One more thought . . .

. . . from that book "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. I finally finished reading it, and yes I can now whole-heartedly recommend it to you! There were so many great things in there, so much I learned; it just makes sense. He talks a lot about how we need to bring traditional cooking back into our homes and quit trusting the latest nutrition fads; humans seemed to be doing a really great job with feeding ourselves before this "western diet" came around. Of course, our medical field has gotten so good at fixing problems that we don't worry too much about our diets, but what we eat can help prevent so much!

Anywho, I could go on and on, and I know it's kind of weird to read things about diet. It's always weird to talk about what's "good" for you and what's not; it just seems like everyone has their own opinions and it can sometimes be a awkward subject. This book just really seemed to simplify the world of nutrition by saying that the human body can adapt to all sorts of diets -- meat, dairy, plants, whatever -- but one it can't seem to adapt to is the western diet full of chemicals, sugars, and simple carbohydrates. So he calls for a return to "food", real food, no matter what it is. So read this this excerpt from the very end; it made me want to run down to the kitchen and cook and amazing feast (and it made me feel extra-good about my job running our home):

"To reclaim this much control over one's food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts.
And what these acts subvert is nutritionism: the belief that food is foremost about nutrition and nutrition is so complex that only experts and industry can possibly supply it. When you're cooking with food as alive as this -- these gorgeous and semigorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh -- you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener or the farmer who grew it, this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on the other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight. I'm thinking of the relationship between the plants and the soil, between the grower and the plants and animals he or she tends, between the cook and the growers who supply the ingredients, and between the cook and the people who will soon come to the table to enjoy the meal. It is a large community to nourish and be nourished by. The cook in the kitchen preparing a meal from plants and animals at the end of this shortest of food chains has a great many things to worry about, but 'health' is simply not one of them, because it is given."

So that is what I have been thinking about lately. Kind of granola, right? I will probably become a hippy sometime, it looks kind of fun. :) Which, by the way, I used to work with a gal who had built her dream home with her husband, which was a completely self-sustaining home! They had their own water pump, chickens, ridiculous gardens, solar energy; the works. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that, but I'm not gonna lie, it sounds awesome. I think it would be a bit difficult to ever leave home to travel, a bit expensive to get going, and definitely a lot of work to keep up. I still really like it though. Who knows.