conscious choice

I try to live with an awareness of how my choices affect my home, my family, my community, and my planet.Lately, I have tried to eat in a way that impacts my health and my community for the better.

I was raised on fresh food. My grandparents had a cattle ranch and extensive gardens. Not only did we know where our food came from, we watched it die. Butchering days were big days, festive actually. There was nothing foreign about watching a calf be raised to slaughter. We spent hours riding our horses checking the herd. We had a lovely life and so it seemed, did the livestock. They grazed freely, ate only grass, and seemed placid and happy, but I always knew they were a food source.

I promised myself this summer to try to eat only foods that were touched by a human hand. That means no prepackaged factory-produced foods. To my great sadness, that means no potato chips...OK, a confession, I have stopped buying them, but I heartily enjoy them when other people buy them. I don’t buy meat unless I know where it was raised and how it was killed. I want to know that the farmer, the baker, the maker of my food is a person who actually benefits from my relationship to their product.

I know I am supposed to be worried about my carbon footprint. That I am not supposed to eat pineapples or avocados because they come from so far away. I don’t worry about that. If it is food in it’s natural state...an avocado picked by a human hand.... I eat it. At least someone touched it; at least it isn’t some weird food product that is made of chemicals I can’t pronounce.

This whole subject has a tie-in to the way I will renovate and furnish my home. It does, it really does, but it’s Saturday and it’s raining, I’m tired and I’m craving a sandwich with local tomatoes on seeded bread from my favorite baker, a sprinkle of Celtic sea salt and mayonnaise, oh mayonnaise, that’s a problem...

The lovely photos come from my sister Ann's food blog Redacted Recipes. She is not doing much writing these days, but the recipes are still there and boy are they worth trying.