Eating off the land

I am embarking on a new journey and have become fascinated with the types of food that I am discovering along the way. I will not give up a nice rack of BBQ ribs, and won't switch to eating all vegetables until some genius comes up with a plant that tastes just like a porterhouse, but vegetables will begin to play a starring role in future meals. Eating simple pure food is one of the keys to good health. Eating food that you have grown or is grown locally even better - you know what has been done to the food and that it hasn't been frozen, dried, trampled on or partially gnawed by store house rats. Finding local souces for produce has become tough as the corporate farm is slowly wiping out the family farm, but lately there has been a move back to local growers.

If there are no local sources at least the markets have vegetables. Many diet books recommend shopping the outer margins of the market where you'll generally find fresh foods - the boxed "Dinner Helper" crap with the mystery chemicals and FDA allowable percentage of bug parts and rodent hairs is generally confined to the center aisles. You are paying more than extra cash for these processed wonders of the modern world, you are endangering your health as well. Leave it to capitalists to take a pure food, strip all the nutrition out of it, powder it and vitamins back in and sell it to the suckers for top dollar, when in the next aisle over the consumer could be buying the same thing fresh on the stalk. In truth it doesn't take that much more time to cook whole food as it does the processed and you know what is in it.

AS a cook you control the food that comes into your house. Occasional snacks are nice, some convenience food and be a life saver when on the run, but on the whole the cook should be preparing vegetables, fruits, grains, and, of course meat.  Paul McCartney assures us that if we stop eating meat the global warming problem will disappear, but I feel a burger now and again won't kill you or significantly impact polar bear habitat. I know we've all hear it a million times - practice moderation.

I will be working out some vegetarian dishes and presenting them as I go along. Being a die-hard omnivore I will not abandon meat, especially BBQ, so no worries there.  I hope you will join me in future hubs!!