Spoiled Seedless

Our manager sent out an email today entreating everyone in our group to eat healthy food. It was a little strange. Apparently he's being contientious these days and other people were saying "yeah, I should do that, or something" so he wanted to invite everyone to join the "fun". Discussing this consumed a fair amount of the morning, in bits and pieces. Some one suggested that all we were allowed to eat was the highly fiberous cardboard that food comes in.

During the discussions on healthful food, though, people were skirting around a huge mound of concord grapes one of the other managers had picked and brought in to share. Concord grapes, along with cherries, are one of my favorite foods. No fewer than four people let me know that they had, shudder, seeds! Never been a problem for me. I bite halfway through the grape in a way that squirts the juicy inside out. I chew on the skins a bit. I suck a bit on the sweet center and may or may not chew it some more before I swallow it. If seeds come out, I spit them out, if they don't, I swallow them. No big deal.

It has started to alarm me how many people cannot tolerate the idea of seeds in their food. It's a reaction I would expect from a toddler, not a full grown adult. They're seeds, not shards of broken glass. What with seedless grapes, watermelon, and the like, people are removed from the entertainment value of spitting while snacking. I worry sometimes about this. Although if it means there are more cactus pears left for me because seed panickers won't eat them it might not be all bad.

No wonder we rely so much on modified, pre-packaged, post-seed-removal foods. The more that show up, the more people forget that there's any other way. People go on and on about the benefits of skinless boneless chicken breasts - probably my least favorite portion of the bird. It's the meat equivalent of cardboard having all the color, flavor, and texture removed. I like the dark meat, myself, even if it comes with bones and tendons. I also eat the knuckle meat and small legs from the lobster.

Even so, I can't get too high and mighty. I will fess up to not caring for wings, being only skin and tendons with sauce. (Just point me at the drumsticks.) I don't eat enough beef to feel that I need to resort to tripe. Or hooves. I have ordered stuff from the butcher at the Mexican grocery across the street and have not liked it. I don't recognize most of the stuff they sell, in fact. It doesn't look a thing like the American grocery butcher counter which is now mostly prepped food like stuffed chops and deli treats. I wonder if it is is good, bad or indifferent that I don't recognize someone else's regular meal as food. Are they laughing at me the way I laugh at the no-seed-eaters?

Every generation makes more convenient food, and that's generally to the good. But we've moved so far away from where food comes from that our tolerance for its little peculiarities alarms me. I try to can stuff every so often and realize that there are tricks to preserving food that are being lost that used to be common knowledge. Recipes and instructions leave out some details that make things go better. Frankly, my grandmas love Green Giant. If they never canned another thing as long as they lived, they'd consider it a blessing. They've forgotten their canning tricks but I still remember their bread and butter pickles.

I wonder if the day will come when we want that knowledge and have to re-learn it the hard way. Maybe I'm just a luddite who wants to know how things work. At least sconome and I can make pickles that don't kill us or our friends. And I have a nice can of freshly packed Alaska salmon staring at me from the counter so all hope is not lost. And here I've only just started reading the grow-your-own food book and I've started to get insufferable even knowing that I am not a reliable gardener and depend on others to make things grow.

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Speaking of grandmas, Happy 91st to Grandma P. She's been remarried for 5 years and 2 weeks now and is enjoying the heck out of life.