Homemade and how much?

Since I spent most of last week nit-picking local breakfast restaurants, I figured I had better put up some home made goodness on the blog before I turned into an armchair chef.  

Meanwhile, gotta bite the hand that feeds on this one:  last week the LSJ ran an AP article about GMO 'food' (salmon in particular, with some hazy back story on field crops) that--like most mainstream media--portrayed these friggin' mega-fish, along with the death machine of genetically modified and petroleum-based 'farming' as sound advances in the human endeavor, nay-said by a rag-tag group of doubters with such petty, short-sighted concerns as the 'environment' and other liberal nonsense.

Wake up and smell the hog farm, America.  The dose makes the poison, as my cancer biology professor used to say (still does, hopefully).  Too much--or too little--of even a seemingly innocuous ingredient in this complex, interwoven world can cause undesirable changes.  Let's respect those natural balances, rather than seeking loopholes to cheat them.  The point is not to be making pigs with rose-scented poo, the naturally occurring 'harmful' chemicals designed out under a profiteering patent by a corporation existing at the expense of a genuinely ethical human condition.  Rather, raise your hogs (or cattle, or...) at a stable concentration--one that contributes to the stability of their very habitat.

Give your cows some nice grass and shade, not a barren lot of shit centered on a feed crib.  Filthy swine, on the other hand, don't seem to mind an occasional romp in the slop ;)

Let's just call it like it is: breeding is not the same as genetic tinkering.  Freely reproducing, LIVE organisms are to GMO seed what John Connor is to the terminator (the spry, take-no-guff John Connor of T2, not the glazed, robotic, fist-pumper from the recent exploit).  If the farmers passing seed down for thousands of years are finally extinct, what option will we have to those who would own your very life, the seed for your food?  What's next? Soylent Green?

"You guys should have destroyed this technology years ago...

now my arcade-numbed pre-teen generation is your only hope!"*

*Not an actual quote from a movie, that I know of.

 

But wait you say, what's a lowly consumer like me supposed to do?  Let's model the macro change we want at the micro level--or think globally, act locally, if you will.  (And you will, I hope, keep those -ly endings on your adverbs.)  None of us are monks (apologies to any actual monks reading, leave a comment below!), so let yourself be proud of your moderation.  Rather than giving up a tasty but not-so-sustainable treat entirely, allow yourself some reasonable indulgence while maintaining a sense of scope.  Let's not drink soda with every meal.  Let's not eat meat everyday.  And maybe there's one short trip on your agenda that you really don't need the car for at all.