Wordle, and an Awakening to Organic

Pictured here: my visit to "Wordle.net" produced this themed art of my own words about loving farms. Go try it out. You can enter a URL for your weblog, or any text you want. I used custom colors and a friendly font. Experimental play is the key. Make your own.

And now for something harvested after planting the seed, in a hostile climate, many years ago. It gives me hope for my (or your) relatives who think everything we do is crazy, expensive, or "too California."

Some time back, we shared a holiday meal with Some Family Members. While these people are good and funny and fun, they are essentially afraid of real food. My offering one Thanksgiving of an organic turkey with an herb crust and shiitake mushroom stuffing was greeted with skepticism: the turkey skin was discarded (to the dogs) from some plates, and few would even try the suspicious gravy or stuffing with the shiitakes. 

Requests for family get-togethers in the future were not for my famous turkey, but for things that could be relegated to your granny: could I please make some deviled eggs? Yes, I could…and I decided to doctor them up with the Spanish smoked paprika that every food blogger on earth knows about. Knowing the family, I told Bob, "I'm telling them it's bacon dust."

That ruse worked, and the dusted eggs were wolfed down before the plain ones that I'd thought would be consumed as "safe" to taste.

After that particular meal—which included nearly every single thing from a box or a can, including Kraft Mac & Cheese, canned gravy made with sodium and plutonium, non-organic russets, and so on—all of us who attended got sick. Bob and I were sick for the better part of three weeks. And even though time spent with such a fun family was great for the kids, the older kids (Bob's girls and mine) said: "Life is too short."

I can handle a Super Bowl fiesta with junk food, because I avoid the bad meat and just graze on the other stuff idly. Politely, even. I bring a dish that is not unreal (mass-produced, filled with chemicals) food.

So, imagine that, ten years after meeting this branch of the family—and they ARE wonderful people, just too conventional and seduced by commercials and peer pressure, I guess—TEN YEARS later, Bob got the following e-mail from one of the family, age mid-fifties. (And he encouraged me to post about it.)

I am "okay."  Been going through some health issues. During the first part of the year I was having some terrible problems (liver, kidneys, edema, blood pressure, beginning gout, and was even having episodes of blindness), and was on way too many drugs and they wanted to put me on more. So... I used my brain and started doing research. I discovered that almost all of my issues were related to food additives, preservatives, and pesticides. So, I went all organic. Within 10 days, my blood pressure dropped by 50 points and I was off of every medicine I was taking other than Ibuprofen and occasional pain medicine. My filtration system simply can't process the fake stuff any more and I have become allergic to many things, both food and airborne.

Another good thing has come out of my illnesses as well.  [My older child] has moved their household diet to more and more organic foods as well and is pleased with the results.

This is someone who's been eating Betty Crocker and General Mills and Chef Boyardee and Kraft (Krapt) foods because they were comfortable and familiar and "real". And real to a skeptical child, now the parent of four children who are going to be healthier.

ARE YOU GETTING THIS?

It's not scientific, is it? But it's completely based on the experience of a skeptic, an atheist, a John Wayne-loving Republican whose favorite food group is meat.

For now, I am so glad that the things I've been offering for all these years might finally be normal. I'm guessing they haven't made the transition to clean meat yet, but let's just take it one step at a time.

• • • • • • • • • • •

That's all for today. But it's a lot. Use it if you can.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism. Land can be healthy or sick, fertile or barren, rich or poor, lovingly nurtured or bled white. Our present attitudes and laws governing the ownership and use of land represent an abuse of the concept of private property.... Today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see and nobody calls the cops." — Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness (1971)

Thanks for visiting.

Comments

[Natalie]

Isn't this beautiful? We can still learn and grow and change, and thankfully, it can happen in time to save us. As a work in progress, I am glad you shared this.

[Jennifer Jeffrey]

Wow - thanks, Tana. That's incredibly powerful stuff.

We can never "tell" others, but we can show them... and their own experiences will hopefully lead them to solid answers.

xox

[LutheranChik]

Love the Wordle! And you're not being too "Californian"...there is a nascent but lively locovorious community in Michigan.