left: guavas, red onions, avocados, green plantains, tomatoes, beets, red bell peppers, limes, red grapes, criollo potatoes, and fresh beans.
right: a soup/stew made with
beans, a diced plantain, half a tomato, an onion, several cloves of garlic, and spices with slices of tomato, avocado and corn bread on the side. (not shown is the fresh guava juice I blended up to accompany the meal). yum!Although I don't think organic certification really exists or would matter here, I do know that every piece of produce came from nearby. Some of it I even bought at a little store down the road that just sells fruit and veg and whose tag line is: "Direct from the fields to your house!"
**I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that my mother is the person kind as to internationally lend me Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. A year and a half ago we got into a very heated discussion (one might even consider it an argument) in the car while my parents were visiting me during family weekend at Scripps. I was saying that organic certification has lost most of the potency it once held since the organic food industry is just as corrupt with problems and it is now better (for your health and the world) to support local. My mother, on the other hand, maintained that organic was still a safer bet since the consumer knows that pesticides aren't used.
I think that the deeper undercurrent raising our personal investment in the topic was based on the fact that my parents lovingly raised us on extremely healthy, home-made food into which much consideration was involved. And by repudiating organics my mom felt like I was disregarding the sacrifices they had made to feed me as best they could--which I definitely wasn't since I think they did an amazing job at solving our family's odd but serious health issues by changing our diet. Before we remodeled our old house, we even had a huge garden that provided us with most of our produce. Fifteen years ago organic was the cutting-edge of health food, and they were right in there with the rest of the crazies preaching about the harmful effects of pesticides on the nation.
That February night in 2007 I challenged my mother to research the new local food movement and see if she couldn't update her knowledge on the current food situation. The last time I visited my parent's kitchen in July, they had a cornucopia of local produce spread out on the counter that they had received from their weekly subscription to a local food co-op. They recently had ordered half a free-range buffalo from Montana to replace the red meat they usually bought from the market, and made me try the local honey they use in their morning tea whcih supposedly helps build up immunity to airborne allergens. When I looked a the hallway bookshelf, I was greeted with the spines of different non-fiction books on the local food movement and sustainable farming. Out in the backyard my parents had even started growing all their own herbs, eggplants, fruit trees, and tomatoes! I quickly realized that my mom and dad had truly taken our conversation to heart and learned enough to adapt their lifestyles to the concepts I had preached even more than I have done for myself; making me somewhat of a hyppocrite. But really, it was just one more example confirming my belief that I have the coolest parents ever and feel increasingly lucky to have been raised by them!
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