Industrial organic

There are a few books that will change the way you view the food you put in your mouth. One of these is Diet for A New America by John Robbins, but the one that came to mind today was Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Our family tries in so many ways to reduce our footprint on this Earth. We have a "used" house, remodeled with recycled items wherever possible, we use energy-efficient appliances (and even a few of those annoyingly dim compact fluorescent light bulbs). Our cars are two ancient Volvos (the 'new' one is a 1992). Our clothes come from both thrift shops and retail outlets. And we buy organic food for the right reasons, as well as the selfish ones.

So I feel slightly guilty about today's meals. I didn't really cook today, but I was politically correct enough to buy organic "fast" food. (The only meal I made today was a quick lunch: French onion soup from a mini-brick and a BLT on rye crisp.)

Blame it on the holidays: We got to sleep in this morning, as the kids overnighted at the neighbors while we went dancing. I awoke at 8 and baked up some lemon poppy seed organic muffins from a box of Dr. Oetker, and we breakfasted with the neighbors. It's funny, Dr. Oetker is about as mainstream as you can get in Germany, but you don't find his (their?) boxed mixes anywhere but import shops here; instead the organic line is in every natural food store.

Dinner was a different story: eaten in the car between a holiday party at the swimming school and Number One son's cello recital (his Tarantella was actually quite nice, in spite of a couple glitches). It came in little boxes from Whole Foods, and cost me well over $30 for four people.
I hark back to 1988, and a French friend is ranting about the opening of a bakery in her provincial French town--Pat à Pain was open until 9 pm, and open on Sundays, and she was absolutely livid. Young and American as I was, I thought it was terrific--very convenient and all that. She grumbled something about the younger generation not being able to plan ahead. Dear me, but she turned out to be right! If I had planned ahead, I could have done better than the Whole Paycheck buffet.

I promise to try to do better tomorrow. But as long as I was feeling frivolous, I bought premium gas for the 30-year old Volvo.