The State of Your Bacon

The Renaissance Woman sends me articles and comics she cuts from magazines. I love their torn edges, the off center folds. I love getting an envelope with a handwritten address and a postage stamp.

A couple of days ago she sent an article from Time Magazine titled Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food. The first paragraph, which was placed solo in the sky portion of a full page photo, a black cow grazing in a brown field, read like a little farm fairytale. Except it was even scarier.

Here's it is, by Bryan Walsh:

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009.

Like all good fairytales there is a happy ending to the article though. It's this; the opportunities we have, three times a day, to choose better food. For ourselves, our neighbors, the pigs, fish and for our pretty planet.

Haiku Friday

A gnarly quince tree
twisted around the brick wall.
Crows caw heading home.

Grilled Peaches

I had an awakening last weekend. It happened after dinner, after the sun had set and dusk had settled in. Dishes were still on the table but we served the final course around them. Maybe they were moved to the side. I don't remember and honestly I'm sure no one noticed. The lake was pink, the air warm, the big dragon flies had come and gone. We were intoxicated on the sky and everything it touched.

I enlisted the cute guy, gave him a plate of halved peaches, a spoon full of olive oil and asked him to grill. He acted like he'd done it before, this cooking of fruit, pulling the peaches from the heat as they frayed at the edges, their skins slipping off. I sliced them into bowls, juice everywhere. And covered them with cream.

The only sounds were our spoons against the bowls, the unseen crickets and then someone asked, "Is there more?"

And I appreciated for the thousandth time and the first time again the sheer beauty of simplicity.

Haiku Friday

Eating figs on the bus
I trash the stems in my purse;
heavy as the fog.

Packaging

Every canvas bag I own is packed with books and a pantry of food for a few days away.

In a spontaneous moment however I purchased a plastic container at the farmers' market. Olives. I had to have them but managed to convince the seller I didn't also need a plastic bag.

He was skeptical.

I was firm.

And he was right; the container leaked. The cotton bag will come clean though.

Not to worry.

The Cove

Dolphins are like ice cream; most people love them and seeing one is as good as dessert. I've always wanted to hug one. Which is why the movie we saw last night, The Cove, was so disturbing. The movie uncovered and documented the hidden slaughter of dolphins in a cove of a Japanese city that upon first glance appeared to also love dolphins.

The city however was ground zero for the capture and sale of dolphins to the big business world of theme parks. It's the thousands of dolphins that don't make it to the stage that are packaged as meat, high mercury meat, and often labeled as whale, which commands a higher price. Unbeknownst to the public a good portion of dolphin also found its way into school lunch menus.


The film plays like a James Bond movie. There's bad guys, good guys, high tech cameras, cameras hidden in rocks; there are jagged cliffs, guarded tunnels and tails everywhere. I had to remind myself to breathe more than once. The sailor guy and I rotated between slouching lower and lower in our seats to sitting on the edge of them. One couple walked out.

Eating dolphins is one thing, depleting the oceans another but battling for first place in the list of disturbing was the politics that cover up the dolphin harvest.

Taking a broader view the film was a microcosm for many arms of our food system that are hidden and guarded; protected from view. It was about the world and not only Japan.

The good news however was the film itself. The effort, experience, community, commitment, knowledge and technology that went into making it were amazing. And when the crew wasn't running undercover they found time to laugh.

I love that. It gave me time to sit up and breathe.

Is the movie playing near you?

Haiku Friday

Three gems of lettuce
unused on the bottom shelf;
the week nearly gone.