Animal. Vegetable. Alex.

This Saturday, Mom and I drove to Asheville to run the Hot Chocolate 10K sponsored by EarthFare to benefit an Asheville Charter school. It was quite cold, but afterwards the Hot Chocolate flowed as freely as booze at a Frat party.

Quite famished, we arrived at Tupelo Honey, the areas first 'farm to table' (now Asheville is a local food mecca). After gorging on some local chevre cheese with tomatoes and arugula as well as a lusty winter salad and sweet potato gingered pancakes, we were full to bursting.


We ambled around the town and drove over to Greenlife, an Asheville exclusive Earthfare like store exploding with the areas goods.


We got our groceries there for the week and headed home exhausted and still full. In Johnson City, however, we got the munchies and stopped in EarthFare to take advantage of their exclusive '50% hot/cold bar' special for the week. Upon getting home, we crashed, exhausted and content.

Life for me the past few weeks has been very local-centric as promised. From the Organic Pumpkin Black Bean Bake (local produce 101: chop all your vegetables BEFORE you began saute them, otherwise the 'shrooms burn before the peppers are even diced.)to weekly Wildflower Bakery dinners, so far so good.

While I have been going to Wildflower for breakfast (organic oatmeal) on Saturdays for over a year now (always before visiting Abington's abundant Farmer's Market), their dinners have been a new destination for me. Let me just say WOW. It truly doesn't get much fresher or tastier. There is nothing like consuming an Arugula salad, with greens pulled from the soil, rinsed, and topped with goat cheese all within about three minutes of arrival to your table top. Don't even get me started on the Paella or the Tamale Pie! I could envision the paper thin skin of the tomatillos being peeled away as I inhaled the savory aromas.

This Friday, I again took my seat at Wildflower and was immediately served green tea (the wait staff know me wayyy too well). I ordered a scrumptious chicken curry carrots and peas from the restaurants back yard and poulrty from Rich Valley farms. Afterward, I met some more friends at downtown Bristol's Machiavelli's to indulge in hummus and Margarita pizza. (Yes, I ate two dinners!)After being appropriately stuffed (and talking with some tipsy teachers) my friends and I crossed the street towards Java J's. At this local establishment, we ran in to even more friends!(another benefit ov loval dining) Our party grew from 5 to 9 as we conversed the evening away.

Since appropriately updating, I have also dined well at Troutdale Bistro, Pop Ellis, Earthfare, and Kingsolver's own Harvest Table in Meadowview Virginia. In the my own kitchen, I have prepared a myriad of meals ranging from Zucchini with goat cheese to Endive boats. It is safe to say, my blood stream is saturated with local nutrients.

So..blogs are about honesty and, to be honest, I've been avoiding an update...ONLY because I have so much to update about!
First off, I am an idiot. I was out eating sushi at Osaka, a local restaurant I might add, and BARBARA KINGSOLVER WALKS IN! How ironic and fateful is that? I read Poisonwood Bible in AP English, and now I am doing this blog project on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and she walks in to Osaka on a Sunday night at 6:48. Crazy! What's crazier? Me, the girl who loves to meet new people and strike up conversation, said NOTHING! i DIDN'T EVEN INTRODUCE MYSELF!! That is so so unlike me. I Honestly couldn't sleep that night.
There was,however, a method behind my temporary insanity. I have heard multiple times that while in public, she likes to go totally unnoticed. Kingsolver likes to be seen as a normal citizen(although normal citizens don't have teenage girls blogging about them like crazed fanboys). To be honest, I was terrified of offending her or having her mistake my admiration for hype. No one in the restaurant knew her from Adam, or Eve for that matter. Osaka was quiet that night and to get up and walk to her table would have been ridiculously ostentatious(other side of the room) and awkward...but that has never stopped me before! I was concerned, though, that by doing this, she would draw the unnecessary attention she prefers to evade. I was also dressed extremely unprofessionally and frumpy, so my self confidence was inhibited from that too. I had almost mustered the courage, when family friends walked in and swarmed the table, consequently, making me late for my movie.
I suppose that it just wasn't meant to be :(
Oh, by the way, beef maufactucturers recalled nearly 900,000 beef products today due to E.coli. E. Coli by the way, is caused by the excess of corn cattle are fed to fatten them up for quick slaughter. Corn is the cheapest feed available. Cows, however, are not meant to eat corn. That is the equivalent of a human eating hay. Their bodies cannot process the corn and it poisons their blood stream.
Organic and local. It matters.

No one does. That, is precisely the problem. Today's American culture is one of instant gratification: We want it and we want it now.
Ironically,we are killing ourselves by sustaining ourselves. Basically, the food we consume is the cause for most major diseases and fatalities in the country-cancer, diabetes, heart disease etc.
Not only are we killing ourselves, we are destroying the economic system as well. I bet you didn't know that the chicken you eat, be it at home or McDonald's, is raised by one of only four chicken companies that monopolize the market. These places pay farmers to grow chickens 500,000 at a time in dark coops. The chicken you eat, never sees the sun. They are also pumped with growth hormones and antibiotics to accelerate their growth
; your chicken's breasts were so big, that it could never even stand up. Talk about double D's.

Watch this alarming clip




Basically, with this blog, I will be ranting about the importance of local food as well as the governmental corruption of the food industry. I will be reading Barbra Kingsolver's novel, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which tells of her own journey into the world of strictly local eating. If the Kingsolver family didn't raise the product, or purchase it from a farmer within a fifty mile radius, they did without (yes, that means no soda or Starbucks). I will also prepare an entirely organic, local-centric meal one night a week(gathering produce at Farmers Markets and Earth Fare). I will also dine out at as many local businesses as possible such as Wildflower Bakery, Troutdale Bistro, and The Harvest Table (Barbra's own eatery outside of Abington). Most individuals don't understand the importance of local food and I endeavor to change the status quo.