Cheering for Chicken

I JUST BOUGHT FREE RANGE CHICKEN FROM THE FARMERS MARKET!!!

If you could not tell I am very excited. I believe that we all need to reduce our meat consumption and when we consume meat we should try to ensure that it comes from sustainable sources. Sometimes I believe that I am the biggest paradox, a food scientist that is adamant about local food as much as possible. Oh well, I don't fit in, I am different, and that is how I want to be. Changes don't come about by following the crowd.

My Life Right Now

I am running a gamut of emotions right now. I guess it is finally hitting me.

I had a rather inspiring talk with an old acquaintance last night. He has changed the direction of his career goals. He originally went to culinary school, but is not sure he wants to pursue that route because he doesn’t want his everyday career to spoil his enjoyment of cooking for his family. He is still not certain what he wants to do with his life. In asking him what he wanted out of life, he had the most peculiar response I’ve ever heard. He said that he “wanted un-attachment to everything”. This struck me as very peculiar; most times people respond, “to be happy” which leads to my second question of “what does it take to make you happy?”. But, he wants a lifestyle where he can pick up on a whim and go wherever he chooses. Not many careers allow that kind of freedom, but it is an interesting thing to think about for sure. It reminded me of a quote that I read long ago “ Any man who is attached to the things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.” I guess he does not wish to live in ignorance.

This morning I believe things were resonating inside of me from that conversation. I had awoken early to make a trial run in morning traffic to determine my commute time. (Traffic wasn’t too bad, busy but not impossible. However, changing lanes might be an issue, I need to ensure that I know where I am going because last minute lane changes don’t come easily out here. It is funny how the temperament of drivers’ changes by the city you are in. I also passed by a semi with hogs in it, obviously being transported for slaughter. Normally whenever I see those trucks they are empty. Then a while later I saw another one, this time with cattle in it. I wonder if this will become a common occurrence.) After my trial drive I was feeling good about things. Just in general being happy with myself, my situation. I ventured into a grocery store that I had wanted to visit. With quite a few turn-arounds to boot, but not really stressing about them, and generally laughing at myself. It’s fun when you can amuse yourself. I had needed to pick up a few items and chose to mosey around the store. Two previous stores that I have visited have not satisfied me but I just about fell in love with this one. It seems to be the middle road, my baby bear store if you will. It isn’t as cheap as the first one I went to nor as expensive as the second one I went to. What first grabbed my attention is the type of pharmacy type products that were on the side isle, shampoo, lotion, soap they were some of the more natural ones. Then the food in this section was other specialty type (gluten free) and organic type products, it really made me actually smile to see. But, what really sealed the deal is when I saw that they have milk in glass bottles from a local dairy. I about melted with the warmth I felt in my heart. My heart sings when this happens, when in today’s market I find a break through, a retail store that is giving business to local business. In my heart of hearts I know the reality of the market place and it always feels like a constant struggle for me always, fighting against the current making my head hurt and my heart feel tight. I want to do what is right. I want there to be a happy medium between food production and having convenient foods regularly supplied to American consumers. I always feel like it is a constant battle between big companies, corporations and big business, against the little guy, the blue-collar farmer, and the extreme environmentalists. I know that there needs to be a way to sustainably produce food and have it available to lower, middle, and upper class consumers; not just to those lucky enough to have a farmers market or lucky enough to have enough money to buy the “politically correct” food.

I walked away buying more than I had intended. I allowed my consumerism to kick in. And then I realized that I need to work on being more mindful in practicing what I preach. But at least my daiquiri glasses were made in the USA and not china.

Later this afternoon I also caught up with another friend. She spent college in Chicago and has now moved to Boston with her long-term boyfriend. She likes what she is doing for the most part but cannot see herself living in Boston for the rest of her life. She wants to also live in California and perhaps somewhere in Britain if not London proper. She is mostly struck by how snobby the people in Boston seem. She mentioned that there is snobbery everywhere but that it seems like the majority of the people in Boston are. We talked about how there are so many different ways to be in the world. It seems as though one could create a new identity for every city there is in the world. So she wants to explore in her lifetime, not to be tied down to one place, one way of being.

