Garden and food musings

This morning Maddie and I went to work off my work hours that are part of the CSA I belong to. We had to get up bright and early and be at the garden by 8:00. She wasn't happy. Nor was she pleased to be picking beans in the middle of a wet field surrounded by bugs. Yes, we were SURROUNDED by bugs. Totally sucked. They were in our ears, eyes, mouths, legs and arms. We were not dressed properly at all. You would have thought I would have realized that since there are bugs in my own garden, there would probably be a few in the REALLY BIG garden.

Other than the bugs, the work itself doesn't bother me at all. Sure, it gets to the back, but like picking blueberries I find it somewhat meditative. But I don't think Maddie was getting that vibe at all, because every time I happened to look her way, she was scowling at me!

As a kid growing up, my grandfather had a big garden. When we would visit during the summer, it was always a BIG DEAL to pick blueberries, raspberries or whatever else was growing in the garden. I loved it. My grandfather was a serious gardener and spent hours going from one plot to another, and until the day I ran into one of those huge disgusting worms that is the size of the snake, I enjoyed it immensely. Night crawler, that is what they are called. If you have read earlier posts, you will know that snakes and I do not get along. I was just minding my own business in the garden, when I saw the tip of a worm poking through the dirt. Worms are cute, so I gave it a little tug, and much to my surprise this enormous thing came out of the ground. I screamed and ran, sure it was chasing me. My grandfather called to me, what is wrong? That's just a night crawler. I said it's a snake. Nah, he said, it's just a big old worm, won't hurt you.

But the damage had already been done. (Think of all the years of therapy I have saved in concluding that my long vacation (read: lifetime!) from gardening was caused by a stupid nightcrawler. Geesh. I am ridiculous.)

So anyway, I think it is such a shame that my children have no gardening memories whatsoever. My mother had a small veggie garden when she lived here, and a couple of blueberry bushes, but I am not sure that any of the kids noticed it. I personally think that all children should be sent to the fields to do a few hours of back-breaking picking so that when they are sitting in front of the video games or computers they can appreciate how damn easy their lives are!

I wonder what will happen to a generation of spoiled and lazy people. I said to Maddie that I think it is important that everyone knows where their food comes from, and she rightly said that most people do know where their food comes from: the factory. How sad is that? So many people don't eat real food at all.

With the advent of "progress," we turned the daily chore of providing food for our families into something that required a few pushes of the buttons on a microwave. I can see the positive side of this, because I spend hours in the kitchen preparing meals or even freezing blueberries, and I can see why one might think there is more to life than that. And the way I combat that personally is to go out to eat. I've never eaten factory food because I've always found it gross. I can remember when I was a kid, maybe 7, and my parents were going out with another couple and I was being left with their older kids. I didn't know them at all, and was somewhat uncomfortable, but I started playing basketball with two of the boys and was having a good time, until one of the girls called to say it was dinner. We went inside and there was a bowl of the grossest looking stuff on the counter. Everyone was spooning it up, and I wondered what it was. I looked around and saw a ton of empty cans, Chef Boy R Dee ... canned something or other, spaghetti, but I think it was macaroni noodles. Anyway, I couldn't eat it, the color alone was putrid, and the smell! I mumbled that I wasn't hungry and went to watch TV. I was starving.

When my parents came back I was in tears I was so hungry, and they asked me what I'd eaten for dinner. I said that I hadn't, because it was disgusting and in a can. So while I don't have specific memories of what my mother cooked us for dinner, I do know it probably wasn't out of a can, because the concept was so bizarre to me!

But I started to notice other friends who ate such food, and yet, I could never eat it myself. I can remember eating a McDonald's hamburger and telling my mother that it wasn't food -- that there was PLASTIC in it! I could taste the plastic! I could see it! She would tell me I was being ridiculous, and I eventually ate the fish sandwiches when I went to McDonald's -- because I thought that was the closest thing they had to real food there. This was when I was a kid, mind you. And don't get me wrong, while I haven't eaten at a McDonald's in probably close to 20 years, I still think about those fries! I didn't hate the food, I was just suspicious of it.

So what is my point? I don't have one. And right now I have to go out to my own garden and pick a peck of lettuce because it is growing like mad. Tonight will be a dinner of just garden food -- and that is just so cool!

No can opener needed. Just a healthy appetite.