The Main Problem With Eating Organic, Whole Food Is . . .

. . . everything else is unsatisfying. Seriously. I've been to two gatherings recently loaded with party food--mac 'n cheese, wings, chili, chips 'n salsa, sloppy joes--the whole bit. In the past, I would have found a meal like that extraordinarily pleasing: a feast for all times. Sure, there is a junk-food element to some of the items but still there's a lot of decent food and variety in the mix, right?

Lately, organics make up a significant portion of my diet, perhaps even a majority. The rest is wholesome, whole foods and I pay special attention to avoiding corn syrups, MSG, nitrates, artificial additives this-n-that. The foods I eat are rich in flavor and low in garbage, garden fresh, locally raised (environmentally responsible, too). Its not an exaggeration to say that I feel a glow after eating such high-quality foods.

At these gatherings, I felt like I needed to eat more. Like my body didn't get what it was supposed to, and if only I would just keep eating I would eventually hit it. But I got stuffed and just felt blah. Ironically, I was unfulfilled.

I once spent a week volunteering and eating at a soup kitchen. I ate mostly white rice, because I was afraid of everything else. I felt a similar blah feeling that week. It was like the food wasn't doing anything. The nutritional deficiency could be felt. Only thing now is I feel that way eating regular American food. Perhaps it is all the hydrogenated oils and additives that are making me feel sluggish.

Home Economics

"Home economics" is not a popular phrase anymore. It carries connotations of gender segregation in high school--girls take Home Ec, boys take Shop. Or even worse, sexism--girls take Home Ec, boys take College Prep Physics. But understanding the workings of a household in terms of economics is a really good idea.

Economics understands that in every system there are limited resources, and as a result you have to make decisions about what to do. Time, materials, hands to help, energy, all these are limited. Every decision to do something is a decision not to do something else. Each decision has both a cost and an opportunity. When you truly economize you end up doing the most with the least amount of inputs.

I can easily spend my time spinning my wheels--and have. I come home from work, get something to eat, drink some juice, and when I look in the sink both bins are overflowing with dirty dishes. I see 10-15 cups in the sink. I live alone, folks. Why did I use that many cups and when??

I've talked about my laundry previously on this blog. I can easily use the same bath towel for a week if I manage it properly. If I hang it up to dry quickly after using it and only use it for the same purpose each time, it stays fresh for quite some time. Hanging out in the sunshine and wind, I imagine it could be used almost indefinitely.

Let's say I have grease on my hands from fixing something, or maybe even ketchup from a sloppy hamburger. I could easily reach for the more-accessible bath towel--its just hanging there drying. I could also walk a few extra feet to the kitchen for a paper towel or find a rag more suited for that purpose. Those extra few seconds saved out of laziness using the bath towel ends up costing me more loads of laundry, more money in detergent, and more resources spent from the environment. The towel that could have lasted me a week is now in the hamper. I think I'm being "laid back" by reaching for the easiest items, but all I'm doing is making life unnecessarily difficult in the long run.

I am a believer that we can all learn to be more efficient and economical in our home decisions without having to change our entire personalities. I don't think we need to become totally organized, make lists or think completely differently if that's not our style. Its just about deciding how we want to spend our time and not doing things that are going to make more work for us later on.

Suze Orman talks about the way people rebel against managing their own money out of some protest of being a "money-oriented person." The result is that they spend years struggling with debt and living with the consequences of haphazard decisions--Decisions they thought they were avoiding, but in economics every decision not to do something is a decision to do just that. Money is a part of life whether we like to admit it or not (unless you live in radical, intentional poverty, but even then it may not be so simple).

I think a similar situation applies in the households--we rebel against a well-managed house because maybe it brings connotations of Mrs. Cleaver. People don't want to be a tidy "Suzy Homemaker", they want to be laid-back and carefree. But regardless of gender roles, we still have to feed ourselves and take care of our daily business. That work is not going away. The best way to minimize that drain on our time, attention, money and other resources is to properly economize what we do. Suzy Homemaker is either doing a much better job in the same amount of time as you, or has more time to kick back and relax. Suzy Homemaker may be calm and collected, while the so-called "laid-back" types are always running around "managing" candles burning at both ends.

A cup used can be rinsed out or just left on the counter for the next use. A household with many mouths could have a cup assigned to each person, so as to avoid unnecessary washing due to confusion over who drank from what cup. Clean clothes can be hung up to re-use, kept apart from the dirty laundry so I can tell what's what later. A stitch in time saves 9 more later, and there's no reason not to embrace that kind of wisdom today. I don't want to spend all my free time at the laundromat or washing dishes.