And even another long time friend called to catch up with me; One that I have commonly shared my fears and concerns with; A friend who also has angst when throwing things in the trash. She is getting ready for a job interview, as she has just returned to the US from Ireland. She finds things here to be the same yet different, and had tried to get more funding to stay in Ireland. She mentioned that she was thinking about questions that the people would ask her in the interview. She said that if they ask her about alternative fuel sources that she’ll have a good answer and had thought of me. Sometimes I wonder about the persona that I put out into the world, how people see me. The differences between how I see myself, the truth of myself and how others see me. I fear often that people think that I am smarter than I really am. Or perhaps I am selling myself short. But, it strikes me that it again seems like the theme of the week is ways of being and how environment changes it.

She asked me how I was doing; if I was excited or nervous. I explained that I wasn’t really giving it a lot of thought but that I could tell I was nervous because my stomach has felt funny lately. Sometimes it feels more like what is happening to me rather than how I am being actively involved in my life. Most of life is perception of life. Once we realize this a lot changes.

Shortly after that phone call ended my phone rang yet again. This time it was someone new. It was my new manager touching base with me. Which, I greatly appreciate, however it was strange to meet for the first time on the phone. I now find myself wondering how I made myself sound. Did I pitch my voice funny? Did I not ask enough questions? Did I seriously say “cool” and “fun”? Could he tell that I was nervous and started to get a little tongue-tied?
Before I wasn’t nervous, before it was I have to move, this is the next step. But now it is real. I start work on Monday. All of these what if questions are going through my brain. “What if I’m not what they are looking for?” “What if this isn’t what I’m looking for?” “Do I really believe in this product?” “What if I’m not smart enough?” “What if I don’t like it?” “What if I can’t handle it?” “What if this?” “What if that?” I, for a moment in time, found myself terrified.

But then reality and perspective came into play. This is a job. I am a person, I am capable of learning, and I have a good school background, and my last internship everyone appreciated my work ethic. I know that I may not be the smartest, fastest, prettiest, wittiest, funniest, nicest, or the est of anything. But I work hard and am nice. That hopefully will be appreciated anywhere I go. This job has the capability of being whatever I want it to be. A stepping-stone to something else, or my career. It is like that quote “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.” Half the game of life, probably more than half the game, is about how you approach things and attitude. I just hope that I can continue to have a good attitude with this job. I allowed my attitude or myself to be worn down at my last job. I couldn’t get out of the rut of feeling stuck. Hopefully I won’t let that happen here. I can let this job be what I need it to be.

“Losing illusion is good, but not at the price of losing hope”.

This comes up now because, like I mentioned in my grocery store story, I think a lot about food systems. I care about the environment. I know that the way we are treating it now is destroying the earth. Our simple day-to-day life is destroying the planet. One of the biggest polluters is our food system. From growing, to shipping, to processing, to packaging, to consumers going to get the food to preparing it at home there are a lot of steps that create a ton of pollution and use up valuable resources, some of which are nonrenewable and lots of water- which depending on how you view things could also be a nonrenewable resource. This company is part of the system. I am learning to accept that things need to be shipped, sometimes across oceans. I like things that aren’t grown in my area, coffee, chocolate, various fruits, and nuts. These are things that I consume regularly. I know that they need to be shipped. I can accept that people want everything whenever they want it. Meaning that people (American consumers) are going to demand produce, even if it is out of season. I am learning to accept the fact that people will never be on all local diets. I am learning to accept that not everyone can afford to buy organic all the time, let alone even care. I am learning to accept that people can’t always cook from scratch. I am learning to accept that some people don’t want to cook from scratch. I am learning to accept that some people consider eating alone in their car a meal. I am learning to accept that people think of a family meal as making something from a box and eating it in front of the TV. There are things that I am learning to accept, but that is not to say that I will give up hope that we can make changes that will reduce pollution, carbon emissions, and ultimately our food systems footprint on the earth. Not to mention not giving up on hope that people will realize that some family values can and do start with food, or that our lifestyle and relationship with food is greatly reflected in our health and happiness.

I take myself seriously; I take the world’s issues seriously. I have been inspired by many different people and by many different quotes.

“ Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else too.”
“Foster a desire to make the world a better place and act on this desire.”

“ We each have only a limited amount of time here. We have to do more with it - - pay attention, explore, be open to all of life. Because we have only one chance, we have to make life seem longer than it really is.”

