F.A. Farm

Back in the day when I went to the gym (I don't need to work out now since I work many hours at hard labor), I once had a conversation with another exerciser about how much to eat. He was of the opinion that your stomach normally holds two fistfuls of food and you shouldn't eat more at one sitting. That actually is good advice - and it doesn't need any scientific studies or numbers! I remembered this conversation recently because I was thinking about how most Americans eat - large portions heavy on the meat and cereals, with just a pittance of fruits and vegetables. Our diet here on the farm is more of a "vegetablanarian" blend of vegetables and some meat for flavoring. Yet we also have a tendency to overload the portions, too. I think a better idea is to eat like a gourmet.

By eating like a gourmet, I mean to enjoy the tastes and the mingling of tastes in properly prepared foods. Very often, we like to serve a vegetable on its own, so we can discover the subtleties of that vegetable. (Think parsnips or Brussels sprouts for example.) The key here is not portion size, but rather the "bang for the buck" is in the taste. Most of us American types think more is always better, but it ain't necessarily so. Perhaps a good gauge is to have one dish that has a mingling of flavors and the other dishes just a simple vegetable or fruit. This allows for clarity of palette. Reducing the need for seasonings fits into this idea also. For example, I don't boil my potatoes in salted water and I can taste the natural mineral salts in the potatoes when they are done. If I need more salt, it is easy to add later. Part of this taste is the trace minerals I add to the soil as I build it up. It seems to me that plants that are healthy will have the right mix of vitamins and minerals - this is the real reason for soil development.

So, if we eat smaller portions and really enjoy what we eat, we can afford to eat higher-priced food. This is not typically what we think of when we think of gourmet eating, but the world is changing all around us. Why not be a gourmet on a budget?