And if you're gonna be "laid back", do it with, uh . . . gusto: don't wash anything, and don't shower at all.

Jesus: Love in the Face of Violence

Imagine a movie scene of the Gospel of John. The disciples are gathered around the table immediately after Jesus has washed their feet. Jesus knows his betrayer and lets him go and do what he needs to do. He hands bread to Judas, and then Judas leaves.

Imagine then the movie screen is split in two. On the one side, you see Judas scurrying down narrow flights of stairs and out into the streets, making his way quickly among the shadows until he finds the Chief Priests. He makes his deal.

One the other side of the screen is Jesus among his disciples. He knows that Judas is out there, right at this very moment betraying him. What does Jesus do? He gathers his disciples in a delicate, intimate scene, and talks about love--the Greatest Commandment, no less. While Judas is making his deal, Jesus--in full knowledge of this betrayal--at the very moment this betrayal is happening--Jesus opens like a flower.

While there is no mention of "turning the other cheek" in the Gospel of John, there can be no better example. In the face of violence, Jesus turns and shows his best side. He does not tighten up in anger, or slink away in fear, or keep a grudge, or make a list. He talks about the importance--the sheer necessity--of loving one another. Judas turned and struck him in the cheek, but Jesus responded--not with his hurt side--but as if we were never hurt. He turned and responded from his other side, his unhurt cheek--not from his pain or fear, but out of love.

Some argue that the Gospel of John is problematic in that Jesus only mentions the greatest commandment to his closest disciples. Many have wondered if he's talking only about love among disciples for disciples. The role of Judas in this scene, however--even when he is not present at the meal any longer--is critical to understanding Jesus' message. Even if John focuses on relationships among disciples, the ability of Jesus to remain in love and respect Judas, even as the latter falters, shows how a disciple can respond to the rest of the world. This message of love is for all people.

You Can't Eat Fish Anymore

When I was in elementary school, I remember reading a story about some futuristic time period. People had to wear gas masks to go outside due to the excessive pollution. I believe one of the highlights for the kid in the story was going to a museum/park to actually see real live trees and play without a gas mask on.

Such stories serve as warnings, but most of us see them as being exaggerated, worst-case-scenario portraits that are unlikely to happen. Or maybe that are a prediction for an era several generations in the future.

If we look around, however, we can see all sorts of immense compromises we have made to live in a world that is already excessively polluted.

Folks, we can’t eat fish anymore. Did you hear the news? The FDA advises that pregnant women or young children shouldn’t eat more than 12 oz a week of what…? Plastic? Tin cans? Car bumpers? No: FISH. All fish. Everywhere. Lobster, shrimp--them too. If they're in the water, they're on the list. There is not a fish on this planet that doesn’t carry around mercury or other toxins as a result of swimming in our collective dumping ground. And don’t get me started on farm raised, they are probably worse. My medication is safer for pregnant women than . . . fish.

If its that bad for pregnant women and youngsters, you might want to ask yourself if its really all that safe for the rest of us.

Its actually good to reduce fish consumption anyway, since our oceans, rivers and lakes are so catastrophically over-fished that we are pushing some of our favorite species to extinction--not to mention destroying entire ecosystems, which is tragic for many reasons not the least of which is the contribution to global warming.

If it weren’t for the toxins and the over-fishing, I would most assuredly recommend fish as one of nature’s wonder foods. I can’t now. Some wild caught salmon every once in a while and I’m done. Things our ancestors took for granted we need to avoid.

We are an adaptable species, and sometimes our ability to adapt doesn’t serve us. We get used to things that we shouldn’t get used to.

Did you also notice that we can’t drink the water anymore?

Concise Composting

When I was young, my family would often throw our organic waste in the fields. On a large farm, all you had to do was take a milk carton full of peels, cores and leaves, walk a hundred yard in any direction, and then launch the contents into the grass and brush in a circular arc motion. If rats or other animals got into it, we could hardly care.

I was a bit hesitant to compost in the city, though. It seemed complicated--getting a compost bin, and I had heard you had to do it just right to make sure the contents heated up to a certain temperature, etc. Wouldn't rodents be a problem with vegetables rotting in a concentrated area?

I have to thank Erin for introducing me to composting. Its astonishingly easy: You just dump the stuff into a pile in the backyard. Its that simple. Then throw some dirt, grass clippings and leaves on it to keep it relatively covered. You just don't want vegetables rotting in plain daylight, but they don't need much to cover them at all. Once a pile is formed, I'll just open a little hole in the top with a hoe, dump my kitchen waste in there, then close it back up. Its good to stir the pile up regularly to facilitate quicker composting. In just a couple months (or even less with more focused management), your yard clippings and kitchen waste turn into a wonderful, rich compost.