“Happiness comes when your work and your words are of benefit to yourself and others.”

Although these things weigh heavily on my actions and thoughts I must also remember “Don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive.” As well as taking work seriously, myself seriously, I also need to take enjoying life seriously, having fun seriously, and making myself happy seriously. Seriously.

Just because things are important doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, or be happy, while doing them. Otherwise what would be the point?

City Entitlement

There are many things that I don’t talk about much on this journal, or maybe things that I have just not mentioned. I mostly write out my thoughts, what is currently going on in my life etc. There are some thoughts that I just don’t share. Or things that I normally do that I just don’t mention. There are parts of us that we find inherent, and sometimes other people don’t realize it about us. It is no one’s fault just the way it is. But lately I have been racking my brain about the system of the US and the world. I am in food science, as most of you know. But I also come from the Reduce Reuse Recycle campaign of long ago. I guess it stuck in my mind because lately I have been stumbling over it in my brain. As I look around in the world I look at the amount of consumption and the mentality of consumerism. It eats away at me to think that every single thing that is thrown away is a material that took energy, time, and money to make, not to mention resources, and it is going to stay in a landfill never to be used again, never to be of any help ever again. Some of the things that we toss are degraded back into soil but it is still useless because of all of the toxins that are leached into the soil surrounding the things that will not degrade, or will take thousands if not millions of years. Thinking this way can drive me crazy thinking about the millions of tons of trash that is in produced every day. Packaging and plastic bags drive me nuts! It would be interesting to see if it is possible to find the amount of paper that could be saved if packaging were reduced, or if all packaging and packing materials could be recycled.


I drove throughout some of the Omaha area. This city is much larger than many people realize. Everyone I told that I was moving out here always remarked something along the lines of, “What’s out there?” Well it is, actually, very developed and very large. I drove west past my apartment complex for the first time, and there were large areas of housing development with those huge houses with vaulted ceilings, rather overbuilt for my taste. In other words it is huge “Urban Sprawl”, really. The city is encroaching on all the land that used to surround it. What of the land that is lost? What of the people that are now filling those plots? How are they to be sustained?

I found myself wondering if we can ever sustain cities with only the farmland that surrounds them?

I did finally get to some land cleared for farmland, but this is the Midwest, the Corn Belt. As the areas are currently plowed I cannot tell you what the crop will be, but in all best guessing it is most likely to be corn and if not corn than more than likely soybeans. And let me remind you this is the Midwest. There are many, many months of the year when things aren’t being grown. In pilgrim days people would have to have cold storage and life off tubers, root veggies, and whatever apples they could store. But today the majority of our food is trucked in from other states if not other countries so we can have what ever we want whenever we want it. Not only is there demand for things that that aren’t in season, but there is great demand for things that simply cannot be grown in the region. Citrus fruits cannot be grown in the northern parts of the US; and I don’t believe we grow coffee or bananas.

Our way of life simply is not sustainable. The things we want, the amount of things we buy and keep buying. The waste that we produce. The land we trash, the water that we use and squander.
It is our nature to continually make our life’s easier. In doing so we have changed the worries of our lives, of our nation. Because we do not have to spend our time farming in order to survive we have created other professions and have created vehicles to make the world smaller.

But in doing so, we have created havoc on the earth. We have not prepared or innovated to protect what we live on. We have been so far removed from the planet from the earth we live on we do not give a second thought that everything we throw away in the trash is a material that will never be used again and will continue to stay on the planet in an un-useable state for eons to come. The population has boomed and grown at huge rates that we have not predicted. Countries are developing and using the US as a model, people in China all want cars like Americans. We have increased consumerism in our own country and in countries around us.

I don’t believe it takes a scientist to realize, to make the connections that we are getting to a point where we cannot continue to live like this.

It will take all of us to change this. It will take more than all of us to stop throwing away things that can be reused, and buying and throwing away things that can’t. It will take system changes. Changes in the way we build our homes, our cities. Changes in the way we grow our food, buy our food, and prepare our food. Changes in our expectations of life. We need to change the idea that it is our right to live like this and not preparing for the future. We need to change our feeling of entitlement and start feeling the urgency to preserve what we have not yet destroyed, and fix the damage that has already been done.