Darling Illustrations | Queer Artist, Storyteller and Illustrator

After a long day, it’s easy to order takeout, nuke a freezer meal in the microwave or “cook” up a box of hamburger helper.  The clean-up for these meals is also easier.  Takeout meals have disposable utensils, napkins, containers and condiment packages.  Very little cleanup is required for freezer meals or boxed meals as well.  While this food is easy to make, however, it is food that has been changed-processed and complicated-in order to be able to freeze well, taste good or be cheap to mass produce.  Complicated food is not intended to nourish, primarily, but to be sold. It is a commodity; and, for the most part, it is a food substitute.

We romanticize certain kinds of foods, foods that are homemade, heirloom, specialty, craftsman, or gourmet.  We intrinsically recognize that non-industrialized foods hold great value and character.  Even industrialized foods try to hearken back to simpler times, when food was grown primarily on small farms and livestock were able to roam under the sun and rain.  We want simple food, but simple food is hard to come by.

To eat real food, and to eat it as simply as possible, you have to buy raw ingredients. You have to prepare them. You have to wash tons of dishes. And tomorrow you have to do it all over again.

How would you make your own salsa?  How would you can or preserve your summer tomatoes? How would you bake your own bread or grind your own flour? Can you imagine making your own yogurt, or even your own cheese? Have you ever considered raising backyard chickens?

The more “simply” you eat and the raw-er your ingredients get, the more time you spend preparing them, and the more dishes you have to wash.  When a meal is simple and your ingredients are simple, there is often much work, preparation or training involved.  It’s a pity, really, that we have lost a lot of our innate cultural wisdom regarding food preparation.  To our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, much of this simple living came naturally as they learned the traditions from their mothers; for those raised in an industrialized world where our mothers were raised to depend on supermarkets and Betty Crocker, we have to strive to find a food niche from which to nourish our families.

I’m thankful that farmers markets are on the rise. I’m thankful that people are demanding local food options. I’m thankful that meat shops across the nation are offering butchery workshops for average citizens. I’m thankful heirloom seeds were preserved by a handful of wonderfully weird and independent farmers and gardeners. I’m thankful that the internet is available to be a great resource for those of us who want to walk away from over processed fake foods and be retrained in the wonderfully deep and mysterious world of real, simple food.

I’ve learned a lot, and I still have a lot more to explore. In the meantime, who wants to come wash my dishes?

By ekwetzel
2010-10-22

*Photos of the takeout bags and of the girl in the kitchen, courtesy of Molly Morris.

WEEK 16

(Clockwise, from the eggs)
Eggs (again, the farm has young hens, and they are laying smaller eggs this week, so we received 18 eggs instead of the normal dozen)
3 Jalapeno Peppers
2 Leeks
Red & Purple Potatoes
2 Purple Onions
4 Tomatillos
Delicata Squash
Garlic
2 Beets
Red Chard
2 Eggplant
(In the middle)
4 Tomatoes
Apples
3 Green Peppers

I drive with the windows down.  I love the fresh air, the wind in my hair, the sun on my arms.  I get a kick out of smelling the changing seasons or feeling the true level of humidity, fog or misting rain in the air.

Now that we moved, I take a 15 minute commute to my job, and I spend most of my drive on the freeway.  The worst part of the commute is the “armpit of Tacoma,” on I-5 between the Tacoma dome and Highway 16.  Even when the traffic is moving freely, the air on this stretch of freeway gets caught in a little valley, and the smog is unbearable.  I roll the windows up and try to have faith in the little air filter in my car.

What aggravates me the most about my commute, however, is there are many large trucks on the freeway, and they expel copious amounts of dark exhaust in to the atmosphere. It makes me gag! I get particularly upset when I see a truck whose exhaust is black and thick. How is it legal for companies to use trucks that pollute the air like this?

