brunetteblogger.com

Lately I’ve been really into eating more natural foods and less processed ones, and I recently started baking bread again. I don’t know if it’s the books I’ve been reading (Omnivore’s Dilemma, Animal Vegetable Miracle), my change of diet to vegan, the economy, or the fact that I’ve been working a lot from home, but I feel better, physically, cooking and eating more natural foods. Why eat more unprocessed foods? For one, they use less resources and contribute less to greenhouse gases. Also, if you start reading into what goes into processed foods…you’ll really try to limit them (because, in layman’s terms, it’s a bunch of crap). Additionally, a la books such as Fast Food Nation, if you do any investigating about the industrialization of animal farming in the US, you’ll quickly learn that animals are treated very poorly (there is no quick solution to this if you continue to eat meat, but eating less fast food will help).

There seems to be a national move in this direction to eat more simply, buy locally, and even grow food, driven by many factors, including the economy. In the depression, victory gardens were popular, and even promoted by then first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who planted one on the white house grounds. There is currently a group that is trying to motivate the Obamas to do the same.

What’s with the title, you ask? Well, it’s a play on the business book Who Moved My Cheese, which deals with change in the business world. I’m fascinated with the change in my sentiment that caused me to obtain and get rid of my breadmaker in the 90’s, and now my return to it. How much is convenience worth to us, and how much depends on our surroundings? My parents lived through the depression and they are big on convenience, I think because when these items were introduced (e.g., paper plates) the alternatives were, well, very inconvenient. I see many of my generation going to great lengths to not use these items that helped make our childhoods easier for our parents. I even have a friend who never uses disposable plates at her parties…go Shawna! I think it is a natural progression as we have clearly gone from living in the land of plenty to really seeing how our choices impact our life on this planet.

Tying this all together…I started thinking about the image to use for this blog post and I got a little stumped. One of my google searches was something like “bread cartoon superhero” and Rosie the Riveter, an image that was used in the depression to motivate women to work in the WWII effort at home, came up (you can see from the wiki entry that I’m not correct in my name of the image–it actually refers to an older Norman Rockwell illustration). Anyway, I was immediately struck with the similarities between this image and the famous Obama artwork by Shepard Fairey that was used during the campaign, along with the messaging (yes we can). With some simple photoshopping (?) I transformed the original “Rosie” artwork into something somewhat similar to the iconic Obama work…and it turns out I’m not the first one to make this connection. I’m sure those of you who know art will say that there’s nothing really new, as all artists are influenced by others, as evidenced in this nice collection of Obama artwork. To me, it’s intriguing that history is repeating itself in several ways: economic outlook is grim, and we’re being asked to help by our soon-to-be leader using bold, inspirational artwork. How incredibly fitting that he represents change in so many ways, as I think we all need to break away from the conveniences that are taxing our planet.

My point? Some would say the beauty of self publishing is that you don’t have to have one. Another perk is that you can continually step up onto your soapbox and preach. Try eating more natural, unprocessed foods. Try subscribing to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. Try growing your own food (I haven’t, but vow to in ‘09). Heck, even try going vegetarian! How does this help the economy? Eating less processed, more locally grown food puts more money into your local economy, and less into factory farms that rely on low-paid workers using industrial practices to produce food which is shipped at great expense to the end consumer (and the money for the petroleum to ship the foods goes mostly overseas too). Being green often coincides with being thrifty, too–cooking at home is always cheaper than eating out.  Perhaps ‘09 will be the year we all learn to enjoy time with others, cooking and enjoying high-quality, simple foods, rather than ordering a pizza and running out to a movie…roll up your sleeves, we can do this.

Note: Some would say I’m not really giving up conveniences, since I’m not baking bread by hand..to you, I say that my Rosie is flipping you off.