Two months ago, Bob started a container garden at work. We started harvesting basil and cilantro right away. Today we brought home a grocery bag full of chard and arugula. Tuesday, we’re going to fill another bag with lettuce and arugula. Soon, we’ll be eating beets and tomatoes. After that it will be eggplant and cucumbers.
This is not fast food. It takes time to grow, time to harvest and time to wash. I’ll cut up the chard, steam it and dress it with a little soy sauce and toasted sesame oil. The arugula is eaten raw in salads and sandwiches. I spend a couple of hours a day in the kitchen, washing and chopping, baking, steaming and boiling.
Slow Food is the antidote to Fast Food. Fast Food is killing our planet with greed for cheap, salty, sugary calories that coat the consumer’s internal organs with cottage cheese-like fat globules. Fast Food simultaneously provides comfort while feeding egos with the illusion of being too caught up in an important life to take time to nourish their bodies. Fast Food is invariably ordered, paid for, received and eaten in a moving car.
The rainforests are disappearing in order to satiate the Industrialized World’s appetite for 99-cent hamburgers. The real costs are largely ignored. It takes petrochemicals, growth hormones, antibiotics, spoilage retardants, packaging, refrigeration and shipping and to produce a Happy Meal.
All but the people at the top of the Fast Food industry have no clue what they are doing to their world. Everyone in the Slow Food industry knows exactly what he or she is trying to do for the earth.
It’s been hot, so I do my cooking in the morning while it is cool. We eat sandwiches and salads for dinner. When I bake, I make part of the dough into cabbage ‘burgers’ or calzones. When they come out of the oven, I cut some in half and take them over to Bob and Steve at work. They stop working and wash their hands. Bob walks out to the garden where he picks arugula to go with the burgers. Then we sit down and eat the warm buns and talk about whatever comes to mind.
