Reality Check

I believe that we should be honest about where our food comes from. I was a vegetarian for over 10 years. The story behind my carnivorous conversion is not something I’m going to write about now, but I’ve long felt that if you are going to eat meat, you need to be honest about what it is you are eating, where it came from, and how it came to be on your plate. That isn’t always possible, unless you make it the focus of your day to day life. Maybe one day I will raise my own meat, but for now I just try to call it what it is and treat it respectfully.

Eli and I have always been really straight with the girls about what they are eating. Today, I had a moment when I questioned our logic. You see, tonight I served beans, elbow pasta, kale, and venison stew for dinner. The kale was from our garden, the dry beans and pasta from the store, the venison from NoNo’s freezer. She had more than she could use and blessed us with it. A friend of hers, a hunter, had killed and butchered a deer that he shared with her. Well, as Isabel walked to the table with her steaming bowl, her belly growling from a full day of outdoor play, I heard her comment “Yum, I’m gonna eat you deer, you won’t be able to eat our vegetables now.” I was a country kid growing up…barefoot and playing in the dirt and helping out in the garden every summer. But I vividly remember being distraught learning that venison was “Bambi”! And here is one of my kids eating it with gusto!

In addition to the overheard remark about our dinner, a friend who volunteers in Isabel’s classroom told me that the kids were discussing persuasive writing this week and along with that were discussing a passage about spring and whether or not it was the best season. The kids were asked to share their opinions. Was spring the best season? Isabel answered that spring was NOT the best season and when asked why she offered “because it is planting time.”

Despite my offspring’s deep appreciation of the reality of where food comes from, the weekend did hold some of childhood’s magic. Saturday was a lovely day. Our neighbors were having a party and you could see the balloons they’d strung up while standing at the entrance to the flower garden. It was magical. The photo I’ve included doesn’t do it justice. The girls got out the acrylics and spent an afternoon making art for the garden. They also finished Alice Jr., our resident scarecrow. And, they spent an entire hour clutching their money jars and waiting for the ice cream truck to show. We heard the truck way off in the distance and they nearly worked themselves into a frenzy anticipating its arrival. Isabel and Eli got orange creamsicles, Flora got a chocolate nutty ice cream bar, and I had a childhood favorite, the strawberry vanilla crunchy ice cream bar. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was just like I remember it from when I was little. The fact that the ice cream truck comes through our neighborhood thrills me to the core. I lived so far out in the country as a kid, the only ice cream truck I’d ever seen before I moved to Durham was on the tv. The existence of one in my neighborhood is on par with discovering fairies under the hydrangea bush. And the best part is, the girls are happy to do extra work around the garden and house to earn a little money for the ice cream man.

In between visiting the ice cream man, cleaning up acrylics and loving my babies in the hammock, I did manage to do a little gardening. I got almost a whole truck load of mulch put out (boy it doesn’t go far!) and all the tomatoes planted and caged. I wish the days were twice as long!