According to the internet, doctors are saying the younger generations may not live as long as the older one has,. I gave that a lot of thought ...

I grew up when farmers raised their crops without pesticides and produced fertilizer. They used manure and compost to fertilize the fields. They rotated crops so the minerals would not be depleted. They allowed fields to lay fallow for a season so the earth would be replenished naturally.

I can tell you the food I ate tasted like food. Apples had not been fooled with to make an apple that could survive shipping and time in a market without losing its visual appeal to the consumer..

Christmas saw our stockings filled with apples and oranges, tangerines, fresh fruit shipped in from Florida and California ,.other places too I guess. My tongue and body parts may be old but my taste buds remember how good that fruit tasted.

That was the difference -  IT TASTED wonderful.  Now sometimes when I eat "fresh" fruit it is tasteless. True you can buy it out of season now, having been in cold storage to sell at a later date but the apples and other fruit have no flavor ...sometimes the fruit feels sort of mushy in your mouth and instead of lasting for a week or even more they rot on your counter.

The same way with meat, when I was young meats had great flavor.  You didn't need to add anything but onions and garlic to make a pot roast taste wonderful.

If you have never eaten a fresh killed chicken you really don't know how great chicken is ...Everyone I knew had fish at least once a week, it was cheaper than red meats and tasted delicious .. baked or fried or even poached .. and fresh eggs.  AH they were a delight...sort of simmered in the fat left of the frying pan away from cooking bacon.

The shelves in stores were not full of prepared food. Mother baked cakes, pies, cookies etc from scratch which means (in case some of you are too young to not only not know what that means but what it tastes like), cakes were made with flour, sugar, fresh eggs and real butter. WOW!  

Cookies were made the same way and melted in your mouth.  Fresh biscuits were also made from scratch not out of a tin from the grocer's shelf.

I still make many things from scratch ...true they don't have a LONG shelf life mostly because people gobble them up. I think of all the things I enjoyed and really don't any longer.

There is one thing though I can still enjoy because each year I set out tomato plants. IF it doesn't rain I water them daily.

I pick the best spot where the sun can shed its rays and warm the plants so when the tomatoes are ripe you can bring them in and rinse them, and since I don't like the peel even if it is edible on a vine ripened tomato, the peel slips off easily. Then I slice it thinly ...butter some real homemade bread . and lay those slices on the bread , add a bit of salt and pepper and sit down to dine sublime.... WONDERFUL.

Dining Divine
By Anna  Alexander
 

restaurants in France
offer cuisine sublime
choice tidbits fines herbes
embellish the mundane
make them fine

today on my deck
in regal splendor I dine
fresh made home baked bread
sweet cream butter
tomatoes sunripe from the vine

anna alexander
7/28/97
all rights reserved

 anna