Saturday, July 16, 2011

Ruint! and eggplant squee!

I've been drinking raw milk for several weeks now.  A very refreshing way to consume it is iced cafe au lait. The other day I went to make myself just such a drink, but because I wanted to skim the cream off my latest share of milk, I used some ultra pasturized milk instead.  OMG, did that stuff taste HORRID!  I'm also getting spoiled by grass fed beef and pastured pork and free range chickens.  I can't help but wonder if part of this country's obesity problem isn't due to "real" food being so tasteless that it cannot compete with food-like products.  What we are truly hungry for is nutrition and flavor, but we aren't getting it at the grocery store.

Second topic:  Look what I found on the patio today:


Itsy bitsy teeny weeny eggplants!


I hope they grow faster than the Meyer lemons are projected to.

2 comments:

A. Warped, knitter said...

Oh my! I was already green-eyed looking at all the knitting that you've gotten done this summer and now your beautiful garden...

Toni said...

Whoo hoo! Eggplant! (Which I have only ever said when nothing else in the garden is harvest-able)

Andy was listening to NPR the other day & they were talking about a new book out about the food industry--something about tomatoes. The food industry is 100% focussed on long shelf life and profit, not taste, and unfortunately consumer preference hasn't helped any. We buy the best-looking or biggest produce, not the best-tasting. I remember in the 1980s & 1990s when the Washington apple industry was almost destroyed because they were only growing red delicious apples because consumers only wanted to buy bright red, shiny apples. A grower I talked to was really disgusted because he kept trying to grow the better tasting apples (I assume the ones we're getting now--Fuji and Braeburn, etc.) but no one wanted them. I think foolish consumerism & the food industry conglomerates have almost equal parts in the de-tasting of American food.

Which I am going to keep reminding myself as I finish my coffee and go out to battle squash bugs..........:)