that make sense?
Anyway, stay tuned for pictures of me turning a small backyard wasteland into (let us pray) a verdant paradise of vegetables and joy! Positive thinking!
