"Food..." 'Bettejo Dux' (Classic Wednesday)

Bettejo Dux has lived on the cosmic Garden Island of Kaua'i for over 40 years.
Bettejo is a regular columnist in the Garden Island news and is the author of the
famed novella, "The Scam."
www.bettejodux.com

Food

Want to pursue one hot topic?  Try food for a subject.  Amazing how complicated the basic need to eat food has become,and we all need to eat I've heard of Breathtarians--believers who claim food and possibly water are not necessary-but as a devout non- believer I sincerely doubt their existence. Never met one in person.  If there's one in the vicinity, I'd be happy to have a little chat.

I'm not one. I love a good hot bowl of soup as well as the next guy. Better than the next guy more than likely. All due to my faithful Vitamix.

When I was a little kid there was no such animal. Making soup has always been easy but it was a long process. Making broth to use in soup is still a long process, takes about three hours simmering broken bones in a pot of water, salt and vinegar.

Thinking about food in the past is a human indulgence  I sometimes love to wander about in.

I remember milkmen with milk bottle in milk trucks . The bottles had a narrow neck with a metal cap and the top two inches  was a yellow rich cream that sometimes my mother would let me skim off and add to a bowl of cereal and strawberries. Home grown strawberries raised  in a ceramic pot that looked, i imagined, like a miniature hanging garden of Babylon.   The cereal was usually Quick Quaker Oats-which can still be found on grocery shelves in round cardboard boxes with a picture of a  white-haired, white-scarfed  Quaker gentleman in a blue hat on the front-and brewed as it's been brewed aromatically for generations. I still love the smell.

Then there were soda fountains  Milk shakes, all flavors, root beer floats. Chocolate cokes in coca cola glasses I drank too much of when my mother wasn't looking.

Today, eating is so complicated. What to eat? Where to buy it? How to cook it?  So many questions, quizzes and debates a guy could go hungry trying to respond or answer all of them.

All kids drank milk. Loved vegetables 'cause their mothers knew how to cook them. Ate fresh laid eggs collected every morning. Shared food-fruit, vegetables, eggs- with neighbors, friends and animals. Dogs loved eggs and vegetables. Cats loved cream.  Hens  loved bugs and worms and no one complained about crowing roosters. Fertilized eggs were his contribution and his harem of hens proud members of the family. Sometimes we'd let the eggs hatch and give the young away.I never could tell what was a girl chick, what was a boy, but my father could. This was how people lived. Even those in the city bought produce from small and large farms, ranches, dairies

Today, it's so complicated. Best not to ask question and-for goodness' sake-don't dare whisper the word 'Franken' lettuce. So what if it bred with a rat? Be tolerant.

Two easy questions. Do you eat to live? Or do you live to eat?

Yes or no?

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