June 16, 2010

Readers,

Yes, I know. It's been forever. Blogging started to be a chore- just another thing that I needed to get done and that's no way to go about a project. Worse, the cooking started to be that way as well.

Tonight I went to the grocery store. No real problem there, right? But, it was. I won't go in to the problem where they didn't have any of the agile smaller carts. You know the ones I'm talking about, and you have to admit they're far superior. 

The problem comes in my realization that the world is against us. All of us. The world I'm talking about is the connventional food industry, and the us I"m talking about is everyone who cares enough about themselves to think about what they put into their bodies.

How many of you, dear readers, have enjoyed the fresh healthy feeling of blending fresh fruits, juice, ice (whatever) and created your own smoothie. A great way to use fresh fruits, have something sweet and convince yourself that you've created something in the kitchen. I'm sorry to report that the freezer aisle at your local Kroger now carries  a premade fruit smoothie. And it's in some sort of plastic bag in the freezer (next to the frozen fruits). A premade fruit smoothie in a bag. Am I the only one finds this out of line? I stood in front of the freezer staring at it for 30 whole seconds trying to figure out why you would ever let go of the joy of "cooking" your own smoothie and getting the kitchen all dirty with fruit juice all over the place for a nice bagged high fructose corn syrup frozen treat. Even now, sitting at home, I'm a little baffled.

A big part of this experiment for me is about leaving the store with actual ingredients. Actual raw, uncooked, unprocessed, unsliced, unshelled, un-everything'd food ingredients. I'm attempting to bring them home, process them myself, combine them, apply heat and eat the resulting combination. If you pay careful attention in the store, you may find it harder and harder to find the original ingredients. This, I'm prepared to argue, is a problem. I have virtually no idea how to solve this problem, but it is dramatically cutting my ability to conduct my experiement and, frankly, I'm a little perturbed.

Or, perhaps I'm in a sour mood because I'm a little hungry. I wonder if I could make something in under 60 seconds?


Jo