Real Food

Dinner last night consisted of meat and potatoes and peas.  It doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? 

Well, for me it was in a way.  You see I grew the peas and the potatoes.  And the meat was a yak roast raised right here on a local farm. 

Yep.  I said yak.  Locally bred and locally raised. 

My dinner - all locally grown/raised.  Real food!

Over the past few years I have learned a lot about a lot of stuff that I probably would have been happier not knowing.  Stuff about stuff.  Stuff about how stuff affects us all.  

It’s kind of scary – stuff is.  And not to sound overly dramatic, stuff is dangerous.

Sadly food has become stuff. 

But the food I ate last night was real food.  It wasn’t stuff.  (Though I was quite stuffed by the time my plate was empty!)  It was grown and raised and harvested quite naturally.  Except for a bit of butcher paper that the yak roast was wrapped in, there was no packaging involved.  There was no transportation from some faraway place.  The carbon footprint of that meal was pretty much negligible compared to the stuff I normally eat.  There was no advertising.  No corporate branding.  A mere handful of people were involved in the process from farm to table. 

And it tasted amazing!

Food – real food – like this makes want more.  Wouldn’t it be grand to have a big garden?  Wouldn’t it be awesome to have access to local farm raised meat on a regular basis?  And eggs.  And milk.  And cheese.  I think it would be so cool to have a local food co-op where people raise and grow their own food and share it among the members. 

Sigh….

I would never make a farmer.  It’s not in me.  Every cow, every pig, every chicken would have a name.  I can’t eat anything if it has a name and I know it.  But I could grow veggies.  I could collect eggs. 

Well, maybe someday.  You never know.

For now I will enjoy the real food whenever I can.  Like right now.  Dinner tonight is left overs!