Nika's Culinaria - Eat With Your Eyes

(Image Source: Whole Foods)

So, I have to admit to this disturbing dynamic in my eating habits – my mouth doesn’t water over vegetables. I know from childhood and our acre garden in Iowa what fresh lettuce and spinach tastes like as you pick it right off the plant. Same for strawberries. Yet, when I walk in the vegetable section of the grocery store, and I FORCE myself to walk the isles, I am so completely unappetized and uninspired. I WANT to grow my own food because I know intuitively that it is more likely I would eat it. When I browse the seed packets at the store though, I find a similar uninspired feeling.

What is that all about it?

I find my answer after putting a little thought into the experience I have with vegetables, in the grocery store.

Yes, sure, I walk the isles, look at veggies, try to imagine delicious preparations that might titillate me. Just doesn’t happen. What happens is that I look at a vegetable and the scientist and mom in me looks at the rind or skin and wonders just how much pesticide lurks there. I look at the potatoes and wonder the same. I become exhausted by this experience and do not buy anything beyond a few tomatoes that I figure wont kill us off RIGHT away.

Thus, its not a wholesome, joyous, sustainable experience.


(Image Source: Whole Foods)

You might think it would be wholesome, joyous, sustainable at Whole Foods but its not! For one, I live like more than 50 miles from the closest one so when I buy anything there I have to plan as if I am dragging the haul to north of the Arctic Circle. I do find myself admiring the beautiful greens and fruits, even the conventional ones but then my frugal side kicks in and I just cant spend that much money and it makes me mad that we cant eat it 24/7. Honestly, it would not kill us to eat it 24/7 in terms of absolute budget on the food alone but the gas to get there and back would make it simply obscene.

So, all of this gets in my way, all this is what is floating in my mind as I stand in Whole Foods by the flowers near the front door, sniffing them and staring at the vegetables and fruits across the way.

PA-THE-TIC.


(Image Source: Whole Foods)

My veggie world has closed down, perhaps you could say it never opened up, because I fear the chemicals (and with good reason). I do not know what the answer really is. I would like to become dependent on vegetables. I want them to sustain me because they can be so strengthening and invigorating where meat pulls me down into a stupor.

So it’s a clash between an easy stupor-fix and the harder to obtain vitality of pure vegetables.

Now if I could just convince my tastebuds.


(Image Source: My flickr stream)