Thursday, July 10, 2008

HEATHENS AT THE HEARTH

Welcome all heathens to my kitchen!

I’m on a bandwagon.
I’m a foodie and a cook and a food writer- and I am on the organic bandwagon.
I know all the reasons for organic, the bumph, the hype, the health, the health of the planet and the fact that it looks ‘oh so cool to tote the wicker basket at the local market’-and I love them all these reasons (both important and silly). I love them for the sense of community they bring. The idea that ‘we who have lost contact with the production of our food’ can somehow reach out to those who make the food and reconnect with the bounty of our world.



I am a city girl. But in recently I have begun to wish that I had been borne with a green thumb and in the country.
I envy my friends who grew up grading eggs and starting before dawn to help harvest before school (though I am sure that at least one of these friends would happily trade my childhood with hers).
I have a hankering to get back to nature. To produce my own food and to watch things grow. Idyllic and idealistic as it is in my head, and even knowing that the reality is somewhat less romantic and a damn sight more gruelling- I am that close to quitting it all and heading to Byron Bay with a bushel of seeds and a pitch fork.
This is no passing trend for me. It’s been going on for about 2 years now- this urge for a sea change, this obsession with where my food comes from, how it was grown and by what means it got here.

So to support this emotional trend and to acknowledge it in my current life (the one before I head for the hills and wear overalls for the rest of my days) I stopped shopping at chain supermarkets, and I began to frequent the local farmers markets and any organic communes that I could find. I did this, in order that when purchasing the food that I so dearly love I might also touch the hands that grew it and packed it.

Right now, the closest I can get to nature in a practical sense, is concentrating on my food and where it comes from.
It makes me happy and it brings me closer to my primordial gathering self.

I’m an organic wanker- I hope you are too- because there are so many good reasons to be one.

This blog is dedicated to a life's journey with food- to my belief that too many people have forgotten how to have fun with food & forgotten how to be 'unafraid' in their own kitchens.

I want to remind people that food is fun- if reaches out to every sensation- good food, played with, should smell good, feel good, sound good, look...interesting, and yes... TASTE good- you just have to be brave enough to find those thing in your food- they are certainly all there!

Nothing makes me happier than good food, sharing it and knowing where is comes from.
'Play with you food' is my attempt to bring people back to their kitchens for the sheer joy of it- and so I welcome all heathens to my hearth!

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