our christmas menu

My mom, sister and I are at the beginning stages of planning the Christmas menu.  We were emailing back and forth so that my mom can get the first of many grocery store treks out of the way.  Visions of cranberry scones, and warm cereals, soups and pork loins were dancing in my head.  I spent about twenty minutes, typing as fast as I could -- taking advantage of "free" (my mom has a less limited budget than me) food to do my heart's (and stomach's) desire.

Meanwhile, my sister had emailed a link to some pictures from a book called Hungry Planet: What the world eats.  It was fascinating to see the pictures of families standing behind their week's supply of food.  They (and their food) came from Germany, Poland, China, Ecuador, Mexico, Egypt....  The tomatoes and squashes and breads piled up in red, orange, green and yellow mounds, creating little topographic models of their home landscapes.  (Isn't it funny how much our food looks like our land from afar?)  Unfortunately, the American family stood behind mounds of plastic and cardboard more than fruits and veggies.  The food is probably made from the same stuff as the packaging...and tastes the same too.  What's just as bad, was the family from Chad who sat behind wrinkled cucumbers and a bit of casava flour.  

Funny --- isn't it.  Both the American and Chad families....I'm equally heartbroken for.  It's impossible to compare the injustices really...  One group has all the choice in the world...and chooses to eat chemicals and sugars and food coloring.  The other family doesn't have much power at all in their food decisions.  These families, couldn't have more different life circumstances-- but I truly believe, that both affect the other.  The reason that the Chad family eats so little has something to do with the fact that the American family eats at Burger King, Pizza Hut, Crispy Cream, and when they do sit down to eat, it's Macaroni and Cheese or some sort of robo chicken that never stepped a foot on the ground and was shot up with crazy growth hormones.  Americans (6% of the world's population) use up 30% of the world's resources.  For some reason, Americans don't realize that the world has a limited amount of "stuff".  Limited means that after we take all that we need and want, the rest of the world has to fight over the rest.  Some people win those fights...other people lose.  It's obvious that the Chad family is losing.  Surely, we can do something about this.