Eat Your Way Through Earth Day

I love food. Not generic, out-of-the-box-designed-only-to-be-convenient food, but diverse, right-from-the-person-who-produced-it type of selections. My passion for a meal with a story stems, I believe, from my upbringing on a farm that provides me with insight into how everything on my plate came to be there, a view that is restricted to a very small percentage of the population today. Something tells me that when the average citizen sits down to a meal, the last thing on their mind is a farm and a family and the labor and passion that got the juicy chunk of beef (or pork, or chicken, or lamb, or turkey, or veal) to the plate in front of them. To me, a meal should blow your mind with flavor and at the same time act as a tribute to the people who have devoted their lives to the production of said entree. When I take a bite of excellent chicken, I am in the barn with the caretakers watching proudly as the birds grow and mature into healthy marketable fowl. Take a bite of a hot-off-the-grill steak (medium rare with butter and mushrooms and a little coarse salt, some fried asparagus on the side) and I am not simply tasting beef, I am reveling in the familiar smell of a barn, the subtle but ever present commotion from the cattle, the excited between-chores talk of things to come, and the pride associated with producing something that will make people very happy. Some tasty pork represents a pen of healthy hogs rooting around, lips smacking, while the grower looks over them with quiet satisfaction after another busy day. While blissfully enjoying anything from meats to vegetables, I am grateful to those in the field working with their land and animals to ensure my next feeding frenzy is a success.

These emotions that should come with our meals have been largely erased from the eating experience thanks to cookie-cutter restaurant chains trying only to maintain food consistency (forget quality and originality) across their 3,200 dining centers, diet plans yelling that the only way to a flat belly is to eliminate carbs or starch or meat or eggs or sugar or everything from your daily intake, "doctors" on biased infomercials saying studies indicate eating this food rather than that food will enhance your life with ".000003 micrograms more omega-3-fatty acids"...you know what I am talking about. Add to the confusion an environmental group that portrays farmers as earth-destroyers and animal activists that portray producers as "factory farmers" who cause "untold suffering to farm animals" and the bombardment will make even the strongest individuals actually WANT to sit inside and eat freeze-dried bean sprouts for the rest of their lives. Does anyone else see the tragedy here?

So, on this Earth Day while everyone else is screaming at the top of their lungs that you need to avoid meat to save the World, I will sit here and quietly suggest that you do the opposite. Make yourself and your family a special meal that supports any one of our dedicated cattle ranchers, hog producers, poultry producers, specialty meat guys, and vegetable growers big or small, production or niche. Connect in this way to the people behind the scenes constantly working with the Earth to safely keep it productive and our taste buds content rather than falling in behind someone who advertises "I am saving the World!" as they fly to the next environmental convention that, when said and done, is about as environmental as a toxic waste dump. Enjoy the bounty of the land by way of your food and get real with your efforts to help out the Earth by supporting farmers who work with the environment each and every day; if we all do this, the results will be much more dramatic than "going green" by purchasing the latest electric pushmower advertised in Mother Earth News.