Recipe for Success

Nimble fingers flicking past card after 3x5 recipe card, Linda exclaimed.  “I could get rid of two-thirds of these.”   Seated on the kitchen bar stool---as I so often do to watch the master at her craft---I nodded knowingly.    She’d said a bagful in that one.  And we both knew it.  When your whole life feels condensed into a single phrase, what is there to do but stare?  Not only stare at the amazing she who’d said it, but at the movie now playing in my mind.    Actually, it was more like a trailer, a trailer for our life, our new life, turned upside down since 2004.

Incisors rip and tear.  Free-range chicken.    Whole Farm Coop.  Linda smiles.  “Guess I have to learn how to cook all over again.”

Omnivore’s Dilemma.  Purple sticky note.  If there’s a new right we need to establish, maybe this is the one:  the right, I mean, to look. 

CRV winding down pastoral County 26.  I glance over at Linda.  She looks rabid.  Crazed.  “Got to find a way to get those Dietz vegetables every week.”

Kitchen table.  Linda opens the CSA box.  Green.  Red.  We ooh and ah like Christmas.

Linda’s stained gospel.  The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper.  Each page silently whispers its mantra. “Local, seasonal ingredients sing together like tomatoes and basil.” 

And what title roles at the end of this trailer?   Pantry for a Revolution.    Trust Me, It’s Just a Meal.   Of course trailer’s don’t really tell you what the movies about.  Yet in our silence there in the kitchen, Linda and I did.   All those old 3x5 recipes that we’d never use again due to their ingredients.  Processed. Industrial.  Opaquely sourced.   New recipe cards took their place. 

And on the way to her well-stocked pantry, she’d found a new recipe for our life.   Linda’s bold move away from Industrial Organic toward transparent food---“do I know where this came from”---launched us off-the grid and into our new community-reliant life.  In retrospect its shocking how shocked we were by what we learned.  Our own…

Recipe for Success

Everything fulfilling happens up close and personal. 

The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying:  Be Myself, Work Less, See Friends, Express Feelings, Choose Happiness.

Discard the grid.  It’s impersonal and unfulfilling.

Food grid.  Power grid.  Entertainment grid.   Health care grid.  Education grid.  Trade grid.

Engage community.  It’s fun, rewarding and very, very tasty.

Friends.  Family.  School-mates.  Neighbors.  Volunteers.  Local food.  Sunlight.  Rain.  Trees.  Bees.