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Does Your Food Remember?

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Dark-Tower-1Flashback Friday! This is a post that I originally wrote for VeganMoFo in 2010. It certainly still applies!

In the Dark Fark Tower series by Stephen King (a set of books that I dearly love), the main character, Roland, frequently extorts his companions – of one era or another – to “remember the face of your father.” In the context of the series, this means that the characters should honor their ancestors by being true to their roots and to their family values. They need to remember from where they came.  (Important note – I have nothing against mothers; I am one.  I’m just working with the quote.)

For me, this phrase constantly comes to mind when I’m thinking about, or talking to people about, the best way to eat. I’m a vegan, so sometimes that means that those I talk to assume that I certainly would eat a very sound diet.  Frequently, where I work, someone sets out cookies or cakes or candy, and then remarks to me, “Of course you don’t eat that kind of stuff,” assuming that my veganism is equal to eschewing all but fruits and veggies. But, being vegan or vegetarian does not, in an of itself, mean eating healthy foods. A vegetarian can eat cheese pizza, chips, and peanut butter cups for every meal. That is all vegetarian, but it sure is not healthy. A vegan can live – for a while, at least – on ramen noodles, pretzels, and Swedish fish. That’s all vegan. But, wow, it is not healthy.

These food items are so processed and so refined that all of the natural nutritional value has pretty much been extracted. They do not remember the face of their fathers. They are so removed from their fathers that it’s crazy.  They don’t even know that they ever had fathers!

The best foods, nutritionally, can remember the face of their fathers. Fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes – even if they have been a little engineered in the name of mass farming, and even if they aren’t totally organic, and even if we cook them up and add some seasonings and sauces, at least they remain fundamentally in their natural form – they can remember the face of their fathers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pretzels. I love them. We have a long-term relationship. I’ve been trying to break up with them – again – recently and we are seeing much less of each other. Though I love them, I know that they aren’t giving me anything that I need nutritionally, and when it comes right down to it, they really don’t taste as good as a big bowl of roasted vegetables or some butternut squash risotto. I also really enjoy tofu, and I think it isn’t as bad for you as a lot of things, but it is pretty far from its father, isn’t it?  I’m not a huge sugar fan, but I do once in a while get on a candy or cookie kick. Where is the ancestry there? And there is some food that is marketed specifically for vegans that is a very very long way from remembering its father (I’ll not name any particular items here so as to not cause trauma).

Does your food remember the face of its father?  Should it?  It’s an interesting thing to think about before you take that next bite or plan your next meal.

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Baby’s Got Bhakti: Vegan Organic Gardening with Love

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Squirrel by Karl (turnbullsx3) on Flickr

Squirrel by Karl (turnbullsx3) on Flickr

Subtitle: Even Those Dang Squirrels are Divine

It’s been a summer of gardening at The VeganAsana house, for the first time in a long time, and the first time ever with more than a dozen or so plants. And it’s been quite a learning experience.

garden

First, there was the reading and planning. I drew plot designs and looked at seeds. I read about the different problems that could crop up in a garden and resigned myself that I would probably have one of them. But, I was ok with that.

I imagined all of the delicious, home grown, organic food that I would produce for my family, their eyes open wide with wonder at the dinner table (cue choir of angels). This was me in May.

Then in June, things were growing. GROWING in my garden! Wow!

You should have seen it. The plants were beautiful and green and strong.

The sunflowers were immense. The tomato plants were getting huge and the zucchini plants were flourishing.

We were eating pounds of green beans. And if the kids didn’t look at me in amazement when I produced plates of fresh green beans, at least they ate them.

And then July happened, and it all went to heck.

trellisThe squash and pumpkin plants that I planted by my home-built (with help from my pal, Erica – shout out!) trellis started looking a little dodgy. So did the zucchini. I thought they were being overwatered.

I slowed the watering down and waited on the rain to chill out. And then I noticed some odd sawdust looking stuff at the bottom of the stems. Wait a minute! I read about this! (DUM DUM DUUUUUMMMM!)

The dreaded squash borer! Yep, I had squash borer. Boy oh boy, did I have squash borer. Every single zucchini plant was infested. All the pumpkins were too. Almost all of the winter squash, as well. I was not happy. I was not happy at all.

I removed borers from my plants (I couldn’t kill them, because they are beings after all, so I just relocated them). I reburied stems. They died anyway. Four squash plants and two pumpkin plants survived. I thought horrible things about those borers at first, but then I gradually let it go and got back to the idea that they were just doing their thing, eating their food, raising their little slug-babies.

So, ok, whatever, no zucchini for me. And, also, maybe there would be no pumpkin. Right. And it wasn’t looking good for squash. Sure. I’ve got tomatoes!

tomatoesinjuneBut, there was a little hitch in that plan. The mighty mighty (Bosstones? No.) squirrel.

My house is squirrel central. We have had them nesting in our oven vent, living in our eaves, rustling around in our attic, and eating our bird food. It’s squirrel happy town. I just didn’t realize how much they loved tomatoes.

Squirrels adore tomatoes. They will take every single freaking tomato from 12 tomato plants. All. Of. Them.

I cannot even blame them. I love tomatoes too. I like them on sandwiches, alone, in salsa and pico de gallo, and fried up when they are green. I would eat tomato every day and so would the squirrels.

I don’t mind sharing, and at first I thought that maybe they would slow down and just eat their half and left me my half. And, anyway, I still had other stuff.

But then the remaining pumpkin (with little baby pumpkins on the vine, awww) got powdery mildew. And that spread to the squash that were still there. The peppers were too shaded by the tomatoes and stopped growing and I hadn’t thinned the carrots enough, so they were not producing much. And the squirrels were not confining themselves to half.

Bah. Humbug.

So, here we are in September. I have another batch of zucchini plants going and some fall plantings, but my hopes aren’t too high. I did have another meal of fried green tomatoes today (the hot sauce spray seems to be slowing the squirrels down a bit for the green ones, but they still get eaten too fast to ripen), and we’ll see if I get any more.

But, I’m working on my bhakti yoga. Bhakti is about a surrendering to the divine that could mean a God or Gods. Or, it could mean the universal being. But, in any case, it means something about seeing the divinity in self and others. And, I’m pretty sure that includes the borers, and the fungus (among us), and the mosquitoes, and even the squirrels.

So, while I am still going to practice some additional non-harming vegan-like methods of keeping some of my garden for my family next year, I’m not going to be angry at the squirrels for taking the tomatoes or the borers for eating the zucchini stems. Because, they are just doing their thing, and they, too, are divine.

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