Last week, I wrote about the new garden bed I built on the north side of the house. Although I’ve been growing veggies in raised beds in other parts of the yard for the past couple of years, I decided that I needed to do something different this season. The main reason for building a [...]
The herbs have been enlivened by the warmer, sunny weather, offering up a whiff of fresh aroma as I sit on the stones and pick out the few weeds that managed their way in. The oregano has become quite a thick blanket of ground cover for the bed, entirely flanking the thyme plants in front [...]
Addie Broyles wrote a good article for yesterday’s Statesman entitled, “Rediscovering the Art of Eating In,” where she highlighted the efforts of author Cathy Erway as she stopped eating out at restaurants for two entire years. Erways book, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, is a memoir of her experiences of cutting out prepared restaurant foods and instead preparing every meal herself in her own home on her own stove and is packed with recipes and tips on becoming more self-dependent in the kitchen.
While I haven’t read the book, Broyles’ article peaked my curiosity. I, too, made the decision a few years ago to cut out as much processed and prepared foods as I possibly can. This was not so much a matter of saving money, as Erways’ subtitle suggests, as it was a matter of eating healthier and becoming more self-reliant. As Broyles points out, there are entire generations of young people who do not know how to cook a meal for themselves. They have become dependent upon the agriculture, manufacturing and retail industries to bring them the foods they want with as little effort as possible; however, not only are prepared foods and restaurant fare full of artificial ingredients, trans fats, genetically modified organisms, high-sodium, sugar, and preservatives, they are missing one hugely important and nearly universally ignored ingredient: love.
