Here's something you might be interested in.
New Year’s resolutions could start right here.
Mine are simple: One, raw veggies. And two, I swear I’m gonna get out and work off whatever else I eat.
Not so much the gym. I mean what’s the point of wasting all that sweat on doing nuttin’? No. Think I’ll do useful stuff. Like growing triple-canopy food forests. (Remember the Chagga tribe on Mt. Kilimanjaro? They feed themselves on about a quarter-acre each! I’m twitching to try it. No quarter acre, of course, but there’s always the roof. Should I tell the landlord? Mebbe cut him in on half the produce, and milk from the goat I’ll have up there…)
The Future: Ellie Sherman, field manager at Suzie's Farm, shows what you can grow without all those sprays
But also I'm thinking: we don't need all that stuff. Stuff we buy, stuff we eat.
And, seems we don’t need to eat anywhere near what we do eat to keep going. Just been reading “Mutiny on the Bounty” (actually it was the second book of “The Bounty Trilogy, called “Men Against The Sea.” Carla’s trying to get me to read “something serious.”).
Man alive! Back in 1789, these guys were in an open boat for seven weeks and covered 4,000 miles across the Pacific, on, like, bread and water and a couple of birds they caught. Unbelievable. It was when they got back to eating that some of them died.
Think I’ll follow the guy I’ve just been reading about, Dieter Rams, who designed all those really suave Braun electronic things for fifty years, and inspired Jonathan Ive, the guy who designed Steve Jobs’s beautiful iPads, iPods, i-Whatevers: Their dictum? Went something like:
Less, but better.
I know, resolutions, schmezolutions. Thinking about it, the only thing that keeps me from being a complete slobbering louche is dinero. Like, lack of dinero.
Plus, I don’t wanna turn into like, American Gothic, severe Puritan, nuts, twigs, no fun, no tastes in eating. Because seriously wonderful things are happening out there. Cultural culinary collisions! Locovores, lunch-trucks, Lizard Lounge Lagers! OK. Straining the alliteration thing here. But the point is, food’s coming full-circle, but value-and-idea-added. Plus, spray-free organic veggies you can actually afford! The return of tomatoes you can actually taste! (Note to self: git on down to Suzies Farm, 1856 Saturn Boulevard, Imperial Beach, 619-662-1780, for some toms, but do it Wednesday mawnin’ so you can collect some of their really free-range hens’ eggs. These hens – 150 of them – race out through the fields and peck and chomp all the live-long day. Result: Totally orange yolks from all the pesticide-free stuff out in their Garden of Eatin’ heh heh.)
I mean, yes, I appreciate the fast food places (Confession, got Carla and our bud Maggie a tub of KFC extra crispy chicken last night, the last night before we hunker down to serious Resolution Time. Cost $25, fed more than three. Still got five pieces left in the fridge).
But I know we’re all killing ourselves with that greasy kid stuff.
And less-is-more diet?Wwe can do it. Hell, I lived on nuttin’ but OJ for a whole week once, and after the first three days, you started to think of food as kinda disgusting.
I guess that’s how the other danger, anorexia, starts.
Maybe the French have it right: eat good, but keep the portions down to a small roar. Like, the big white plate with a little mound of something in the middle and swirls of syrup all over the rest of the space.
As Dieter (was that name his mother’s reminder to self to stay thin?) and Jonathan say:
Less, but better.
Whatever, we’re gonna make this year better, right?
New Year’s resolutions could start right here.
Mine are simple: One, raw veggies. And two, I swear I’m gonna get out and work off whatever else I eat.
Not so much the gym. I mean what’s the point of wasting all that sweat on doing nuttin’? No. Think I’ll do useful stuff. Like growing triple-canopy food forests. (Remember the Chagga tribe on Mt. Kilimanjaro? They feed themselves on about a quarter-acre each! I’m twitching to try it. No quarter acre, of course, but there’s always the roof. Should I tell the landlord? Mebbe cut him in on half the produce, and milk from the goat I’ll have up there…)
The Future: Ellie Sherman, field manager at Suzie's Farm, shows what you can grow without all those sprays
But also I'm thinking: we don't need all that stuff. Stuff we buy, stuff we eat.
And, seems we don’t need to eat anywhere near what we do eat to keep going. Just been reading “Mutiny on the Bounty” (actually it was the second book of “The Bounty Trilogy, called “Men Against The Sea.” Carla’s trying to get me to read “something serious.”).
Man alive! Back in 1789, these guys were in an open boat for seven weeks and covered 4,000 miles across the Pacific, on, like, bread and water and a couple of birds they caught. Unbelievable. It was when they got back to eating that some of them died.
Think I’ll follow the guy I’ve just been reading about, Dieter Rams, who designed all those really suave Braun electronic things for fifty years, and inspired Jonathan Ive, the guy who designed Steve Jobs’s beautiful iPads, iPods, i-Whatevers: Their dictum? Went something like:
Less, but better.
I know, resolutions, schmezolutions. Thinking about it, the only thing that keeps me from being a complete slobbering louche is dinero. Like, lack of dinero.
Plus, I don’t wanna turn into like, American Gothic, severe Puritan, nuts, twigs, no fun, no tastes in eating. Because seriously wonderful things are happening out there. Cultural culinary collisions! Locovores, lunch-trucks, Lizard Lounge Lagers! OK. Straining the alliteration thing here. But the point is, food’s coming full-circle, but value-and-idea-added. Plus, spray-free organic veggies you can actually afford! The return of tomatoes you can actually taste! (Note to self: git on down to Suzies Farm, 1856 Saturn Boulevard, Imperial Beach, 619-662-1780, for some toms, but do it Wednesday mawnin’ so you can collect some of their really free-range hens’ eggs. These hens – 150 of them – race out through the fields and peck and chomp all the live-long day. Result: Totally orange yolks from all the pesticide-free stuff out in their Garden of Eatin’ heh heh.)
I mean, yes, I appreciate the fast food places (Confession, got Carla and our bud Maggie a tub of KFC extra crispy chicken last night, the last night before we hunker down to serious Resolution Time. Cost $25, fed more than three. Still got five pieces left in the fridge).
But I know we’re all killing ourselves with that greasy kid stuff.
And less-is-more diet?Wwe can do it. Hell, I lived on nuttin’ but OJ for a whole week once, and after the first three days, you started to think of food as kinda disgusting.
I guess that’s how the other danger, anorexia, starts.
Maybe the French have it right: eat good, but keep the portions down to a small roar. Like, the big white plate with a little mound of something in the middle and swirls of syrup all over the rest of the space.
As Dieter (was that name his mother’s reminder to self to stay thin?) and Jonathan say:
Less, but better.
Whatever, we’re gonna make this year better, right?