Local Eats!
I’m taking a radical turn on the blog here, by making a new entry after an eon of dead air. I made the blissful journey into finding out where my food comes from. It started innocently enough with a viewing of Food, Inc. followed by The Future of Food, and finished with Deconstructing Supper. Basically, I went a little bonkers. I know there are a crap ton of food blogs out there, and I hardly want to make this into one, but hey, I’ve found that every job I worked and everything I cherish from my memories revolves around food. During my search, I discovered this: food is our culture condensed. Do you really want to say your culture comes in a box, or from this new family of farmers and all the influences that is this melting pot of a country?
Here’s the thing. I’m tired of the usual food blog that gives all these ridiculously bizarre recipes, substitutions up the wazoo to lower the calories, and my personal favorite to snark on is recipes that consist of using highly processed crap. Isn’t it enough you’re cooking the food that you need to add a bunch of highly modified crap? No thank you! So, after saying this to my ex and other single guys I know, I just want to say, you ate WHAT for dinner last night? C’mon, it’s not that hard to cook, people! Sure, it takes time, sure, it takes care, sure, sometimes it takes longer to cook the damn stuff than to consume it, but it’s that care and love and using the best, healthiest, whole ingredients you can. So, first, let’s meet your meat.
Tuck, a mischevious, but good momma! (Click on pic to see the rest of the herd!)
Do you know where your meat comes form and how it was cared for? What about that fish you’re grilling? Do you know how and when your fish was caught? How about it’s potential species endangerment, are they over fished, are they taking care of the species as a whole, is it loaded with toxic chemicals and heavy metals, or worse, is it farmed, ranched, or improperly handled ? What about your delicious sea prawns being dredged off the ocean floor destroying the ocean floor in the process on top of countless other little creatures getting caught in the path that we don’t even eat, or was it pot trapped, limiting damage to environment and other species? Was that cow you just ingested raised in a feed lot on a toxic diet of hormones, antibiotics, and grain or was it free range, processed locally, from a heritage breed, tame, and untainted? Was it cared for when it was sick? Was your pork raised in a sterile environment, pumped full of antibiotics, fed an improper diet, and slaughtered wholesale with no regard for the pig’s ultimate sacrifice, or was it allowed to run free, graze on grass and healthy foods, from a heritage breed, and honored for it’s sacrifice from the moment it was born? Don’t even get me started on chickens and eggs, and you know this dark turn is also headed straight for your milk sources too. Worse yet, all this crap you’re putting in your body is shipped from who knows where wasting fuel resources, and is wrapped carefully in plastic which bombards us with toxic chemicals as well. I encourage you to, if you’re going to eat meat, understand that something died so you could eat it. There is no reason to cause this noble creature giving the ultimate sacrifice any additional undue pain just so we can eat cheap (and flavorless!!) generic meat.
Sure, you think that I’m going to stop at the animals, when this is just the tip of the iceberg when you start to consider what’s going on with out vegetable side of the food supply. Monsanto has created a shit ton of strange genes to enter into the vegetable world. The worst one (in my opinion, this one trumps the cross species gene splicing) is the “kill gene”. This prevents man’s first start into what we now consider the civilized world, agriculture. The kill gene stops an F1 generation from ever being produced. A plant will create seeds, but they will never germinate, and you will have no future crops. From a corporation’s standpoint, this is good for business because a farmer would always have to buy new seeds from the company. From a societal standpoint, this spells death to our food supply. Are your veggies really organic, and do you realize USDA organic certification allows over 140 chemicals to be used on your “organic” veggies? Did you know co-op farmers can grow GMO crops for “organic” processed food? If that’s not bad enough, just start thinking how much fossil fuels are used in the transport of your food, organic or not.
tricolor carrots... they taste best right from the ground!
What I’m trying to get at is your food. I want to slap the plate out of your hand, and scold you for not knowing where and what you are really eating. I’m not here to toot my own horn, as living on a budget is a bitch, and even I still slip up now and then and get mass produced butter. I will be busy this year sourcing as much of my food as possible from local farms, and I intend to take my new friend with me to pick up my staples: meet my Motobecane Cafe 24 spd. If you see my chubby butt peddling around Whatcom county (Samish too, if I’m feeling frisky enough to bike 60 miles in a day!), please don’t honk, I’ll freak out and fall off.
Motobecane Cafe, my new best friend
Cat's out of the bag 