Today, every exit, rest stop and oasis provides access to one or more of the fast food giants and no access local eateries that might serve up something regional, something different.

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A shopping cart filled beyond full, boxes of groceries arched above the blue plastic basket, waited in line at the checkout. Peeking through the chaos of pretty packages, microwave dinners named Lean-This and Slim-That stood out. A slightly heavy but beautiful woman pushed the cart. Judging from the Lean/Slim dinners, either she or her mate did not appreciate her beauty.

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Bad news. The poached fish fell flat. Maybe not exactly flat. It looked good and tasted okay but fell short of greatness. Since many restaurants provide okay taste lacking greatness, why bother cooking at home? We cook to greatness, not less.

Fortunately, the bread and potatoes wowed the diners.

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The long pale of winter sets in all wet and cloudy, leaving us yearning for a feast to distract us from the melancholy hold of too little light and too much cold. Fortunately, we have one made to order: The Burns Supper.

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Oh well, the holiday break extended far beyond the intended week. Cold and flu conspired to keep me away from the keyboard, but time has come to get back to it.

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Many people, if they endeavor to create cake at all, choose to make cake from a box. Whether one of the more popular, instantly recognized name cakes or a lesser known, top shelf, hoity-toity cake, they elect the box cake path none-the-less. Considering the disadvantages of preservatives, old ingredients and artificial flavoring, there must be some great, hidden advantage of a cake mix.

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When it comes to getting things done, few tricks work as well as a good shopping list. If you go to the supermarket with no list, if you wander the aisles trying to decide what to get, shopping takes forever, and when you get home, you’ve forgotten the important stuff, like beer.

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Buying locally grown goods makes good sense, and usually good cents. When you buy locally, you help your neighbors, small farmers who are being crowded out by mega-companies; you get fresher food and often better varieties of produce than you can find in the supermarkets. The small farmers who grow produce for road-side stands and farmers’ markets often grow varieties that differ from those grown by big, super farms. The mega farms grow things that provide quantity, in contrast to taste, and that transport easily. Small, local farmers can grow varieties that ripen in the field and bring better flavor to your table. Many consider this biodiversity important to the perpetuation of our agriculture. When you buy from a local grower, you invest in goodness today and promise for tomorrow.

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Last summer, we bought half a cow from the Amish. It’s great meat, no weird stuff, no extra hormones or steroids. All this is sitting in the freezer. Or, some of it is. It seems that last time someone got something out, a package of beef fell out, and stopped the door from closing. All the meat on the door thawed out. Thankfully, what was in the freezer proper stayed frozen.

Still this left us with about twenty pounds of stewing beef that we had to cook right away. So, as we were making our various stews and freezing them, it occurred to me that people don’t do this as often any more.

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I’m not fat because I love food. I’m fat because I forgot to love food for a few years. Long hours, frantic dashing and stress made the eat-me marketing of fast food attractive. I bit and the hook was set. After a week or two of regular fast meals, I fell. Twice a week or more I needed my drive-thru fix; ached for fries perfectly perfumed to make me drool; had to have a burger and soda. My wife, loving and loyal, joined me for my habitual trips to the local instance of multi-national food-factory. But, alas, like all addicts, enough was not enough. When she wasn’t looking, I sneaked out for a quick snack. Like a robin drunk on fermented junipers, I fell. Every six months for two years I replaced my pants with the next size up. I ate junk for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I ended up fat.

What mistake did I make? Did I eat too much? Did I exercise too little? Or did I get fat because I let strangers select and prepare my food? I think the later. I do not try to excuse myself from blame. I ate the stuff and I knew, sort of, what I was doing. No, I make but an admittance of error in judgment. My mother showed me how to cook before I was ten. Since, I’ve been learning evermore about the uplifting alchemy of the kitchen. Even the failed experiments surpass, in flavor and nutrition, the mass produced food of the drive thru; food factories where the untrained and mechanical cooks collaborate to artificially scent meals to make them palatable; where light toxins battle the natural toxins of the factory food.

When life slowed down, home-cooking replaced the drive-thru. Not to go cold-turkey, my wife and I ate out two or three times a week, then cut down to once a week, then to less than twice a month. Cooking our own food forces direct contact with ingredients, deciding on portions and control of the preparation. We became obsessed with organic and locally grown produce. Luckily, produce stands and farmer’s markets pepper the landscape here. During the summer, we cook exclusively with fresh, locally grown produce. During the Winter, we look for organic on the labels or use the food we canned and froze during the summer months. I’m still fat, but I feel better and I have energy to follow the only genuine diet for weight loss; the ELEM diet (Eat Less, Exercise More).

I think cooking your own meals is simply a good idea; a way to live a more energized, more fulfilling life. Becoming one of the ad hoc chefs, comfortable in the kitchen; able to create meals from whatever is in the pantry, brings great joy of accomplishment. Always grab the best ingredients available; look for organic when possible and most of all, buy locally. Talk to the producers. Get to know them. Ask them how they grow things, what fertilizers they use, how they keep the weeds down and how they avoid pest damage. Know what you eat because it becomes you. Then enjoy putting a pot on the stove and inventing something good to eat.

copyright 2005 Chromia Poetics