Removed From Food

Tomorrow there is a potluck lunch for a colleague who is leaving. I was unsure of what to bring, so I opted to buy a packet of ready-to-bake sausage rolls. If I were my mum, I'd have made them from scratch. It suddenly hit me how...removed I am from food.

Let me explain.
Throughout most of my childhood I had the benefit of knowing about where my food came from. The first three years of my life were spent on a farm and orchard, so I knew that fruit came from trees and plants, and I knew that the animals in the fields would most probably end up on the dinnertable. My mum made her own bread.

As I got older and we moved from the farm to urban life, I still had the benefit of knowing where most of my food came from. We had a garden, and might I say very proudly that it was organic. To this day my mum still has incredibly rich soil thanks to composting, and bugs are kept at bay by birds who do their work and also benefit from the occasional fat worm when mum turns the soil. I grew up with the joy of shucking peas from their pods and watching our massive pumpkin patch grow to such a yield that often mum would end up giving a pumpkin to anyone who came to the door! She bakes all her own baking, makes her own jam, etc.

So how was it that I rebelled against the bounty of nature so spectacularly? I live out of packets, there are ingredients on said packets that would never be found in nature. I don't bake, and sadly there is no room for an organic garden in our little shoebox backyard. It makes me sad. I know it's not good for my health either.