Blossom to Stem

This year I had two resolutions. Write more. Get better at salads.

With the end of January upon us, I’m sneaking in just before Rome’s favorite two-faced deity shuffles out, taking all his transitional momentum with him. Over the past few years, I’ve reevaluated much of the way I cook and eat. I’ve tried to make the food in my life deliberate, nourishing, and most of all, delicious. Michael Pollan’s article in Sunday’s New York Times struck a chord, and if you haven’t yet read it, then I recommend a look at one of the best articulations of sound food philosophy I’ve seen in the popular press.

His exhortation to avoid processed foods, while perhaps more intuitive than revolutionary, just makes sense. His dicta are straightforward: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” One may quibble with some of his arguments grounded in something akin to armchair evolutionary science or primitivism, but the basic argument that the food industry has more interest in making us buy more than in improving our health and that the produce section (or better, farmer’s market or CSA, or even better, Voltaire, from our own carefully cultivated gardens) is where we should be procuring the bulk of our food is difficult to fault.

I always feel a twinge of guilt when I succumb to the convenience of a frozen pizza. I know better, even if at the time I’m convinced that turning on the oven is all the energy I can muster. Good, real food is so much more satisfying and doesn’t necessarily require much more effort.

Here’s to continuing to making the effort, one day at a time.