*WARNING…this blog post will talk about where your food comes from with an example. If you don’t like seeing things alive and then dead…don’t read this.
This is a story about Nellie…who became Nelson.
Nelson belonged to a good friend of mine who with her husband decided to raise chickens for their eggs. A few months back the eggs arrived and when they hatched, you don’t know if they are boy chickens or girl chickens until they grow up. She named each chick a girl’s name. While they were hoping for an all ladies gang they did end up with a rooster. So Nellie became Nelson. I asked what she was going to do with Nelson as having a rooster was not part of the plan. (Rooster = fertilized eggs = more baby chicks. Roosters can also be aggressive and very noisy.) She replied, “he’s going to the farm to get butchered!” Me…”WHAT???? How can you do that? How can you butcher and eat Nelson?” Her response was…”where do you think that chicken you ate last night came from?” Good point.
This of course got me thinking. We have a complete and utter disconnect between where our food comes from and what we eat. Here is another example. I got it in my head last year to make bread. While it was fairly easy to do, it was a bit time consuming and as I had never done it before, I found it a little daunting. I purchased the ingredients, mixed the dry parts together, got the yeast to bubble, added it to the mix, sort of got the bread to rise (albeit with it sitting on a heating pad) and popped it in the oven. I didn’t have high hopes as it looked like a hot mess when it went in to be cooked. But despite my misgivings, it came out spectacular. I was overjoyed. I cut a piece, swished it with butter and jam and gave it to my son. He took about two bites and went to THROW IT OUT! I flipped out because didn’t he KNOW how much time and effort went into making that bread? Oh heck no was he going to throw it out.Eat every last crumb kid!
Every day we get up and make hundreds of decisions about what we are going to eat…when, where, what etc. But how often do you think about where your food comes from. How was it grown? How was it raised? How was it picked and when? Who were the people that grew/raised it? What part of the world did it come from? How did it get to the store? Who unpacked it and arranged it on the shelf? There is a lot that happens before that first forkful of chicken pot pie hits your mouth.
I find that this disconnect leads to disordered eating patterns. Our disassociation with food and its origins causes a lack of respect and lack of gratitude and ultimately causes us to be compulsive, over eat, be wasteful, and make poor choices. Think about what it took for your great, great grandmother to make a meal of pork chops, potatoes and peas. The pig was raised from piglet, fed and tended to over a season. Then it was butchered which was a day long process. The meat was cut, hung to dry, salted and whatnot. The potato was started from seed in early spring, placed in the soil (which had been prepared by composting over the previous winter), watered, weeded, and took months to grow. The peas were the same. It took a lot of back breaking work, fighting with the elements (nature can be really fickle), insects, and so on. It took many, many months to get that meal. What do we do when we want to make pork chops, potatoes and peas for dinner? Get in our car, drive to supermarket, get a cart, pick out the chops, potatoes and peas and head home. Total time spent? 30 minutes to buy and 30 minutes to make. This incredible convenience has anesthetized us when it comes to our food. Do we want to go back 150 years to the way food was raised and harvested and live that life again? Of course not. It was brutal and often times tragic. But we can slow down and start to really think about where that chicken came from and what sort of life it had before it came to your table. This can be applied to ALL food, not just chickens and potatoes. Trust me, once you start this practice of food appreciation, you make better choices and you eat less. Yes, it truly is that simple.
As for Nelson, well he went over the rainbow bridge and ended up on my friends rotisserie. She said he was “skinny, but delicious.” Thank you Nelson for feeding my friends.
Salad For Breakfast 