You should go here.

jaredboyd — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:11:55 +0000

On not lamenting my grocery bill…and the pleasure of food

jaredboyd — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:05:59 +0000

I spend about $130 a week to feed my family. I spend this much money knowing that it is more money than I actually have, which is, in fact, another story altogether but one that we all could tell from time to time. I’m working on trying to figure out, not how to spend less on food, but how to spend less on everything else so that we can eat. I made a conscious decision a few years ago, that of all the things in life that should be pleasurable, at least eating should be so. Not necessarily gourmet, though we sometimes eat things that people might call “gourmet,” like a stilton blue cheese from England, but a pleasure that is extensive and full. At the risk of sounding overly pedantic: I don’t think that most americans take pleasure in eating. I think the emotion of many americans in the present century, with the growing realization that all is not well in the food system, is that of anxiety. And while I fight anxiety about money, and the money we spend on food, and the growing price of local eggs and flour and milk, I am not anxious in eating.

The Pleasures of Eating

A few nights ago my wife fixed a pleasant meal of rice, kale, and mushrooms. I’m sure there were some spices in there, perhaps some rice vinegar or soy sauce, but eating kale from Ben Sipple’s farm was good. We’ve been eating kale in some form or another for the past 4-6 weeks. Much of the pleasure of my eating that evening at the dinner table was watching little pieces of local kale dangle from the mouths of my little girls and watching it disappear into those little bodies alongside the laughter and silliness and prayers of thankfulness around our dinner table.

The Displeasure of Eating

How much pleasure do you take in eating? I know. This all sounds somewhat elitist, some might say a bit more of a gnostic approach to food than we ought to take. After all, there are people who wouldn’t care one bit where their next meal came from, just that it in fact came in time to live another day. I recognize this. And on an entirely different scale of lamenting, I lament this as well. We might be tempted to place a malnourished underfed child in Nigeria in a different category than, say, a malnourished overfed child in the midwest of America. I’m inclined to say that the travesty is the same, but the difference is not one of degree, but of context and spectrum. Both children suffer from a displeasure of food, one because she doesn’t have enough of it, and the other because he doesn’t care enough about it. One displeasure is caused by lack, and another by an abundance, but they’re both unhealthy, malnourished, and can’t take pleasure in food. Both are hungry for food and don’ t have access to food because of the industrialization of their lives or the globalization of their lives and neither has the ability or the capacity or the opportunity to plant something, watch it grow, and then eat it. One has been robbed of this capacity because of political and historical reasons, another because of reasons of greed and ignorance. One is stuck in a cycle of poverty, while another is stuck in cycle of a mistake made in the generation of his great-grandfather. One goes hungry, while another stuffs his belly with things that aren’t really food.

Over the years people have taken up causes to fight for. Noble causes for justice and good for orphans, for needs, for water, for life, for the world.

Wendell Berry has said that “a significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health.”

I’m trying to say, along with many others, that we need to plant some seeds, watch them grow, eat food, and give food away.

Starting Two Blogs at once

jaredboyd — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:12:23 +0000

For someone like myself, blogging in general is a bit of a stretch. All the reasons of time, and energy, and being a bit of an introvert, lend toward keeping more of myself, to myself. Those of you who know me also know that I tend to share a lot about my zeal or zest for this or that idea or vision or dream or thought. I think I have about 10x as many thoughts as I have words to express them. I think at heart…I’m a writer with about a 15 year writers block. I used write quite a bit. Short stories. Poems. Observations. The blocks about to burst, as I have promised my friend, and while I don’t know if what I’m about to say here at Double Stitched Khakis or what I’ve been starting to say over here at Justice Gardens is worth the reading, I know at least it’s worth it to me to start saying it, in some form, with, albeit digital, pen and ink. At the risk of sounding too cute and saccharine, I’ll say that those Khaki pants that have been mended and hung up to dry on a clothes line are still flapping in the wind….

thoughts in the hopper…

jaredboyd — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:07:46 +0000

There’s a lot of stuff rolling around in the old noggin. Just not enough time to get it out.

I’ve been working on something else here that has me pretty excited…

Khaki pants are hanging on the line waiting to dry…..

not yet….

jaredboyd — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:53:49 +0000

hope to start blogging soon…khaki pants are being mended.