When Mr. Wetzel and I used to order groceries though Spud’s delivery service, I always enjoyed being able to see exactly how far each item on my grocery list travelled in order to get to the Spud warehouse. It really helped to put into perspective how great of an impact buying locally can have on the environment. Here are some interesting stats from Spud’s website:

“Each year, over $16 billion is spent across North America just to transport food. Most of this money is spent on 4 million trucks traveling 10 billion miles annually. The average grocery item travels 1500 miles to get from its place of production to where it is sold. All this transportation uses tons of fossil fuel and releases large quantities of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into our air.”

To help you get a clearer picture of what all this food transportation means, take a look at this infografic from Good magazine’s website (Click on the image above for a larger version, or go to Good’s website to see the original post here ). It is a terrific illustration of the impact it could make on the environment if more of us were to buy locally instead of aimlessly picking up whatever has been transported en mass to the local grocery chain.

Trucks stink. Farms don’t. Local food passes my smell test. Hopefully the more we demand local produce and products, the more our economy will shift to steward local economies and environments with greater responsibility and care.

By ekwetzel
2010-10-01

WEEK 13
(Clockwise, from the eggs)
Eggs (again, the farm has young hens, and they are laying smaller eggs this week, so we received 18 eggs instead of the normal dozen)
6 Corn on the Cob
2 Bok Choi
6 Apples
Cucumber
Red Onion
Head of Garlic
Green Cauliflower
Radishes
Green Beans
Head of Lettuce
Summer Squash & Zucchini
(In the middle)
Eggplant
Pumpkin Peppers
Tomatillos
4 Tomatoes

Real food is good for the body and makes us healthy.  That is one reason why I become more dedicated to real food the more I learn about it and experience it.

Mr. Wetzel and I eat farm veggies, fruit and eggs from our CSA, Terries Berries.  We buy milk from another CSA, Meadowwood Farm.  When we eat meat, we try to buy from a local, Washington farm, like Sea Breeze Farm, and if we don’t have the time or money to do that, we’ll at least get organic, grass-fed, or pastured meat.  When we buy bread, we like to get it from Great Harvest or The Essential Baking Company, local bakeries that use whole grains and high quality ingredients.  For other food stuffs, we avoid processed and industrial foods.  For example, we make our grilled cheese sandwiches with mozzarella, not American cheese slices.

This is not how we always used to eat.  When we met in 2006, we’d eat at a fast food joint on average once a day. Our favorites were Taco Del Mar or Subway.  I used to survive on Hamburger Helper, boxed mixes for muffins and brownies, and frozen quick-to-stir-fry meals.  And, boy, did I ever have the health problems to go along with that food lifestyle!  I used to have severe acid reflux.  I was also lactose intolerant.  To this day, I am still dealing with being insulin resistant.

We used to pour so much money into different medications to treat the symptoms of our bad food choices, instead of diverting our funds to fix the problem at the source.  I took both prescription and over-the-counter medicines to help with the acid reflux and lactose intolerance.  They were expensive and they elped, but they only curbed the issues I had. At least every couple months, I used to wake up in the middle of the night with terrible burning in my esophagus, and then I’d have to puke up everything in my system before I’d feel any better. No doctor was ever able to diagnose this problem; it was simply something I lived with.

My health issues are one of the first things that lit a fire under me and spurred on my interest in better foods and real foods.  I started drinking raw milk, and my lactose intolerance went away entirely.  We stopped eating processed foods and industrial foods, and I no longer suffer from acid reflux.  I can eat a meal and not be in pain an hour later.  Is that a miracle? No. I believe that’s how we were created. We were meant for healthy foods and healthy food experiences, and when foods make us sick, it’s a sign that there is something wrong with the food.  Sickness should not be a way of life.

I still feel like a real food rookie, but I do know one thing: if what we’re doing is working, I’m gonna keep on keepin’ on.

By ekwetzel
2010-09-03

WEEK 9
(Clockwise, from the eggs)
Eggs (again, the farm has young hens, and they are laying smaller eggs this week, so we received 18 eggs instead of the normal dozen)
Cucumber
Bok Choi
Romaine lettuce
6 Ears of Corn!!!
Summer Squash
5 Peaches
6 Potatoes
Red Chard
Carrots

(In the middle, from the left)
4 Tomatoes
Yellow Green Beans
1 Head of Garlic
1 Onion