Eat Local Part 1
Think Global, Eat Local
It seems it was about a million years ago, in Los Angeles, California, that I was born. The epoch of mankind as hunter and gatherer was long past, the agricultural revolution had already been supplanted by the industrial revolution, and as a society we had finally determined how best to put food on the table: frozen TV dinners. They were easy to cook, easy to serve, and there was no cleanup. What’s not to love?
Plus, they were pretty good.
For a kid, how could they not be good? Each portion of food had its own compartment so there wasn’t any unintentional food-type touching: carrots and peas were walled off from mashed potatoes and gravy. There were plenty of meals from which to choose. In the odd case that a kid grew tired of the Mexican Style TV Dinner, there were Fishstick TV Dinners, Meatloaf TV Dinners, and Grilled Salmon with Wild Mushroom Risotto TV Dinners (not really, I’m projecting here).
Mom loved them too. She’d come home from work, pop a couple into the oven and Bam! Dinner! (We would have said, “Bingo! Dinner!” Emeril was still decades away.)
As a kid, a lot of my food came from the freezer, or in a can, or in a box that shaked and baked our chicken. Not all kids ate that way, I know, but that’s how the kids in my tribe learned about where food came from. It never, ever, came from the ground!
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