Knicker Knot: Accountants Control Our Food.
Shelf life sucks.
I once shopped at a ‘pick your own’ farm near Hana on Maui. We were given grocery baskets and a machete to tour a tropical food forest. The checkout counter was a large stump to hack apart fat sugarcanes to get to the juicy core. Biting into fresh sugarcane was like eating sunshine and sent me over the moon. My brain went a little haywire with joy. I later froze some and had the world’s best popsicles.
Sugar in its rawest form is ripe with delicate flavor and packed with powerful nutrients. Crystalized white sugar, conversely, is not unlike cocaine; a beneficial plant that has been processed into an addictive drug.
I also gleaned a large breadfruit, along with an easy recipe to turn it into coconut pudding using fresh tofu — healthy food as a guilty pleasure bordering on orgasmic. A fresh cut banana flower was exotic and gorgeous but tasted like weird cabbage, so I painted its portrait instead. Unfortunately, I could only afford to shop for groceries in Hana once, but the value of eating fresh and local stayed with me.
I just had to refine how I shop for unrefined food.
Food that rots the fastest is the best food for us. Since farmer’s markets and our own veggie gardens are seasonal, that leaves us with supermarkets for a lot of the year…