I haven't noticed much of a rodent problem at all. We had a couple piles at Erin's house and one at my apartment. Occasionally, I'd see some corn cobs lying in the backyard, so someone had been rooting through the pile and pulled some stuff out. But no infestation of rats or anything to that degree. By contrast, the compost piles are significantly cleaner than the rows of garbage cans in the alleyways of Columbus. Its clear that animals root through them and scatter their contents far and wide.

Its amazingly fun to compost. I just keep a pail in the kitchen with a tight-fitting lid, and every few days its full and I take it outside. I feel like I'm doing something for the environment and participating in the full life cycle. It is said that at least 30% of all household waste could be composted. No sense sending that to a landfill when it could be used to augment the nutrition in your soil for gardening. [Due to the compact nature of landfills, much of the biodegradable materials in them do not beak down, they just add to the volume of the waste out there.] Sometimes I even enjoy it when vegetables go bad or I have a lot of cores and peels to throw out, because that just means there's more to compost!

You can compost the following:

• All raw vegetables--peels, cores, leaves, anything that goes moldy
• Egg shells (not the contents, although most of the eggs shells obviously have a little egg residue, but I don't think that's a problem)
• Tea bags and coffee, filters and all!
• Grass clippings and leaves
• Some even recommend composting certain paper and cardboard products

It is not recommended to compost meats, eggs, bread or oils, or treated woods. In theory they can be composted, but you could have a bigger problem with pests, and treated wood contains toxins.

There are plenty of web sites with details about how to compost. If you want to use the compost you've created in a garden, you may want to be more mindful of what you put in--for example, if you treat your grass with pesticides, that could be a problem for your vegetables next year (or you when you eat those vegetables). Others say that's not an issue since the herbicides break down quickly. Others discourage composting leaves of black walnut trees or rhubarb or other plants with potential toxins to humans or which could inhibit growth in your garden, some say its not a problem. There are a variety of opinions out there, so do a little research. But the bottom line is that its real easy, and nature handles most of the issues for you.

Four Gospels Are Better Than One

Studying the world of Johannine Literature means partaking heavily in the scholarship of Raymond Brown. As my professor would say--This is the sea of Ray Brown, and we're just coming for a swim in it.

One of my favorite insights of Ray Brown would be the following, taken from his book The Community of the Beloved Disciple. Some background info: It is believed that there was a community which produced the Johannine writings. The functioned almost like a separate denomination, in modern terms. At some point, this community dissolved and many of its members and some of its writings were accepted into the larger Christian community--the community through which the New Testament was compiled and the Nicene Creed formed, and from which most modern denominations can trace their roots. Here's the quote:

"What I do want to reflect upon is the results for the Great Church of the amalgamation of the Johannine Christians into its membership and of the acceptance of the Johannine writings into the canon of Scripture. At various times I have referred to the theology of the Fourth Gospel as challengingly different, volatile, dangerous, and as the most adventuresome in the New Testament . . .

The ultimate check upon what Kysar calls the "maverick Gospel" has been the church's hermeneutical decision to place it in the same canon as Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Gospels which implicitly advocate the side opposite to many Johannine positions. This means that the Great Church, "the church catholic" of Ignatian language, whether consciously or unconsciously, has chosen to live with tension.

Tension is not so easily accepted in ordinary life, and we usually try to resolve it. So too in church history--but because of the church decision about the canon, attempts at simple resolutions of these theological tensions into a static position on one side or the other are unfaithful to the whole New Testament."

In Introduction the the New Testament, he makes a similar point:

"Divine providence furnished four different Gospels, not a harmonized version . . . Harmonization, instead of enriching, can impoverish."

World's Easiest Chili

So it all started when I had some leftover ground meat.... already cooked, with onions and garlic, s&p. Didn't know what to do with it.

So I opened up a can of diced tomatoes (the kind with some spices already in it), and put the contents in a pot on the stove. Turned on heat. Opened a can of pinto beans and dumped them in. Opened a can of corn and dumped about half of it in. Dumped my ground beef in. Threw some seasonings in--cumin, chili powder, whatever else. Cut up one of the 1,000,000 jalapeños I have left from the garden, dumped it in. (I got worried about not having tomato sauce and emptied out an extremely small amount of spaghetti sauce that I had left, but I wouldn't be surprised if the impact of this was negligible)

2 minutes later, it was done.

Tasted like I had spent hours on it.

Serves with a dollop of sour cream.