Food, glorious food.

I've been on a steady path to more healthy family eating, really since I left the work force when we moved to Atlanta. I have been progressively cooking more from scratch, and wasting a lot less food by menu planning and creative management of the fridge and pantry. All our bread is homemade, and has become a staple at every meal, helping to fill the bottomless pits that are teeneage boys.

After reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, my relationship with food has taken yet another spin. It is a convincing argument for local, organic, small-farm sourcing of as much of one's food as possible. I had been considering joining a CSA for a couple of years while we were in Atlanta, but never got around to it. Today I signed up with Green Earth Organics and will get a box of (to the extent possible in each season) local/organic produce delivered to my home on a weekly basis.

I just picked up a copy of Pollan's most recent book In Defence of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Whereas The Omnivore's Dilemma focussed on food production practices, this one looks at nutrition fads/fallacies/claims and proposes a rational approach to deciding what and how to eat. He is a great writer and very inspiring. And he wants me to switch back to butter! (This is one area that I have flipped back and forth on a half a dozen times over my adult life: butter-Becel-butter-Becel.)

The vegetarian in the household has okayed the occasional ingestion of pasture-raised meat and my local Loblaws is now carrying meat from Beretta Organic Farms which fits the bill for him. So I'm looking forward to a home cooked roast or steak every once in a while. Not to mention a leg of organic lamb for Easter Sunday dinner (although I'll need to go to a butcher to get a fresh one.)